Climate Change in two different worlds
Americans' opinions on Climate Change have, ahem, changed a lot in the last decade, and the media is to blame in large part
Note: What follows is one of my favourite pieces, an analysis of how opinions on Climate Change have come to diverge in the US. It’s also one of the occasions when my inner geek ran amok and produced analysis that’s too long a read for almost everyone. So take a break! Read it in digestible chunks!
And oh yeah, google will probably tell you that this email has been clipped. You’ll have to click a link to read all of it. If you like this, rebel a little against Google’s tyranny of length and read all of it!
"I don't speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," Romney said, "I can't prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer.”
"No. 2, I believe that humans contribute to that," he continued. "I don't know how much our contribution is to that, because I know there's been periods of greater heat and warmth than in the past, but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and global warming that you're seeing."
On June 5th, 2011, a couple of days after he announced his candidacy, Mitt Romney said that[1] (~22:30) during a town hall in Manchester, N.H. It was already a position going against most of the GOP field. The backlash was immediate. “Bye bye, nomination”, said Rush Limbaugh.[2] “…The last year has established that the whole premise of man-made global warming is a hoax, and we still have presidential candidates that want to buy into it.”
By October, Romney was saying slightly different things. “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.” he said in Pittsburgh[3] , before going on to push for aggressive oil and gas drilling.
I would like to analyse how things got here.
I. Trends in Public Opinion
2007–2010: Backdrop
We’ve been here before.
As of late 2019, 73 per cent of Americans thought that global warming is happening, according to a Yale/George Mason University poll . Among liberal/moderate Democrats and moderate/conservative Republicans, this number was 95/89 and 66/41 per cent respectively. 59 per cent thought it’s caused by human activity.
About 13 years earlier, in a Pew poll[4] released in January 2007, 77 per cent of Americans thought that global warming was happening. The split across liberal/moderate D’s and moderate/conservative R’s was 92/83 and 78/54 respectively - which puts the gap much smaller than at present. 47 per cent thought that it was caused by human activity.
Pew Research Center Survey, 2007
Of course, denialism existed, as did lobbyists - but despite years of ambivalence by the Bush administration, the US had practically bipartisan voter recognition of the idea that global warming is happening, and something should be done about it.
And then it cratered.
By October 2009, only 57 per cent of Americans believed global warming was real[5] - 75 per cent Democrats, but only 35 per centRepublicans. 50 per cent Democrats still saw it as caused by human activity, but only 18 per cent of Republicans agreed.
Pew Research Center Survey, 2009
This rapid change in sentiment registered almost everywhere. Yale’s Global Warming’s Six Americas study[6] had identified six clusters of public opinion in 2008 - Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive. In 2009, they found that the “Dismissive” cohort - those who believed global warming to be a hoax - had almost doubled to 16 per cent of the population, while the “Alarmed” cohort had nearly halved, from 18 to 10 per cent. By the start of the decade, in October 2010, only about 38 per cent Republicans thought global warming was even happening, and only 16 per cent thought it was due to human activity.[7]
The US has spent the last decade catching up. Climate change opinion has shifted towards more acceptance and recognition that something needs to be done about it, but it is now an issue divided along partisan lines.
2010–2019
Here’s something important to remember: a majority of America thinks Climate Change is happening, and has thought so for a while.
It’s taken a while, but more than half of Americans agree that Climate Change is mostly caused by human activity, and this has also increased slowly over the decade.
A majority of Americans show some degree of worry over climate change, and that has slowly recovered over time as well.
This increased concern about Climate Change is seen in Yale’s Six Americas study as well. Contrasting the 2011 findings with the 2019 findings reveals a similar shift. (Apologies for the difference in image sizes)
2011:[8]
2019:[9]
However, the partisan split that had opened up at the end of the last decade has widened.
Both parties have moved towards more acceptance that climate change is happening over the decade. But conservative Republicans still don’t recognise it at pre-2009 levels.
And the increased concern about climate change is concentrated almost entirely among Democrats[10].
