Polar facts in the age of polarization

Abstract

Many drivers of polar-region change originate in mid-latitude industrial societies, so public perceptions there matter. Building on earlier surveys of U.S. public knowledge and concern, a series of New Hampshire state surveys over 2011 to 2015 tracked public knowledge of some basic polar facts. Analysis indicates that these facts subjectively fall into two categories: those that are or are not directly connected to beliefs about climate change. Responses to climatelinked factual questions, such as whether Arctic sea ice area has declined compared with 30 years ago, are politicized as if we were asking for climate-change opinions. Political divisions are less apparent with factual questions that do not suggest climate change, such as whether the North Pole is on land or sea ice. Only 38 percent of respondents could answer that question correctly, and even fewer (30 percent) knew or guessed correctly that melting of Greenland and Antarctic land ice, rather than Arctic sea ice, could potentially do the most to raise sea levels. At odds with the low levels of factual knowledge, most respondents say they have a moderate amount or a great deal of understanding about climate change. A combination of low knowledge with high self-assessed understanding characterizes almost half our sample, and correlates with political views. The low knowledge/high understanding combination is most prevalent among Tea Party supporters, where it reaches 61 percent. It also occurs often (60 percent) among people who do not believe climate is changing. These results emphasize that diverse approaches are needed to communicate about science with people having different configurations of certainty and knowledge.

Flood Realities, Perceptions and the Depth of Divisions on Climate

“…While tracking general beliefs about climate, the GSP also experiments with knowledge questions. Self-assessed understanding of climate change is high, but for an ideological subgroup this confidence appears unconnected to basic knowledge (Hamilton, 2015). Early GSP knowledge questions were global in scope, such as the meaning of ‘greenhouse effect’.…”

Was December Warm? Family, Politics, and Recollections of Weather

“…Much larger gaps, but in similar directions, have been observed by other studies that asked about longer-term trends. Questions about multidecade trends more clearly evoke people's thoughts about climate change, whether the topic is global, such as Arctic sea ice, 22 or local, such as fire-season warming in eastern Oregon 23 or flood damage in New Hampshire. 24 Responses to our very short-term December/winter weather questions suggest that even on such an immediate, local, and directly experienced scale, beliefs exert some influence on perceptions.…”

“Stickier” learning through gameplay: An effective approach to climate change education

“…Climate change is one of the most polarizing political issues of our time (Hamilton, 2015), and a limitation to this experiment is that participants were skewed toward a Democratic party affiliation due to the demographics of the location where it was conducted. The study used a sample of convenience in the Metro Boston Area.…”

“…An additional issue is that this study relied on selfreported knowledge alongside questions about actual content knowledge. The content knowledge questions were adapted from previously used and validated surveys (Hamilton, 2015(Hamilton, , 2016. While this is a common practice when collecting data via surveys, and self-reported knowledge may be a useful way to assess the construct of self-efficacy, a survey based more heavily on actual content knowledge assessment would strengthen the argument for knowledge gain attributable to the EcoChains game-playing experience.…”