The News You Choose: news media preferences amplify views on climate change

How do choices among information sources reinforce political differences on topics such as climate change? Environmental sociologists have observed large-scale and long-term impacts from news media and think-tank reports, while experimental science-communication studies detect more immediate effects from variations in supplied information. Applying generalized structural equation modeling to recent survey data, previous work is extended to show that political ideology, education and their interaction predict news media information choices in much the same way they predict opinions about climate change itself. Consequently, media information sources serve as intervening variables that can reinforce and, through their own independent effects, amplify existing beliefs about climate change. Results provide empirical support for selective exposure and biased assimilation as mechanisms widening political divisions on climate change in the United States. The findings fit with the reinforcing spirals framework suggesting partisan media strengthens climate change beliefs which then influences subsequent use of media.     

Climate policy support under political consensus: exploring the varying effect of partisanship and party cues

By creating attitudinal rifts among partisan voters, political polarization is expected to negatively affect chances of effectively mitigating climate change. While such expectations generally have found support, less attention has been paid to the opposite claim that political consensus should eliminate the partisan dimension in climate change politics. This study tests this claim by studying how party identification, and party cues specifically, affects public policy attitudes in a context defined by political consensus. Using data from a large online access panel in Sweden, party identification and party cues are shown to matter for policy attitudes even in a consensus context. This effect is not limited to certain issues but is found across a wide range of policies, and the effect of party cues, for a given issue, varies across parties. The implications of this study and areas for future work are discussed.     

Perceived mastery climate,felt trust,and knowledge sharing

Interpersonal trust is associated with a range of adaptive outcomes, including knowledge sharing. However, to date, our knowledge of antecedents and consequences of employees feeling trusted by supervisors in organizations remains limited. On the basis of a multisource, multiwave field study among 956 employees from 5 Norwegian organizations, we examined the predictive roles of perceived mastery climate and employee felt trust for employees' knowledge sharing. Drawing on the achievement goal theory, we develop and test a model to demonstrate that when employees perceive a mastery climate, they are more likely to feel trusted by their supervisors at both the individual and group levels. Moreover, the relationship between employees' perceptions of a mastery climate and supervisor‐rated knowledge sharing is mediated by perceptions of being trusted by the supervisor. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of our findings are discussed.     

An assessment of safety climate,job satisfaction and turnover intention relationships using a national sample of workers from the USA

The association between safety climate, job satisfaction and turnover intention has not been thoroughly researched. This research is needed so that safety researchers and practitioners can begin to delineate the impact of safety on organizational and business outcomes. A path analysis was completed using data from a national sample of workers from the USA (n?=?1525). The overall fit of the model was excellent and analyses determined that both training and resource adequacy positively affected safety climate and job satisfaction. Safety climate also positively influenced job satisfaction. Both safety climate and job satisfaction were negatively associated with respondents’ turnover intention. In the study, the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention is reiterated in a sample of workers across many industries. This study is novel because it is one of the first studies to confirm that turnover intention is reduced with increased safety climate in a diverse sample of workers.     

循环载荷下煤裂隙演化试验研究

为了研究循环载荷下的煤体裂隙演化特征,在不同应力水平和不同频率条件下分别进行煤样破坏力学及声发射试验。结果表明:应力-应变曲线呈疏-密-疏的变化特征,对应的振铃数柱状图呈U型;上限应力点的应变值、累积能量、撞击计数均随循环次数增加而上升,曲线呈倒S型;煤裂隙演化经历了原始裂隙闭合、新生裂隙稳定发育和裂纹贯穿破坏等3个不同阶段;循环载荷的应力水平和加载频率对煤体疲劳寿命的影响具有差异性,对煤体裂隙演化和破坏模式均有明显影响。     

Nature Articulations in Norwegian Advertising Discourse: A Depoliticized Discourse of Climate Change

This article deals with how nature is articulated in public discourse and more specifically how humans’ relationship to nature is constructed via such articulations. Based on critical cultural analyses of ads presented in a Norwegian context, the article claims articulations of nature serve to a depoliticization of nature, which silence social differences and reduce environmental politics to individual moral action. Several rhetorical patterns of particular relevance to the articulation of nature are discussed, pointing out how disparate, sometimes conflicting, understandings of nature are rhetorically configured and aligned in ways that benefit a global market economy. There is a discursive distancing of nature and everyday life, even as nature remains valorized and very much central to national identity. This constrains citizens’ political engagement and undermines understandings of how to govern nature.     

