Climate Change Science and Policy—A Guided Tour across the Space of Attitudes and Outcomes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It's a very interesting paper review concerning Climate Change Science and Policy - A guided tour across the space of attitudes and outcomes.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for appreciating our work and finding it suitable for publishing. We did comply with other Reviewers’ comments and made suggested edits in the revised version of the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript reports an important subject that, in fact, needs to be discussed. Therefore, the work is considered important for climate science and sustainability.

My biggest concerns for this manuscript are the lack of methodology (the most serious step to be modified in the manuscript) and the lack of references to some statements that, given that they were not found by the authors, need to be referenced.

About the lack of methodology: I did not understand the methodology of the study. As I read through each step, I tried to figure out what had been done. So, I noticed that reviews were made on some subjects (perhaps systematic reviews) and reviews of official documents (such as IPCC reports for example), choice / compilation of journals (magazines) (which was analyzed in a different way than the reports) . Afterwards, ideas/methodologies from other authors were used for other analyzes (such as extending the ideas of Schellnhuber). This whole way of interpreting/answering each of the questions in figure 1 needs to be described in a methodology before the results are presented. Therefore, this work lacked scientific methodology.

About the references: There are many statements that are not part of your study/result, and that, probably, you found them elsewhere. There is a need for referencing.

Here are the examples: Pag 4, line 118-123; Pag 4: 138-143; Pag 5: line 155-160; line 163-169; line 192-194, Line 197-198; line 207-208; line 213-218; line 239-242; line 254-257; line 373-376; 

Attention to line 184-185: These meteorological stations, to be connected from the World Meteorological Organization, follow standards. We need to be careful with this type of statement because it can generate more.  controversy

Author Response

Reviewer: The manuscript reports an important subject that, in fact, needs to be discussed. Therefore, the work is considered important for climate science and sustainability.

My biggest concerns for this manuscript are the lack of methodology (the most serious step to be modified in the manuscript) and the lack of references to some statements that, given that they were not found by the authors, need to be referenced.

About the lack of methodology: I did not understand the methodology of the study. As I read through each step, I tried to figure out what had been done. So, I noticed that reviews were made on some subjects (perhaps systematic reviews) and reviews of official documents (such as IPCC reports for example), choice / compilation of journals (magazines) (which was analyzed in a different way than the reports). Afterwards, ideas/methodologies from other authors were used for other analyzes (such as extending the ideas of Schellnhuber). This whole way of interpreting/answering each of the questions in figure 1 needs to be described in a methodology before the results are presented. Therefore, this work lacked scientific methodology.

Authors: We would like to thank the Reviewer for a thorough analysis of our manuscript, pointing out deficiencies and inaccuracies, which after correction makes the paper more concise and the message clear. It needs to be clarified though that presented manuscript is an essay (as marked on the top of page 1) not a systematic review and this defines its specific structure (i.e., no explicit methodology section). It was our original idea to address it to a broad readership representing different disciplines (who may not be familiar with technical terms such as names of methodology – e.g., systematic review). We do not feel comfortable with the idea to find labels for our methodology. Guided by common sense and long-term experience as international experts e.g. in IPCC (two co-authors have been multiple Co-ordinating Lead Authors of IPCC publications), we rather tried to present evidence from various sources, including aggregated observation data, IPCC reports, scientific journals, and world-leading opinion magazine TIME. Table 1 contains what we consider to be principal messages in IPCC reports and Table 3 – the cover story titles and our interpretations of the cover content. However, to comply with the Reviewer's comment and to avoid raising similar doubt in the future, we modified our original lines 108-110 which now read as follows: “We presented selected evidence on the key questions from Figure 1 one by one. The aim was not to answer them directly but rather to provide a concise summary based solely on scientific findings and publicly available report”. Moreover, Reviewers #1, #3, and #4 did not mention methodology as being problematic or incomplete. Lastly, extending the ideas of Schellnhuber was mentioned to indicate that these findings of one of the co-authors of our study, did not devaluate for 10+ years and our research aimed to extend the original scope by social science and public point of view (shown on the example of “Time” magazine).

Reviewer: About the references: There are many statements that are not part of your study/result, and that, probably, you found them elsewhere. There is a need for referencing.

