LibGuides: Climate Change and Global Warming: Journal Articles

Articles - Purpose of Page

This page lists PEER REVIEWED articles available in our databases that give a general overview of Climate Change/Global Warming Science, Policies, and Politics as well as articles that give a call to action and outline how individuals can combat global warming. Students will need to sign into their account to access most articles.

The Politics of Climate Change

America’s Polarized Politics of Climate Change (Peer Reviewed Article)
Political Institutions and Supply-Side Climate Politics: Lessons from Coal Ports in Canada and the United States (Peer Reviewed Article) In recent years, a new “supply-side” climate politics has emerged as activists have turned their attention from fossil fuel combustion to fossil fuel extraction and transport. This article investigates conditions for success of anti–fossil-fuel activism by comparing the fate of two proposed coal terminals on either side of the Canada–United States border. Both cases highlight that fossil fuel transport infrastructure is especially vulnerable to opposition as a result of concentrated costs and limited economic benefits in transit jurisdictions that did not produce the fossil fuels in question. Still, not all contexts are equally amenable to supply-side contestation. Institutional differences explain approval of a new coal port in Canada, while a similar US facility was rejected: a weaker environmental assessment regime and more limited opportunities for local government and Indigenous vetoes. However, the regulator’s subsequent withdrawal of the still-pending Canadian terminal’s permit five years later reveals that delay can be as good as victory for opponents when markets for fossil fuels decline.
Climate Politics and the Crisis of the Liberal International Order (Peer Reviewed Article) The election of Donald Trump brought disarray to the climate change regime. The changes in what was up to then a promoter of the liberal international order (LIO) exacerbated existing tensions while creating new ones. This paper investigates how that challenge impacted the behaviours of Brazil, China and the European Union (EU) by comparatively analysing their dissimilar positions with respect to three indicators before and after Trump's coming into power. These indicators are individual pledges and climate-related policies; approaches to climate finance; and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC). The analysis first shows how the US started eroding the broader LIO and the climate change regime to then delve into the behaviours of the three respective key players concerning climate talks. I sustain that the EU, despite its inner divisions, is already counteracting Washington, whereas China is combining a pro-status quo position based on a rhetorical condemnation of the United States. Brazil, in turn, had a transition towards a climate-sceptic government, shifting from being a cooperative actor to abdicating hosting the COP25.