Shifting Baselines: Conveying Climate Change in Popular Music

Popular music is a generation-specific zeitgeist, while music affords otherwise unobtainable engagement with environmental themes. Despite being the most widespread form of music there is a paucity of scholarship on climate change vis-à-vis popular music. In turn, this article explores how popular music may provide a soundtrack that narrates the rapidity of contemporary biophysical change. Approaches of conveying versus communicating climate change in music are considered across a spectrum of musical forms, from contemporary and historical popular music to contemporary classical music and sound art. The article applies the framework of shifting baselines to music engaged with environmental change in order to formulate a closer relationship between objective and quantitative intergenerational biophysical change and subjective and qualitative socio-cultural change. To cease losing track of such inexorable degradation, the article speculates on future musical forms that may obviate such intergenerational myopia by conveying and/or communicating the unprecedented rapidity of biophysical change.     

吉林省城市紧凑度与城市效率的时空演变及相关性

紧凑城市理念被认为可以有效提高城市经济发展效率,减少城市在开发建设、资源配置等方面的低效率。为探究我国城市紧凑度和城市效率的时空演变及两者间的相关性,本研究以吉林省地级及以上城市为研究对象,研究时间段选择为2000—2013年。研究主要分为三个部分。第一部分,运用熵值法,对吉林省地级及以上城市的紧凑度时空演变特征进行研究,研究发现,吉林省城市紧凑度平均水平较低,并且空间分布极不均衡,受区位和经济发展水平影响较大,高紧凑度城市基本位于哈大城市走廊一线。第二部分运用DEA数据包络模型,对吉林省城市效率演变特征进行研究,结果显示,吉林省城市效率在经过了长期的反复波动后于2012年步入快速增长阶段,受多种因素影响,各城市全要素生产率增长节奏迥异,但都表现出与技术进步一致的变动性,城市经济发展对新技术、新的生产要素投入的依赖较大,资源利用效率整体较低。第三部分运用R语言对吉林省城市紧凑度与城市效率的相关性进行了研究,两者间存在极弱的相关性,接着借助象限图法得出两者在不同时间段内存在一定程度的同步性,紧凑度提升时大部分城市的城市效率会出现提升,紧凑度的下降不一定有效引起城市效率同步下降。     

Climate change adaptation approaches with nomadic culture characteristics in Inner Mongolia grassland in China

Climate change adaptation is an important part of addressing climate warming. Inner Mongolia grassland is a sensitive and vulnerable area of climate and an important region for adaptation to climate change. New climate change adaptation approaches with nomadic culture characteristics should be exploded in the context of climate warming. In this paper, the different utilization pattern of grassland in different regions, the different modes of production and management and historical culture were analyzed first in Nenjiang–West Liaohe plain and Ke’erqin region, Inner Mongolia Plateau and Ordos Plateau. Then, nomadic culture on the grassland was discussed from the productivity to biodiversity, from local livestock variety to resource-used system. Finally, new approaches of climate change adaptation with inheriting the essence of nomadic culture were proposed, including protecting biodiversity and using resources reasonably, performing a practice of grazing suspension–rotational grazing system, fencing degenerated grassland to facilitate its growth, founding new farming and husbandry system on the grassland, and establishing an incentive mechanism favorable to grassland and ethical cultural protection.     

Dividing and Uniting Through Naming: The Case of North Carolina's Sea-Level-Rise Policy

Opponents of a proposed sea-level-rise policy in North Carolina, USA, reasoned rhetorically to promote a narrative claiming that the policy supporters’ efforts had failed to meet the criteria of “good” science and the American dream expectancy of “progress.” The critics worked to hinder policy adoption by naming as “villains” scientists who provided research to support the proposed policy. In addition, the opponents named their own efforts to prevent policy based on “bad” science that would “destroy” the American dream as “heroic.” To more effectively respond to such narratives, scientists and policy proponents need to shift away from reporting just climate change “facts” in the attempt to gain stakeholder support for mitigation and adaptation initiatives. They need to move toward reasoning rhetorically to construct narratives that encourage the public to name them as the “heroes” who will achieve the American dream by their actions to mitigate climate-change outcomes.