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ZAZQQZAZPolitics found that these experiences can affectattitudes about climate change in a significantand sizable fashion. For each 3.1 degreesFahrenheit that local temperatures rose abovenormal in the week prior to a survey, we foundthat Americans became one percentage pointmore likely to agree there is ‘solid evidence’ thatEarth is getting warmer.”HOW LONG DO THESE EFFECTS LAST?QZAZ“They’re fairly short-lived, typically disappearingafter about a week. Periods of unusual weatherthat last a longer time can have a larger effecton attitudes, but even these effects eventuallydissipate. Our study shows that even a heatwave leaves no impact on climate change beliefafter about two weeks. It’s a powerful influence,but not a lasting one.”WHAT ROLE DOES EXPOSURE TO POLITICALRHETORIC ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE SHAPETHESE PERCEPTIONS?“Exposure to policymakers’ polarized debate onclimate can be a huge factor in shaping people’sopinions, especially among people with strongpolitical leanings or party affiliations.Although our analysis showed thattemperature’s effect on opinion was as largeor larger than the impacts of race, education,religion, or gender, we nonetheless found thatparty ID and political ideology still were theprimary forces shaping people’s perceptions ofclimate change.One of the challenges in designing our studywas disentangling politics from the effect ofpersonal experience. Because climate changeis such a polarized issue in American politics,people’s self-reported experiences of theweather can be misleading. We perceive thatweather is hotter, or cooler, if that’s the patternwe expect. This tendency may be especiallystrong when people are responding to surveysthat contain political content.In our 2012 study, to see how, or if,perceptions about climate are shaped bypersonal experience outside the lens of politics,we collected actual local weather data andmapped temperature trends for the zip codesof respondents to five large national opinionsurveys. Our findings showed that people’sresponses to survey questions about belief inclimate change correlated strongly to theirgeocoded experiences with recent local weather,independent of external political influences.”QZAZWERE SOME PEOPLE MORE LIKELY THANOTHERS TO BE INFLUENCED BY RECENTEXPERIENCE WITH HOTTER THAN NORMALWEATHER?“We saw the strongest effect among people withthe lowest levels of education, who may be leastlikely to have formed opinions about climatechange ahead of time. We also saw stronginfluence among political leaners—people wholean toward one party or the other but tend tobe less informed about politics and have fewerstrongly held issue positions.To some degree, however, we all are influencedby recent personal experience because whenwe respond to surveys, we typically tap intoinformation or experiences that are freshest inour minds and most readily accessible.Climate change is hard to understand. Localweather is easy to understand and seemsrelevant to the topic. So it’s understandablethat our experience with local weather mightinfluence our perceptions about climate and howwe all respond to survey questions.”AS A POLITICAL SCIENTIST, WHAT DO YOUMAKE OF THAT?“Considering that one of the chief effects ofclimate change in the United States is to raisethe prevalence of unusually hot days, drawingconclusions about the existence of a warmingclimate from a recent string of usually hot localweather isn’t entirely irrational.On the other hand, it does give you pause forthought. Is this really how we are forming ouropinions on difficult public policy issues such asclimate change?It’s not surprising that many people formassessments of complex, society-wide issues likeclimate change based on personal experience.If you get mugged, you’re more likely to thinkthat crime is getting worse; if you lose your job,you’re more likely to believe unemploymentis rising. Scientists call this process attributesubstitution. The problem is, it can lead youto discount other sources of information, suchas scientific research, that are much morerelevant.”

