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The next decade is likely to produce any number of global challenges that will affect health and health care, including pan-national infections such as the new coronavirus COVID-19 and others that will be related to global warming. Nurses will be required to react to these events, even though they will also be affected as ordinary citizens. The future resilience of healthcare services will depend on having sufficient numbers of nurses who are adequately resourced to face the coming challenges.

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This study presents a detailed investigation of public scepticism about anthropogenic climate change in Britain using the trend, attribution, and impact scepticism framework of Rahmstorf (2004). The study found that climate scepticism is currently not widespread in Britain. Although uncertainty and scepticism about the potential impacts of climate change were fairly common, both trend and attribution scepticism were far less prevalent. It further showed that the different types of scepticism are strongly interrelated. Although this may suggest that the general public does not clearly distinguish between the different aspects of the climate debate, there is a clear gradation in prevalence along the Rahmstorf typology.

Public perceptions of climate change are known to differ between nations and to have fluctuated over time. Numerous plausible characterizations of these variations, and explanations for them, are to be found in the literature. However, a clear picture has not yet emerged as to the principal trends and patterns that have occurred over the past quarter-century or the factors behind these changes. This systematic review considers previous empirical research that has addressed the temporal aspects to public perceptions. We address findings that have been obtained since the 1980s and using a range of methodologies. In this review, we consider early, seminal work examining public perceptions; survey studies carried out over long timescales and at an international scale; detailed statistical analyses of the drivers of changing perceptions; and qualitative research featuring a longitudinal component. Studies point to growing skepticism in the latter 2000s in some developed countries, underpinned by economic and sociopolitical factors. Even so, in many parts of the world, there has been growing concern about climate change in recent years. We conclude that the imbalance in the literature toward polling data, and toward studies of public perceptions in Western nations (particularly the United States), leaves much unknown about the progression of public understanding of climate change worldwide. More research is required that uses inferential statistical procedures to understand the reasons behind trends in public perceptions. The application of qualitative longitudinal methodologies also offers the potential for better appreciation of the cultural contexts in which climate change perceptions are evolving.