Twelve Brief, Experimentally-Vetted, No-Polarization Ways to Reduce Denial of Human-Caused Global Warming

Berkeley’s Reasoning Group’s experiments show that a dozen different brief (usually under-five-minute) “hunks” of scientific information increase acceptance (among conservatives and liberals alike; i.e., without polarization) that anthropogenic Global Warming (GW) is occurring/concerning (e.g., Ranney & Velautham, 2021). These interventions include videos, temperature (vs. stock-market) graphs, climate statistics (even mixed with misleading statistics), and texts explaining either GW’s physical-chemical mechanism or why climatologists deserve trust (e.g., Ranney & Clark, 2016; Senthilkumaran, Velautham, & Ranney, 2023). (Our public-outreach site, HowGlobalWarmingWorks.org, offers examples.) Other interventions involve sea-level rise, climate change’s effects, supra-nationalistic statistics, and CO2’s cognitive harms (e.g., Kihiczak & Ranney, 2023; Ranney et al., 2019; Velautham, Ranney, & Brow, 2019). Velautham (2022) likewise increased GW acceptance using two hope-oriented interventions (involving the effectiveness/uptake of, or dyads selecting among, GW solutions). Our convincing information (perhaps even Ranney’s 13-word haiku; e.g., Ranney, et al., 2016, etc.) plausibly improves decisions about policies, politics, and candidates.