This is true for both moderate as well as conservative Republicans.
More and more Americans want Climate change to be a high priority for the President and Congress, but again, this increase is driven almost entirely by Democrats.
“About half of liberal/moderate Republicans (54%) think their party (the Republican Party) should do more to address global warming, while only one in four conservative Republicans (25%) think so. Large majorities of both liberal Democrats (86%) and moderate/conservative Democrats (80%) think their party (the Democratic Party) should do more. Majorities of Independents think the Republican Party (63%) and the Democratic Party (59%) should do more.”
Source: Politics and Global Warming 2019, Yale[11]
What follows is my analysis of what has driven this public opinion. If you’re only interested in the findings, you can stop here. If you’re only interested in the conclusions, you can skip ahead to Section III.
II. Drivers of Public Opinion
1. Media
Maggie: How can you be biased towards fairness?
MacKenzie: There aren't two sides to every story. Some stories have five sides, some only have one.
Tess: I still don't underst...
Will: Bias towards fairness means that if the entire congressional Republican caucus were to walk in to the House and propose a resolution stating that the Earth was flat, the Times would lead with "Democrats and Republicans Can't Agree on Shape of Earth."
-The Newsroom, “News Night 2.0” (more like “The Newsroom, when we all thought it would be better”)
Most Americans rarely hear about Climate Change from friends/coworkers[12].
But most Americans, in 2019 at least, do report hearing about it in the media at least once a month.
And that brings us to the primary, most powerful driver of public opinion: the media.
2007–2010: Cracks open up
To understand why the partisan gap opened up between Americans, it’s important to look into what they were seeing and hearing towards the end of the last decade.
Americans were hearing about Climate Change a lot in the couple of years leading up to 2007 - in 2005, even Fox News was running specials[13][14] about the effects of global warming.
In a Harvard paper in 2012[15], Frederick Mayer classified news stories on Climate Change in the decade of 2000–2010 into six major narratives***. Mayer's work is interesting, because you can still easily see climate coverage fall into one of these narratives. My summary of his six stories below:
“The Climate Tragedy” is the story which says: once upon a time, humans were in harmony with nature. Now, our usage of technology and fossil fuels is leading us towards disaster, and we must avert it.
“He Said, She Said” says some scientists say global warming is real, some say it’s not, the science isn’t out there yet - so we should wait.
“Don’t Kill the Goose”says that global warming might be real, and humans may or may not be causing it - but it’s much less of a threat than the actions that the environmentalists are suggesting to combat it. Climate Change is basically an excuse for the liberals to add more regulation.
“Hoax”says that the science and scientists talking about Climate change are a fraud, and the liberals are betraying America by listening to them.
“The Denialist Conspiracy”is another narrative of conspiracy - on the opposite side. In this story, shadowy, oil-funded interest groups are everywhere, paying politicians and the media to mislead the gullible people.
And finally, “The Policy Game” is the set of accounts that are concerned with the policy outcomes and who is likely to win, and not with climate change itself.
***This list is neither mutually exclusive, nor collectively exhaustive. And it does not distinguish, say, a grounded and well-sourced Denialist Conspiracy narrative from a hyperbolic, breathless rant. But that’s not the point; the point is to look inside not only the quantity of coverage, but the kind of coverage of Climate Change by each source.
Note carefully here why these narratives are appealing. For instance, The Climate Tragedy is the go-to environmentalist tale of human corruption. Don’t kill the goose fits perfectly with the conservative scepticism of added regulation. Denialist Conspiracy ties well with the progressive fear of rich shadowy groups greasing the levers to retain power.
Up until about 2006, news coverage across the board consisted mostly of Climate Tragedy stories. Even Fox News, until 2006, was running 50% more Climate Tragedy stories than Hoax, He Said/She Said, and Don’t Kill the Goose stories combined. In the February of 2007, probably the high point of American public opinion about climate change in the decade, Al Gore was jointly nominated for the Nobel peace prize, and An Inconvenient Truth won two Oscars.
