The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) is a research center within the

Yale School of the Environment Yale School of the Environment (YSE) is a professional school of Yale University. It was founded to train foresters, and now trains environmental students through four 2-year degree programs ( Master of Environmental Management, Master of Environ ...

that conducts scientific research on public

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

knowledge, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior at the global, national, and local scales. It grew out of a conference held in

Aspen, Colorado Aspen is the List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population ...

, in 2005.

General

The program is led by

Anthony Leiserowitz Anthony Leiserowitz is a human geographer at Yale University who studies public perceptions of climate change. He has particularly examined perceptions within the United States, where people are considerably less aware of climate change than in o ...

. As of 2017, it put out a daily 90 second audio program carried by around 350 radio stations, articles in the media, a series of monthly videos, and training to help television

weather presenters Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the ...

and reporters discuss climate change. The organization conducts ongoing opinion polls of the American public on climate. Its climate change opinion polling has been described as being similar to the work of the

Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center (also simply known as Pew) is a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world. It ...

. The YPCCC website also offers tips on how

activists Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

and everyday people can communicate more effectively about climate change. YPCCC has collaborated with the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication to assemble a freely available

dataset A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more database tables, where every column of a table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given record o ...

, which has been used to create interactive partisan climate opinion maps of the United States. These maps, also known as the Yale Climate Opinion maps, provide detailed information about "climate change beliefs,

risk perception Risk perception is the subjective judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Risk perceptions often differ from statistical assessments of risk since they are affected by a wide range of affective (emotions, feel ...

and policy support for climate-related policy at the state and local level." In July 2019, the organization suggested that discussing climate change more frequently with family and friends might be the most effective way of influencing United States public opinion on climate change.

Awards

In 2017 the program was given a "Friend of the Planet" award by the

National Center for Science Education The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a Nonprofit organization, not-for-profit membership organization in the United States whose stated mission is to educate the press and the public on the scientific and educational aspects of con ...

in 2017. In 2018, Leiserowitz and YPCCC researchers received the Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Award, given by the

American Association for Public Opinion Research The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) is a professional organization of more than 2,000 public opinion and survey research professionals in the United States and from around the world, with members from academia, media, gover ...

. The award recognized "a new statistical method to downscale national public opinion estimates using multiple regression and post stratification (MPR) survey data collection methodology".

References

External links

* {{Authority control Yale University Climate change organizations based in the United States Environmental organizations based in Connecticut Environmental organizations established in 2005 2005 establishments in Connecticut Climate communication

General

Awards

References

Further reading

External links