Missing the (Tipping) Point: The Role of Climate Tipping Points on Public Risk Perceptions in Norway

Nadeau, Christina; Milkoreit, Manjana; Eriksen, Thomas Hylland; Hessen, Dag Olav

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23

Preprints

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23

Preprints

04 Sep 2023

| 04 Sep 2023

Status: a revised version of this preprint was accepted for the journal ESD and is expected to appear here in due course.

Missing the (Tipping) Point: The Role of Climate Tipping Points on Public Risk Perceptions in Norway

Christina Nadeau, Manjana Milkoreit, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Dag Olav Hessen

Abstract. Climate tipping points are a topic of growing interest in climate research as well as a frequent communication tool in the media to warn of dangerous climate change. Despite indications that several climate tipping points may be triggered within the Paris Agreement temperature range of 1.5 °C to well below 2 °C warming above pre-industrial levels, there is limited understanding of the level of public understanding of climate tipping points, the effects this knowledge may have on perceptions of risk related to climate change, and the corresponding behavioural and policy support implications. The emerging scholarship on learning, communication, and risk perceptions related to climate tipping points provides confounding evidence regarding the psychological and behavioural effects of information about climate tipping points. It remains unknown whether and under what conditions this knowledge increases concern, urgency perceptions and action intentions, or whether it might overwhelm audiences, inducing fatalism and withdrawal from public engagement. In this study, we assess the current state of knowledge about climate tipping points among Norwegians using a nationally representative survey. We study the comparative effects of communicating about climate tipping points and climate change more generally on risk perceptions among participants with a survey-embedded experiment. We find low levels of knowledge regarding climate tipping points (<20 %). Information about tipping points had somewhat stronger effects on participants’ risk perceptions compared to general information about climate change, moderately increasing concern. We discuss our findings, and the implications, and suggest directions for further research.

Received: 27 Jul 2023 – Discussion started: 04 Sep 2023

Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this preprint. The responsibility to include appropriate place names lies with the authors.

Download & links

Christina Nadeau, Manjana Milkoreit, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Dag Olav Hessen

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on esd-2023-23', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Sep 2023
1. General comments
This manuscript examines the current state of knowledge around climate tipping points in the general population of Norway. The two research questions raised in the manuscript are highly relevant and require urgent answers. The methodology that is used to address the research questions is principally solid. A major strength of the study is the large and diverse sample that has been recruited. The results of the study appear to be quite informative. In some ways, the present findings may even help understand previous findings in the field. Thus, the present research has the potential to make a significant contribution to this emerging research area.
However, in the current form, it is difficult to fully assess the quality of the manuscript and the underlying research given that critical information on the experimental treatment, questionnaire, codebook, and the data is missing. Some sections of the manuscript seem half-finished (e.g., some headers and sentences appear twice). There are also plenty of unclear statements and formatting errors. I hope the following comments will help the authors improve the manuscript.
2. Specific comments
Introduction
Lines 28-30: “Among the many reasons for his [sic!] inadequate response to the climate challenge (Stoddard 2021), public risk perceptions and the corresponding support for climate action have been paramount.” First of all, I would not use the term ‘paramount’ – other factors can be considered as equally important as policy support and risk perceptions. Secondly, if the authors wish to invoke the concept of policy support, then I would encourage them to explain the interrelationships between policy adaption, policy support, and public perceptions of climate change more clearly while citing recent sources such as Yeganeh et al. (2020) and Bergquist et al. (2022).

Lines 30-33: “[Lenton et al. (2008] argued that the persistent lack of climate urgency, i.e., insufficiently high-risk perceptions, stems from a “false sense of security” (p. 1792) founded in smooth, gradual projections of climate change.” Lenton et al. (2008) merely say that “Society may [!] be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change” (p. 1792). The ‘may’ should be included in the indirect citation as well -> may stem from… Aside from this, I encourage the authors to be more careful when invoking concepts such as risk and urgency (not to equate them). A person who perceives climate change as a significant threat may not necessarily perceive it as an urgent threat. Communicating the risks associated with climate tipping points may affect both types of perceptions. This could be further explored in the introduction or discussion section.

