Spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism

Kaufmann, Robert K.; Mann, Michael; Gopal, Sucharita; Liederman, Jackie A.; Howe, Peter D.; Pretis, Felix; Tang, Xiaojing; Gilmore, Michelle

doi:10.1073/pnas.1607032113

Cited by 74 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…For example three studies find that 10 year summer temperature trends are positively related to beliefs about human-caused global warming in the US [19,64,66]. In addition, an index representing the ratio of previous record high temperatures to record low temperatures over several years (with more record high temperatures expected under a warming climate) is associated with estimates of county-level climate opinions in the US [12,69]. However, other studies that have focused on longer-term temperatures or trends have found little to no effect on climate opinions [28,30,32,34,70,71].…”

Section: The Effect Of Objective Temperature Experiences On Climate Omentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[31,32,38,66]), whereas in other cases respondents are aggregated by zip code, county, or even state levels (e.g. [8,12]). The varying degrees of mismatch between respondent locations and weather or climate 'treatments' introduces uncertainties into any assessment of treatment effects.…”

Section: Variation In Geographic Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As we show, despite extensive research efforts, the relationship between weather and climate opinions still remains unclear. Several recent studies point to an association between elevated temperatures [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] or extreme weather events [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] with greater climate change concern, belief that human-caused climate change is happening, or support for climate policies. Other studies, however, do not support such a relationship [28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How will climate change shape climate opinion?

Howe

Marlon

Mildenberger

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

176

129

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As climate change intensifies, global publics will experience more unusual weather and extreme weather events. How will individual experiences with these weather trends shape climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors? In this article, we review 73 papers that have studied the relationship between climate change experiences and public opinion. Overall, we find mixed evidence that weather shapes climate opinions. Although there is some support for a weak effect of local temperature and extreme weather events on climate opinion, the heterogeneity of independent variables, dependent variables, study populations, and research designs complicate systematic comparison. To advance research on this critical topic, we suggest that future studies pay careful attention to differences between self-reported and objective weather data, causal identification, and the presence of spatial autocorrelation in weather and climate data. Refining research designs and methods in future studies will help us understand the discrepancies in results, and allow better detection of effects, which have important practical implications for climate communication. As the global population increasingly experiences weather conditions outside the range of historical experience, researchers, communicators, and policymakers need to understand how these experiences shape-and are shaped by-public opinions and behaviors.

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Section: The Effect Of Objective Temperature Experiences On Climate Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Variation In Geographic Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How will climate change shape climate opinion?

Howe

Marlon

Mildenberger

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

176

129

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It seems unlikely that climate models will be able to provide the local-scale, specific, reliable, and trusted information required for most private adaptation decisions. Instead, direct experience of weather events is likely to be an important information source, with several studies suggesting a link between experience of weather anomalies and stated belief in climate change (Howe et al, 2014;McCright et al, 2014;Kaufmann et al, 2017). Therefore, how well people learn from experience in nonstationary, stochastic environments has important implications for the rate of adaptation and the economic costs associated with climate change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning, Adaptation, and Weather in a Changing Climate

Moore

2017

Clim. Change Econ.

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Climate change will push the weather experienced by people affected outside the bounds of historic norms, resulting in unprecedented weather events. But people and firms should be able to learn from their experience of unusual weather and adjust their expectations about the climate distribution accordingly. The efficiency of this learning process gives an upper bound on the rate at which adaptation can occur and is therefore important in determining the adjustment costs associated with climate change. Learning about climate change requires people to infer the state of a changing probability distribution (climate) given annual draws from that distribution (weather). If the climate is stationary, it can be inferred from the distribution of historic weather observations, but if it is changing, the inference problem is more challenging. This paper first develops different learning models, including an efficient hierarchical Bayesian model in which the observer learns whether the climate is changing and, if it is, the functional form that describes that change. I contrast this with a less efficient but simpler learning model in which observers react to past changes but are unable to anticipate future changes. I propose a general metric of learning costs based on the average, discounted squared difference between beliefs and the true climate state and use climate model output to calculate this metric for two emissions scenarios, finding substantial relative differences between learning models and scenarios but small absolute values. Geographic differences arise from spatial patterns of warming rates and natural weather variability (noise). Finally, I present results from an experimental game simulating the adaptation decision, which suggests that people are able to learn about a trending climate and respond proactively.

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“…Impressions on the past local climate affect individual beliefs and behaviors, e.g. people living in areas turning cold are more likely to doubt whether the earth is warming [24,25], and individuals are capable of adjusting their expectation of and response to the future climate by learning from the past [26]. Therefore, the past climate may also affect the hotel business: unpleasant weather in the past may lead to a loss of visitors and lower room rates, and thus a reduction of revenue and profit.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Loss of profit in the hotel industry of the United States due to climate change

Qiu

Wang

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Tourism has been identified as a key economic sector vulnerable to climate change, yet direct empirical evidence is still lacking on the economic gain and loss of the tourism industry due to climate change. Here we find that temperature significantly affects the profits of the hotel industry with both spatial and seasonal heterogeneity. By using a rich dataset of the monthly financial records of more than 1700 hotels in 50 US states during 2016-2018 (approximately 3.2% of hotels nationally), we show that a deviation from 18°C ∼20°C in monthly averaged temperature leads to a decrease in the profit rate. The effect is triggered by fewer customers, less revenue, and higher cost per occupied room partially due to the increased usage of electricity and water. Such an effect can be lasting and is less impactful for higher chain scale hotels. In future GHG emission scenarios, climate change will lead to a loss of profit in most climate zones particularly the southern regions, with higher GHG emissions leading to a more serious effect. This study contributes to the literature on how climate change affects human activities and helps refine the relevant damage function of climate change on tourism in existing climate models.

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Spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism

Cited by 74 publications

References 37 publications

How will climate change shape climate opinion?

How will climate change shape climate opinion?

Learning, Adaptation, and Weather in a Changing Climate

Loss of profit in the hotel industry of the United States due to climate change

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