TODAY’S STUDY: SOME KNOWN UNKNOWNS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

In former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s formulation, it’s the unknown unknowns that are the problem in war. They are the things not in the battle plan that the planners don’t know aren’t in the battle plan.

In the international community’s fight against global climate change, there are known unknowns that are perhaps a bigger problem.

The known known: The science is conclusive. The climate is changing, even faster than anybody thought it would, and human spew is the aggravating factor. Consequences are predictable. Those predicted earlier are happening before the world’s eyes day by day: severe and tempestuous weather, ever scarcer water, rising food prices, population displacement, growing ecosystem erosion.

The unknown known: The costs will be staggering. Rebuilding New Orleans and Tuscaloosa and Joplin is going to cost a lot but that is just a hint of what is to come. How much did the 2010 summer fires in Russia and floods in Pakistan cost? Free marketeers and denialists have argued that investing in a New Energy economy was an unwise use of the world’s money. Will they look back in wonder at the bargain they could have bought?

The unknown unknown: How bad will it get how soon?

But the known unknown, if it could be addressed, might be the key to unlocking effective world action and turning global climate change around before its worst impacts become irrevocable – if there is still time.

That known unknown is the ignorance that breeds denial. That ignorance is detailed in the study highlighted below, which concludes that on “a straight grading scale, 25 percent of teens received a passing grade (A, B, or C) [for knowledge of climate change], compared to 30 percent of American adults…[and] few teens have an in-depth understanding of climate change. Fifty-four percent of teens received a failing grade (F), compared to 46 percent of adults…”

This sad news contains a hidden happiness: Removing ignorance could stop denial. Ending denial invariably leads to action. Informed action could still be effective.

As so often is the case, the teachers – arguably the most heroic, underappreciated and over-maligned profession in this nation – hold the key.

NewEnergyNews has long argued that if teachers were paid what lawyers are paid and lawyers were paid what teachers are paid, this would be a much smarter, less litigious and altogether better society. But it ain’t gonna happen.

So take a teacher an apple and ask him or her to teach the children well. The fate of this good earth hangs in the balance.

American Teens’ Knowledge of Climate Change
Leiserowitz, Smith and Marlon, April 2011 (Yale Project on Climate Change Communication)

Executive Summary

American Teens’ Knowledge of Climate Change reports results from a national study of what American teens in middle and high school understand about how the climate system works, and the causes, impacts and potential solutions to global warming.

This report describes how knowledge of climate change varies across both American teens and adults. Using a straight grading scale, 25 percent of teens received a passing grade (A, B, or C), compared to 30 percent of American adults. While knowledge levels vary, these results also indicate that relatively few teens have an in-depth understanding of climate change. Fifty-four percent of teens received a failing grade (F), compared to 46 percent of adults.

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Understanding of Climate Change

In general, American teens know about the same or less than American adults about how the climate system works and the causes, consequences, and solutions of climate change. For example:

• 54% of teens say that global warming is happening, compared to 63% of adults;

• 35% of teens understand that most scientists think global warming is happening, compared to 39% of adults;

• 75% of teens understand that coal is a fossil fuel, compared to 80% of adults;

• 46% of teens understand that emissions from cars and trucks substantially contribute to global warming, compared to 49% of adults;

• 62% of teens say that switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources worldwide would reduce global warming a lot or some, compared to 63% of adults.

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However, American teens have a better understanding than adults on a few important measures. For example:

• 57% of teens understand that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, compared to 50% of adults;

• 77% of teens understand that the greenhouse effect refers to gases in the atmosphere that trap heat, compared to 66% of adults;

• 52% of teens understand that carbon dioxide traps heat from the Earth’s surface, compared to 45% of adults;

• 71% of teens understand that carbon dioxide is produced by the burning of fossil fuels, compared to 67% of adults.

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Knowledge Gaps

This study also identified numerous gaps between expert and teen knowledge about climate change. For example, only:

• 7% of teens know how much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere today (approximately 390 parts per million);

• 17% of teens have heard of coral bleaching;

• 18% of teens have heard of ocean acidification.

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Furthermore, for many knowledge questions American teens are also more likely than adults to provide a “Don’t know” response. For example:

• 34% of teens don’t know enough to say whether scientists think global warming is happening, compared to 17% of adults;

• 26% of teens don’t know that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere affect the average global temperature of the Earth, compared to 16% of adults;

• 34% of teens don’t know that past climate changes have played an important role in the advance or collapse of past human civilizations, compared to 23% of adults;

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Common Misconceptions

This study also found important misconceptions leading many American teens to misunderstand the causes and therefore the solutions to climate change. For example, like adults, many teens confuse climate change and the hole in the ozone layer:

• 35% of teens believe that the hole in the ozone layer is a large contributor to global warming;

• 21% of teens believe that aerosol spray cans are a large contributor to global warming;

• 44% of teens believe that stopping rockets from punching holes in the ozone layer would reduce global warming.

