[✔️] July 21, 2023- Global Warming News Digest |

Fri Jul 21 05:28:05 EDT 2023

/*July*//*21, 2023*/

/[ Yale measures ethics to address global warming predicament ]/
Jul 20, 2023
*Messages about harms of fossil fuels increase support for renewables, 
with or without a moral emphasis*
By Abel Gustafson, Matthew Goldberg, Sanguk Lee, Miriam Remshard, Andrew 
Luttrell, Seth Rosenthal and Anthony Leiserowitz
We are pleased to share the findings of a new study, conducted in 
collaboration with the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the 
University of Cincinnati. This study examines the persuasive effects of 
moral appeals on public support for the transition from fossil fuels to 
clean, renewable energy.

The global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources 
(such as solar and wind) will be greatly affected by social factors such 
as public opinion, consumer demand, and political support. Political 
polarization over renewable energy has increased in the U.S. over the 
past five years. This divisive political climate underscores the 
importance of finding ways to communicate about renewable energy across 
different segments of the public.

One approach is appealing to people’s moral foundations. Some research 
has argued that morality is a primary source of people’s opinions on a 
wide variety of issues. Prior studies have found that moral appeals can 
be persuasive for diverse people – particularly when they highlight 
moral principles held by the audience. For example, a message might be 
more persuasive if it argues that we should transition to renewable 
energy because fossil fuels are unethical due to pollution harming 
innocent people (violating a common moral principle) and to fewer people 
if it argues that we should make this transition because of climate 
change. Similarly, a message could argue that fossil fuels are unethical 
because the pollution contaminates the cleanliness of the natural 
environment – activating another key “moral foundation” of purity.

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/moral_msg_fig1.png

Here, we report findings from a recent experiment testing whether 
persuasive effects are enhanced by explicitly emphasizing the moral and 
ethical aspects of different energy sources. Although all information 
about the harms of fossil fuels and benefits of renewable energy could 
be interpreted as having some degree of moral implications, it is 
important for communicators to know if it is beneficial to explicitly 
make a strong moral claim as a reason to transition away from fossil 
fuels. Therefore, our study tested the effect of explicitly calling out 
those ethical implications, compared to only describing the negative 
impacts of fossil fuel use without an explicit statement about morals 
and ethics.

Overall, we found that explicitly emphasizing the moral aspects of the 
issue did not provide a boost in either persuasiveness or message 
durability. Put simply, we found that the messages describing the 
negative effects of fossil fuels and advantages of clean energy already 
had strong and durable effects and nothing was gained by adding an 
explicit claim about ethics. While this is only one study, the findings 
suggest that direct statements about the morality or immorality of 
different energy sources do not necessarily enhance the persuasiveness 
of messages.

In our study, research participants were randomly assigned to watch one 
of five animated videos. Two non-moralized videos explained how fossil 
fuels can harm human health and the environment, respectively. Two 
“moralized” videos contained the same information but also included 
additional arguments about why this means using fossil fuels is 
inherently immoral, because doing so harms innocent people or 
contaminates the purity of nature, respectively. The image below 
provides an example. The fifth video, which provided information about 
an unrelated topic, provided the control (baseline) condition.
We found that all four messages were effective at changing beliefs about 
renewable energy and support for an energy transition. However, adding 
the specific moral claims (“this is unethical”) did not increase the 
persuasiveness of the message. Instead, all messages were similarly 
effective.

*Persuasive Effects Over Time*
In addition to investigating the immediate persuasive effects of the 
video messages, we also tested how long the persuasive effects lasted. 
Most studies on persuasion only measure immediate effects – that is, how 
attitudes and opinions are affected right after persuasive messages are 
presented. But it is critical to also understand how durable these 
changes are. Persuasion that quickly fades away might not be practically 
useful, especially when the desired outcomes are longer-term, such as 
changing daily habits or voting in a future election.

