What Americans Really Think About Climate Change and How to Talk to Them About It
DATE: Tuesday, March 24 2026
TIME: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm MST
LOCATION: College of Law and Virtual Event
ABOUT THE EVENT:
Public concern about climate change has grown substantially over the past two decades, yet a persistent gap remains between the risks scientists document and the risks the public perceives. This talk draws on research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication to explore where American public opinion actually stands, why it varies so dramatically across geography, politics, and demography, and what that means for communicators and educators.
Key topics include the “Six Americas” framework for understanding audience segmentation, the Yale Climate Opinion Maps, and experimental findings on which messages and messengers move people most effectively. The talk also addresses the growing science of extreme weather attribution: what we can now say with confidence about the climate-weather connection, and why that knowledge isn’t yet reflected in how most people think about risk. Drawing on recent work on heat risk misperception and related studies, the talk examines the human consequences of these gaps and what research suggests about closing them. Practical tools and takeaways for science communicators, educators, and policymakers will be highlighted throughout.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Jennifer Marlon is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment and Executive Director of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions. For more than a decade she has been a core member of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC), where she leads data science research on public beliefs, attitudes, and behavior related to climate change. Her work spans the full arc of climate communication, from mapping what Americans think at the national, state, and local level using the Yale Climate Opinion Maps, to developing the Six Americas audience segmentation framework, to running experiments that test which messages actually move people.
A central theme of her recent research is the gap between objective and perceived climate risk, including a 2025 Nature Communications paper showing that misalignment between actual and perceived extreme heat risk exacerbates vulnerability. She has also studied how people attribute extreme weather events to climate change, how prior experience with heat and other climate impacts shapes risk perception, and what communication strategies help close the gap between scientific understanding and public awareness. Her research draws on large national surveys, geospatial modeling, and experimental methods.
Marlon holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Oregon. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, briefed members of Congress, and regularly communicates her research to diverse audiences ranging from journalists and federal agencies to educators and community leaders. She is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee on Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and their Impacts.
This event is co-sponsored by the Wilkes Center and the S.J. Quinney College of Law’s Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment.