climate roundup: supreme court ruling, ECONOMICS REPORT, and hot weather keeps attention on climate change

author: Dana R. Fisher

The figure above presents twitter traffic for #climatechange, #ActOnClimate, and any tweets with the term "climate" for the past month--from 27 May to 25 June 2014.   The Supreme Court Ruling that the EPA can require CO2 emission controls on power plants on the 23rd, the release of the " Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States” report on the 24th, and sustained hot weather around the globe increased attention on the issue once again.  Overall coverage of the climate issue on Twitter is almost as high as when the President released his Clean Power Plan in early June, which is much lower than when the National Climate Assessment was released on May 6 (see 6/3 post for more details).  Nonetheless, Twitter traffic continues to trend much higher than before the National Assessment was released almost two months ago.

--Dana R. Fisher, drfisher@umd.edu