Literature review
Sections 2.1 and 2.2 contain a lot of information, not all of which is relevant to the focus of the present study. The sections could be shortened to create a more consistent and clear narrative structure. For instance, when the tipping point risk characteristics are explained, the authors should focus on the main points; each of the characteristics could be explained in only three or four sentences. To structure this section, it could also help to first highlight that the reorganization/state shift is the focal process and the remaining characteristics merely describe how this process unfolds (i.e., in a nonlinear, potentially abrupt fashion) and what it entails (i.e., potential for severe, long-term impacts…).

This brings me to the next point: there is not a clear consensus as to whether ‘irreversibility’ should be considered a CTP characteristic (e.g., Armstrong McKay et al., 2022). After all, irreversibility is a high standard that is extremely difficult to prove. The authors acknowledge this in some parts of the manuscript when they use alternative terms such as ‘limited reversibility’ and ‘irreversible at human timescales’. For reasons of consistency, I would choose a single term, perhaps limited reversibility (or another term that carries the same meaning). From a risk analysis perspective, this can also be framed as a question of controllability: once a tipping point has been crossed, it becomes much more difficult for humans to control exactly how a natural system operates. This is because the regime shift comes with a certain degree of stability/persistence.

Section 2.1: The authors may want to engage with more recent publications from the field of public perceptions of climate change. Importantly, some of these publications show that in many countries climate change is not perceived as a distant risk anymore (e.g., van Valkengoed et al., 2023; I strongly recommend this review).

Sections 2.1-2.3: The summary of the previous literature contains statements that are imprecise and potentially misleading. For instance, the authors state that “[Bellamy and Hulme (2011)] found that climate tipping points increased concern only among participants with an egalitarian value set […]” (lines 196-198). The study that is cited here is a cross-sectional study, not an experimental study. Bellamy and Hulme (2011) merely found that egalitarians were most concerned about climate tipping points. It cannot be concluded that there was an ‘increase’ in concern or any other variable.

In their short summary of the study by van Beek et al. (2022), the authors write that “[van Beek et al. (2022)] observed an increase in concern and perceived seriousness of climate tipping points” (line 190f). However, it should be noted that the changes that van Beek et al. (2022) registered on their quantitative measures of concern and seriousness were nonsignificant. That is, the present summary of van Beek et al. (2022) seems to disregard the quantitative findings and only reports the results from the qualitative analysis.

Line 204f: “[…] a study by Formanski et al. (2022) found no difference between climate risk perceptions related to linear versus non-linear climate change”. Given that the present study is in many ways similar to the Formanski et al. (2022) study – e.g., in terms of the design and the dependent variables (for RQ-2) – it would make sense to briefly describe the methodological approach and explain the main findings of this previous study. In general, I encourage the authors to pay particular attention to the most recent publications in this field that directly relate to their research questions – e.g., Bellamy (2023, -> RQ-1) and Formanski et al. (2022, -> RQ-2).

Methodology
“In part 1a, all participants were asked a series of questions about their climate change risk perceptions” (line 256f). The authors need to provide a list of all questions that were asked here, as well as an explanation for how the responses to these questions were processed/aggregated.

The authors also need to disclose all questions that were part of the “tipping point knowledge test”. In the results section, the authors present statistics about which tipping point characteristics were most frequently identified. However, from the method section, it is not clear which question stimulated these answers. Section 3.1 only states that participants were asked to name an example of a CTP.

Appendix A – which is said to present the stimulus materials (i.e., information packages) – is missing in the document.

Sample composition: “A nationally representative sample was recruited […]” (line 275f). The authors need to specify in which sense the sample is ‘representative’. To me, it looks like the sample is a quota sample, not a probabilistic sample. That would, however, mean that the sample is only representative of the Norwegian general population in terms of selected demographic characteristics (e.g., sex, age, region). If that is the case, the authors need to state this explicitly and provide the quota plan.