And something snapped, because Fox’s Hoax coverage quintupled in 2007. By 2010, Fox was running more than 1.5 times as many Hoax stories as Climate Tragedy stories. This is backed up by other sources: another study[16] found Fox’s coverage of Climate Change in 2007 was mostly dismissive in nature.
Seemingly in response, CNN decided to give increased weight to all the critical narratives as well. In 2007, even if you watched only CNN, you would’ve ended up with very different ideas about Global Warming depending on when you watched it.
In 2008, with a presidential election and a deepening recession, coverage of Global Warming almost disappeared across the board. When it picked back up in 2009 with the Copenhagen Summit, it was markedly different on different networks. CNN’s coverage was still schizophrenic, as seen above. ABC and MSNBC’s coverage was sparse at best. Whenever it did talk about it, MSNBC primarily wanted to run Denialist Conspiracy stories talking about Fox, not about Climate Change. Fox itself primarily ran either Policy Game or Hoax narratives.
As a general TV audience, you were now hearing stories about this global warming thing that were markedly different from what you were hearing a couple of years ago.
This culminated around “Climategate”[17] . In late November 2009, just before the Copenhagen summit, an anonymous hacker leaked about a thousand emails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The leaks contained some instances of scientists being rude, or dismissive, or jerks; but eight different committees, including the US EPA and the IG of the Dept. of Commerce, cleared them of any wrongdoing or fraud. Most emails held up as incriminating evidence turned out to be taken out of context.
But if you were watching Fox news, this was the smoking gun that the scientists were cooking evidence, and there was a major conspiracy being uncovered. Glenn Beck had on a blogger who said “what this scandal shows is that the science underpinning all of this is a crock. It's a shambles. It's dishonest.” Bret Baier had Rep. Sensenbrenner on, who said “These e-mails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and secrecy that was inspired by ideology, condescension and profit. They read more like scientific fascism than scientific process”.
MSNBC and ABC barely covered climate change leading up to the summit. And over on CNN, all too often, Global Warming and Climategate were just two equal sides of the debate, about a matter very much up in the air. Here’s how Campbell Brown was leading in on December 3:
“Is global warming just a big scientific conspiracy? Some climate change disbelievers think that they have got the proof in form of hacked e-mails. But, tonight, Tom Friedman says the controversy is all a smokescreen distracting us from the facts.” CNN leaned so hard into this angle that their 8 PM report on the first day of the Copenhagen summit was called “Global Warming: Trick or Truth?”[18](link to transcript, working only inside the US).
After the disappointment of the Copenhagen summit, coverage everywhere dropped to almost none in 2010. But in an increasingly polarised electorate, and an increasingly fragmented media sphere, a partisan schism was opening up. By 2011, 45 per cent of Tea Party respondents in Yale/George Mason University’s survey had heard of Climategate - and only 16 per cent Democrats had heard of it[19].
2011 - 2019
On this backdrop, there are a few trends to look at.
One, with media spheres getting fragmented over time, this divide in public opinion has been hard to bridge.
The trend had started in the last decade: “Climategate” was covered much more extensively on blogs as compared to traditional news, for example. But alternative information sources have only really exploded in this decade. A Nature paper[20] found that, though they are covered almost equally across mainstream sources, contrarians on Climate Change are featured in nearly 49 per cent more total media articles than scientists. The paper also found an emergent echo chamber on this subject: contrarians mostly referenced each other’s work, creating a network of information sources reinforcing each other.
Two, the American media doesn’t cover Climate Change a lot. It comes up when there is a major event or news about it, or a politicians talks about it, but the media going out themselves and covering Climate Change remains a rare occurrence.
Three, the media’s tendency to place scientists and contrarians on an equal footing means that, all too often, the issue seems to be a lot less settled than it is.
Let’s put two and three together. The Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) at the University of Colorado Boulder charts the amount of coverage it receives in different media outlets in the US and around the world. Here’s US coverage of Climate Change:
Print (5 major newspapers):[21]
TV (Major networks):[22]
Source: ICECaPS, University of Colorado Boulder
As shown above, Climate Change got little coverage in the first half of the decade - though it increased in the second half, in large part due to President Trump’s environmental policies.