Towards a climate-resilient America? Tracing climate-resilient nationhoods in US climate politics (Peer Reviewed Article) Exploring connections between climate resilience and national identity under the Obama and Trump presidencies, this paper argues that discourses of climate-resilient American nationhood constitute an intersection of neoliberalism, populism and immunopolitics. Under Obama, a climate-resilient America is an adaptive subject that embraces climate-insecure futures; under Trump, the anti-climate resilient national subject is a ‘frankenstein neoliberal’ [Brown, W. (2018). Neoliberalism’s Frankenstein: Authoritarian freedom in twenty-first century “democracies”. Critical Times, 1(1), 60–79. https://doi.org/10.1215/26410478-1.1.60] identity grounded in white supremacism. For both of these subjects, albeit in radically different ways, climate-resilient nationhood acts as an immunopolitical drive for self-preservation: a resilient American subject adapts to climate insecurities at the expense of those demarcated as non-adaptive and non-resilient.
Contrasting Views of Citizens' Assemblies: Stakeholder Perceptions of Public Deliberation on Climate Change (Peer Reviewed Article) It has been argued that a 'new climate politics' has emerged in recent years, in the wake of global climate change protest movements. One part of the new climate politics entails experimentation with citizen-centric input into policy development, via mechanisms of deliberative democracy such as citizens' assemblies. Yet relatively little is known about the motivations and aspirations of those commissioning climate assemblies or about general public perceptions of these institutions. Addressing these issues is important for increasing understanding of what these deliberative mechanisms represent in the context of climate change, how legitimate, credible and useful they are perceived to be by those involved, and whether they represent a radical way of doing politics differently or a more incremental change. This article addresses these gaps by presenting findings from mixed method research on prior expectations of the Devon Climate Assembly, proposed following the declaration of a climate emergency in 2019. The research compares and contrasts the views of those commissioning and administering the citizens' assembly, with those of the wider public. Findings indicate widespread support, yet also considerable risk and uncertainty associated with holding the assembly. Enabling input into policy of a broad array of public voices was seen as necessary for effective climate response, yet there was scepticism about the practical challenges involved in ensuring citizen representation, and about whether politicians, and society more generally, would embrace the 'hard choices' required. The assembly was diversely represented as a means to unlock structural change, and as an instrumental tool to achieve behaviour change at scale. The Devon Climate Assembly appears to indicate 'cautious experimentation' where democratic innovation is widely embraced yet carefully constrained, offering only a modest example of a 'new climate politics,' with minimal challenges to the authority of existing institutions.
Climate bones of contention: How climate variability influences territorial, maritime, and river interstate conflicts (Peer Reviewed Article) Many scholars examine the relationship between climate variability and intrastate conflict onset. While empirical findings in this literature are mixed, we know less about how climate changes increase the risks for conflicts between countries. This article studies climate variability using the issue approach to world politics. We examine whether climate variability influences the onset and militarization of interstate diplomatic conflicts and whether these effects are similar across issues that involve sovereignty claims for land (territory) or water (maritime, river). We focus on two theoretical mechanisms: scarcity (abundance) and uncertainty. We measure these concepts empirically through climate deviation (e.g. droughts/floods, heat waves/cold spells) and climate volatility (greater short-term variance in precipitation/temperature). Analyses of issue claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1901–2001) show that greater deviations and volatility in climate conditions increase risks for new diplomatic conflicts and militarization of ongoing issues and that climate change acts as a trigger for revisionist states.
Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization. (Peer Reviewed Article) Americans polarized on climate change despite decreasing uncertainty in climate science. Explanations focused on organized climate skeptics and ideologically driven motivated reasoning are likely insufficient. Instead, Americans may have formed their attitudes by using party elite cues. We analyze the content of over 8,000 print, broadcast, and cable news stories. We find that coverage became increasingly partisan as climate change rose in salience, but climate skeptics received scant attention. Democratic messages were more voluminous and consistently pro–climate science, while Republican messages have been scarcer and ambiguous until recently. This suggests Republican voters took cues from Democratic elites to reject climate science.