Data analysis (knowledge): Is a qualitative categorization necessary? The authors could just present the familiarity ratings and the frequencies for correct/incorrect CTP examples – and then they could probably draw the same conclusions from this data. Yet, this would not require the presentation of a category system. However, if the authors still wish to use a categorization procedure, then I would advise them to avoid the category label “no knowledge” and to use “no demonstrated knowledge” (see Figure 3, p. 13) instead.

Data analysis (risk perception): Instead of conducting separate independent-sample t-tests on the test scores for t1 and t2, it would be better to conduct an ANCOVA on the post-test scores, with the pre-test scores as a covariate. This is an elegant way to test whether there are differences between the experimental groups at the post-test stage while taking the pre-test scores into account. The paired-sample t-tests (from line 383 onwards) can then be presented as simple ‘follow-up analyses’.

Results
Section 4.1, 4.4: The authors should try to meet the journal article reporting standards for empirical research articles in psychology and social sciences. That is, mean values and standard deviations should be reported for each experimental condition (e.g., in a table), as well as exact p-values and standardized effect sizes.

Section 4.1: The authors find that only a few survey respondents rated the information on climate tipping points as “new to them” (see lines 339-341). It is concluded that this indicates socially desirable responding. However, the authors should keep in mind that the free recall of memorized information is generally more difficult than the recognition of memorized information. It is possible that many survey respondents had previously heard of specific tipping elements but were unable to recall that information during the free recall task (“name an example…”). The authors should therefore not simply dismiss their findings on this measure as socially desirable responding. While social desirability could certainly play a role, the present findings could also be an indication that laypeople may be more aware of CTPs and the consequences of unmitigated climate change than researchers often assume (even though that CTP knowledge might not be highly accessible, as it was only activated through the confrontation with specific stimulus materials). The authors should also consider the possibility that many laypeople may be aware of the catastrophic consequences of unmitigated climate change, but they may not associate these impacts with the concept of tipping points or simply do not know the relevant terminology. This tends to be a principal weakness of studies that only ask people ‘whether they have heard of climate tipping points’. Thus, the present results give us limited insights into laypeople’s expectations about how climate change will unfold in the future. This is yet another reason why the authors need to be cautious in their interpretation of the present results.

Discussion
Lines 418-421: “Our results contrast with recent findings by Formanski et al. (2022) […]. One explanation for this difference might be that Formanski et al focused on a single characteristic of tipping points (non-linearity), which might not be the feature that generates most concern”. The treatment materials by Formanski et al. (2022) also highlighted another feature – severe impacts. However, it is true that other features such as the limited reversibility of the impacts were not explicitly mentioned, which is a valuable observation. At the same time, the authors could also consider the fact that there were other differences in terms of the specificity, scope, and length of the materials - Formanski et al. (2022) acknowledged that the length and simplicity of the materials could explain their null findings. A simple reframing of climate change as a dynamic phenomenon (with the help of the CTP concept) may not be enough to increase concern; yet the current study indicates that a more elaborate discussion of CTPs and the associated risk characteristics could help!

Lines 426-429: “We did not observe any effect of information of climate tipping points on beliefs about whether or not it is too late to act on climate change. This could be attributed to the public's tendency to downplay the seriousness of these risks due to certain cognitive biases, and that systematic risk associated with climate tipping points pose unique learning challenges that is not easily grasped by participants”. First of all, the authors could point out that the null finding on this item is consistent with the results that Formanski et al. (2022) report for the dependent variable ‘efficacy beliefs’. Secondly, the explanation that the authors offer for the null finding would only seem plausible to me if the text presented to participants had, in some way, suggested that the crossing of multiple CTPs is inevitable – why else would they be prompted to believe that it is too late to act on climate change?

Conclusion
The excurse on social tipping points (from line 475 onwards) comes a bit out of nowhere. The authors may want to consider deleting this part or embed it more deliberately, so that it fits into the conclusion.