And the coverage it gets faces unique issues.
Let’s take an example. Climate Change got a significant amount of coverage in late 2013 from a particular event. An IPCC report[23] was released in September 2013, which expressed unequivocal certainty that AGW existed, was here to stay, and increased its projections of rising sea levels.
But the major story across media was something else. Global Warming had been slower from 1998 to 2012 than it had been in the past 50 years, despite there being more CO2 in the atmosphere in millions of years. Now, there were a few pertinent factors there: 1998 was itself a year of record warmth due to El Nino, and removing it took care of a lot of the variance; more importantly, such small periods of cooling down (or heating up, for that matter) are not unusual, caused by natural climate patterns. (Sure enough, warming patterns have continued on the same upward trajectory since, with wide consensus across sources.)
(Source: NASA[24])
Of course, none of this mattered. The Economist first reported that “Over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar.”[25]. The rest of the media then picked it up and ran with it - everyone, not just the usual suspects. Reuters led with “Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown”[26]. Fox News,obviously, said “Leaked draft of climate report struggles with drop in warming”[27].
Even at the press conference after the report was released, journalists relentlessly pursued the “hiatus” angle. Bloomberg said “Global Warming Slowdown Seen as Emissions Rise to Record”[28]. Even Nature referenced it, saying “IPCC: Despite hiatus, climate change here to stay”[29].
Interest in the “global warming pause”/“global warming hiatus” peaked circa late 2013.
Source: Google Trends for “Global Warming Pause”[30]
Source: Google Trends for “Global Warming Hiatus”[31]
And across a lot of the media, they were still putting sceptics on for balance. Quoting from “Who created the climate pause?”[32]:
At the outset of the segment, CBS’s Mark Phillips intoned: “Another inconvenient truth has emerged on the way to the apocalypse. The new U.N. report on climate change is expected to blame man-made greenhouse gases more than ever for global warming. But there’s a problem. The global atmosphere hasn’t been warming lately.”
Then followed an animation, seeming to show that since the year 1998, rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere haven’t been matched by rising temperatures. Soon, CBS cut to a scientist trying to explain this apparent global warming “pause” by saying that the missing heat has gone into the oceans. Then, presumably for balance, came an interview with a climate skeptic who, when asked whether the “pause” blunts the urgency of doing something about global warming, replied that “It has already.”
Link to the CBS Segment[33]
As a consequence of all of this, sometime around late 2013, public opinion dipped. This is visible in almost every trend cited above.
Though coverage has picked up in the second half of the decade, there is a particular trend: a lot of the time TV was talking about Climate Change, it was actually talking about Trump. In 2017, for example, the liberal watchdog group Media Matters found that 79 per cent of news coverage on Climate Change revolved around the actions or statements by the Trump administration.[34] By 2018, the outrage had dissipated, and coverage dropped 45 per cent[35]. Now, there is some good news on this front: TV coverage picked up 68 per cent in 2019, and coverage by the top 5 newspapers as measured by MeCCO was up 46%. More than a third of these shows also talked about potential solutions[36], which marked a step in the right direction.
But that really brings us back to the main point: the media doesn’t really like talking about Climate Change. That’s mostly because, as Chris Hayes once explained[37], it’s a ratings killer. And that’s mostly because Climate Change is a particularly hard problem to talk about.
2. Science Communication
I have thought for a while that Climate Change is a problem suited particularly well to humans.
Immediate problems receive far more attention than longer-term ones[38], even if they are less problematic. We are much more likely to care about crises when they have faces and names associated with them[39]. We are even more likely to care when those faces look like our own[40].
Climate Change goes against every one of those instincts. That makes it difficult to comprehend, and therefore tricky to present well.
