Natural versus anthropogenic climate change: Swedish farmers’ joint construction of climate perceptions

Consensus and conflict in climate science

When it comes to climate science, similar patterns are observed in the United States and United Kingdom. The American public believe ‘there is solid evidence’ of higher global temperatures, but is divided as to whether scientists agree that climate change is anthropogenic (Pew Research Center, 2013). Similar trends have been found in the United Kingdom, where most respondents believe climate change is happening but disagree as to whether it has or has not yet been established as largely anthropogenic (BBC, 2010; Shuckburgh et al., 2012).

Attribution of causes of climate change

When it comes to climate change rather than climate science, that is, to the causes of climate change rather than whether its scientific foundations are established, frames of natural versus anthropogenic climate change are activated. For example, the UK public commonly believes that climate change is caused partly by natural and partly by anthropogenic processes, while just over a third believes that it is mainly or entirely anthropogenic (Poortinga et al., 2011; Shuckburgh et al., 2012). Similar findings have been observed regarding the American public: about half of Americans think that if global warming is happening, it is caused mostly by human activities (Leiserowitz et al., 2014; Pew Research Center, 2013), while one in three (32%) say they think global warming is mostly due to natural changes in the environment (Leiserowitz et al., 2014).

Levels of concern

Public perceptions of climate change in the European Union (EU), covered by the Eurobarometer (EB) (2008, 2012) surveys, are oriented neither towards the degree of consensus among climate scientists nor to the linkage between natural and anthropogenic causes of climate change. Instead, a general frame of concern dominates EU public perceptions of climate change (EB, 2008, 2012). Generally, the European public regards climate change as among the world’s most serious problems that call for responses from various actors, such as governments, industry and individuals. When segmenting the US public according to levels of concern, most respondents express overall concern about the harmfulness of climate change, although not all believe it to be so harmful that it calls for precaution (Leiserowitz et al., 2013, 2014). It can generally be said that the European public is more concerned about climate change and is more likely to see it as a collective and individual responsibility than is the US public.

Climate change frames as filtered through existing worldviews

In reviewing qualitative studies, Wolf and Moser (2011) conclude that individual understandings of climate change are always contextualized within broader considerations, meaning that people are not ‘blank slates’ receiving information about climate change, but that information is always and inevitably filtered through values and worldviews (see also Leiserowitz et al., 2013; Poortinga et al., 2011; Whitmarsh, 2011). Generally, studies analysing in-depth understandings of climate change are lacking, so there is little insight into the dynamics of how particular ideas are shaped. However, Weber (2010) and Weiler et al. (2012) found that laypeople use associative thinking and personal experience when learning about climate change. Similarly, associations with melting polar ice caps, endangered polar bears, floods and droughts are found in Swedish (Wibeck, 2014b), Norwegian (Ryghaug et al., 2011) and British (Smith and Joffe, 2013) FG discussions of how climate change is understood. Combined, such studies provide insight into the processes by which climate change is understood and the processes that underlie climate perceptions.

The importance of experience in making sense of climate change

The importance of experience for environmental and climate perceptions has been recognized more recently (Akerlof et al., 2013; Myers et al., 2012; Ryghaug and Solli, 2012; Weber, 2010). It has been suggested that personal experience of climate change is interdependent with the belief that climate change is happening (Myers et al., 2012), which heightens perceptions of climate change’s local risks (Akerlof et al., 2013). Although rare, studies of this matter are based on current cognitive and social psychology theories suggesting that laypeople typically rely on associative thinking and personal experience when making sense of complex issues (Kahneman, 2011).

Analysis of frames and framing processes

I analysed the FG transcripts, focusing on the frames (i.e. central ideas) reoccurring throughout the material and on frame formation. I started the analytical process with a two-level thematic analysis, in which topics and themes are central (Marková et al., 2007). First, I identified various topics in the FG transcriptions. Second, recurrent topics were grouped into ‘themes’. By recurrent I mean a topic that recurs in at least four groups. From the fairly non-theoretical list of the matters participants discussed, the next step included identifying frames – also called underlying assumptions (Marková et al., 2007) – which can be seen as abstract arguments we often unconsciously use in sense-making processes (Marková et al., 2007). I also paid attention to the frame-formation process by analysing the framing devices participants used to make sense of climate change. The analysis includes the farmers’ use of keywords, metaphors and prototypical examples (Entman, 1993; Nerlich and Koteyko, 2009).

The importance of experiences to perceptions of climate change

The participating farmers’ experience of sometimes decades of agricultural production served as a starting point from which to discuss climate change. The farmers frequently used examples and comparisons (i.e. analogies and distinctions) based on their own experience to support or counter ideas or arguments. The following excerpt illustrates how experiences were elaborated on in the discussions by using such framing devices:

Excerpt 1: ¹

Moderator What do you associate with climate change?

