I think some on this list may find the following short piece in Nature Climate Change of interest, as it raises questions about the degree to which experience with weather/climate anomalies/extremes is likely to encourage futher public acceptance of the reality of human-caused climate change. It employs statewide measured temperature deviations during the abnormally warm 2012 Winter, as opposed to "perceptions" of abnormal weather (as used in many studies), and finds that they predict public awareness of the warmer-than-average witnter but NOT attributing it to global warming.
I'm providing the NCC abstract and ref. A pdf for it is available for downloading on my ResearchGate page (although I assume you need to be registered on RG--which is easy to do): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riley_Dunlap http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n12/full/nclimate2443.html The impacts of temperature anomalies and political orientation on perceived winter warming Nature Climate ChangeVolume: 4 (Dec. 2014):1077-1081.Pages: DOI: doi:10.1038/nclimate2443 Abstract: Although perceptions of common weather phenomena moderately align with instrumental measurements of such phenomena, the evidence that weather or climatic conditions influence beliefs about anthropogenic climate change is mixed. This study addresses both foci, which are important to scholars who investigate human–environment interactions and observers who expect greater exposure to weather or climate extremes to translate into stronger support for climate change adaptive measures and mitigative policies. We analyse the extent to which state-level winter temperature anomalies influence the likelihood of perceiving local winter temperatures to be warmer than usual and attributing these warmer temperatures mainly to global warming. We show that actual temperature anomalies influence perceived warming but not attribution of such warmer-than-usual winter temperatures to global warming. Rather, the latter is influenced more by perceived scientific agreement; beliefs about the current onset, human cause, threat and seriousness of global warming; and political orientation. This is not surprising given the politicization of climate science and political polarization on climate change beliefs in recent years. These results suggest that personal experience with weather or climate variability may help cultivate support for adaptive measures, but it may not increase support for mitigation policies. Riley E. Dunlap Regents Professor of Sociology and Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professor Department of Sociology Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK 74078 405-744-6108 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gep-ed+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
