Sara Cobb

Meteorologists' Views About Global Warming: A Survey of American Meteorological Society Professional Members

Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. However, members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic. In response, AMS created the Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication to explore and, to the extent possible, resolve these tensions. To support this committee, in January 2012 we surveyed all AMS members with known e-mail addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate (n = 1,854). In this paper we tested four hypotheses—1) perceived conflict about global warming will be negatively associated, and 2) climate expertise, 3) liberal political ideology, and 4) perceived scientific consensus will be positively associated—with 1) higher personal certainty that global warming is happening, 2) viewing the global warming observed over the past 150 years as mostly ...

Weathercaster Views on Informal Climate Education: Similarities and Differences According to Climate Change Attitudes

ABSTRACT Surveys have found that weathercaster views on climate change are diverse, with a large majority agreeing that climate change is happening but most remaining unconvinced that human activities are the principal cause. We hypothesized that these differences in climate change views could have implications for weathercasters acting as informal climate change educators, as well as for professional development training for weathercasters attempting to serve such roles. We asked weathercasters at a professional society meeting to provide brief statements on climate change and their roles to educate viewers about climate. We then pooled these statements for an online card-sort activity completed by 29 weathercasters and used network analysis to study the epistemologies of groups according to climate change attitudes. Despite different views on climate change, all weathercasters had a shared ethos for developing their climate change views through consulting observational data and multiple sources of information. Additionally, all weathercasters shared the concern that informal climate education focus on “the science and only the science.” Looking specifically at factual statements on climate change, all weathercasters classified the statement, “Climate is always changing,” as significant for informal climate education. However, there were differences in how weathercasters perceived the importance of changes in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and how it relates to human activities. The implications of these findings are twofold. First, without interventions to empower all weathercasters as science communicators, the community may split into communicators explaining the contributions of human activities to climate change versus those who question it. Second, professional societies can play important roles to confront this schism through forums that address conflict, the science–policy interface, and scientific discussions around climate. By appealing to values and codes of conduct shared by all weathercasters, professional development activities can help them build confidence in making public statements about climate change as well as to develop appropriate conceptual scaffolding for relationships between human activities, greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, and climate change.

Conflict about Climate Change at the American Meteorological Society: Meteorologists’ Views on a Scientific and Organizational Controversy

AbstractThis article analyzes open-ended survey responses to understand how members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) perceive conflict within the AMS over global warming. Of all survey respondents, 53% agreed that there was conflict within the AMS; of these individuals who perceived conflict, 62% saw it as having at least some productive aspects, and 53% saw at least some unproductive aspects. Among members who saw a productive side to the conflict, most agreed as to why it was productive: debate and diverse perspectives enhance science. However, among members who saw an unproductive side, there was considerable disagreement as to why. Members who are convinced of largely human-caused climate change expressed that debate over global warming sends an unclear message to the public. Conversely, members who are unconvinced of human-caused climate change often felt that their peers were closed-minded and suppressing unpopular views. These two groups converged, however, on one point: politics was se...

The Construction of Legitimate Natural Resource Plans in the Petén, Guatemala

This briefing presents the development of a model of ‘legitimacy’ by a team from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) of George Mason University in collaboration with Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City. The model describes four types of discourse evident in development and natural resource planning in the Peten region of Guatemala as well as four distinct tiers of influence on the cumulative processes of constructing legitimacy. It also presents the theoretical underpinnings of a process to maximise the legitimacy of all stakeholders involved, and through inclusive legitimacy build a sustainable future.