As this heat wave worsens, it's important that the imagery the news uses to illustrate it matches its severity. My colleagues at @yaleclimatecomm.bsky.social recently showed that positive imagery (e.g. people on the beach) reduces how worried individuals are about the heat wave in question.

This is the right image to use for a heat wave; not one of children playing in the fountain or people frolicking on the beach.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 2y ago

A major heat wave is expected to hit much of the eastern U.S. this week. And millions of people across the country are taking medications that may make them more susceptible to heat-related illnesses. Here’s what to know, and how to stay safe during scorching temperatures.

Pam is so essential to ISPS operations that I used to joke that I wanted to graduate before she retired. I made it by two weeks! Congratulations Pam, on a well deserved retirement. And remember to thank your admin staff, without whom we would all be stuck.

Yale ISPS@ispsyale.bsky.social · 2mo ago

If you've ever been to ISPS, you have almost certainly met Pam Greene, who is retiring this week after 35 years: bit.ly/43hvNml

The 6th Annual CAPE Research Conference program is live! Join us virtually July 27-29 at 12:00 PM ET for the latest (and greatest) in American Political Economy (APE) research. Free registration and full schedule: americanpoliticaleconomy.org/events/annual-conference 👇

Annual Conference | Consortium on the American Political Economy

The annual CAPE research conference is a forum for APE-oriented scholars to present work in progress and receive feedback from the broader APE community.

americanpoliticaleconomy.org

Top 10 reasons why Democrats need to talk about climate change now: 🧵

New study: How to communicate the impact of climate change on extreme weather in India, the UK, and the US. Simple messages can help build public understanding that climate change is making extreme weather more likely:

Communicating the Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Weather in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States| Global Environmental Psychology

As climate change increasingly affects the likelihood and severity of extreme weather events such as flooding and heat waves around the world, it is more important than ever to encourage both mitigation and adaptation. As an important step, people need to understand the links between climate change and extreme weather. We conducted a preregistered online randomized experiment with over 10,000 participants across India, the UK, and the USA, three countries that are large annual emitters but have different patterns of extreme weather. We tested the impact of different numerical frames (percentage versus times) and types of extreme weather (heat waves versus flooding) on beliefs that climate change made extreme weather in 2023 more likely. All four message treatments had a significant effect, increasing the percentage of participants who believed climate change made extreme weather more likely by 4.5 to 6.1 percentage points. However, there was no main effect of specific event type or numerical framing. We found message treatments also increased worry about climate change in general, although impact on policy support or information-seeking behavior was limited. The findings of this study contribute to the scarce literature on which messages are effective at communicating extreme weather event attribution.

doi.org

Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality is finally out in the world! Combining nationwide survey evidence, state administrative data, and 111 interviews with patients, physicians & others, it tells the long-overdue story of coverage barriers and their deepening of burden an inequity.

We're hiring a new Managing Director! If you have senior experience in operations, administration, development, communications, and program management, this New Haven-based role may be a good fit - check out the details, and please spread the word:

Employment - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

Browse currently available full-time, post-doctorate, and contract-based jobs at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

climatecommunication.yale.edu

We now have 13 different models with 637 different ensemble members with El Niño forecasts out through at least September 2026. They suggest a best estimate of 2.2C for September; interestingly ECMWF (which was seen as particularly hot when it came out) is right around the middle of the pack:

The current 12-game Jeopardy champion works at an affordable housing finance agency in NJ, and shamed New York for not building more housing: "NJ's doing really well, we're ahead of NY, CT, PA. If you're from one of those states, shame on you, build more housing."

The AI economy looks...really precarious. So @matteowong.bsky.social & I did a bunch of reporting to try to figure out what happens when a potential bubble collides with a war in Iran and a potential resource shortage. The answer is...arguably the most dire stuff i've heard from smart ppl in a while

The AI Boom Wasn’t Built for the Polycrisis

“There are too many ways for it to fail for it not to fail.”

theatlantic.com

Plug-in solar is one of a suite of solar recs that I’d urge CT legislators to adopt. I’d call it the “ @volts.wtf Listener Suite” of policy proposals, as anyone who’s been a long-time listener probably has a set of dream proposals for their state! www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-...

What's the deal with balcony solar?

Cora Stryker joins me to explain how "plug-in" solar took Europe by storm and is finally, via Utah (?), making its way to America.

volts.wtf

Now that my dissertation is submitted (and I caught up on sleep), I'm excited to share I'll be joining @yaleclimatecomm.bsky.social this summer as Deputy Director of Experimental Research! My last three years at YPCCC have been transformative and I'm thrilled to continue our important work.

