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.

Key words: :

• climate change
• group epistemology
• informal science education
• science communication
• weathercasters

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Climate Change Education Partnership award to George Mason University (#DUE-1043235). For useful discussions and logistical support of research activities, the authors thank Keith Seitter, Steve Harned, Gene Bierly, Carole Mandryk, Joe Witte, and Bob Henson. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Notes

This work (DUE-104235) is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position, policy, or endorsement of the funding agency.