People underestimate scientific consensus on climate. Correcting the record will go a long way.
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September 17, 2024
Communicating the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change – at least 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is happening and human activity is the main cause – can strengthen people’s climate beliefs, according to a massive new study with global reach.
Members of the public often underestimate this agreement among scientists, and those who do are less likely to believe in or be concerned about climate change themselves. What’s more, many past studies have found that communicating the consensus can strengthen climate beliefs, but most have been conducted in the United States, with a handful in other wealthy, industrialized countries.
The new study “represents a first large-scale multi-country test of this climate change communication strategy,” says Bojana Većkalov, a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and part of an international team of 46 researchers who conducted the study.
Većkalov and her collaborators administered an online survey to more than 10,500 people in 27 countries on 6 continents, recruiting several hundred people from most of the countries. Participants were asked to estimate the proportion of scientists who agree that climate change is real and human-caused and queried about their own climate beliefs.
Then, participants were shown one of three statements: one stating that 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused; one stating this consensus and also that 88% of climate scientists agree that climate change is a crisis; or a third statement not related to climate change. After this participants answered questions about their climate beliefs again.
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