coverZQAZQZIT ALSO BEGS THE QUESTION THAT IFPEOPLE’S ATTITUDES ARE INFLUENCED BYLOCAL WEATHER, AND LOCAL WEATHER ISGETTING HOTTER ACROSS MUCH OF THEUNITED STATES, WHY AREN’T WE SEEING ACHANGE IN OPINIONS?“That’s the real question. Why is public opinionnot reflecting the concern we should be giving tothe issue given the increasing seriousness andscope of the problem?One answer is that the effects we found wereshort-lived. Although temperatures in the UnitedStates have been rising, especially in winter sofar, a cold snap can counteract warm weather’seffects on opinion. But my colleague PatrickEgan and I suspect that long-term temperaturetrends are exerting their own influence onopinion, and we currently have research underway to investigate that possibility.”IN A COMMENTARY YOU PUBLISHED IN THEJOURNAL NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE IN 2014,YOU NOTED THAT SINCE 1988, WHEN CLIMATESCIENTIST JAMES HANSEN PRESENTED THEFIRST TESTIMONY ON HUMAN ACTIVITY ANDPLANETARY WARMING TO THE U.S. SENATE,THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HAS BEEN EXPOSEDTO MORE THAN A QUARTER-CENTURY OFSUSTAINED ATTENTION TO THIS ISSUE. THEREHAVE BEEN HUNDREDS OF CONGRESSIONALHEARINGS ON IT, THOUSANDS OF PEERREVIEWED STUDIES, AND TENS OFTHOUSANDS OF MEDIA REPORTS. DOES YOURRESEARCH SUGGEST THAT ANY OF THIS HASMADE A DIFFERENCE?ZZLEARNMOREDUKENVIRONMENT8ZAZAZQ“Yes, but perhaps not as much as some peoplemight have hoped. Those who hoped the longrunning debate we’ve had on climate changewould close the gap between the scientificconsensus and the public’s divided beliefs areprobably disappointed.The public has become more aware aboutclimate change, but levels of belief and concernhave changed little over the last 20 years. Themain change in opinion has been the emergenceof a partisan gap as those who identify asRepublican have become less worried aboutclimate change, less likely to believe that itis attributable to human activities, and moresuspicious of mainstream news coverage aboutthe issue. Politicians have had more successthan scientists in shaping the debate.”WHAT’S THE TAKEAWAY MESSAGE FROMALL THIS?“As scientists and science communicators,we need to engage with the public usinglanguage and values that Americans recognize.Personal experience resonates more stronglythan scientific evidence. Rather than discountpeople’s experiences, we need to communicatescience in a way that helps people interpretthose experiences as being part of a broaderphenomenon. Politicians are skilled at this formof communication—we scientists have a lot tolearn from them.”Tim Lucas is senior writer for Dukenvironment magazine and isthe Nicholas School’s director of marketing communications.MEGAN MULLIN joined the Nicholas School faculty in 2014, and teaches thecourses, “Environment 577: Environmental Politics,” and “Environment 684: Politicsof the Urbanized Environment.” In addition to her research on political and socialprocesses related to climate change, she is widely cited for her research ondecentralized governance and water management. She is the author of Governing theTap: Special District Governance and the New Local Politics of Water (MIT Press), whichwon the 2009 Lynton Keith Caldwell Award for the best book in environmental politicsand policy.You can view her full faculty bio at nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/mullin,or watch a video about how politics shape the environment by going to youtube.comand typing Megan Mullin — I am Duke Environment in the search box.

news//SCHOOL‘PLANKZOOKA’LARVAL SAMPLER MAY REVOLUTIONIZE DEEP-OCEAN RESEARCHScientists from Duke, TheUniversity of Oregon and WoodsHole Oceanographic Institution(WHOI) have successfullyconducted the first high-volume collectionof plankton, including animal larvae, fromthe deep ocean using a new samplingdevice mounted on a robotic submarine.They deployed the new sampler—nicknamed PlankZooka for its uncannyresemblance to two bazooka rocketlaunchers—during a research expeditionthis summer aboard the R/V Atlantis offthe U.S. East Coast.Unlike sampling devices used in thepast, which often damaged the delicateplanktonic specimens they collected, thenew SentrY Precision Robotic Impeller

