Americans believe climate change connected to location and local weather
Researchers found local experiences and temperatures drive belief or non-belief in climate change
A new study finds local weather may play an important role in Americans’ belief in climate change. The study, published on Monday, found that Americans’ belief that the earth is warming is related to the frequency of weather-related events they experience, suggesting that local changes in their climate influence their acceptance of this worldwide phenomenon.
“One of the greatest challenges to communicating scientific findings about climate change is the cognitive disconnect between local and global events,” said Michael Mann, associate professor of geography at George Washington University and co-author of the paper. “It is easy to assume that what you experience at home must be happening elsewhere.”
The researchers found that Americans who experience more record highs than lows in temperature are more likely to believe the earth is warming. Conversely, Americans who live in areas that have experienced record low temperatures, such as southern portions of Ohio and the Mississippi River basins, are more skeptical that the earth is warming.
The study notes that part of this dichotomy may be because of the early terminology used to describe climate change that suggested the earth was simply warming – not changing in innumerable but measurable ways. This might have led residents living in areas that experienced an unusually cold winter to doubt that climate change is occurring.
“Who do Americans trust about climate change; scientists or themselves?” said Robert Kaufmann, professor in the department of geography and the Center for Energy & Environmental Studies at Boston University and lead author of the paper. “For many Americans, the answer seems to be themselves.”
The researchers also found that a recent period of lower-than-average temperatures offset the effect of a long warming period, further supporting their findings that people’s belief in climate change is local and experiential.
The scientists note the importance of differentiating between weather, the temperatures of a relatively short period of time such as a season, and climate, the average temperatures over a period of 25 or 30 years. Emphasizing the difference between weather and climate may help scientists more effectively communicate about climate change.
The paper, “The Spatial Heterogeneity of Climate Change: An Experiential Basis for Skepticism,” was published in Proceedings National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/12/13/1607032113.abstract
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Abstract
We postulate that skepticism about climate change is partially caused by the spatial heterogeneity of climate change, which exposes experiential learners to climate heuristics that differ from the global average. This hypothesis is tested by formalizing an index that measures local changes in climate using station data and comparing this index with survey-based model estimates of county-level opinion about whether global warming is happening. Results indicate that more stations exhibit cooling and warming than predicted by random chance and that spatial variations in these changes can account for spatial variations in the percentage of the population that believes that “global warming is happening.” This effect is diminished in areas that have experienced more record low temperatures than record highs since 2005. Together, these results suggest that skepticism about climate change is driven partially by personal experiences; an accurate heuristic for local changes in climate identifies obstacles to communicating ongoing changes in climate to the public and how these communications might be improved.
Significance
We develop a simple heuristic to measure local changes in climate based on the timing of record high and low temperatures. The metric shows local cooling and warming in the United States and captures two aspects of experiential learning that influence how the public perceives a change in climate: recency weighting and an emphasis on extreme events. We find that skepticism about whether the Earth is warming is greater in areas exhibiting cooling relative to areas that have warmed and that recent cooling can offset historical warming. This experiential basis for skepticism of climate change identifies obstacles to communicating ongoing changes in climate to the public and how these communications might be improved.
Anthony comments:
So I’ve read the study, and it’s got one clear problem that I can see, which is obvious from their map – they didn’t account for local media exposure and political bias. Below is a map of how counties voted in the 2012 election, compared to Mann’s climate belief system map. Reds are right leaning (Republican), Blues are left leaning (Democratic). I’ve used this map, because it’s closer to the timeframe of the polling data from Mann’s study, IMO.
If you compare the grey areas, where belief in global warming due to weather events is high, you’ll note an obvious pattern: The darkest areas in Mann’s map match many of the bluest areas of the voting map. Places like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Miami, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Washington, DC and Chicago all have strong correlations with voting records.
This suggests that Mann’s study is pure bunk, and is more related to political leanings and media outlets for those areas pushing the AGW meme, than it has to do with weather.
Another Manntastic fantastic claim, shot to hell.
UPDATE/CORRECTION: Well, I’ve made a mistake. The Michael Mann listed as author of the paper is not the Michael E. Mann, of Penn State, but a person of the same first and last names of George Washington University. The headline and last sentence have been corrected to fix that misidentification. (h/t to Roman M in comments) -Anthony
Jesus, Captain Obvious is sort of Santa Claus of science nowaday : he seems to be working 8760 hours a day, delivering everywhere, although nobody ever saw him and he never sign his work himself.
The problems with this paper are more fundamental than Anthony suggests.
Kaufmann et al. extensively discuss their right-hand variable of interest, temperature, but they are almost completely silent about the left-hand side, belief. This variable is taken from an earlier paper by Howe et al. It is based on 12 nationally representative samples of about 1,000 observations each. The samples are for different years, of course, something that Kaufmann and co overlook. More seriously, there are 3,000 counties in the USA, so that a 1,000 strong sample will leave many counties unobserved. Howe et al. interpolate their data to obtain coverage for all counties. Kaufmann et al. do the same: They interpolate weather station data to counties.
