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Category: Project

Description: Communicating the scientific consensus that climate change is real increases climate change beliefs, worry, and support for public action. Recent science goes beyond the mere reality of climate change—there is now broad agreement that climate change is a crisis. In this preregistered experiment, we tested two scientific consensus messages, a classic message on the reality of climate change and an updated message additionally emphasizing the crisis-status agreement. Across 27 countries (N = 10,527), the classic message corrects misperceptions and slightly increases climate change beliefs and worry but not support for public action. The updated message is equally effective but provides no added value. Both messages are more effective for audiences with lower message familiarity and higher misperceptions, including those with lower trust in climate scientists and right-leaning ideology. Overall, this study shows that consensus messaging is an effective, non-polarizing tool for climate change communication across diverse samples and audiences.