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Climate Change Education Through TV Weathercasts: Results of a Field Experiment

TV weathercasters are well positioned to educate Americans about the relationships among weather, climate, and climate change. Through a collaboration involving TV meteorologists, climatologists, and social scientists, we produced a series of educational segments to assess the impact of such an education. The educational segments were branded “Climate Matters” and aired over one year during the nightly weather segment on WLTX TV (Columbia, South Carolina). Prior to airing, we conducted a telephone survey of adult TV news viewers in the Columbia media market using random digit dialing (n = 1,068) to establish baseline measures; respondent screening was used to sample approximately equal numbers of WLTX viewers and viewers of competing stations. Approximately one year later, we resurveyed all available members of the baseline cohort (n = 502) and an independent sample of randomly selected residents (n = 910). The longitudinal data showed that—after controlling for baseline measures, demographics, and politi...