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However, American teens also recognize their limited understanding of the issue. Fewer than 1 in 5 say they are “very well informed” about how the climate system works or the different causes, consequences, or potential solutions to global warming, and only 27 percent say they have learned “a lot” about global warming from in school. Importantly, 70 percent of teens say they would like to know more about global warming.

Seventy-three percent of teens say they would turn to the Internet to learn more about global warming, compared to 61 percent of adults. Teens are less likely than adults to look to television programs or books or magazines for more information about global warming.

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Introduction

Knowledge about climate change can be divided into several general and overlapping categories: knowledge about how the climate system works; specific knowledge about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming; contextual knowledge placing human-caused global warming in historical and geographic perspective; and practical knowledge that enables individual and collective action. This study included measures related to each of these key dimensions, along with other measures such as public desire for more information, trust in different information sources, and climate change risk perceptions, policy preferences, and behaviors.

Methodology

These results come from a nationally representative survey of 517 American teens (aged 13 to 17) and 1,513 adults, conducted June 24 through July 22, 2010. Households both with and without teens were randomly selected from the nationally representative online research panel of Knowledge Networks. The teen data comes only from those households with teens, while the adult data comes from all sampled households, including those with and without teens. Teen and adult samples were each separately weighted to correspond with US Census Bureau demographic parameters for the United States. The margin of sampling error for the teen data is plus or minus 4 percent, and plus or minus 2 percent for the adult data, with 95 percent confidence. Question order and wording can also introduce error into the results of surveys.

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For analysis, some items were re-coded as a 1 (a correct answer) or 0 (an incorrect answer, including don’t know & refused). For example, several questions asked respondents whether a statement was “definitely true”, “probably true”, “probably false”, or “definitely false”. These responses were converted into a simple true vs. false dichotomous measure. Likewise, questions that provided the response options “a lot”, “some”, “a little”, “not at all” or “don’t know” were also converted into simple dichotomous variables for analysis.

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In some cases, there is a clear “correct” or “incorrect” answer, strongly supported or strongly rejected by well-established scientific evidence. In other cases, there is a “best” answer reflecting broadly held scientific agreement, but somewhat more subjective. We provide references to peer reviewed, scientific sources for each answer (see the Appendix: Answer Key). Best or correct answers are indicated with a (!). Unknown or uncertain answers are indicated with a (*). All results show percentages among all respondents, unless otherwise labeled. Totals may occasionally sum to more than 100 percent due to rounding. The term “order of items randomized” refers to a standard survey technique in which questions and/or response categories are presented to respondents in a random order. This technique helps to prevent “order bias” in respondent answers.

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Grading American Teens

As a first-brush estimate of overall teen knowledge about climate change, a straight grading scale was constructed, using only those items for which there was a correct or best answer. To adjust for the difficulty of some items, only questions that were answered correctly by at least 25 percent of teens were included in the grade calculation (although all results are reported below in the results section). Thus this “grade” is based on a total of 75 individual questions. Each respondent was given a percentage score based on their total number of correct answers and graded on a straight scale (scores 90% and above = A, 80-89% = B, 70-79% = C, 60-69 = D, and scores 59% and below = F). On this scale, 25 percent of teens received a passing grade (A, B, or C) indicating that relatively few American teens have an in-depth understanding of climate change. For comparison, the same 75 questions were used to grade American adults. On this scale, 30 percent of adults received a passing grade. This “grade”, however, should be interpreted with caution. Some questions clearly were harder to answer than others. Likewise, other researchers might have chosen to assess different types of climate-related knowledge, which perhaps teens better understand.

It is also important to recognize that although some schools have started teaching about climate change, few teens have ever taken a formal course on the topic, so it is perhaps unsurprising that they lack detailed knowledge about the issue. Instead, these results likely reflect the unorganized and sometimes contradictory fragments of information teens have absorbed from the mass media, their parents, and other sources. Further, many of these questions are outside the practical concerns of most teens, who don’t need to know about climate change in their daily life or in school, thus it is not surprising that they have devoted little effort to learning these details.

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Nonetheless, many of these questions reveal important gaps in knowledge and common misconceptions about climate change and the earth system. These misconceptions lead some teens to doubt that climate change is happening or that human activities are a major contributor, to misunderstand the causes and therefore the solutions, and to be unaware of the risks. Thus many American teens lack some of the knowledge they will need to make informed decisions about climate change both now and in the future as students, workers, consumers, homeowners, and citizens.

To further adjust for the difficulty of some questions, we constructed a curved grading scale as an alternative scoring system. First, the mean percentage score was calculated (51%). Scores +/- 0.5 standard deviations from the mean (39% to 63%) were assigned the letter grade C. Scores ranging from +/- 0.5 to 1.5 standard deviations from the mean were assigned the letter grades B (64% to 87%) and D (15% to 38%) respectively. Finally, scores ranging from +/- 1.5 to 2.5 standard deviations from the mean were assigned the letter grades A (88% or higher) and F (14% or less) respectively. On this curved grading system, 72 percent of teens receive a passing grade. Note, however, that relatively few teens receive an A, even in this curved grading system. For comparison, a curved grading scale was also constructed for adults. Using this scale, 74 percent of adults receive a passing grade.