One quarter of Americans self-identify as evangelical and a strong majority of these reject humaninduced climate change. Can one lecture on climate science from a Christian perspective change their minds? Here, we examine the response of undergraduates at three evangelical institutions, located in upper state New York, Texas, and Canada, to a recorded lecture by an evangelical climate scientist. Pre/post-test surveys posed six questions from the Global Warming's Six Americas instrument with additional questions on participants' political and theological perspectives. All populations showed significant pre/post-test gains on almost every question, immediately after the intervention, with gains among the most conservative population being as large as the others. A one-month delayed postsurvey showed that gains were still significant relative to pre-test values for most of the questions. Furthermore, gains did not decrease when the Christian frame was removed, except on one item related to Christian responsibility. These results suggest that even a limited exposure to accurate information can change minds, and that the context in which the information is presented (here, the evangelical college and faculty sponsor) may be more important than the content frame.
Soil is one of the key resources that sustain life on Earth, not just as the foundation for almost all our food supplies, as important as that is, but also in the way that it fi lters water, supports biodiversity, and perhaps even moderates global climate. Yet the world's soils are under increased pressure on many fronts. They face unprecedented threats from erosion, deforestation, deserti fi cation, salinization, sealing (paving over), contamination, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. The importance of soil and the need to sustain it against these threats, however, have elicited little interest, not only by scientists and the general public, but also by the educational systems of most countries. While increasing attention has been paid to other important environmental topics, such as loss of biodiversity, climate change, deforestation, fresh water availability, and the world's oceans, little attention has been placed on soil so far.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.