news//SCHOOLDriven (SyPRID) sampler uses spinningblades inside tubes to gently pump largevolumes of water, and the microscopicorganisms it contains, through a netsystem housed within two carbon fibercomposite tubes.“Part of the beauty of its design isthat planktonic organisms are filteredgently so they remain intact for scientificanalysis,” says Cindy Van Dover, directorof the Duke University Marine Laboratory.On its maiden voyage, the SyPRIDsampler was carried by the autonomousunderwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry to adepth of more than 2,150 meters—wherepressures exceed a bone-crushing 3,150psi—and drove a precise sampling patternfor more than eight hours just above anatural methane seep.Thirty-nine deep-sea larvae,representing 16 different types of animals,were collected during the survey. Geneticand morphological analyses is to beconducted on the preserved specimens.“The SyPRID sampler can allow us togain a much clearer picture of where thelarvae go and where they concentratein the deep ocean,” says Craig Young,director of the Oregon Institute of MarineBiology (OIMB). “The uniqueness of thissystem is its ability to sample preciseareas, at depth, for long periods of timewhile filtering enough volume to find therelatively rare organisms in the water.”Natural methane seeps play animportant but poorly understood role inthe ocean ecosystem. The organisms thatdepend on methane from the seeps playa substantial role not only in the marinefood web but also in altering the quantityof methane released to the ocean surfaceand, potentially, in the overall chemistryof the ocean.Scientists lack a clear understandingof how sedentary or slow-moving animalsmove between the widely separatedseeps, how new seeps are populated, andhow resilient these ecosystems may bein the face of ocean change. Studying themicroscopic planktonic larval stages ofthese animals may shed light on many ofthese processes.DUKENVIRONMENT10Previous net-based sampling toolslimited researchers’ ability to studydeep-sea larval distributions becausethe samplers were not able to get closerthan 50 meters to the sea bottom andcould only move over long distancestowed at an angle from the surface, notesCarl Kaiser, AUV program manager atthe WHOI National Deep SubmergenceFacility, which owns and operates Sentry.“By contrast, Sentry is capable ofdelivering the new sampling device towithin two to three meters of the bottom,or any other desired depth, and withinfive meters of any desired point orpattern of points in more than 95 percentof the world’s oceans,” Kaiser says.“This could revolutionize how wesample not only larvae but all planktonin the deep ocean,” says Van Dover.“We can now pick and choose where wesample, rather than reaching into a deepbucket and grabbing everything, fromeverywhere, on the way back up.”Van Dover, Kaiser and Young jointlydeveloped the concept for an AUVdeployed precision sampler, which wasthen designed and built by engineers atWHOI led by Kaiser and Andrew Billings.The research expedition, which seeksto understand the genetic, oceanographicand larval connections among seepecosystems in the Atlantic, also includesscientists from North Carolina StateUniversity.Funding for the expedition and for thedevelopment of Sentry and the SyPRIDSampler comes from three NationalScience Foundation grants.The methane seep the SyPRID samplerexplored was identified by Van Dover ona previous expedition. Laurel Hiebert ofOIMB led the on-board team responsiblefor sorting and preserving the collectedlarvae. Svetlana Maslakova co-leads theOIMB team with Young.14IMAGES1 An octant or sextant and pottery jug fromthe wreck site give some sense of the ageof the wreck found by scientists off theNorth Carolina coast. Photo by WHOI;2 Brick pile from the newly discoveredshipwreck, with a drift of Sargassum weedfrom the surface Photo by WHOI;3 The research vessel R/V Atlantis withthe submersible Alvin hanging off its stern.Photo by Luis Lamar, WHOI;4 Launch of autonomous underwatervehicle Sentry from the researchvessel R/V Atlantis.Photo by Cindy Van Dover, Duke University;5 One of nine glass bottles observedat the site of the shipwreck. Photo by WHOI

32kcerwpihSdlOseirutCeOnVERED OFF NORTH CAROLINADISC5Scanning sonar from a scientific expedition has revealedthe remains of a previously unknown shipwreck more thana mile deep off the North Carolina coast. Artifacts on thewreck indicate it might date to the American Revolution.Marine scientists from Duke, North Carolina State Universityand the University of Oregon discovered the wreck thissummer during a research expedition aboard the Woods HoleOceanographic Institution (WHOI) research ship R/V Atlantis.They spotted the wreck while using WHOI’s robotic autonomousunderwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry and the manned submersibleAlvin. The team had been searching for a mooring that wasdeployed on a previous research trip in the area in 2012.Among the artifacts discovered amid the shipwreck’s brokenremains were an iron chain, a pile of wooden ship timbers, redbricks (possibly from the ship cook’s hearth), glass bottles, anunglazed pottery jug, a metal compass, and another navigationalinstrument that might be an octant or sextant.The wreck appears to date back to the late 18th or early 19thcentury, a time when a young United States was expanding itstrade with the rest of the world by sea.“This is an exciting find, and a vivid reminder that even withmajor advances in our ability to access and explore the ocean, thedeep sea holds its secrets close,” says expedition leader CindyVan Dover, director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory.“This discovery underscores that new technologies we’redeveloping to explore the deep-sea floor yield not only vitalinformation about the oceans, but also about our history,” saysDavid Eggleston, director of the Center for Marine Sciencesand Technology (CMAST) at NC State and one of the principalinvestigators of the science project.After discovering the shipwreck, Van Dover and Egglestonalerted NOAA’s Marine Heritage Program of their find. The NOAAprogram will now attempt to date and identify the lost ship.The expedition has been focused on exploring the ecology ofdeep-sea methane seeps along the East Coast. Van Dover is aspecialist in the ecology of deep-sea ecosystems that are poweredby chemistry rather than sunlight, and Eggleston studies theecology of organisms that live on the seafloor.“Our accidental find illustrates the rewards—and the challengeand uncertainty—of working in the deep ocean,” Van Dover says.“We discovered a shipwreck but, ironically, the lost mooring wasnever found.”

