Yale Climate Opinion Maps

This visualization focuses on public acceptance of climate science. The set of interactive maps illustrates public opinion on a variety of climate beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support. The data is from the Yale Project on Climate Communication.

Go To:

http://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/

Peter Howe

Mattie Mildenberger

Jennifer Marlon

Anthony Leiserowitz

Yale Project on Climate Change Communication

Notes From Our Reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials

Teaching Tips

Educator will need to develop guiding questions to give context to the data on the maps.

While this tool is not a stand-alone activity, a few minutes of engaging with the maps is likely to elicit observations and questions. In particular, it can be useful to examine regional differences in attitudes about climate change. Students could also design their own questions and answers after exploring the maps.

It may be helpful to demonstrate the visualization for students to illustrate the many ways to display and interpret data.

Article on Consensus in Skeptical Science is a good resource [link http://www.skepticalscience.com].

About the Science

The information presented is useful for students to engage data on how Americans feel about different aspects of climate change and how those beliefs vary in different parts of the country.

Detailed data from this research is available below the main map, and links to the research are also included.

Graphical representation on national, state, congressional district, and county levels of people's options related to their beliefs on global warming, risk perceptions of global warming, and policy options to address climate change.

Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.

About the Pedagogy

These interactive graphics invite inquiry and engage students to consider how Americans' beliefs about climate change vary across different questions. Students can select different sets of public opinion data from a dropdown menu and the results are displayed on a map of the US. Results can be shown as a national average, statewide averages, or can be broken down by county or congressional district.

Visualization is intuitive to use and offers multiple opportunities to explore data.

Requires basic graph reading skills to interpret data.

Lesson plans and teacher guide are not provided with the visualization. However, the tool can be incorporated into existing lessons, or new lessons can easily be developed using the tool.

Free data download and details of survey methods used are provided.

Technical Details

Color coding: warm colors such as red and orange indicate agreement with climate science and policy; cool colors indicate lack of acceptance of climate science.

The estimates will be updated periodically when new Climate Change in the American Mind survey results are released.

The estimates on the maps are current as of Fall 2014. Changes in opinions over time were taken into account when generating the estimates. Estimates for past opinions and changes over time may be available in future versions of the tool.