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Abstract Ethnographic interviews were conducted with a small but diverse sample of U. S. residents in order to understand how ordinary citizens conceptualize global warming. Most informants had heard of the greenhouse effect. However, they conceptualized global climate change very differently than scientists because they interpreted it in terms of four preexistent categories: Stratospheric ozone depletion, plant photosynthesis, tropospheric pollution, and personally experienced temperature variation. Species extinctions and range shifts are among the most significant potential effects of global climate change, yet these effects were virtually unknown, and few informants could clearly articulate a value for species preservation in the abstract.
Willett Kempton (Tue,) studied this question.