Here are the examples: Pag 4, line 118-123; Pag 4: 138-143; Pag 5: line 155-160; line 163-169; line 192-194, Line 197-198; line 207-208; line 213-218; line 239-242; line 254-257; line 373-376;

Authors: Actually, several statements identified by Reviewer are our own interpretations of existing records. Hence, we give a link to these records. It may well be that someone else has made statements similar to ours because they would be obvious in the light of existing data (e.g., in our Fig. 2). However, we made our statements as independent interpretation, e.g., lines 118-123 referring to Fig. 2, based on observational evidence. In some cases, we added references as per the recommendation of the Reviewer as follows (*line numbers refer to the old version of the manuscript):

L 118-123 – reference added

23. Kundzewicz, Z.W.; Pińskwar, I.; Koutsoyiannis, D. Variability of global mean annual temperature is significantly influenced by the rhythm of ocean-atmosphere oscillations. Science of the Total Environment 2020, 747, 141256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. scitotenv.2020.141256.

L 138-143 – reference added:

28. Hegerl, G.C.; Brönnimann, S.; Cowan, T.; Friedman, A.R.; Hawkins, E.; Iles, C.; Müller,W.; Schurer, A.; Undorf, S. Causes of climate change over the historical record. Environmental Research Letters 2019, 14, 123006. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4557.

L 155-160 – reference added:

23. Kundzewicz, Z.W.; Pińskwar, I.; Koutsoyiannis, D. Variability of global mean annual temperature is significantly influenced by the rhythm of ocean-atmosphere oscillations. Science of the Total Environment 2020, 747, 141256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. scitotenv.2020.141256.

L 163-169 – reference added:

24. IPCC., Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Masson-Delmotte, V.; Zhai, P.; Pirani, A.; Connors, S.L.; Péan, C.; Berger, S.; Caud, N.; Chen, Y.; Goldfarb, L.; Gomis, M.I.; et al., Eds.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 2021; pp. 3–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.001.

L 192-194 – reference added:

35. Herring, D. Are there positive benefits from global warming? Available online: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/are-there-positive-benefits-global-warming. (Accessed on 14 February 2023)

L 197-198 – reference added:

35. Herring, D. Are there positive benefits from global warming? Available online: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/are-there-positive-benefits-global-warming. (Accessed on 14 February 2023)

 L 207-208 – reference added:

37. IPCC. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Pörtner, H.O.; Roberts, D.; Tignor, M.; Poloczanska, E.; Mintenbeck, K.; Alegría, A.; Craig, M.; Langsdorf, S.; Löschke, S.; Möller, V.; et al., Eds.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 2022; p. 3056. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009325844.

 L 213-218 – reference added:

37. IPCC. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Pörtner, H.O.; Roberts, D.; Tignor, M.; Poloczanska, E.; Mintenbeck, K.; Alegría, A.; Craig, M.; Langsdorf, S.; Löschke, S.; Möller, V.; et al., Eds.; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 2022; p. 3056. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009325844.

 L 239-242 – reference added:

47. Korosec, M. Severe Weather Europe. Millions across North America will face Deep Freeze and the Coldest Christmas in Years as Powerful Winter Storm Elliot With Snow and Blizzards Heads for the East-Central United States This Week. Available online: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/polar-vortex-2022-christmas-winter-storm-elliot-arctic-front-deep-freeze-united-states-snow-mk/. (Accessed on 14 February 2023).

 L 254-257 – reference added:

50. Global Monitoring Laboratory. Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Available online: https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/. (Accessed on 14 February 2023).

24. IPCC., Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Masson-Delmotte, V.; Zhai, P.; Pirani, A.; Connors, S.L.; Péan, C.; Berger, S.; Caud, N.; Chen, Y.; Goldfarb, L.; Gomis, M.I.; et al., Eds.; Cambridge University

L 373-376 – Own observation, no source needed.

Reviewer: Attention to line 184-185: These meteorological stations, to be connected from the World Meteorological Organization, follow standards. We need to be careful with this type of statement because it can generate more.  Controversy

Authors: Yes, we agree with the Reviewer that our statement could generate more controversy, so we re-phrased it and it now reads as follows: “Despite this overwhelming evidence, global warming – being indeed the most conspicuous piece of the climatic puzzle – has been questioned by surprisingly many people, even if the number of such people has been decreasing as the warming gets more and more unequivocal and persuading (see Figure 2). Skeptics refer to the urban heat island effect that is real and can be very important locally, and even regionally, but it can explain only a very small portion of the observed warming at the global scale. Jacobson and Ten Houve [34] estimated that the urban heat island effect may contribute only 2-4% of gross global warming.”

