Chilled By Climate Denial

Chris Mooney flags a study suggesting “the climate issue may have become so politicized that our very perceptions of the weather itself are subtly slanted by political identities and cues”:

Comparing Gallup polling results from early March 2012 (just after the winter ended) with actual temperature data from the lower 48 U.S. states, the researchers analyzed people’s perceptions of the warmth of the winter they’d just lived through in light of the temperature anomalies that actually occurred. … It was no surprise that temperatures predicted people’s perceptions of temperatures (duh), but what was surprising is the other factors that also shaped their assessment of how warm it was. The researchers found that political party affiliation had an effect — “Democrats [were] more likely than Republicans to perceive local winter temperatures as warmer than usual,” the paper reports.

Cass Sunstein highlights a related research showing that cold weather makes people “less likely to be concerned about global warming. And when the day seems unusually hot, concern jumps”:

To study this phenomenon, Eric Johnson, Ye Li and Lisa Zaval of Columbia University’s Center for Decision Sciences, asked almost 600 Americans two questions. The first was whether they considered the local temperature, on the day of the survey, to be colder or warmer than usual (on a five-point scale from -2, meaning “much colder,” to +2, “much warmer”). The second question was whether they believed that global warming is happening and whether they were concerned about it (on a 4-point scale from 0, “not at all convinced/worried” to 3, “completely convinced/a great deal worried”).

The researchers found that when people felt the day was warmer than usual, they were significantly more likely to believe in and worry about global warming than when they considered the day to be unusually cold. The effect was substantial, with a “much colder” day producing a full one-point decrease in both belief and worry. (The researchers found the same basic results in Australia.)