news//SCHOOLNOWACEK TESTIFIES BEFORE CONGRESS ONIMPACTS OF SEISMIC ACTIVITYON MARINE LIFEDouglas Nowacek, RepassRodgers University AssociateProfessor of ConservationTechnology, testified beforea U.S. House of Representativessubcommittee this summer about theimpacts of seismic activity on whales andother ocean life.His testimony included policy-relevantrecommendations for how to reduce thepotential harm.Nowacek, an expert on marineecology and bioacoustics, presented histestimony to the House Natural ResourcesCommittee’s Subcommittee on Energy andMineral Resources.Seismic surveys associated withunderwater oil and gas exploration are amajor contributor to ocean noise, Nowacektold the committee. Recent technologicaladvances and market forces have ledindustry to extend the geographic scope ofits exploration into once remote areas ofthe oceans, especially at higher latitudesand into deeper waters.In some cases, the loud blastsgenerated by the air guns used to conductthe seismic surveys can be detectedunderwater more than 2,500 miles away.Numerous studies have shown thatthese sound bursts—which can reach260 decibels and may continue, almostnonstop, for weeks or months on end—candisrupt or harm marine life. Whales, forinstance, rely on underwater sound forcommunication and navigation and tofind food and avoid predators. Exposureto repeated loud blasts from a seismicsurvey can mask the sounds they rely onand lead to stress, disorientation, changesin foraging and nursing behaviors, and, inextreme cases, direct physical damage.At 260 decibels, the noise generated byseismic air guns roughly approximates thenoise at “the epicenter of a grenade blastISTOCK PhotoMARINE LAB TAKESTO THE AIR WITHDRONESDuke University has openeda new research and trainingfacility for the use ofunmanned aircraft systems—commonly referred to as drones—inmarine science and conservation.The Marine Conservation EcologyUnmanned Systems Facility is located atthe Duke University Marine Laboratory inBeaufort, N.C.It flew its first operational missionsearlier this month to support Universityof North Carolina researchers who weremapping nesting beaches and at-seaaggregations of endangered olive ridleysea turtles in Costa Rica.In addition to flying research missionsfor private and public partners, theDUKENVIRONMENT12new facility will offer courses, startingin summer 2016, to train students andworking professionals on how to useunmanned aircraft systems (UAS) incoastal research and conservation.It also is developing UAS-centeredmarine science educational outreachprograms for local high school students.“Unmanned aircraft systems have theability to collect large volumes of datafrom even the most remote or extremelocations. They are transforming howwe study and learn about the marineenvironment,” says David Johnston,executive director of the new facility andassistant professor of the practice ofmarine conservation ecology at Duke’sNicholas School.“Given the breadth of marine scienceexpertise concentrated at universityand government labs in eastern NorthCarolina, we believe there is significantopportunity for us to work together andestablish our region as a global leaderin the development and use of this newtechnology for research,” Johnston says.Drones can be used for a wide arrayof difficult or dangerous researchand conservation jobs, he says. Theseinclude identifying and analyzingmarine debris in remote locations;monitoring protected and endangeredspecies and their habitats; assessingfisheries stocks; monitoring the effects

Photo by Scott Taylorof climate change, coastal erosionand sea-level rise; and supportingemergency responses to marine animalentanglements or strandings and othermarine crises.“The facility’s new education programwill provide students and professionalswith the basic skills and knowledgeneeded to achieve state and FAAcertification, and operate unmannedaircraft systems safely and effectivelyin marine environments,” says programmanager and retired U.S. Air Force Col.Everette Newton.Skills covered in the course will includeflight planning, mission execution,proposed the adoption of a new “morerealistic” metric for establishing ascientifically based threshold at whichharm—short-term and cumulative—may occur.He recommended that morecomprehensive monitoring of regionalmarine populations be required before newseismic surveys can take place, and

Karen Kirchof, Assistant Dean, Career Services Sherri Nevius, Assistant Dean, Executive and Distance Learning Programs Cynthia Peters, Assistant Dean, Academic and . Nicholas School of the Environment Duke University Box 90328 Durham, North Carolina 27708-0328, USA Tel 919.613.8004 Fax 919.613.8719 nicholas.duke.edu 22