Will I think of (.) I’ve farmed since, well, what is it, 72 I started. So it has changed, the climate. That, I think of. The growing season is longer today than it was in 1972.

Ted And that’s not a long-term perspective.

Will Nah, it’s not long. I would say the growing season is typically 20 days longer today than it was in 72. That’s my belief.

Ted In 30 years? (Will: yes)

Will On average per year. There have been setbacks but, after all, it has happened, a lot.

Sam But spring, the spring is late now, isn’t it?

Will Yes, it’s late now. But it’s pretty normal this year, I think.

Sam But a little late, isn’t it?

Will No.

Sam No, maybe not.

Morty But isn’t it something that falls within normal variation? (X: yes) I mean, you’ve got 400-year variations.

Will Looking at the 60s, it was very late. (X: mm) There were late springs and early autumns (X: much snow). Yes, a lot of snow every winter. Then it changed. Sure, we’ve had a few turns, a few setbacks, but if you look at those years, a considerable number of them were early. And autumn has been milder. (X m) And on our part, we have harvested all the way to December quite a few years, and that could never have been done before.

John Yes, you notice it very clearly in your production.

(FG 2)

As to what they associate climate changes with, participants started to discuss longer growing seasons; Will, in particular, claims that the climate has changed and that this is noticeable in one’s daily chores. The excerpt illustrates how different ideas regarding the growing season length in different decades emerge, are adopted and co-evolve to shape the meanings of climate change. As distinct from the 1970s, Will claims that today’s growing season is longer than it used to be, reaffirming this claim by specifying that the growing season is 20 days longer. Will makes knowledge claims the other participants are hesitant to accept, as seen by the repeated attempts to argue against him. For example, Ted asks how many years were needed for such changes to be noticeable; Will, based on his own experience, answers with certainty. However, he opens up the discussion to alternative interpretations by suggesting that there have been occasions when the change has not been noticeable, although these events are seen as anomalies that the participant dismisses as exceptions. Thus, at the same time as he acknowledges other understandings, he downplays their importance. Yet another participant, Sam, poses a counter-question: ‘But spring, the spring is late now, isn’t it?’ This time Will only answers ‘No’, supplying no arguments supporting the answer. Even so, Sam seems to change his mind, replying ‘No, maybe not’. A new participant, Morty, enters the discussion, posing yet another question that challenges the claim of a changing climate by suggesting that variations should be understood as ‘normal’. In response, Will once again reaffirms his argument based on experience over a 40-year period. The discussion ends with the formation of apparently shared knowledge of the subject, Will’s arguments being prioritized because of their basis in experience and practical work.

This excerpt illustrates a recurrent form of argumentation in the material and is interesting from several perspectives. First, it exemplifies how different ideas regarding climate change circulate, are shaped and upheld, and then disappear. It also exemplifies how participants jointly seek to understand climate change and, in interaction, construct their perceptions. In this example, it is the frame proposed by someone whose experience is deemed to best capture changes in weather and climate that is eventually shared by other participants.

In the above excerpt, experience was cited mainly to distinguish the length of growing seasons today from those in the 1970s, taking this as evidence of a change in the climate. However, other farmers in the group also used their experience to draw the opposite conclusion. In the following excerpt, one participant uses his experience of weather and agricultural practices since the 1950s to make claims about climate change and its existence:

Excerpt 2:

Colin And I have had personal experience of weather for 40 years. The first thing you do in the morning is look at the sky, so you have extensive experience of weather. As a farmer you remember some years. In the 1950s, you have a reference year when it was very, very hot at 30–35 degrees, huh. You remember the snowy winters in the 80s maybe, then green winters in the 1990s, and then one remembers the last two snowy winters. For 12–13 years we had no snow at all. And then ask you the question – personally I do not feel that there has been climate change.

(FG 6)

The excerpt illustrates how experience is used to indicate, according to the participant, that there has been no climate change. Central to the argument is the analogy with variations occurring during different periods, such as the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s, exemplified by summer high temperatures in the 1950s, snowy winters in the 1980s, but then green ones in the 1990s and snowy winters again in 2009 and 2010. The analogy refers to variations in the past and leads to the final statement, ‘I do not feel that there has been climate change’.

Excerpts 1 and 2 highlight the participants’ elaboration of experience of weather patterns and their implications for agricultural production. Their experience is verbalized as comparisons between perceived variations in growing season length and as examples of temperatures and precipitation. The references to previous decades – used as meaning-making resources – are not read or heard about, but based explicitly on experience. This illustrates the use of one’s experience to attribute concrete meaning to climate change. As the excerpts suggest, similar observations can be used to draw very different conclusions, as arguments based on experience both supported and countered frames of human-induced climate change.