Reviewer 3 Report

Global climate change is a challenging study problem.The manuscript thoroughly and methodically analyzes the attitudinal space that explains the climate challenge as well as the potential results (success or failure) of the interaction of climate science and climate policy.

The topic of global climate change is particularly difficult to debate. Extreme weather events happen regularly as the temperature rises steadily. The way that people perceive climate change is also being impacted by these natural events. Scientific research is always attempting to investigate the reasons and foresee potential effects, and policymaking is also, to a certain extent, based on the findings of recent scientific study.

Global climate change, however, is a result of both natural and human-caused changes, and both of these factors can have an impact on it. Since it is impossible to completely distinguish between the two,it is suggested that the authors further explain and discuss the impact of the two parts' combined factors.

Author Response

Reviewer: Global climate change is a challenging study problem. The manuscript thoroughly and methodically analyzes the attitudinal space that explains the climate challenge as well as the potential results (success or failure) of the interaction of climate science and climate policy.

The topic of global climate change is particularly difficult to debate. Extreme weather events happen regularly as the temperature rises steadily. The way that people perceive climate change is also being impacted by these natural events. Scientific research is always attempting to investigate the reasons and foresee potential effects, and policymaking is also, to a certain extent, based on the findings of recent scientific study.

Authors: We agree with this comment of the Reviewer and reflected it in section 2.6. by adding relevant sentences: “The way people perceive climate change is being impacted by extreme weather and climate events. Researchers interpret weather and climate extremes and the scientific findings are available to policy makers.”(Line 432-434)

Reviewer: Global climate change, however, is a result of both natural and human-caused changes, and both of these factors can have an impact on it. Since it is impossible to completely distinguish between the two, it is suggested that the authors further explain and discuss the impact of the two parts' combined factors.

Authors: The existence as well as the impact of natural causes of climate change were already indirectly described and discussed in the manuscript in several sections e.g., section 2.1. : “It was also made clear, that changes observed during the last few decades cannot be attributed to natural factors, like variations of solar radiation or volcanic activity. Regarding total solar irradiance (TSI), the results of the new estimates of the 20th century course suggest that: “TSI averaged over the solar cycle very likely increased during the first seven decades of the 20th century and decreased thereafter” (IPCC, 2021 [24], Chapter 2, after Lean [31] and Wu et al. [32]). Similarly, it was stated, with a medium level of confidence, that the effects of volcanic eruptions (expressed as the variability of Stratospheric Aerosol Optical Depth – SAOD) were not unusual since 1900 at the background of the last 2500 years [33].” (Lines 173-180). The aim was not to describe all possible factors in details but to express that anthropogenic activities were clearly the main climate change cause for few decades now. Although, we did comply with the Reviewer's comment and in order to further clarify raised issue we refer in section 2.3 to the attribution made in a range of IPCC reports as follows: “Global climate change is a result of both natural and human-caused changes. However, the essence of the most important attribution statements spelled out by the last four assessment reports of the Working Group I (WG I) of the IPCC ([53], [54], [30], [24]) was that human activities have largely contributed to the observed global warming.” (Line 264- 267).

Reviewer 4 Report

Although global warming has been influencing each component of the Earth system, climate-related proposals and controversies can be difficult for the public to evaluate simply because the public is unfamiliar with the underlying science about climate change. Focusing on climate communication, Kundzewicz et al. investigated public attitudes towards climate change. Inconvenient truths and convenient untruths were summarized based on four fundamental questions about global warming. Then, a binary outcome of failure/success was examined to discuss the most probable outcome at this moment. In my opinion, this manuscript has shown some interesting ideas, and it highlights the importance of climate communication and associated role of social and decision sciences in communications. 

Specific comments:

L33: Remove “the factors:”.

L88: Please use the quotation mark in the right way.

L454: The definition of success of science, “the projections of climate impacts adequately represent the development of the situation”, is vague. What kind of situation? The situation about what? From my point of view, it is a success if natural science can confirm the answer to the four fundamental questions raised in the manuscript.  

Discussion: Conflict of interests between countries may expedite the process of the reality shifting to the most probable outcome “a tragic triumph”. However, a lack of communications between the scientific community and the public is probably the major cause of this tragic outcome. How to explain the science to the public? How to persuade people to act in sustainable ways? The authors should show some insights on these aspects.

