All right. Now, let's move specifically to climate change impacts on health and what people know about those impacts and the short summary of this section is not much, only a little. We asked. You might remember from the last lecture that I talked about a survey that we did in the climate change in the American mind research program that asked specifically about health. We had a whole series of questions on health. One of the first questions we asked was, how much have you thought about the effects of global warming on health before today? Overall in the population, the proportion who say a great deal or a moderate amount is about a third. You see the same pattern that you would expect among the segments in terms of the degree to which they've thought about it. We asked them to rate the impact of climate change on human health on a scale that went from very bad as negative three to very good at positive three. You can see that a third of the nation says it will be very bad on human health. So people are predisposed to understanding that this is the case. You add in the people who say, who are negative two on this scale and we've got half the population. But when it actually comes to concrete knowledge, it's quite a different matter. People think that it will be bad on human health, but they don't really understand very much about that. We asked an open-ended question. First we said, do you think global warming will have impacts on health? The people who said yes to that question, we asked them. So what are they? An open-ended question that we then coded and only about a quarter of the population, 27 percent could accurately name a health problem caused by global warming. This deferred quite a bit by segments essentially only the alarmed and concerned have much understanding. These proportions down here are the proportions who were in each segment at the time that this survey was conducted. So you can ignore those because they've changed so much since then. The proportions add up to more than a 100 percent because people gave multiple responses. So they could give both an accurate response and an inaccurate response and an irrelevant and uninterpretable response hence more than a 100 percent. But what we see here is that 60 percent of the alarmed could accurately name at least one health problem caused by climate change, 44 percent of the concerned, 18 percent of the cautious and then just 10 percent or less or fewer in the other three segments. Specifically the health problems that they named. A third of the alarmed mentioned lung diseases. I want to attribute this at least in part to the Lung Association and the quite effective advertising that they have done related to climate change. It's interesting that, that is the most recognized problem that asthma, COPD and respiratory problems are affected by climate change. Skin diseases including skin cancer. There is some kind of a medical implication of climate change that is accurate in terms of skin diseases, but the vast majority of the people who gave this response are thinking of the ozone hole that there's an effect of the ozone hole on causing people to be more exposed to damaging rays that causes skin cancer. Allergies, heat strokes, these are all less than 10 percent even among the alarmed. When we get down to the other four segments, there are very few people who can name these as health impacts of climate change when it's unprompted. What about groups that are vulnerable? We asked, do you think that some groups or types of Americans are more likely than others to experience health problems? Yes, no or not sure. Again, we see the pattern two-thirds of the alarm say yes. Four percent of the dismissive say yes. Then when you ask, okay what are those vulnerable groups? Half of the alarmed can accurately name a group that is vulnerable. A third of the concerned and many fewer of the other four segments. Specifically the most recognized vulnerable group are people who are poor, homeless, uninsured. So they're vulnerable because they have more exposure and less ability to get care. Seniors, 19 percent people who are physically vulnerable because they're sick or disabled, they're overweight or they have weak immunity systems 15 percent. Children and babies 14 and then very small proportions mentioned outdoor workers and farmers or specific regions of the country that people living in those areas are more vulnerable. That was unprompted, so that reflects information that people have understood and stored in memory. That tells us they don't know very much about who's vulnerable and what kinds of health problems we are facing because of climate change. These then are prompted responses in which we have questioned. So do you think that global warming will increase each of the following? You see much higher proportions here. So for example heatstroke less than 10 percent, unprompted heat related illnesses. But close to a third say "Oh yes!" For heat strokes. Much higher proportions saying this is going to be impacted by climate change. That indicates a predisposition to accept that information. If they are exposed to it they need to hear about it and they need to hear about it repeatedly because they are inclined to think that will be true but it isn't stored in memory so that they're remembering it and can act on it in the future. They need to hear about it more before it sticks. Again, we see smaller proportions in the concerned and very low proportions among all the other four segments. So in summary, Americans general sense of the harmfulness of climate change is consistent with their overall perspectives on its reality and how harmful it is. Most haven't given very much thought to the health harms. As evidenced by their questions for climate expert, they're not seeking information on the harm claim caused by climate change. Only among the alarmed and to a lesser degree among the concerned is they're very much understanding of the health threats we face.