3. Technical corrections
“Stoddard (2021)” is missing in the references

Some publications that are listed in the references section are not cited in the text (e.g., Trope & Liberman, 2010)

Authors names -> correct spelling errors (e.g., Russil -> Russill)

Throughout the manuscript the authors frequently use phrases such as “could be affected by climate tipping points” (line 58). And when they introduce the concept in line 35, they state that “Climate tipping points refer to dynamics in the Earth system […]”. Technically, tipping points are not ‘dynamics’ within the climate system – they are thresholds; hence, tipping points do not ‘affect’ countries – only the impacts that the crossing of tipping points has can affect countries. I presume that the authors mean the processes that are initiated by tipping events, not the ‘tipping point’ itself?

The authors use formulations such as “the effects of climate tipping points on” (line 70). I presume that the authors mean the effects of the ‘presentation of’ or ‘exposure to’ information on climate tipping points?

Line 323: “50% indicated little or no familiarity” – in case two categories were combined here, the authors should provide frequencies for each category (“little familiarity” and “no familiarity”)
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christina Nadeau, 08 Nov 2023
  
  On behalf of myself and the other authors of this work, thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript and for providing such detailed comments. We are fortunate to receive such constructive feedback from a reviewer with intimate knowledge of this particular topic. Your comments and recommendations will help us refine and enhance the quality of our manuscript. In response to your insightful suggestions, we are making the following revisions to the manuscript:
  
  First, we will include the supplementary material detailing the survey, codebook etc. in the next submission of the manuscript. This was an oversight, and rightly highlighted as a weakness in the original submission. We will also screen the manuscript for errors and resolve these, such as adding Stoddard (2021) to the reference list, removing the references that are not used in the body of the manuscript, and correcting the spelling errors that you identified.
  
  Lines 28 – 30: We will correct the spelling error and will not use the word paramount in this section to acknowledge the other factors that are equally as important in climate action. We will instead use “played a significant role” or something similar. We will also integrate the work from Yeganeh et al. (2020) and Bergquist et al. (2022) into the manuscript, providing an account of the interrelationships between policy adoption, policy support, and public perceptions of climate change. Thank you for providing resources for us to more effectively communicate this point.
  
  In lines 30-33 in our quotation from Lenton et al (2008), we will include “may” and “may stem from” as it is not the intention of this work to miscommunicate the message Lenton and his team made in 2008. We will also make sure to edit this section so that we do not equate risk and urgency and will make sure to treat them separately. We should indeed explore this in the introduction and discussion section.
  
  We agree with the comments made by all reviewers regarding the length of sections 2.1 and 2.2 on risk-relevant characteristics of climate tipping points. We will shorten the climate tipping point risk characteristics to a few sentences each. Thank you for the recommendation for the structure of section 2.2, which we will implement during the revision process.
  
  Thank you for suggesting the work of Valkengoed et al. (2023), it is indeed important that we address the changing state of psychological distancing and pull this work into our section on climate risk perceptions.
  
  With respect to the focus on irreversibility as a climate tipping point characteristic, we recognise the importance of consistency throughout the manuscript. Given how irreversibility is referred to in the climate system tipping points literature, it would be more accurate to use the term “limited-reversibility on human timescales”> We will make sure to make these changes to the text, and your comment on controllability is extremely relevant and should be integrated into our text and will add significant strength this section on risk relevant characteristics.
  
  We appreciate you highlighting our incorrect statements regarding Bellamy and Hulme’s (2011) work. We will correct this and instead, state that the authors of this work found that egalitarians were most concerned about climate tipping points and that the knowledge about climate tipping points was not found to increase concern in this group.
  
  Regarding the work by van Beek et al. (2022), it was not intentional to disregard the quantitative findings of the study. We will make sure to expand on our mention of their work and include the nonsignificant quantitative findings of concern and seriousness in order to represent the work more accurately and completely. In our reading, van Beek et al. concluded that their qualitative findings provide a better understanding of the effects of their intervention due to the limitations of the quantitative measurements (esp. ceiling effects).
  
  In order to support and lay a good foundation for RQ1 we will pay more closely to Bellamy (2023). We would have done this more thoroughly; this paper was published only a few weeks before we submitted our manuscript which is why it is not referred to more, but this can now be rectified. We will also do the same for RQ2 with Formanski et al. (2022) and include a more detailed comparison of our methodological approach to theirs as well as expand our explanation of the findings.
  
