You might also be interested to see how technological optimism interacts with support for climate stringency among COP delegates: doi.org/10.1038/s418...

👉 Learn about our submission criteria and how to contribute on our Call for Collaborations page: janpfander.github.io/trust_climat...

🙌 This project is led by @janpfa.bsky.social and myself at @eawag.bsky.social and @madalina.bsky.social and @smconstantino.bsky.social at Stanford.

🔍 What We’re Looking For
We are seeking short, text-based informational interventions that could increase trust in climate scientists. The most promising interventions will be selected by the study leads and an advisory board. Deadline for submission is November 11, 2025.

🤝 Collaborate with us
We invite researchers at any career stage as well as practitioners to submit intervention ideas to increase trust in climate scientists in the US. Successful contributors will receive co-authorship. Interventions can be submitted by individuals or teams.

🚀 What is a megastudy?
A megastudy is a large-scale online experiment designed for robust, replicable results.

🌎 Why trust in climate scientists?
Across 55 countries, trust in climate scientists was the strongest predictor of belief in climate change and support for climate policy (Todorova et al., 2024). Yet, climate scientists tend to be less trusted than scientists of other disciplines.

Thanks for asking! We did not establish causation. Indeed, we note in the paper that the reverse causal relationship is also possible (as you suggest) and that future work should examine the nature and direction of this relationship.

This study was a huge collaborative, and truly interdisciplinary, effort 🙏 Huge thanks to my co-authors @simonameiler.bsky.social @samluethi.bsky.social @nielsmede.bsky.social @johnbesley.bsky.social @cameronbrick.bsky.social @marinajoubert.bsky.social @maibached.bsky.social and many others! 7/7

Making the link between climate change and extreme weather events more salient could increase climate policy support. The current heatwaves in many parts of the world provide a window of opportunity for communicators to increase subjective attribution and potentially climate action ☝️🌍 6/7

Note: Our data does not allow us to make conclusions about individual-level exposure, i.e., we don't know whether respondents were directly affected. A recent study found pos. relationships between individual-level exposure and climate risk perceptions osf.io/preprints/ps... @fdabl.bsky.social 5/7

However, population-level exposure to most events was unrelated to climate policy support. Interestingly, and in line with previous studies, only population-level exposure to wildfires was positively related to climate policy support. 4/7

We found that subjective attribution was well above the scale midpoint in all countries and confirm previous findings that a majority support climate policies. We also provide global evidence that subjective attribution predicts climate policy support. 3/7

We created a measure of exposed population to different types of extreme weather event (e.g., heatwaves) over the last decades across 68 countries. We then triangulated this data with survey responses on subjective attribution of extreme events to climate change and climate policy support. 2/7