International Publics Backsliding on Climate Change

The New York Times has a sobering run down of polling in the US and Europe that shows public understanding of global climate change has been declining.  The article credits climate change "skeptics" and cites their ability to rely on the media to amplify every misstep or mistake as somehow discrediting to the consensus on climate change.

We know from long research about the challenges faced by experts trying to engage the public on the topic of climate change -- from the lack of explanatory model for just how our actions result in a "heat-trapping blanket" -- to the lack of a conceptual framework for understanding the kinds of policy tools we will have to wield in order to solve the problem.  The persistent media framing of a "contest" or even "conversation" between two essentially equal sides -- climate change worriers on the one hand, and climate change skeptics on the other -- has not served to move things forward.  On the contrary.