Could climate deniers be more likely to change their minds if they are told of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change? My guess would be no, as the issue has become one of tribalism and identity that transcends fact-based analyses.

But researchers from Yale University, University of Cambridge, University of California Santa Barbara, and Utah State University appear to have found that messaging on the scientific consensus actually can make a difference in opening minds. They published their results in the journal Nature, describing the perception conundrum:

[D]espite the fact that over 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening, only 11% of the US public correctly estimate the scientific consensus on climate change as higher than 90%.

Using a national survey, the researchers buried questions about climate change among other issues, prompting some respondents with information about the scientific consensus but not others (the control group). The top line finding?

Exposing the survey respondents to the message about the scientific consensus increases their perception of the scientific norm by 16.2 percentage points on a 100-point scale.

So messaging about the consensus may be helpful after all for climate advocates.

But the results were not uniform across the country:

We find the largest messaging effects in states with the lowest pre-treatment belief in the scientific consensus, such as West Virginia, Wyoming and North Dakota. States with more pro-climate publics (for example, California and Hawaii) have some of the lowest effect sizes, because respondent’s initial estimates of the consensus were substantially higher than those in more conservative states…

So basically, the messaging on the scientific consensus worked best in places where climate deniers had little prior exposure to information about climate science. As a result, advocates could use this information to tailor climate communications in those parts of the country especially.

The battle to win “hearts and minds” on climate science will probably take some combination of additional extreme weather events, business and other elites signaling acceptance to their climate denier “tribes,” and generational/population shifts. But every little bit of framing assistance, such as discussed in this study, can surely help in the meantime.