Mind On My Money and My Money On My Mind

Climate change has been a hot topic of debate for some time now. Considering few people like to wade through the boring scientific evidence of it all, most turn to media sources to formulate their opinions. The chart above shows an interesting trend regarding how people feel about the media's representation of climate change. While public opinion about the over-exaggeration of climate change tends to fluctuate, the actual reporting does not.

Due to the fact that political coverage drives media ratings significantly more than scientific coverage, reporting on climate change has always been extremely limited in proportion to its potential impact on society (and all of civilization for that matter). Another contributor to the consistency with which climate change has been reported on is the media's own bias added by their attempt to appear unbiased. In the day to day coverage of political news stories it is important for media channel members to represent each side of an opinion. However, when reporting on concrete scientific evidence, giving each side equal claim while evidence on one side is more substantial distorts viewer's perceptions of the situation being reported on. For instance, you don't see an equal amount of stories about the harmful and beneficial effects of tobacco products because the majority of scientific research indicates that tobacco use is harmful. Due to the fact that climate change has begun to be perceived as more of a political debate than a scientific one, reporting has remained consistent while scientific evidence favoring the existence of climate change has gotten much stronger.

If reporting on climate change has remained so consistent then why has public opinion fluctuated? In my opinion the seriousness with which people approach climate change is dependent on the level of priority they assign to it. One pattern that has a direct correlation with the perceived accuracy reporting on climate change is GDP growth. Notice that the two major spikes in skepticism of reporting occurred during the last two major US recessions (04, 08/09).If people are more concerned about something else, say the monetary stability of themselves and their families, climate change then becomes comparatively less of a threat.