How is climate change debated and perceived?
A three-year international research project (2011-2014) investigating changes in the debate about climate change from 1988 to present day. Our research aims to gain insight into how the political and scientific debate about climate change affects the views and attitudes of individuals and groups in society, as well as how the issue is perceived differently across countries.
Climate change is a complex scientific issue. It is also a complex social issue, involving a wide range of actors and organizations -- including scientists, policy makers, industry, the mass media, NGOs, activist groups and lay people.
Debates about climate change or global warming have been characterised both by long periods of slow, mainly consensus-dominated phases and by a series of sudden changes in attention to, and the social, cultural and political meaning of, 'climate change'. In recent decades, the public debate surrounding man-made climate change has evolved from climate scientists' increasingly vocal warnings about the dangers of the 'greenhouse effect' at the end of the 1980s to current ‘climate wars’ which began after ‘Climategate’ in 2009.
“Social scientists, discourse analysts and communication analysts have studied climate change for a long time, but nobody has engaged in-depth with the complexity of public perception. The tools we are using in this project allow us to uncover patterns and reveal changes in the dynamics of social change, accelerated through the increasing impact of the internet”, said Professor Nerlich.