General Climate Science

An Economist's Guide to Climate Change Science (Peer Reviewed Article) This article provides a brief introduction to the physical science of climate change, aimed towards economists. We begin by describing the physics that controls global climate, how scientists measure and model the climate system, and the magnitude of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide. We then summarize many of the climatic changes of interest to economists that have been documented and that are projected in the future. We conclude by highlighting some key areas in which economists are in a unique position to help climate science advance. An important message from this final section, which we believe is deeply underappreciated among economists, is that all climate change forecasts rely heavily and directly on economic forecasts for the world. On timescales of a half-century or longer, the largest source of uncertainty in climate science is not physics, but economics.
Citizen Science and Climate Change: Mapping the Range Expansions of Native and Exotic Plants with the Mobile App Leafsnap (Peer Reviewed Article) The mobile iPhone app Leafsnap, designed for the automatic identification of 220 tree species from the northeastern United States, was released to the public in 2011. In the first 3 years of its use, the app was downloaded by more than 1,500,000 users from five continents and 181 countries who recorded over 3,056,684 leaf images. The high levels of accuracy of Leafsnap identifications, as were confirmed by expert botanists, were used to map the geographic distribution of native and exotic species at a scale previously unachievable without this technology and without the aid of citizen scientists. Species demonstrated northerly migrations, southerly migrations, or little change from their estimated distributions in the 1950s. These results suggest that this tool carried on the phones of millions may potentially collect invaluable data that can be used to monitor the effects of climate change and exotic species on tree distributions at broad geographic scales.
Public Perception of Uncertainties Within Climate Change Science. (Peer Reviewed Article) Climate change is a complex, multifaceted problem involving various interacting systems and actors. Therefore, the intensities, locations, and timeframes of the consequences of climate change are hard to predict and cause uncertainties. Relatively little is known about how the public perceives this scientific uncertainty and how this relates to their concern about climate change. In this article, an online survey among 306 Swiss people is reported that investigated whether people differentiate between different types of uncertainty in climate change research. Also examined was the way in which the perception of uncertainty is related to people's concern about climate change, their trust in science, their knowledge about climate change, and their political attitude. The results of a principal component analysis showed that respondents differentiated between perceived ambiguity in climate research, measurement uncertainty, and uncertainty about the future impact of climate change. Using structural equation modeling, it was found that only perceived ambiguity was directly related to concern about climate change, whereas measurement uncertainty and future uncertainty were not. Trust in climate science was strongly associated with each type of uncertainty perception and was indirectly associated with concern about climate change. Also, more knowledge about climate change was related to less strong perceptions of each type of climate science uncertainty. Hence, it is suggested that to increase public concern about climate change, it may be especially important to consider the perceived ambiguity about climate research. Efforts that foster trust in climate science also appear highly worthwhile.
Politicization of science: how climate change skeptics use experts and scientific evidence in their online communication (Peer Reviewed Article) This study, using the discussion about climate change in the USA as an example, analyzes the research question of how climate change skeptics use experts and scientific evidence in their online communication. Two different strategies are distinguished: legitimation and criticism. The study conducts a quantitative content analysis of online documents to answer the research question. The results show that the deduced strategies are an important part of the communication of climate change skeptics, who more commonly use the criticism strategy than the legitimation strategy. Results are further differentiated for different actor types and various types of experts.
Nature-based solutions for urban climate change adaptation: Linking science, policy, and practice communities for evidence-based decision-making (Peer Reviewed Article) Nature-based solutions offer an exciting prospect for resilience building and advancing urban planning to address complex urban challenges simultaneously. In this article, we formulated through a coproduction process in workshops held during the first IPCC Cities and Climate Science Conference in Edmonton, Canada, in March 2018, a series of synthesis statements on the role, potential, and research gaps of nature-based solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation. We address interlocking questions about the evidence and knowledge needed for integrating nature-based solutions into urban agendas. We elaborate on the ways to advance the planning and knowledge agenda for nature-based solutions by focusing on knowledge coproduction, indicators and big data, and novel financing models. With this article, we intend to open a wider discussion on how cities can effectively mainstream nature-based solutions to mitigate and adapt to the negative effects of climate change and the future role of urban science in coproducing nature-based solutions.
Usable climate science is adaptation science (Peer Reviewed Article) The author argues that in the present historical moment, the only climate science that is truly usable is that which is oriented towards adaptation, because current policies and politics are so far from what would be needed to avert dangerous climate change that scientific uncertainty is not a limiting factor on mitigation. The author considers what implications this might have for climate science and climate scientists.
Ethics of Probabilistic Extreme Event Attribution in Climate Change Science: A Critique (Peer Reviewed Article) The question whether a single extreme climate event, such as a hurricane or heatwave, can be attributed to human induced climate change has become a vibrant field of research and discussion in recent years. Proponents of the most common approach (probabilistic event attribution) argue for using single event attribution for advancing climate policy, not least in the context of loss and damages, while critics are raising concerns about inductive risks which may result in misguided policies. Here, we present six ethical predicaments, rooted in epistemic choices of single event attribution for policy making, with a focus on problems related to loss and damage. Our results show that probabilistic event attribution is particularly sensitive to these predicaments, rendering the choice of method value laden and hence political. Our review shows how the putatively apolitical approach becomes political and deeply problematic from a climate justice perspective. We also suggest that extreme event attribution (EEA) is becoming more and more irrelevant for projecting loss and damages as socio-ecological systems are increasingly destabilized by climate change. We conclude by suggesting a more causality driven approach for understanding loss and damage, that is, less prone to the ethical predicaments of EEA.

