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A large disconnect exists between the general public's acceptance of human-caused climate change and the prevailing consensus of actively publishing scientists. Previous research has examined both political and economic motivated reasoning, media influence in print and television, conspiracy ideation as a predictor of science rejection, and the role of the social construction of scientific knowledge in science rejection. Using these previously studied justifications for climate change rejection as a starting point, this research examines 212 written responses to a prompt at Climate Etc. asking the community to explain their acceptance / rejection of climate change. Using a textual content analysis, this study finds that media choice, motivated reasoning, conspiracy ideation, and the scientific construction of knowledge all play important roles in explanations for climate science rejection. Work and educational background, as well as a reframing of the scientific consensus as a "religion," add new analytical perspectives to the motivated reasoning explanations offered in prior research. This analysis also finds that the explanations for climate science denial given by respondents are often complex, falling into two or more of the explanation types suggesting that science rejection may be a more complex social process than previously thought.

A 2°C increase in global mean temperature (ΔTg) has been widely adopted as a benchmark for dangerous climate change. However, there has been a lack of research into the implications of 2°C, or any other degree of warming, for Africa. In this thesis changes in African temperature and precipitation associated with 1°C, 2°C, 3°C, 4°C, and beyond are investigated for the first time, using output from 350 climate model experiments: a collection of simulations from international modelling centres (CMIP3), two Perturbed Physics Ensembles (PPEs), and a group of five regional models. The models project temperature and precipitation anomalies which increase in magnitude and spatial extent as global temperature rises, including a wet signal in East Africa, and drier conditions for African rainforests. The models consistently show that the evolution of change with global warming is gradual, even at 4°C and beyond; but the amplitude and direction of precipitation change at each ΔTg increment vary between models and between datasets. The PPEs project precipitation signals which are not represented by CMIP3, in particular a large drying (>0.5 mm day-1 °C-1) of western Africa. There are also important differences between global and regional models, especially in southern and West Africa (>1 mm day-1). Analysis of atmospheric circulation responses suggests that the higher resolution projections are no more credible in this case. Some of the variation between models can be understood as the result of untrustworthy simulations, leading to constraints on the PPEs, and casting doubt on the strong drying of west Sahel; but model evaluation is found to be limited by observations in the case of the Congo Basin. The implications of global warming are different depending on which models are consulted. The findings emphasise that caution should be exercised in the application of climate model data to inform mitigation debates.

Understanding the response of species to climate change and their ability to adapt is the key to describe the future development of plant communities. The aim of the study is to determinate intraspecific variability in germination of Festuca rubra from different original climates in response to novel climatic regimes. This study also observes if different climatic regimes lead to selection of different genotypes. Festuca rubra is a widespread clonal grass occurring in the Northern hemisphere. The plant material comes from 11 localities distributed along a climatic grid of factorially crossed temperature and precipitation situated in western Norway. The project was carried out in growth chambers, where the germination of seeds was monitored in two different temperature conditions and in two moisture treatments. Germinated seeds were planted into pots remaining in the same treatment where they germinated. Seedlings from one Petri dish grew together in one pot. One population, from the coldest and the driest original locality, growing in the warm-wet and cold-wet treatments was genetically analysed using microsatellites. Germination of the species was higher and faster in warm than in cold conditions, showing that germination of the species is enhanced by higher temperature. Germination was higher in...

The framing of news stories is found to be changing throughout time. This thesis advances a quantitative, longitudinal content analysis to examine the news coverage on climate change in five different countries over a period of ten years. Applying Chyi and McCombs two-dimensional measurement scheme, this thesis finds that the international frame was the most deployed spatial frame, while the present frame was the most used temporal frame. The political action, environmental risk and science frames, in their own regard, were the most deployed topical frames. Centrally, the analysis showed that the environmental risked frame is increasingly superseded by the science frame. This suggests that scientific considerations have become increasingly important in climate change journalism. Additionally, a higher climatological vulnerability of a country does not appear to translate to a risk focused framing of news articles. Moreover, the analysis finds that the societal spatial frame is increasingly used, pointing to emphasised national considerations in climate change journalism. Finally, the data of the thesis supports the emergence of a previously unconsidered climate action frame.