  We will include a list of all questions asked in the survey, the information packages, and other additional materials in the revised submission.
  
  We will add a more detailed description within the methodology section of where we collected the answers for which tipping point characteristics were most frequently identified and examples of climate tipping points.
  
  You raise very important questions about our participants. The description of our sample does more closely match a quota sample, and we will include details about the quota plan in the revised manuscript.
  
  Given the complex reality of states of knowledge and understanding, we would prefer to use the qualitative categorization procedure in our study. However, in light of the scholarship on recall and memory, we recognise that “no knowledge” does not correctly reflect that category. We will change the label to “no demonstrated knowledge” as you suggest. We will add a brief discussion of this issue, which is important for our arguments about the role of knowledge in risk perceptions.
  We will conduct an ANCOVA on the post-test scores in order to strengthen the validity of our findings in the risk perception analysis section and include this in the final manuscript. Additionally, we will add mean values and standard deviations for each experimental condition, as well as exact p-values and standardized effect sizes.
  
  We recognise that there is more to be said about our results in section 4.1 where we find that only a few survey respondents rated the information on climate tipping points as “new” (lines 339-341). We consider these results important as there is a statistical difference between the two groups, but participants may indeed be aware of the potential for catastrophic consequences of unmitigated climate change outside the context of climate tipping points. Presenting these results will require more expansion in the discussion section and this will be added to the manuscript.
  Thank you for sharing your valuable insights into our conclusion. It is important that we highlight why our results differ from the findings from Formanski et al. (2022) and this could be expanded in our manuscript. It is true that the length of the materials and the content could contribute to why the findings are different. Our intervention was also a limiting factor, and we are sceptical that a short text can really help people “understand” the complexity of climate tipping points and their impacts. There is clearly much more work to be done in this field.
  
  There is definitely something to be said about the public's tendency to downplay the seriousness of these risks due to certain cognitive biases. Also, we will expand upon the learning challenges associated with climate tipping points. There are communication challenges associated with climate tipping points within academia, let alone the general public. More work is needed to understand how communication about climate tipping points shapes knowledge and meaning-making in the general public, among academics, and policymakers.
  
  We agree that the mention of social tipping points comes a bit out of nowhere, but feel it is important to include this emerging research here for two reasons. Social tipping is often mentioned in conjunction with climate tipping points, and research on social tipping points tends to be motivated, driven, and framed by the knowledge of climate tipping points. We will consider how we can make this connection more effectively, potentially signposting the link between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ tipping points in the introduction of the manuscript.
  
  We will be clearer in our terminology, especially the difference between a tipping point and the change process associated with the passing of a tipping point. You rightly point out that the impacts of tipping processes will affect countries and not the tipping points themselves. We will correct the statement that climate tipping points are not dynamics, but thresholds in the Earth system and that we are referring to the processes initiated by tipping events and not the climate tipping points themselves. Thank you for pointing out this error as it is important to be as clear as possible when distinguishing climate tipping points from the impacts and processes they set in motion.
  In line 70 we do indeed mean the effects of the exposure to knowledge of climate tipping points; we will correct this instance and other such instances in the manuscript.
  
  We will provide the frequencies of these two categories (“little familiarity” and “no familiarity”) in the manuscript.
  We thank you again for your valuable feedback and believe your comments will significantly improve our manuscript.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on esd-2023-23', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Sep 2023