General Databases

JSTOR Archival Journals and Primary Sources Collection This link opens in a new window (JSTOR) - Access to back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Over 700 titles available.
Funded by Statewide Allocation
Sage Journals This link opens in a new window (Sage Publications) - Sage is the world’s 5th largest journals publisher. Our portfolio includes more than 645 journals spanning the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science, Technology, and Medicine, and more than 280 are published on behalf of 225 learned societies and institutions.
Funded by Statewide Allocation
ProQuest All Subscribed Content This link opens in a new window (ProQuest) - Large aggregated full-text database totaling more than 11,250 titles—with over 8,400 titles in full text. It serves as the central resource for researchers at all levels in all markets.
Funded by College (FLVC Group License)
Wiley eJournal Package This link opens in a new window (Wiley) - Wiley eJournal Package is an academic and professional multidisciplinary collection of resources covering life, health, physical science, social science, and the humanities. FSCJ only has access to articles labeled as "free access."
Funded by Other
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window (EBSCO) - Academic Search Complete, designed specifically for academic institutions, is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format.
Funded by Statewide Allocation
Gale Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window (Gale) - Academic OneFile provides peer-reviewed, full-text articles from leading journals and reference sources. Includes coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and, other subjects.
Funded by State Library of Florida (FEL)

Peer Reviewed Journals

Journal of Ocean and Climate (Online) 2019-2019
The Journal of Ocean and Climate: Science, Technology and Impacts is a peer-reviewed, open access, international journal which focusses on ocean science, ocean technology, and ocean-climate interactions and impacts. Please note this title was formerly International Journal of Ocean and Climate Systems.
The Journal of Climate Change and Health
The Journal of Climate Change and Health is a worldwide scientific peer reviewed gold open access medical journal that seeks to publish high quality scientific works related to acute and chronic climate related disasters, migration, changing patterns of disease and the impacts of climate change on individuals and health systems.
Climate Resilience and Sustainability
Climate Resilience and Sustainability is an interdisciplinary Open Access journal focused on research and practical experience of solutions that address the socioeconomic and biophysical impacts of climate change and lead to a sustainable and resilient environment, society and economy.