Author Response

Reviewer: Although global warming has been influencing each component of the Earth system, climate-related proposals and controversies can be difficult for the public to evaluate simply because the public is unfamiliar with the underlying science about climate change. Focusing on climate communication, Kundzewicz et al. investigated public attitudes towards climate change. Inconvenient truths and convenient untruths were summarized based on four fundamental questions about global warming. Then, a binary outcome of failure/success was examined to discuss the most probable outcome at this moment. In my opinion, this manuscript has shown some interesting ideas, and it highlights the importance of climate communication and associated role of social and decision sciences in communications.

Specific comments:

L33: Remove “the factors:”.

L88: Please use the quotation mark in the right way.

Authors: These two minor issues were fixed in the revised version of the manuscript as suggested.

Reviewer: L454: The definition of success of science, “the projections of climate impacts adequately represent the development of the situation”, is vague. What kind of situation? The situation about what? From my point of view, it is a success if natural science can confirm the answer to the four fundamental questions raised in the manuscript. 

Authors: We would like to express our gratitude for raising this issue. We do agree that, if science can confirm the positive answers to the four questions in Fig. 1, it is a modest success. However, in our statement, we indeed refer to projections for the future and a comparison of projections with future observations. Although, in order to reflect the Reviewer’s comment, we rephrased the statement in Section 3 as follows: “We assume that each individual venture of the “science-policy” couple can either succeed or fail. One can herald a “success” of science if the projections of climate impacts adequately represent the development of future reality.” (Line 455-457). 

Reviewer: Discussion: Conflict of interests between countries may expedite the process of the reality shifting to the most probable outcome “a tragic triumph”. However, a lack of communications between the scientific community and the public is probably the major cause of this tragic outcome. How to explain the science to the public? How to persuade people to act in sustainable ways? The authors should show some insights on these aspects.

Authors: We fully agree with the Reviewer and thus accommodate these comments into the manuscript. We also comply with the suggestion of the importance of the two questions posed by the Reviewer. Therefore, we decided to insert them into the revised manuscript, noting though that we do not elaborate on these issues in this paper: “Among the reasons behind a “tragic triumph” are - conflicts of interests between countries and deficient communication between the scientific community and the public. The jury is still out as to how to effectively explain the climate change science to the public and how to persuade people to act in sustainable ways.“ (Lines 480-484).         

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revisions made by the authors were very good and I believe that the manuscript has become more robust for its publication.

I understood the idea of a broader methodology, which does not have a formal name and which helps readers from different areas. I also understood that this is not a literature review study. However, I still think it's very important (somehow) to clarify which documents were analyzed and how they were analyzed. Perhaps insert some information in Figure 1, or even a paragraph that points out this question.

Author Response

We have reconsidered our previous state of mind and admit that the Reviewer is right that the multi-disciplinary readership of SUSTAINABILITY may appreciate clarification of which documents were analyzed in our paper and how they were analyzed. There exists indeed a vast body of literature conveying responses to each of the four questions presented in Figure 1, amounting to thousands of relevant journal publications providing the positive response to each of these questions. In contrast, the number of references providing negative responses is very low, as indicated in references (14) and (15). The set of references demonstrating that climate has not been warming in recent decades is empty – it does not contain any elements.

The authors subjectively identified 43 source items that – in our opinion – convey the essential message. The problem of optimal selection of a set of sources conveying the essential message cannot be objectively solved. We are sentenced to subjectivity.

We refer to 43 source items (#19-61 in the list) in various categories, namely datasets (#19-22, 42, 50), scientific journal papers (#23, 25-26, 28-29, 31-34, 36, 39, 41, 43-44, 46, 49), IPCC publications (#24, 30, 37, 53-56), other reports (Stern Report #38, EASAC Report #40) and auxiliary references (#27, 35, 45, 47-48, 61).

Finally, as suggested by the reviewer, we considerably extended the existing paragraph (previously lines 108-111) to address that issue as follows:

“A vast body of literature exists conveying responses to each of the four questions presented in Figure 1. There are virtually thousands of relevant peer-reviewed publications providing positive ("YES") answers to each of these questions. In contrast, the number of references providing the negative ("NO") responses is very low, as indicated in Oreskes [14] and Powell [15]. Moreover, the set of references demonstrating that climate has not been warming in recent decades is empty – it does not contain any elements. In this work we subjectively identified 43 data source items (publicly available data sets, scientific journal papers, IPCC publications, other reports, and auxiliary references; see no. 19 to 61 in Reference section) that convey the essential message. In the following sections, 2.1-2.4 we presented selected evidence on the responses to key questions from Figure 1 one by one. The aim was not to answer these questions directly but rather to extract a concise summary based solely on scientific findings reported in different literature items mentioned above.”