Frame clashes: natural versus anthropogenic climate change

In the FGs, everyday experiences served as ‘evidence’ from which to make claims regarding climate change. Different interpretations of experience then gave rise to two interpretations of what causes climate change: natural processes or human activities. These two frames were in dialogue with each other through argumentative cycles with either of the frames supported by certain keywords, metaphors and prototypical examples (see Table 2).

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Table 2.

‘Climate change’ as framed by focus group participants.

	Natural climate change	Human-induced climate change
Keywords	Cycles, variations, fluctuations, shifts, alterations and recurring patterns	Change, temperature increase, human impacts and something new
Time metaphors	Characterized by long-term perspectives – typically several centuries, thousands of years, ‘always’ – and slow changes	Characterized by short-term perspectives, typically up to 150 years, and rapid changes
Causes	Impossible to determine, human impact is negligible	Use of fossil fuels
Prototypical examples	Ice ages as recurrent phenomena/periods (general)	Melting of glaciers
	Grapes, wild or domesticated (context-specific)	Changed direction of Gulf Stream
Responses: mitigation and adaptation	Mitigation not an issue and adaptation unproblematic	Mitigation and adaptation are collective responsibilities; ‘others’ are primarily responsible

The table shows how different framing devices form the two frames of natural climate change and anthropogenic climate change during the discussions.

Understanding rationales for action due to different frames

From the analysis it can be concluded that different frames suggest different views of a phenomenon and different ideas as to the causes, solutions and necessary actions. In particular, this study emphasizes that there are many ways to understand and experience environmental problems such as climate change and that these may be at odds with natural scientific understandings and the behaviours proposed in response to them.

As this study demonstrates, when climate change was framed as a natural process, with little or no human input, it was rarely recognized as a problem. If no problem exists, solutions are seen as spurious, and motivation for action is absent. Mitigation was never discussed in the FGs unless the moderator put it on the agenda. However, as climate change was found to represent a natural phenomenon that has always affected agricultural production, adaptation was seen as important. When participants framed climate change as a natural process, this implied that mitigation activities were deemed unnecessary – contrary to many proposals for Swedish agriculture from the SBA (2012), the news media (Olausson, 2009) and even farm magazines (Asplund et al., 2013). On a general level, there seemed to be a logical connection between how the farmers talked about climate change, their attention to certain elements and their definitions of what is problematic coupled with suggestions for appropriate courses of action. This study indicates that when climate change is believed to be natural, support for mitigation and adaptation activities is low. Arbuckle et al. (2013) found a similar logical connection between diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framings of climate change among American farmers. They found that belief in human-induced climate change and concern about impacts correlated with support for adaptive and mitigating actions (Arbuckle et al., 2013). Hence, different frames of climate change entail different assumptions as to the relevance of and need for mitigation and adaptation strategies. However, Snow and Benford (1988) suggest that there is more than a logical connection between a frame and its practical consequences for action, as agreement about causes and solutions to a particular problem do not automatically generate action, so rationales for action go beyond problem definitions and solutions to concern issues of motivation. Responses to climate change therefore may not necessarily be consistent with frames of climate change as natural versus anthropogenic but may well be consistent with other frames. To date, little research has examined motivational framings among various audiences, and further research is needed to deepen our understanding of the relation between problem identification, proposed solutions and rationales for action.

Understanding why a certain frame is given precedence

It has been suggested that climate change perceptions can be explained by demographic variables such as gender and voting intentions (EB, 2008; McCright and Dunlap, 2011) and by peoples’ values, worldviews (Leiserowitz et al., 2013; Poortinga et al., 2011; Whitmarsh, 2011) and identity (Kahan et al., 2012). The importance of experience for environmental and climate perceptions has been recognized more recently (Akerlof et al., 2013; Myers et al., 2012; Ryghaug and Solli, 2012; Weber, 2010), simultaneously raising questions of an epistemological character: How are understandings of climate change acquired and, in particular, on what are understandings of climate change based?

Perceived experiences of climate change and the belief that climate change is happening have been found to be interdependent (Myers et al., 2012). Similarly, it has also been suggested that personal experiences of climate change heighten perceptions of climate change’s local risks (Akerlof et al., 2013). The most frequently described personally experienced aspects of climate change are changes in seasons, weather (e.g. heavier rainfall and snowfall), lake levels, flooding, animal populations and vegetation, according to Akerlof et al. (2013) and Ryghaug and Solli (2012), who have demonstrated that personal experience of, for example, weather changes, can be interpreted as evidence of climate change. This study highlights that experience of the same event can be used as evidence for climate change being either a human-induced or natural process. Similarly, Capstick and Pidgeon (2014) found two competing interpretations of a period of severe cold weather in the United Kingdom. They found that unusually cold weather could be interpreted as evidence either for or against the existence of climate change. As experience of the same event, for example, seasonal changes, can be used to frame climate change in different ways and support contrasting arguments, this highlights the many ways audiences can interpret climate change and, hence, the complexity of audience-specific understandings of climate change (for an overview of climate change frames, see Nisbet and Scheufele, 2009).