Climate Change Perspectives

How Climate Change Science Is Reflected in People's Minds. A Cross-Country Study on People's Perceptions of Climate Change (Peer Reviewed Article) The way people perceive climate change scientific evidence becomes relevant in motivating or demotivating their climate actions. Climate change is one of the most publicized topics globally, and media has become an important "validator" of science. Therefore, science has become more exposed to criticism. Even when most scientists, decision makers, and laypeople agree on the robust evidence of climate science, there is still room for disagreement. The main aim of this paper is to reveal how climate change knowledge generated by science is perceived by the laypeople and to observe a possible gap between them. The study answered two questions "What are the main contrasting climate change topics in the scientific literature?" and "What are Romanian and Belgian participants' perceptions of these topics?". A qualitative approach was chosen for data analysis, using Quirkos software. The present cross-country study showed commonalities and differences of views between the two groups of participants regarding six climate change topics. Divergent perceptions among Belgians and Romanians came out, for example, within the theme "The heroes, villains, and victims of climate change." Thus, whereas Belgians considered all people, including themselves, responsible for climate change, Romanians blamed mostly others, such as big companies, governments, and consumers. Additionally, both groups stated that climate change existed, but contrary to Belgians, Romanians voiced that climate change was often used as an exaggerated and politicized topic. The analysis revealed that perceptions about climate change, its causes, and its impacts are social constructs with a high degree of variability between and within the two national groups. The study argued that the cleavages between scientific literature and people's views were blind spots on which a participatory approach was needed to better cope with climate change challenges.
Understanding Farmer Perspectives on Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: The Roles of Trust in Sources of Climate Information, Climate Change Beliefs, and Perceived Risk (Peer Reviewed Article) Agriculture is vulnerable to climate change and a source of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Farmers face pressures to adjust agricultural systems to make them more resilient in the face of increasingly variable weather (adaptation) and reduce GHG production (mitigation). This research examines relationships between Iowa farmers’ trust in environmental or agricultural interest groups as sources of climate information, climate change beliefs, perceived climate risks to agriculture, and support for adaptation and mitigation responses. Results indicate that beliefs varied with trust, and beliefs in turn had a significant direct effect on perceived risks from climate change. Support for adaptation varied with perceived risks, while attitudes toward GHG reduction (mitigation) were associated predominantly with variation in beliefs. Most farmers were supportive of adaptation responses, but few endorsed GHG reduction, suggesting that outreach should focus on interventions that have adaptive and mitigative properties (e.g., reduced tillage, improved fertilizer management).
The role of populist attitudes in explaining climate change skepticism and support for environmental protection (Peer Reviewed Article) Conventional wisdom holds that partisanship and political ideology, writ large, are some of the most powerful explanations of attitudes towards climate change and environmental politics. While compelling, most studies focus on a narrow definition of political ideology in the US. This study adds to the literature by assessing the relationship between populism, climate skepticism, and support for environmental protection. Populism offers an orthogonal dimension to partisanship and left-right self-placement, which broadens the scope of the concept. Assessing the UK facilitates understanding the role of political ideology beyond the strong party sorting apparent in the US. Data from the 2015 British Election Study offer strong support for the proposition that populism holds a consequential role in climate and environmental politics.
Current surveys may underestimate climate change skepticism evidence from list experiments in Germany and the USA. (Peer Reviewed Article) Strong public support is a prerequisite for ambitious and thus costly climate change mitigation policy, and strong public concern over climate change is a prerequisite for policy support. Why, then, do most public opinion surveys indicate rather high levels of concern and rather strong policy support, while de facto mitigation efforts in most countries remain far from ambitious? One possibility is that survey measures for public concern fail to fully reveal the true attitudes of citizens due to social desirability bias. In this paper, we implemented list-experiments in representative surveys in Germany and the United States (N = 3620 and 3640 respectively) to assess such potential bias. We find evidence that people systematically misreport, that is, understate their disbelief in human caused climate change. This misreporting is particularly strong amongst politically relevant subgroups. Individuals in the top 20% of the income distribution in the United States and supporters of conservative parties in Germany exhibit significantly higher climate change skepticism according to the list experiment, relative to conventional measures. While this does not definitively mean that climate skepticism is a widespread phenomenon in these countries, it does suggest that future research should reconsider how climate change concern is measured, and what subgroups of the population are more susceptible to misreporting and why. Our findings imply that public support for ambitious climate policy may be weaker than existing survey research suggests.
Examining Links Between Religion, Evolution Views, and Climate Change Skepticism (Peer Reviewed Article) Recent media portrayals link climate change skepticism to evolution skepticism, often as part of a larger “antiscience” tendency related to membership in conservative religious groups. Using national survey data, we examine the link between evolution skepticism and climate change skepticism, and consider religion’s association with both. Our analysis shows a modest association between the two forms of skepticism along with some shared predictors, such as political conservatism, a lack of confidence in science, and lower levels of education. Evangelical Protestants also show more skepticism toward both evolution and climate change compared with the religiously unaffiliated. On the whole, however, religion has a much stronger and clearer association with evolution skepticism than with climate change skepticism. Results contribute to scholarly discussions on how different science issues may or may not interact, the role of religion in shaping perceptions of science, and how science policy makers might better channel their efforts to address environmental care and climate change in particular.
