Faculty Sponsor: Emmanuel Kaparakis
Live Poster Session: Zoom Link Goes Here
Alec Easterby
My name is Alec Easterby, and I am a sophomore at Wesleyan University. I am on the Wesleyan Men’s Varsity Lacrosse Team and am majoring in economics with a plan to minor in data analysis.
Abstract: 2024 and 2025 were reported as the warmest years on record, with Texas experiencing historically high temperatures and severe drought conditions. Prior research finds that exposure to warmer-than-usual periods is associated with increased belief in global warming, however, political ideology has been found to be a consistently greater driver of climate concern than weather exposure. This study examines whether deviations from historical climate conditions in 2024 are associated with levels of climate concern across Texas counties. Data were drawn from county-level datasets on climate change beliefs, weather records, voting data, and socioeconomic conditions for all 254 Texas counties. An OLS regression was used to examine the relationship between change in maximum temperature, GOP vote share, county population, and a composite resilience index on the percentage of county residents reporting being somewhat or very worried about global warming. Results show that both change in maximum temperature (β = 0.918, p < .001) and GOP vote share (β = −41.82, p < .001) are significant predictors of climate worry, with GOP vote share being the strongest predictor in the model. The full model explained 77.7% of the variance in climate worry across Texas counties. These findings suggest that while rising temperatures do have a significant effect on climate concern, political identity is the dominant predictor of climate worry in Texas.