Giving Compass' Take:

• Emma Sarappo reports that a survey found that climate skeptics were unlikely to be swayed to believe in climate change by extreme weather - even if they experienced it themselves.

• How can funders work to support climate action without those who remain unswayed by scientific evidence and personal experience? 

• Learn about climate change communication strategies. 

It often seems like climate denial has a logical end: Once the Earth's climate systems become unpredictable—or at least undeniably weird—everyone will be forced to accept our planet's new reality.

A survey of 3,000 United States adults showed that previous climate beliefs affected how people self-reported extreme weather experiences, like droughts and "polar vortex" disturbances. The study, published in the journal Environmental Communication, asked participants if they believed the Earth was warming (59.2 percent said yes), if they believed the cause was human activity, and if they believed there was strong scientific consensus about it. Then it asked them to self-report their experiences with extreme weather and compared their responses with National Weather Service data for their areas.

It turns out unprecedented weather isn't the teaching moment environmental advocates hoped for. Respondents indicated if they had or had not experienced a severe weather event, like drought or flood, in the last five years—but much of the time, their recollections didn't match up with objective measures. People who consumed liberal media like HuffPost or The Daily Show were more likely to say they'd experienced drought, even if the data showed that their communities hadn't. Their Republican counterparts, meanwhile, under-reported experiencing extreme weather, including the polar vortex of 2014 and 2015. Consumers of conservative news were also less likely to believe climate change was linked to the extreme cold of the polar vortex.

Read the full article about climate skeptics by Emma Sarappo at Pacific Standard.