Being Skeptical? Exploring Far-Right Climate-Change Communication in Germany (Peer Reviewed Article) This article explores climate-change communication by the German far right – spanning a continuum which ranges from anti-liberal democracy radical-right populists, to the extreme right and to anti-democratic neoNazis – and asks: how do these actors articulate the phenomenon of climate change? In responding to this question, we conduct a discourse network analysis which identifies relations between actors, objects, phenomena, and processes, and points out differences/similarities across a continuum of exemplary far-right sources. The investigated actors put forward a rather skeptical climate change narrative, even though differences exist as the significance attached to the Volk and its sovereignty, rooted in far-right ideology, sometimes overrides, and sometimes is in harmony with, their ideological-driven affinity with nature protection. We thus contribute to the growing body of knowledge on climate-change communication and, more specifically, on the link between ideology and climate-change skepticism.
Just don’t call it climate change: climate-skeptic farmer adoption of climate-mitigative practices (Peer Reviewed Article) Abstract: Despite low levels of agreement that climate change is caused primarily by humans, respondents to a survey of climate change beliefs and adoption of climate-mitigative practices among beef and grain producers in Alberta, Canada, indicate a high level of adoption of several agricultural practices with climate-mitigative benefits. Respondents' motivations for adoption of climate-mitigative practices rarely include the belief that climate change is caused by humans, but rather expectations for economic benefits, improvements in soil quality, and biodiversity, among other things. The strongest predictor of mitigative practice adoption is a learning orientation, defined as valuing improvement, research, learning, and innovation, followed by a conservation orientation that values land stewardship. Predictors are not consistent across practices; however, in some but not all cases adoption is predicted by climate change norms, or assumption of personal responsibility to address climate change, and other predictors vary by practice as well.
Climate Change Scepticism: A Conceptual Re-Evaluation (Peer Reviewed Article) Abstract: “Climate change scepticism” is a familiar concept in popular and scholarly discourse and generally refers to a family of arguments and individuals that reject, dispute, or question the orthodox view of the climate issue. At close range though, it is evident that the concept is often used casually, without consideration of the complexity of the category it represents. Scholars have varied interpretations of the concept and sometimes actively dispute its meaning and reach. The article proposes that the sceptic phenomenon can be variegated according to the types of sceptic critiques and, additionally, according to sceptics’ attitudinal characteristics. Taxonomies are proposed for each. The types of sceptic arguments are organised in a conceptual hierarchy consisting of two classes of critiques (“core” and “concomitant”), three centers of scepticism (“evidence,” “process,” and “response”), and seven specific objects of scepticism. For the attitudinal characteristics of sceptics, the article takes stock of the different motives, modes, and certainties of belief among sceptics. It proposes some relabeling of the category and subcategories to more accurately describe nuances in sceptic positions, as well as to dispose of unproductive labels. The article suggests how the refined conceptualisation might help observers and policy practitioners to manage the sceptic challenge in a more discerning and constructive fashion.
Not All Skepticism Is Equal: Exploring the Ideological Antecedents of Science Acceptance and Rejection (Peer Reviewed Article) Abstract: Many topics that scientists investigate speak to people’s ideological worldviews. We report three studies—including an analysis of large-scale survey data—in which we systematically investigate the ideological antecedents of general faith in science and willingness to support science, as well as of science skepticism of climate change, vaccination, and genetic modification (GM). The main predictors are religiosity and political orientation, morality, and science understanding. Overall, science understanding is associated with vaccine and GM food acceptance, but not climate change acceptance. Importantly, different ideological predictors are related to the acceptance of different scientific findings. Political conservatism best predicts climate change skepticism. Religiosity, alongside moral purity concerns, best predicts vaccination skepticism. GM food skepticism is not fueled by religious or political ideology. Finally, religious conservatives consistently display a low faith in science and an unwillingness to support science. Thus, science acceptance and rejection have different ideological roots, depending on the topic of investigation.
A matter of time… consideration of future consequences and temporal distance contribute to the ideology gap in climate change scepticism (Peer Reviewed Article) Abstract: Factors that contribute to the well-established ideology gap in climate change beliefs (i.e., conservatives’ scepticism about climate change and its severity) remain underexplored. In the present research, we propose that there are differences in the consideration of future consequences, as well as the perception of climate change in time, between conservatives and liberals which, in part, contribute to this gap. Across three studies (total N = 654) in the Netherlands and the UK, we demonstrate that, compared to liberals, conservatives tend to consider future consequences of their behaviour less and perceive the effects of climate change as further away in the future. Furthermore, we find that temporal distance to climate change, and, to a lesser extent, consideration of future consequences, can partially account for higher levels of scepticism about climate change on the conservative side of the ideological spectrum. Besides contributing to a better understanding of this ideology bias, these results have implications for climate change communication.