Our article “How to Inoculate the Public Against Misinformation About Climate Change” was published January 23rd, 2017, in Global Challenges: Climate Change.
Prior studies have found widespread public misunderstanding about the scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is happening. A series of experiments have also found that simply informing people of the fact that 97% of climate scientists are convinced human-caused global warming is happening, significantly increases public understanding of the consensus. In turn, the increase in public understanding of the scientific consensus is associated with smaller, but potentially important increases in respondents’ own conviction that global warming is happening, human-caused, and a worrisome threat that requires action. CONT.
Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal & Edward Maibach