On Wednesday, I'm giving a virtual talk on why hurricanes (don't) change public opinion on climate change, with applications to causal attribution in political economy. Come by, or DM me for the paper if you're interested and can't make it!

Junior Americanist Workshop Series@jawspolisci.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Join us next Wednesday at 1 pm ET for our next workshop, featuring great work by Daniella Alva and @ericscheuch.bsky.social on public opinion 📈🤔Register and read the papers here: jawspolisci.network

Join us next Wednesday at 1 pm ET for our next workshop, featuring great work by Daniella Alva and @ericscheuch.bsky.social on public opinion 📈🤔Register and read the papers here: jawspolisci.network

Announcing the 2026 Political Economy of Climate and Environment (PECE) Conference! When: 9/2/2026 Where: Harvard CFP: www.pece-conference.org/cambridge-20... Submit your papers or apply to attend: forms.gle/6y7YUoxJ6HTsz4cy8 Sponsored by @weatherheadcenter.bsky.social and the Sala Institute

Thrilled to see our paper abt comparative factional conflict out!

Mike Cowburn@mikecowburn.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🚨🎉 New Publication! 🎉🚨 Measuring Factional Conflict: A Comparative Approach Using Party Leadership Contests w/ @malpas.bsky.social & @blumrm.bsky.social Out now in Party Politics. 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/1354... (🧵 below)

Preston Johnston (MIT) and I are organizing a one-day virtual workshop on home insurance and climate, cosponsored by @cape-team.bsky.social on April 10th, 2026, tailored to grad students or postdocs. Message me with questions or indicate your interest here: forms.gle/ZKVv7wLWpDpP...

My answer after listening to the new @volts.wtf pod: YES! “Special” shout-out for Connecticut folks at the 45 minute mark, where Dave refers to the utility/GOP anti-democratic, utter bad-faith smear campaign against Marissa Gillett open.spotify.com/episode/2MZl...

Are utilities making too much money?

open.spotify.com

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

Here’s the situation in the Twin Cities: Random Bovino-style tear-gassing: Way down Relentless persecution of immigrants: Unchanged Thuggish violence against observers: Way up

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars? These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research. So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

Possibly the best thing we can do (now) to cut emissions and energy bills is build more rooftop solar. My new paper in Climatic Change pins low deployment and racial inequality on high up-front costs: link.springer.com/article/10.1... And this @volts.wtf episode walks through how to fix that!

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 6mo ago

Today on Volts: you've probably heard that rooftop solar is 3X the price in the US that it is in Australia, because of "soft costs." How can we fix that? Today I get into the details of permitting & interconnection with two experts who have devoted their careers to bringing those soft costs down.

So much of classic political science research is woefully underpowered. I'm glad we're slowly coming to our senses.

New article with Jim Gimpel in @politicalgeography.bsky.social on convergence in voting behavior in Vermont & New Hampshire border towns 1970-2020. This one goes out to all the tiny towns in the Northeast Kingdom. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Good bridges make good neighbors: The convergence of political support astride the Connecticut river

Does social and political influence cross geophysical borders that present barriers to human interaction? The natural environment is abundant with fea…

sciencedirect.com

Applications are open for the 2026 American Political Economy Summer Academy for ABDs, postdocs, and junior faculty from May 31 to June 4. Travel, meals, and lodging all provided! www.americanpoliticaleconomy.org/events/summe...

Summer Academy | Consortium on the American Political Economy

The annual CAPE Summer Academy is designed to introduce the APE framework, facilitate in-depth discussions around several key areas within APE, and create opportunities for participants to share work ...

americanpoliticaleconomy.org

Another fantastic @volts.wtf pod on congestion pricing’s success. As the Connecticut DOT considers what to do about traffic congestion in Fairfield County, this is the solution no one wants to talk about—a decongestion toll zone for 95. open.spotify.com/episode/0s37...

NYC's congestion pricing has been running for a year now. How's it doing?

open.spotify.com

Excited to have this out in print! If you are interested in persuasion, and particularly how patterns of persuasion change when effects grow, read on:

Matt Goldberg@mattgoldberg100.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🚨 Now published! 💡Do persuasive messages convince more people, or do they convince people to a larger degree? This is a question of breadth versus depth. We examine this question with 14 unique experiments, 94 messages tested, and 41,265 participants. Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.je... 🧵1/x

The thing about cancer research is that everyone is in favor of it, but the admin has spent 10 months trying to gut it. Please read/share/subscribe

Dave Levitan@davelevitan.bsky.social · 9mo ago

NEW/Exclusive: I obtained a recording of the new National Cancer Institute director's first town hall. A well respected Harvard clinician and researcher, he is now attempting to walk a very fine line. "With regard to morale, I don't know what to tell you other than, I don't think things are bad."