Frame resonance and clashes in public understanding of climate change

As previously suggested, Sweden may exemplify a country where there is frequent media reporting on climate change in both the broadcast and print media (Höijer, 2010; Olausson, 2009) and in specialized media targeting farmers (Asplund, 2011; Asplund et al., 2013). Both national news media and Swedish farm magazines have framed climate change as a scientific certainty (Asplund et al., 2013; Olausson, 2009). Farm magazines also depicted climate change using frames of conflict (in which various production systems, national agricultural contexts, or sectors were compared in terms of their contribution to climate change) and frames of economic burden due to stricted climate policies (Asplund et al., 2013). While these frames have been identified in Swedish farm magazines, they were not as apparent in the FG discussions. The farmers participating in the FGs primarily framed climate change, in contrast to the certainty frame found in farm magazines, as natural, with little or no human component. The present empirical results emphasize that Swedish farmers’ understandings of climate change do not always conform to those conveyed by either the specialized or mainstream media, suggesting resonance for the frame of climate change as human-induced but little resonance for the frame of climate change as natural. Due to the various reasons for prioritizing a certain frame of a phenomenon, for example, values, worldviews, identity and, in particular, how these frames are constructed by experience, it is problematic to communicate climate science as comprising ‘accurate interpretations’ (see, for example, Myers et al., 2012: 346). Framing climate change as a risk that calls for collective action in terms of both climate change mitigation and adaptation stands in contrast to a frame in which mitigation is not an issue and adaptation is unproblematic. When scientific interpretations of the causes of and solutions to human-induced climate change do not conform to audience-specific frames of ‘natural climate change’, frame conflict is likely to appear, potentially increasing the levels of distrust between partners in dialogue.

Moreover, as noted above, underlying the scientific understanding of human-induced climate change and lay knowledge of climate change as a natural process are questions of epistemology. While scientists learn via abstract and analytical reasoning, laypeople typically draw on associative thinking and personal experience when learning (Kahneman, 2011; Weber, 2010; Weiler et al., 2012). Consequently, climate change is not only framed in different ways, but the frames may be supported by different epistemologies, which could further complicate the communication of climate change, resulting in even greater frame clashes. However, knowledge of in-depth processes underlying climate perceptions may be of help to increase frame resonance in climate change communication processes. As communicators learn their audiences’ interpretative frameworks and as a result consider how climate change communication can be tailored to specific audiences, the risk of frame clashes may decrease while possibilities for frame resonance increase – ultimately stimulating responses to climate change (Moser, 2010; Whitmarsh and Lorenzoni, 2010).

Frames and audience segmentation

Recent studies of public understanding of climate change highlight the importance of framing climate change in ways that resonate with the various interpretative frames of target groups (for an overview, see Wibeck, 2014a). This article supports arguments emphasizing the existence of multiple publics, each with differing viewpoints, and problematizes the concept of ‘public opinion’ as consensual and fixed (see, for example, Barnett and Mahony, 2011; Michael, 2009; Mohr et al., 2013). For example, Swedish farmers could be categorized as Europeans and thereby likely to express frames of concern regarding climate change (EB, 2008, 2012) – frames that were not particularly present in the empirical material examined here. Moreover, Swedish farmers could also be categorized as Swedes, but they seem to differ somewhat from Swedes in general in their sense-making processes regarding climate change. While Wibeck (2014b) demonstrates that the Swedish laypeople participating in FGs associated climate change with severe consequences, citing examples of melting polar ice caps, endangered polar bears, floods and droughts, Swedish farmers participating in FGs paid little attention to such catastrophic climate change images. Although limited in their scope, these two studies illustrate quite different frames and framing processes among segments of the public in the same national context and even within the same audience group.

Instead of segmenting the public according to demographic variables such as gender, age or socio-economic background, or to their understandings, concerns and emotional responses to an issue, this article addressed public segmentation in terms of its relevance to a particular issue, that is, climate change. The added value of doing so is the opportunity to identify culturally shared assumptions among the examined public – in this case, the relevance of agricultural practices and experiences when drawing conclusions about climate change. Similarly, in a study of Norwegian transportation sector managers, Ryghaug and Solli (2012) conclude that, although accepting the findings of climate science, the managers perceived climate change largely in terms of the damage to Norwegian roads caused by extreme weather events. Segmenting the public according to sector and professional identity has its strengths and weaknesses. It may reveal contextually important ways to frame climate change and its causes and solutions, as well as illuminate motives for action. Its weakness is perhaps the complexity that public segmentation entails in terms of endless processes of the identification, differentiation, and potential proliferation, or patterning, of publics (Michael, 2009).