Viktoria Cologna

Looking for books to get for #climate curious friends & family this Christmas🎄?

Here are 6 of my favourites reads this year.

First up, Yale University historian Sunil Amrith's relentlessly edifying 'The Burning Earth'. A staggeringly comprehensive account of how we got to where we are! 🧵

Technology-minded climate delegates support less stringent climate policies - Nature Sustainability Within high-level conferences devoted to climate or sustainability action, differences in views can lead to differences in policy. This study surveyed how delegates at COP24 perceived the efficacy of ...

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

⚠️ When “technology will save us” becomes a climate risk!

A new paper from great colleagues takes a careful look at techno-optimism — the belief that technology will largely solve climate change — and what it means for real-world climate action.
(1/4)👇
osf.io/preprints/ps...

🎉 You’ve exceeded even our most optimistic expectations — we received 107 intervention proposals.

THANK YOU!

🕵 Our advisory board will now begin reviewing all interventions.

🔗 More information: janpfander.github.io/trust_climat...

Title page of the paper "Techno-optimistic scientists take fewer climate action"

🚨Techno-optimistic scientists take fewer climate actions

In a new preprint, @colognaviktoria.bsky.social, @maiensachis.bsky.social, @jmbh.bsky.social & I examine techno-optimism among 9,199 scientists and how it relates to their civic engagement and lifestyle choices🧵

🔗 Link: tinyurl.com/hh94huzv

Results from study of mental health in 92 countries (n>53,000): People are not doing well.

- U-shape for age is gone: Young adults lowest health, highest illness
- Education still matters (a lot)
- 45% of older people live alone
- Hybrid work > 100% remote or in-person

Preprint: osf.io/3jyda_v1

I've finally got around to curating a selection of films about the #climate crisis 🎥

There's lot of mediocre climate films out there, but for me these stand out head & shoulders above the rest 🎞️

They make excellent resources for classrooms, lecture halls, or community cinema's 🎬

Thread:🧵Plz RT

This! 🔥👇 Couldn't agree more, thank you @kristiansn89.bsky.social

🔥 The never-ending narrative…
This week, I’ve once again heard prominent climate researchers dismiss individual action as either irrelevant or a distraction instigated by the fossil fuel industry.

Here’s a 🧵 on why this argument frustrates me to no end and why I think it misses the bigger picture.

👉 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.

Climate science is facing significant opposition in the US. Today we are launching the collaborative Strengthening Trust in Climate Scientists Megastudy 📈 Find out more and join our efforts 👇🧵

Quasi-universal acceptance of basic science in the United States - Jan Pfänder, Lou Kerzreho, Hugo Mercier, 2025 Substantial minorities of the population report a low degree of trust in science, or endorse conspiracy theories that violate basic scientific knowledge. This m...

How much do people really reject science?

New paper out doi.org/10.1177/0963...

In four studies, we asked Americans—including flat Earthers, climate change deniers and vaccine skeptics—whether they accepted basic scientific facts.

The result? A surprisingly high level of agreement. 👇

Expressing intentions is not climate action letter published in PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2512457122

In our now published letter in @pnas.org, we raise two wider issues for behavioral science:

1) Intentions are poor predictors of behavior
2) Effects on intentions need not generalize to effects on behavior

We join calls for researchers to measure actual behavior: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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.

🌪️Experiencing extreme weathers had no direct effect on climate policies support.

n = 1295: 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 🇦🇺

EXPECTING more severe weather events in the future did.

In sum:
Expectation (not experience) predicts climate policy support!

doi.org/10.1016/j.je...

UK maps showing changes in temperatures for typical summer days and hot summer days.

1°C of global warming does NOT mean that heatwaves 'just' get hotter by 1°C.

Over large parts of the UK, global warming means that heatwaves are 3-4°C warmer, with worse consequences for people and ecosystems.

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

Extreme weather event attribution predicts climate policy support across the world - Nature Climate Change Literature produced inconsistent findings regarding the links between extreme weather events and climate policy support across regions, populations and events. This global study offers a holistic asse...

🚨 How do exposure to extreme weather events and the subjective attribution of these events to climate change relate to climate policy support across the world? 🔥🌎

Find out more in our OA article published in Nature Climate Change 👇 1/7 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Huge congratulations, Matt!! 🎉

Majority support for global redistributive and climate policies - Nature Human Behaviour Fabre et al. demonstrate widespread support for global redistributive and climate policies through surveys across 20 countries. This support is shown to be sincere, as confirmed by follow-up survey ex...

This new research shows majority support for global redistributive policies in 20 countries. Follow-up experiments show the support is sincere. @adrien-fabre.bsky.social @linusmattauch.bsky.social @cired.bsky.social
#EconTwitter #EconSky #Climate #GreenSky
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Looking for two post-docs to join our Public Engagement Lab at Stellenbosch University ...