There are two main stakeholders in this space: the media, and authoritative bodies of scientists, such as the IPCC. The IPCC periodically releases Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs, such as the one linked above): these are supposed to be accessible enough for non-scientists to set policy on Climate Change. In reality, their readability is lower than even the average scientific publication.[41]This is likely because the IPCC’s report writing is a complex dance between scientists, governments and the public. [42]
In a first stage, governments define the scope of the report. The scientists work out three iterations of the Assessment Reports, which are rigorously evaluated—first by experts and then by the public as the pre-final drafts are made available on the internet. Everybody is allowed to comment, and review editors ensure that all comments are addressed. The third draft is then presented to a plenary of delegations from each country. This long process of evaluation and modification may adversely affect the readability of the document, because clear statements may be avoided in response to critical comments during the editing process.
In the end, it’s a problem of creating urgency about a slow moving disaster. On one side, you risk not being taken seriously. On the other, you risk being an alarmist. You have to shout loud enough to be heard over the lives of all the Kardashians, but if you make sensational predictions that don’t come true, you are written off. Besides, popular discourse runs on statements of certainty and sweeping generalisation, something science is loathe to deliver. Coverage that properly conveys the scale and magnitude of the problem, while also situating it close to the audience and the effects it will have on their lives, is hard.
In 2013, for example, in order to make the IPCC’s findings more meaningful to the lay public, the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation emphasised that “more temperature records were broken (between 2000 and 2010) than in any other previous decade”. When the hiatus was then brought up, and they went on to say that periods smaller than 30 years are simply not significant enough to detect climate trends, they were undermining their own point.
Given the standards of science communication in the media - sorry for the plug - the IPCC needs to step up. Things are slowly changing for the better: An IPCC Working Group in 2018 emphasised [43]the need for direct, real, visual communication that relates to the audience’s values and tells human stories.
3. Politics
In my first six years in Congress from 1992 to 1998, I had said that climate change was hooey. I didn’t know anything about it, except that Al Gore was for it, and therefore I was against it.
- Former Rep. Robert Inglis (R) (2015)[44](~1:04)
The Environment is itself inherently a political issue in US politics, and has been for a while. A study found that public concern for the environment, measured by proxy as support for environment spending, typically goes down during Democratic presidential administrations, driven primarily by Republican changes in opinion.[45]
A small measure of the rise in concern in the second half of the decade can, maybe, be attributed to this. But ultimately, Climate Change is now a partisan issue in the US, and that has no doubt driven opinions on it.
In 1997, 46 per cent of Democrats believed the effects of Climate Change had already begun - and 47 per cent Republicans believed the same[46]. Things have obviously changed since then, and there are a few factors at play here.
A lot of money depends on a lot of politicians not taking aggressive climate stances.
About $2 billion have been spent on Climate Change lobbying in the period between 2000 and 2016. Spending by environmental groups is dwarfed by about 10:1[47]. Lobbying expenditure peaked in 2008–2010, when the possibility for political action was the highest.
This money has permeated several spheres, such as think-tanks and, especially post-Citizens United, political parties.
Exxon itself is pretty generous with its giving to think-tanks like AEI and ALEC[48], as are other petroleum companies - and groups that receive this funding often push contrarian articles[49]. In a post-Citizens United world, candidates increasingly receive funding from individuals associated with these companies as well[50][51]- and as of 2016, 90 per cent of that money went to Republicans[52]. Incentives are low in general, then, for a politician to stand up against a powerful, rich opposition.Climate Change is a political issue, and the Republicans’ incentive to reach across the isle has slowly gone down.
President George H.W. Bush was not a perfect president for environment legislation by any means. Simply put, his administration perceived a conflict between the economy and the environment, and placed itself firmly with the former.
But his Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990[53] were important, and he took initiative on phasing out CFCs, and he was widely praised for appointing William Reilly to the EPA.
And, well, he received a “D” for his effort from the League of Conservation Voters, and the Sierra Club ran attack ads against him in swing states. The environmentalists had made a short-term decision: Clinton was definitely the better candidate for environmental policy. But these groups were slowly picking sides on people, not issues - and this trend has had longer-term consequences.
