Despite the abundance of real world events and scientific information linking the worsening extreme weather to climate change, public attitudes toward climate issues in the United States remain highly divided along partisan lines. We compare the effect of different stimuli linking extreme weather events to climate change – personal experiences and scientific information – in reducing the partisan gap. A two-wave survey corresponding to multiple extreme weather events in Texas, including a natural experiment with power outage data from the 2021 North American Winter Storms, shows that personal experiences with extreme weather reduce the partisan divide in climate beliefs and polices. Scientific information attributing extreme weather events to climate change, however, had no effect in closing the partisan gap. These findings suggest that extreme climate events and disaster experiences force vividly tangible information about the proximity and severity of climate change on exposed individuals, prompting belief-updating and preference-shifting toward pro-climate policies.

中文翻译：

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灾难经历缓解了气候变化问题上的党派分歧：来自德克萨斯州的证据


尽管有大量的现实世界事件和科学信息将日益恶化的极端天气与气候变化联系起来，但美国公众对气候问题的态度仍然存在严重的党派分歧。我们比较了将极端天气事件与气候变化联系起来的不同刺激因素（个人经验和科学信息）对缩小党派差距的影响。一项针对德克萨斯州多次极端天气事件的两波调查（包括利用 2021 年北美冬季风暴的停电数据进行的自然实验）表明，极端天气的个人经历减少了气候信仰和政策上的党派分歧。然而，将极端天气事件归因于气候变化的科学信息并没有缩小党派分歧。这些发现表明，极端气候事件和灾难经历迫使受影响的个人获得有关气候变化的接近性和严重性的生动有形的信息，从而促使信念更新和偏好转向有利于气候的政策。