In the end, therefore, Kaufmann regresses imputed, spatial data on imputed, spatial data. Chances are they found that the spatial imputation schemes are similar.
My degee in econometrics taught that when you regress madeup data on madeup data, the result is highly statistically likely to be made up, err… imputated. Nice catch in the junk methodology.
R. T.,
Thanks for that.
This author is not our favorite Mann (Michael E. Mann)
PigBearMann.
“The study notes that part of this dichotomy may be because of the early terminology used to describe climate change that suggested the earth was simply warming – not changing in innumerable but measurable ways.”
Measurable ways? What measurable ways? Would love to see a “before the change” and “after the change” illustration of that.
This implies they know what is normal climate, and can show that normal has changed to abnormal. Another outlandish, unprovable claim by climate alarmists.
What it says in plain speak-
“This study shows it probably wasn’t a good idea to call it “Global Warming”, because when it didn’t warm up like we said it would, people stopped trusting us. So we re-branded it as “Climate Change” so we could use any weather phenomenon, even dropping temperatures, as “proof” of anything we wanted. But we didn’t really think that one through either because Climate Change is kind of an oxymoron (since all the climate on Earth has done is change) so now the only people in the US that still believe in the Church of Humans Must be Causing Bad Things are people who live in hot places, or where the weather changes a lot.”
It’s hilarious because apparently that whole “You can SEE it! Literally look out your window and SEE the climate change happening” meme apparently doesn’t work….if you can’t actually SEE any change. And they had to fund a STUDY to figure that out! Wow. Just….wow.
The study you are deconstructing is actually a dog whistle for climate extremists to increase sensationalized deceptive reporting about weather.
The cold blue dot is where my mountain is in New York! Also, it was below zero last night here, by the way.
Stupidity takes a long time to die.
jim heath,
Especially when you keep it on artificial life support and keep zapping it with the shocky paddles when it starts to flatline….
Since there never was any credible science involved, it is then a random walk, feely thing to be molded and shaped by political science consultants.
We have become a mobile society. People no longer stay rooted in one area. They move from city to city, state to state even country to country. By doing so they never develop a long term history of weather in any area. Everything seems new and different and ‘never happened’ before.
Plus people flock to the cities which due to UHI are always ‘hotter’. This artificial warming warps their sense of reality. “Gosh, it really has gotten hotter!” As they moved from a smaller town to a large city in search of a job, or retired from a colder state to sunny Florida or California.
Myself, I still live in the city I was born in over 54 years ago. It has certainly grown. From about 35,000 when I was a teenager to about 80,000 now. But it still takes only minutes to drive into the countryside and cooler temperatures. Those big city slickers don’t have that. They drive from city to city, all connected and never experience the temperature drop when leaving the influence of UHI.
The only ‘weather’ event I have not yet seen a repeat of here in central Texas is the dust storms that were common in the mid 1970s. Winds would bring dust from west Texas into central Texas. Changes in agricultural practices may be keeping them from returning. Or perhaps they are just around the corner since that was 40 years ago (65-70 year warming/cooling cycle).
Myron,
I agree.
It’s also probably part of the “growing up” spacial change that intelligent people understand easily. You know, where when you are only 4 feet tall, 2 feet of snow seems like a LOT more than it does when you are 6 feet tall. Or how something that used to seem so much bigger/taller/grander/special/amazing when we were kids, now does not. It’s not the amount of snow, or wind, or rain, or storms that have changed…it’s our awareness and perception/point of view that has.
Of course people who aren’t smart enough to understand this principle, just assume that it’s the world around them that has changed, not how they view it. (Or maybe they just never got any smarter than they were when they were 4 feet tall…….maybe we need a study to see if there’s a correlation between climate change belief and height……??)
Aphan,
I don’t know, I’m grown up (though some would dispute that) and 2 feet of snow still seems like a LOT. Especially when I have to shovel it. :?)
Because the duration between absorption and emission of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) for CO2 molecules is approximately 6 micro seconds (µs) but thermalization (the process of absorbing EMR and conducting the absorbed energy to other molecules) for any atmospheric molecule at sea level takes approximately 0.0002 µs, essentially all terrestrial radiation absorbed by CO2 is thermalized. Similarly, all EMR absorbed by water vapor (WV) is thermalized. The thermalized energy is expressed in the froth of molecular velocity and spin with molecular speeds characterized by the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. It is observed as temperature and pressure of the gas.
Molecular species are identified as greenhouse gases (ghg) by the property that they absorb/emit EMR at wavelengths of significant terrestrial radiation (approximately 6-100 microns (µm). CO2 absorbs/emits at only one wavelength in that range (15 µm broadened at sea level to about 14-16 µm by pressure, etc.). Water vapor molecules, however, have, according to a count reported in a 1938 paper (Astrophysical Journal, June 1938, v 87, no 8, p 499) “about 170 lines in the range 75-550 cm-1” [133-18.2 µm].
