Years ago, after taking an Earth science class, I found myself looking at the world differently. It was the 1990s, and lakes in Wisconsin where I lived at the time were beginning to freeze later in winter and thaw earlier in spring, and flowers seemed to bloom a bit earlier. People are more likely to believe an explanation when they see direct evidence of it. In the U.S., the percentage of people who recognize that global warming is happening is higher in counties that experienced record high temperatures in the previous decade. But understanding what's happening and why also matters. That's because people's existing knowledge shapes how they interpret the evidence they see. But does higher education actually create climate concern' As an anthropologist and a researcher in computational social science, I and my colleague Ben Horne set up a study to try to answer that question. In our study, we used Census Bureau data on the percentage of the population with at least a bachelor's...
learn more