John McCain had a strong position on Climate than most in his party. He had introduced Climate bills in 2003[54], 2005[55], and 2007[56], going so far as to taunt his predecessor (“I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges.”)[57].
And, well, the Sierra Club’s Executive Director said he might turn out to be worse than George Bush[58]. The LCV gave him a 0% rating in both 2007 and 2008[59]. And both those organisations, after making some noises[60] about staying out of it, endorsed the inexperienced Senator from Illinois about two weeks after the Democratic primary.
I’m not pointing fingers here. I’m pointing out that the incentives for a Republican to hold out against the increasingly vocal minority of his party, to reach across the isle and put forward a conservative solution to Climate Change - flawed as it may be - have been getting smaller and smaller.In the absence of that bipartisanship, and with increasing polarisation, the vocal minority of the Republican party has come to control the narrative.
Here’s a fun statistic: 14–15% of Republicans are climate sceptics, but among Climate sceptics, 71% are Republicans. In other words, most Climate sceptics are Republicans, but most Republicans are not sceptics[61]. That minority has arguably always existed within the Republican Party: Even in 1992, Rush Limbaugh was declaring the “militant environmentalist” movement to be the “new home of the socialists in America”[62]. But slowly, with increasing polarisation, with the Republicans slowly pushing out moderates, stance on Climate Change is now a purity test in the party. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was the first to sign a “No Climate Tax” pledge in July 2008. That was around the time Republicans started getting wary talking about Climate policy, or showing any support. By Election Day 2010, 165 members had signed that pledge - of the 92 new members in Congress in 2010, 83 had signed it[63]. By 2012, the takeover was complete: even “establishment” candidates were walking on eggshells like Romney, and walking back prior views[64] or losing primaries[65].
People often change their own political views to match what they believe is the median of the tribe. The median Republican is thought of by almost everyone to be Climate-sceptic (see footnote 61 above). That means that partisans gravitate to it, and politicians pander to it. In a polarised electorate, compromise is seen as defeat - and “Democrats are inventing monsters to add regulation” is not a hard sell to the GOP anyway. Increasingly, the vocal minority bends party opinions, the chunk of the party that believes it’s happening starts thinking it’s maybe a little overstated, and plays along, shutting down any change on one side of the isle - and, by extension in a system designed for co-operation, shutting down action by the legislature. And that has created the logjam today.
With a lot of environmental groups embracing intersectionality (the Sierra Club has taken positions on gun control, the Charlottesville march, and marriage equality)[66], their appeal has grown on one side of the isle, but it has also heightened polarisation.
Republican politicians are beginning to talk about Climate Change in 2020. They even introduced some - albeit narrow - bills in February[67], primarily because Climate Change is a concern for a majority of millenials and Gen Z, even in the Republican Party[68]. The GOP will have to adapt.
4. Economy
The effects of the Economy on Climate Change opinion are mostly indirect. But it’s not entirely a coincidence that this rising concern has happened at the same time as a 9-year bull run of the US economy. Studies[69][70][71] have shown that belief or concern about Climate Change tends to suffer during recessions or periods of high unemployment - people are less likely to worry about long-term crises when they’re worried about putting food on the table tomorrow.
III. Conclusions (TL;DR)
Over the last decade, the awareness and urgency regarding Climate Change in the US has grown, but most of the growth in urgency has come on one side of the isle. Climate Change is not intuitive for human understanding, which makes good communication vital. We’ve had problems with it, but that’s changing. Politicisation of the issue has made legislative progress difficult. The problem is exacerbated by partisan polarisation, media echo chambers and media fragmentation. Media coverage of Climate Change is uneven, and often actually about the politics it drives. That’s slowly improving as well.
The times may change yet.
If you like this, share it with a friend!
Oh, and if you’re the friend that was sent this…. thing, hit subscribe below to get more… cool analyses on climate change opinions and shit! That’ll show your friends who’s cool!
This is already way too long for almost anyone, and I don’t want to make the scroll bar scarier by adding a long list of links at the bottom. So if you want to check out sourcing, head on down to the original answer on Quora!