Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

1. Global Warming Beliefs

1.1. About three in four video gamers think global warming is happening.

Video gamers who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not happening by a ratio of nearly 5 to 1.

About three in four video gamers (73%) think global warming is happening. By contrast, 15% of video gamers think global warming is not happening and 12% say they don’t know.

1.2. About half of video gamers are “extremely” or “very” sure global warming is happening. Very few are as sure it isn’t happening.

About half of video gamers (51%) are either “extremely” or “very” sure global warming is happening. Far fewer (8%) are “extremely” or “very” sure global warming is not happening.

1.3. A majority of video gamers think global warming is mostly human-caused.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment report (2021), written and reviewed by thousands of climate experts worldwide, states: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”ntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2021): Summary for Policymakers. In Masson-Delmotte, V., Zhai, P., Pirani, A., Connors, S. L., Péan, C., Berger, S., Caud, N., Chen, Y., Goldfarb, L., Gomis, M. I., Huang, M., Leitzell, K., Lonnoy, E., Matthews, J. B. R., Maycock, T. K., Waterfield, T., Yelekçi, O., Yu, R., & Zhou, B. (eds.), Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press.

The majority of video gamers (56%) understand that global warming is mostly human-caused. By contrast, about one in three (34%) think it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment.

1.4. A majority of video gamers understand that most scientists think global warming is happening.

A 2016 review by John Cook and colleaguesCook, J., Oreskes, N., Doran, P. T., Anderegg, W. R. I., Verheggen, B., Maibach, E. W., Carlton, J. S., Lewandowsky, S., Skuce, A. G., Green, S. A., Nuccitelli, D., Jacobs, P., Richardson, M., Winkler, B., Painting, R., & Rice., K. (2016). Consensus on consensus: A synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming. Environmental Research Letters, 11(4). doi10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002 found that six independent, peer-reviewed studies examining the extent of the scientific consensus about global warming have concluded that between 90% and 100% of climate scientists are convinced that human-caused global warming is happening. A more recent study found that as many as 98% of climate scientists are convinced that global warming is happening and human-caused.Myers, K. F., Doran, P. T., Cook, J., Kotcher, J. E., & Myers, T. A. (2021). Consensus revisited: Quantifying scientific agreement on climate change and climate expertise among Earth scientists 10 years later. Environmental Research Letters, 16(10). doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac2774

A majority of video gamers (52%) understand that most scientists think global warming is happening. By contrast, about one in three video gamers (30%) think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening. Few video gamers (6%) believe that most scientists think global warming is not happening.