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This thesis was interested in exploring the questions of why individuals typically do not respond strongly to climate change, and how individual motivations to do so might be strengthened. More specifically, this thesis explored two widely cited barriers to climate change action and the solutions commonly suggested to overcome them. The first barrier is the lack of personal experience with climate change, which is believed to inhibit relevant emotional processes. The second, not unrelated, barrier is that people typically perceive climate change as a distant threat, one that is not relevant to them personally, where they live, and in the present time. To test these explanations, two public surveys of residents of both the UK (n = 616) and Switzerland (n = 316) explored the relationships among negative emotions, perceptions of geographically proximal and distant climate change risks, and variables that capture people’s willingness to address climate change. The findings supported the idea that stronger negative emotions were positively related to more readiness to act against climate change. The relationship between spatially close versus distant risk perceptions and measures of different forms of action was, however, more complex. Specifically, the findings revealed a strong association between global risk perceptions and policy support and a strong association between local risk perceptions and personal intentions. One explanation for these (unexpected) associations is that they are due to spontaneous matches with regard to psychological distance: Local risk perceptions are psychologically proximal on the spatial dimension and personal intentions can be regarded as proximal on the social dimension. Likewise, the spatially remote global risk perceptions can be matched to support for policies, which can be regarded as distant on the social dimension. Studies 3 and 4 tried to experimentally untangle the complex relationships between psychological distance and people’s perceptions and actions that were 2 observed in the survey research. Specifically, in both studies participants were manipulated to adopt either a spatially proximal or distant perspective on climate change. Study 3 (n = 80) measured participants emotional responses to climate change and looked at how these predicted different attitudinal and behavioural responses under a proximal or distant framework, whereas Study 4 (n = 330) more directly explored the possible effects of activating negative emotions (i.e., fear) in combination with different distance frames as part of attempts to promote action on climate change. The findings of Studies 3 and 4 suggest that decreasing the psychological distance of climate change and inducing fear can both be potentially useful strategies to promote action on climate change. However, the operation of both these strategies is more complex than is often assumed and these complexities have implications for the effectiveness of each strategy. For one thing, both attempts to reduce distance and increase fear can initiate multiple psychological processes that simultaneously increase and decrease the likelihood of acting on climate change. Because these processes work in opposition, reduced distance and increased fear can have positive effects, negative effects, or no effect at all. Together, the findings across studies highlight that psychological distance is neither an insurmountable obstacle to action against climate change – it depends on what kind of action is being considered (Studies 1 & 2) – and nor is decreasing psychological distance a panacea to motivate action – this can trigger the same kind of defensiveness that have been observed in response to other strategies, such as the use of emotion (Studies 3 & 4). In the general discussion, the theoretical implications of these insights for different theoretical models of distance, emotion, and action are considered, as are the implications for the practice of promoting public engagement with and action on climate change.

