Climatic Change http://doi.org/4cf (2015)

Lawmakers in the United States have never managed to pass comprehensive climate change legislation. One possible explanation for this is that the seriousness of climate change has been miscommunicated to politicians, known as the information deficit theory.

A team of US researchers led by Xinsheng Liu from Texas A&M University suggests that this is not the case, however. They conducted a content analysis of 1,350 testimonies given by scientists to congressional committees between 1969 and 2007. They found that the scientific information transmitted to Congress was not substantially different from general agreement in the scientific community at the time: that climate change is happening and is at least partially caused by humans. They also found that almost all the scientists giving evidence to Congress supported implementing policy to tackle climate change.

They conclude that while there are many social, economic and political reasons that may explain why Congress has failed to act on climate change, ignorance of the problem is not one.