Global average WV at sea level is approximately 1.5% = 15,000 ppmv while CO2 is only 505 ppmv so there are approximately 15000/505 = 29.7 times as many WV molecules as CO2 molecules. Thus in the typical case, there are 29.7 X 170 ≈ 5100 absorption/emission ‘opportunities’ for WV plus one opportunity for CO2 for a total of 5101. If you double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the number of opportunities increases to 5102. The resultant increase in warming effect (if any) is (5102-5101)/5101 = 0.000196. This increase of about 0.02% is insignificant.
Climate sensitivity is not significantly different from zero.
Identification of the three factors in an equation which matches average global temperature (98% 1895-2015) is at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
“The scientists note the importance of differentiating between weather, the temperatures of a relatively short period of time such as a season, and climate, the average temperatures over a period of 25 or 30 years.”
The ‘climate’ can be rather different in two places with the same average temps . . on my home planet ; )
Exactly, JohnKnight.
And why “a period of 25 or 30 years”? Why not 35 or 45? Or 100?
Andrew
Seems like they don’t understand the importance of differentiating between the “average air temperature” in a specific location, and BOTH “climate” and “weather”. They seem to be assuming that ONE aspect of both climate and weather can be interchanged with either or both words freely.
Maybe simple people are confused when Mann and his ilk say something along the lines of “the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were not global in scope because we found areas X and Y did not warm at the same rates and time as areas A and B.” but then turn around and say “modern global warming is global in scope, but that doesn’t mean that all areas will experience the same rate of warming and some may even cool.”
But of course those that aren’t simple minded see it for what it is, political.
I’m glad to know they surveyed the Federal park rangers in the Big Bend area.
Anthony — The Mann data looks a bit cherry-picked…..lots of empty space in his map with no temperature dots….a real close look shows that his own data does not really support his hypothesis.
See Richard Tol’s comment at 10:25 am.
v’
“…innumerable but measurable ways…”
How can things which are “innumerable” be measured?
With great difficulty. Best done by those whomare themselves innumerate.
To make a fair social assessment, isn’t it necessary to measure the full scale of a thing? Why isn’t the paper seeking to also measure credulity or gullibility levels in believers in catastrophic climate change? Where is the serious study of which population is more prone to accept propaganda and emotional (ie. irrational) reports in the media, to accept malfeasance or conflicts of interest from government funded or government employed scientists? Or, must we, in typical CAGW science fashion, just ignore that half of the spectrum in the same way we ignore the benefits of more warmth (longer growing seasons, fewer killing frosts), or more CO2 in the atmosphere (plant fertilization) when calculating the “costs of carbon pollution?”
C’mon Mickey, you know the answer to that! you’re asking for honest, objective and balanced research. They’re looking for their next funding source and airfare to the next international PARTAAYY!!
(my bolding). Has anyone seen documentation showing measurements of these “measurable ways”? I sure as hell haven’t.
This paper gives a bit of insight into the thinking behind the use of the term “climate change”. It looks as if they hope that most people are too dumb, or too distracted to notice that in the fantasy world of Climate Science, all the “innumerable” climate changes are driven by CO2,, which is supposed to have only one effect – to cause warming. So, logically, the supposed climate changes and “extreme weather events” must all be derived from that (trivial to non-existent) warming. In other words, they have come to realise that the catastrophic warming that was predicted has slowed down to a crawl, and are busy creating this myth that CO2 causes climate change without actually doing any warming (but without actually saying so).
But while the Climate Science folks are carefully making warming disappear, the politicians are busy signing treaties that aren’t treaties to “limit warming” to certain arbitrary thresholds.
And of course there are unending publications designed to show that warming is happening, and every year is known in advance to be “the hottest EVER”. This is accomplished by various tricks, of which “adjustment” is the most useful to the cause.
This is Climate Science in action; it makes Social Science and Political Science look like particle physics by comparison. It has more in common with theological constructs like The Trinity – “they are one, but there are three of them – don’t try to understand it, just believe”. The more you can force yourself to believe in things that are logically impossible (or just plain ridiculous), the stronger your faith is, and your reward will come in due course.
That first map, what are there, about 50 shades of grey?
I propose a new statistic to shed more light on this … average global attitude.
On a scale of one to five, how strongly do you believe that global warming is caused by human emissions of CO2? Have highly unevenly distributed polling stations situated throughout the world, … collect the data daily, … and at the end of the year, do a big ol’ mathematical average. This will give us another highly meaningful number to use in making pretty graphs and stuff.
So is this Michael Mann saying the problem is not warming due to CO2 but instead that CO2 makes weather more erratic? The original theory was the earth kept in more heat than it released, leading to warming. When was the theory changed? I thought they just changed the name.
What is the new mechanism by which CO2 makes weather be more erratic?
[snip – both of my parents died of smoking related illness, and I find your comment about smoking stupid and offensive. Feel free to resubmit where you don’t try to tell me things about smoking that are both stupid and offensive – Anthony Watts]
The first thing I thought of was the political biases of the locations. Failure to include this makes this one of those papers I file in the garbage after reading the M & M section. No sense even reading it! REALLY, NO SENSE AT ALL!
Remember the Gong Show…, GOOONNNGGG…, next!
Surreal is right. What jumps out is that northern border area of New Mexico.