Accordingly, we measured participants’ opinions at three different 
times: immediately after seeing the message, about 10 days later, and 
then finally after another 10 days. This allows us to measure how much 
the initial changes in opinions persisted (or decayed) over time. Our 
findings (visualized in the figure below) showed that all four messages 
– whether moralized or not – had durable persuasive effects on people’s 
support for a transition to renewable energy. Across the four different 
messages, between 32% and 48% of the original treatment effect was still 
present after three weeks. However, we found no evidence of an added 
boost in durability from the explicit moralization of the message. 
Instead, there was similarly strong durability across all versions of 
the message.
We are currently preparing the full paper for submission to a scholarly 
journal.
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/moral-messages-increase-support-for-renewable-energy/

/[  German news organization discussion video 26 min ]/
*Record heat, drought and extreme weather: Can we still adapt? | To the 
Point*
DW News
Jul 20, 2023  #climatechange #extremeweather #heatwaves
Extreme weather conditions and no end in sight. More and more parts of 
the world are reporting new heat records. Temperatures sometimes reach 
life-threatening levels.
Like in the US or in China’s northwest. This comes as forest fires burn 
thousands and thousands of urgently needed trees. Torrential rains cause 
floods in one part of the world while others are seeing droughts.
The fact is: weather extremes are on the rise. Yet the earth has only 
heated up by an average of 1.1 degrees.
If the goal of limiting warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees were to be 
reached, the effects would probably be even worse.
So on To the Point, we ask: Record heat, drought, and extreme weather: 
Can we still adapt?
Our guests: Claudia Kemfert (DIW); Mekonnen Mesghena (Heinrich 
Böll-Stiftung); Matthew Karnitschnig (Politico
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JgYnAke2ug

/[ Ice that is one mile thick is melting. Existing Greenland studies now 
restudied  Troubling conclusions - video ]/
*New Research on a Greenland Meltdown 400,000 Years Ago Has Big 
Implications for Climate Policy*
Andrew Revkin
Jul 20, 2023
Longtime climate-focused journalist Andy Revkin discusses a new study of 
Greenland's past ice and climate changes with two authors, Paul Bierman 
of the University of Vermont and Tammy Rittenour of Utah State University.
This paper is available this link: 
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4248
Read more at Sustain What: https://revkin.substack.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGzTI6ExMxg

- -

[ from the Journal Science ]
*Deglaciation of northwestern Greenland during Marine Isotope Stage 11*
ANDREW J. CHRIST, TAMMY M. RITTENOUR, PAUL R. BIERMAN, BENJAMIN A. 
KEISLING. KNUTZ, TONNY B. THOMSEN, NYNKE KEULEN. FOSDICK, SIDNEY R. 
HEMMING, AND ELIZABETH K. THOMAS 
HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0002-6489-7123+11 authors Authors Info & Affiliations
SCIENCE
20 Jul 2023
Vol 381, Issue 6655
pp. 330-335
DOI: 10.1126/science.ade4248

    *Editor’s summary*
    Measurements made on subglacial sediment from the Camp Century ice
    core in northwestern Greenland show that the location was ice free
    during the interglacial that occurred around 400,000 years ago.
    Christ et al. used luminescence dating and cosmogenic nuclide data
    to show that the sediment was deposited under ice-free conditions
    after having been exposed at the surface to sunlight fewer than
    16,000 years earlier. The absence of ice at that location means that
    the Greenland Ice Sheet must have contributed more than 1.4 meters
    of sea-level equivalent to the high sea-level stand, when the
    average global air temperature was similar to what we will soon
    experience because of human-caused climate warming. —H. Jesse Smith

*Abstract*
Past interglacial climates with smaller ice sheets offer analogs for ice 
sheet response to future warming and contributions to sea level rise; 
however, well-dated geologic records from formerly ice-free areas are 
rare. Here we report that subglacial sediment from the Camp Century ice 
core preserves direct evidence that northwestern Greenland was ice free 
during the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 interglacial. Luminescence 
dating shows that sediment just beneath the ice sheet was deposited by 
flowing water in an ice-free environment 416 ± 38 thousand years ago. 
Provenance analyses and cosmogenic nuclide data and calculations suggest 
the sediment was reworked from local materials and exposed at the 
surface <16 thousand years before deposition. Ice sheet modeling 
indicates that ice-free conditions at Camp Century require at least 1.4 
meters of sea level equivalent contribution from the Greenland Ice Sheet.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4248

/[The news archive - looking back at disinformation battles]/
/*July 21, 2008 */
July 21, 2008: The UK Office of Communication criticizes Britain's 
Channel 4 for running the 2007 denialism doc "The Great Global Warming 
Swindle." Below, Peter Sinclair of ClimateCrocks.com debunks the doc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/earth/22clim.html?_r=0

http://youtu.be/boj9ccV9htk

http://youtu.be/8nrvrkVBt24

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