<p> The rapid increase of athropogenically-derived CO2 in the atmposphere, during the past century, has been linked to unprecendented global climate change. Forests and various forest management techniques have been proposed as a potential way to help sequester some ofthe atmpospheric CO2. In order to evaluate the CO2 sink potential offorests, a good understanding oftheir carbon dynamics is required over various stages oftheir development and growth. </p> <p> This dissertation reports results of a field study that focused on characterizing and quantifying CO2 emissions from various components of planted white pine (Pinus Strobus L.) forest ecosystems, growing in southern Ontario, Canada. The study site, called the Turkey Point Flux Station (TPFS), consisted offour stands, aged: 70-, 35-, 20-and 7 years-old, as of year 2009. Three major components of ecosystem respiration, Re, were studied using the chamber-method: soil respiration, Rs (both, autotrophic and heterotrophic ), foliar respiration, Rf, and live woody-tissue respiration, Rw. </p> <p> Chamber-based estimates of annual Re across the four different stands were: 1527 ± 137, 1313 ± 137, 2079 ± 293, and 769 ± 46 g C m^(-2) yr^(-1) for the 70-, 35-, 20-, and 7-year-old stands, respectively, and were generally higher compared to literature reported values. Annually Rf accounted for 48, 40, 58, and 31% of Re at the 70-, 35-, 20-, and 7-year-old stands, respectively, and dominated Re during the growing season at the three oldest stands. In contrast, Rs was the dominant Re component at the youngest stand and during the winter months at all four sites. Annually Rs accounted for 44, 40, 29, and 69 % ofRe across the respective TPFS sites. Rw was the smallest component of annual Re, accounting for only 9, 15, 13 and 0.1 % ofRe, respectively. Differences in leaf area indices among the stands were responsible for most ofthe intersite variability in Re, as well as for differences between Re values obtained in this study and those reported in the literature. Results from this study highlight the importance of considering site age and knowledge ofpast land-use history when assessing carbon budgets of afforested or planted ecosystems. They also suggest that Rf may be the more dominant and determinant component ofRe in young to mature afforested stands, which is in contrast to the widely reported Rs dominance of Re in forest ecosystems. </p> <p> Soil respiration was studied in detail across TPFS, as part ofthis dissertation, to determine the driving factors ofits temporal variability, considering seasonal, interannual (3 years ofmeasurements) and decadal (over the TPFS age-sequence) timescales. The range ofRs values across TPFS over the course of three study years was 539 ± 31 to 732 ± 31 g C m^(-2) yr^(-1). In general, annual soil emissions from the oldest stand were higher compared to those from the youngest two stands. However, emissions from the 35-year-old stand were comparable to those from the 20-and 7-year-old stands. Intersite differences in soil emissions were driven mostly by stand physiology, while interannual differences relfected interannual variability in climatic factors, as well as differences in stand physiology that modified the site's microclimates. In particular, results from this study suggest that soil moisture may have a larger effect on the heterotrophic rather than on the rhizospheric component of soil respiration in these forest ecosystems, supporting evidence from other literaturereported studies. Finally, the chamber-based Re values derived in this study were compared with Re values derived from congruent eddy covariance measurements at TPFS. Based on annual totals, Re calculated from chamber measurements overestimated Re calculated from eddy covariance measurements on average by: 18, 75, 24 and 39% at the 70-, 35-, 20-, and 7-year-old stands, respectively. These results highlight the continued need to resolve the discrepancy between the two methodologies used to estimate Re, before measurements from both methods can be used together to make conclusions about the composition of forest carbon budgets. <p> As part of this dissertation, a statistical method of data analysis was used to implement temporal flexibility in the conventional Q10 model, widely used to simulate various Re components of forested ecosystems. The outcome of that analysis highlighted two things: a) for the case of soil respiration, the exponential relationship between Rs and Ts may be limited to the so called "ecologically optimum Ts range" for fine root growth; b) the functional form of the Q10 model is inadequate for simulating the Rs-Ts relationship across a wide range ofTs values, even after the implementation of temporal flexibility into the model, which allowed both of its model parameters to vary. The consequence of the latter result led to the development of a new empirical model -the Gamma model -for use in simulating respiration with temperature. The statistical method and the new emprical model were used to simulate CO2 emissions in this study and to identify additional environmental and physiological factors that explained some of the variability in the individual Re components across TPFS. Thus, temperature was found to be the dominant controlling factor of respiration at all four sites. However, occurrence of precipitation events, vapour pressure deficit, photosynthetically active radiation, the thickness ofthe LFH soil horizon (i.e. litter layer), and soil nutrients, were also shown to explain some ofthe variability ofthe various respiratory components. </p> <p> This dissertation fills some of the gaps in literature on studies of Re component fluxes ofplanted young to mature forests, especially of those growning in the temperate climate of eastern North America, where afforestation and plantations are most likely to occur. The study should be of interest to carbon cycle modellers, field ecologists, the eddy covariance community. It should also be of interest to those involved in forest carbon accounting, management, and policy development, by adding knowledge to our understanding of global carbon cycling and the potential for using afforested sites in global warming mitigation attempts. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Cities are important actors in global climate protection. Almost 80% of global CO2 emissions are produced in urban areas. At the same time cities are in a good position to bring out innovative solutions. Local initiatives in the Czech Republic often take an implicit form: they don't aim directly at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This paper analyses nine projects in the building sector, which have been implemented by Czech cities. It looks for factors that have contributed to the initiation of studied projects and facilitated or inhibited its implementation. Factors have been gathered throughout semi-structured interviews. The research have revealed two relevant barriers and twelve success factors, which have been classified according to the thematic categories: "Economics," "Livability," "Politics," "Institutions," and "Information." Most of them concern the category "Information," while none of them concerns the category "Livability." The research outcomes can serve as an inspiration for other cities and also for actors shaping conditions for local climate protection, in particular NGOs and central government.

This dissertation focuses on public diplomacy efforts targeted at persuading other countries to strengthen their domestic and international climate change policies. While previous research on climate diplomacy has addressed the global negotiations extensively, the role of embassies and the interplay between diplomats, their partners and the instruments and storylines they employ, has so far not received the scholarly attention it deserves. This is despite the fact that such behind-the-scenes outreach is one of the most promising tools available to engage other states. The dissertation aims to fill this literature gap by examining climate public diplomacy conducted by embassies and consulates of four EU states: the UK, Germany, Sweden and Denmark. The European Union, and these states in particular, were chosen because they have sought to portray themselves as leaders in tackling climate change while undertaking extensive climate diplomacy. The United States and China were chosen as target states since they have been the main focus of EU climate diplomacy, due to their position as the two largest aggregate contributors to climate change. The dissertation addresses public diplomacy in the field of climate change applied to both the federal/national and subnational levels of governance of these states. The main research question tackled by this dissertation is: What role do embassies and consulates play in climate diplomacy, and how effective is this diplomacy? In answering this, the research focuses on identifying environmental discourses and framings of climate change employed by embassies/consulates for different audiences, and assesses the impact of these frames. A central finding was a strong trade and growth orientation of climate diplomacy. The diplomatic network identified industry, especially fossil-fuel intensive businesses, as allies. Some companies that were embassy partners supported climate denial behind the scenes.