{"id":67466,"date":"2015-08-19T09:44:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T14:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67466"},"modified":"2015-08-04T21:41:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T02:41:10","slug":"parsing-american-attitudes-toward-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/08\/19\/parsing-american-attitudes-toward-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Parsing American attitudes toward climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who believes that the climate is changing? Researchers at Yale&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/environment.yale.edu\/climate-communication\/\" target=\"_blank\">Project on Climate Change Communication<\/a> asked\u00a013,000 people and they found some pretty interesting stuff. First, they found that there was a great deal of disagreement, identifying six types:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The Alarmed<\/strong> (18%) &#8211; believe climate change is happening, have already changed their behavior, and are ready to get out there and try to save the world<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Concerned<\/strong> (33%) &#8211; believe it&#8217;s happening, but think it&#8217;s far off or isn&#8217;t going to affect them personally<\/li>\n<li><strong>The\u00a0Cautious<\/strong> (19%) &#8211; aren&#8217;t\u00a0sure if it&#8217;s happening or not and are also unsure whether it&#8217;s human caused<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Disengaged<\/strong> (12%) &#8211; \u00a0have heard the phrase &#8220;climate change,&#8221; but couldn&#8217;t tell you the first thing about it<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Doubtful<\/strong> (11%) &#8211; are skeptical that\u00a0it&#8217;s happening and, if it is, they don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a problem and don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s human caused<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Dismissive<\/strong> (7%) &#8211; do not believe in it, think it&#8217;s a hoax<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As you might imagine, attitudes about climate change vary significantly by state and county. You can see all the data at their <a href=\"http:\/\/environment.yale.edu\/poe\/v2014\/\" target=\"_blank\">interactive map<\/a>. Here are some of the findings I thought were interesting.<\/p>\n<p>More\u00a0Americans think that climate change is happening (left) than\u00a0think it&#8217;s human caused (right); bluer = more skeptical, redder = more believing:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/23.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-67467\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/23.png\" alt=\"2\" width=\"949\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/23.png 973w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/23-500x164.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 949px) 100vw, 949px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even among people who say\u00a0that they personally believe in climate change (left, same as above), there are many who think that there is no scientific consensus (right) suggesting that the campaign to misrepresent scientific opinion by covering &#8220;both sides&#8221; was successful:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/101.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-67468\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/101.png\" alt=\"10\" width=\"968\" height=\"313\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/101.png 968w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/101-500x162.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 968px) 100vw, 968px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>People are somewhat worried about climate change (left), but very, very few think that it&#8217;s going to harm them personally (right):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/111.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-2\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-67469\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/111.png\" alt=\"11\" width=\"949\" height=\"308\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/111.png 949w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/111-500x162.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 949px) 100vw, 949px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even though people are lukewarm on whether it&#8217;s happening, whether it&#8217;s human-caused, and whether it&#8217;s going to do any harm, there&#8217;s a lot of support for doing something about it. Support for regulating CO2 (left) and support for funding research on renewable energy (right):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/12.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-3\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-67470\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/12.png\" alt=\"12\" width=\"962\" height=\"302\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/12.png 962w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/12-500x157.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 962px) 100vw, 962px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Take a closer look yourself and explore more questions at the <a href=\"http:\/\/environment.yale.edu\/poe\/v2014\/\" target=\"_blank\">map<\/a>\u00a0or read more at the <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/2015\/07\/09\/climate-change-opinion\/\" target=\"_blank\">Scholars Strategy Network<\/a>. And thanks to the people at Yale funding and doing this important work.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who believes that the climate is changing? Researchers at Yale&#8217;s Project on Climate Change Communication asked\u00a013,000 people and they found some pretty interesting stuff. First, they found that there was a great deal of disagreement, identifying six types: The Alarmed (18%) &#8211; believe climate change is happening, have already changed their behavior, and are ready [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,2056,126,23384,329,2123,64,253,85,461,304,693,290],"class_list":["post-67466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-crimelaw","tag-disaster","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-emotion","tag-environmentnature","tag-globalization","tag-history","tag-politics","tag-human-rights","tag-the-state","tag-public-opinion","tag-sciencetechnology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/07\/13.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67466"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67475,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67466\/revisions\/67475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}