Most of us do not trust the scientists employed by the cigarette companies to tell us truthfully about the consequences of smoking for health, nor the scientists who work for oil companies to give us
accurate information about global warming.
UCS offers a range of resources to help you improve your science communication skills and develop effective techniques for
presenting information about global warming, including a series of webinars designed to provide you with useful tools and best practices for talking about global warming and understanding how people perceive and take in information.
But then there is the vexing issue of why people can't absorb
the information about global warming and take action.
Levels of trust in television weather reporters, the mainstream news media, and scientists as sources of
information about global warming have also dropped since June 2010 (by 9, 7, and 5 points respectively).
Our first Climate Change in the American Mind survey, conducted in 2008, revealed that TV weathercasters are highly trusted sources of
information about global warming.
Figure 3: Responses to the George Mason CCCC poll question «How much do you trust or distrust the following as a source of
information about global warming?»
Sixty - seven percent of Americans «strongly» or «somewhat» trust family and friends for
information about global warming, according to a survey by researchers at Yale University and George Mason University, released in March 2015.
Local television (TV) weathercasters are a potentially promising source of climate education, in that weather is the primary reason viewers watch local TV news, large segments of the public trust TV weathercasters as a source of
information about global warming, and extreme weather events are increasingly common (Leiserowitz et al.; U.S. Global Change Research Program).
In addition, despite the recent controversies over «climategate» and the 2007 IPCC report, this study finds that Americans trust scientists and scientific organizations far more than any other source of
information about global warming.
Usually
any information about Global Warming is quite scary, but this book actually has a great deal of positive as well as fascinating facts.
Maibach, who is now working on a further project to measure the effects the views of weathercasters have on their audience, added: «Most members of the public consider television weather reporters to be a trusted source of
information about global warming - only scientists are viewed as more trustworthy.»