This paper reports on the findings of a nationally representative survey of citizens in Norway on the topic of climate tipping points. In particular, it seeks to examine the role of knowledge as a foundation for risk perceptions. It finds low awareness of tipping points and that information on climate tipping points increases concern about climate change. The paper is for the most part well written and contributes to a very important topic that, as the authors highlight, is extremely under-researched compared to work on perceptions of climate change more generally. The unprompted elicitation of tipping point knowledge is particularly novel (although not entirely unproblematic), as is the conduct of the study in Norway. It is a pleasure to recommend this paper for publication, pending some minor comments.
The paper provides excellent background on risk perceptions of climate change in general and climate tipping points, as well as on the Norwegian context for the study. The section on risk-relevant characteristics of tipping points, however, seems a little too long. The main points could be made more succinctly.
At the same time, this section also seems a little too prescriptive. It is rightly noted that definitions of climate tipping points are varied, but it would be worth unpacking the divergences in more detail and adopting either a more flexible understanding of the concept, or alternatively being prescriptive about only those features that are common to all climate tipping points. For example, irreversibility is identified as one of the key features (and by the public themselves), but this is in fact not a feature of many climate tipping points, e.g., Arctic sea ice, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, ocean acidification, etc. So, it can be contested as to whether identifying ‘irreversibility’ would contribute towards a ‘correct’ understanding of climate tipping points. In other words, it would be good to see some reflection on the problematic nature of ‘knowledge’ about climate tipping points, and what the implications are for the present (and future) research.
A more minor point is that in some places, notably lines 100 to 106, there are repetitions of the text.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christina Nadeau, 08 Nov 2023
  
  We would like to express our gratitude to you for dedicating your time to reviewing our manuscript and offering us kind and valuable feedback. Your comments help us improve and refine the quality of our research. Taking into account your insightful suggestions, we have made the following revisions to the manuscript:
  We agree that section 2.2 on risk-relevant characteristics of climate tipping points should be shortened while still making the important points we seek to deliver to the reader. It was not our intent to come across as prescriptive in this section, but to identify the risk-relevant features common to climate tipping points in the literature (and based on emerging agreement on tipping point definitions in recent reviews). It is of course important to unpack the divergences within the use of climate tipping points in the literature, while also being clear on what features we wish to highlight in our study. The examples you highlight (Arctic Sea ice, the AMOC ocean acidification) are important in understanding why some elements of the Earth system are classified as climate tipping points and others are not. It is our understanding that Arctic Sea ice has been demoted as a climate tipping point in the latest review (Armstrong McKay et al., 2022), and ocean acidification is only mentioned in the same review as a factor contributing to the die-off of low latitude coral reefs and not as a tipping element independently. We base our selection of the risk-relevant features of climate tipping points on the papers by Lenton et al. (2008) and Armstrong McKay et al. (2022), as well as Milkoreit et al. 2017 and Milkoreit 2022, recognizing that the science on this is advancing constantly.
  Regarding irreversibility, we will use the term “limited-reversibility” on human timescales to more correctly reflect this particular feature in the natural science literature on climate tipping points.
  We agree that there should be reflections on the problematic nature of ‘knowledge’ about climate tipping points and the implications of these for present and future research. We will expand our discussion to explore this in more detail.
  We will remove the text repetition in lines 100 – 106, thank you for highlighting this error.
  Again, thank you for your time and recommendations to improve our manuscript. We believe your comments will elevate our work to a higher standard.
  References:
  Lenton, Timothy M., et al. "Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system." Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences 105.6 (2008): 1786-1793.
  Armstrong McKay, David I., et al. "Exceeding 1.5 C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points." Science 377.6611 (2022): eabn7950.
  Milkoreit, Manjana, et al. "Defining tipping points for social-ecological systems scholarship—an interdisciplinary literature review." Environmental Research Letters 13.3 (2018): 033005.
  Milkoreit, Manjana. "Social tipping points everywhere?—Patterns and risks of overuse." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 14.2 (2023): e813.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-AC2
RC3:
'Comment on esd-2023-23', Anonymous Referee #3, 06 Oct 2023

First of all, I think its important to recognise the importance of this work. Understanding climate risk perceptions, specially about tipping points is fundamental to build resilience and reduce shifting vulnerabilities.
With regards to the introduction, it is quite hard to discern what is the research question that the study is exploring. It only comes until line 45-55 (4^th and 5^th paragraph) where readers finally understand the intention of the manuscript. The introduction would significantly benefit if the research question is brought earlier on in the first paragraph and then provide information on what has been done and why it is important to explore climate risk perceptions of tipping points from the public in Norway.
There are three issues I would like to raise on the literature review on climate risk perceptions (section 2). First, I would like to suggest including a brief overview of the literature that studies affective dimensions of climate risk perceptions, as this is another growing field in the literature that significantly influences how individuals perceive climate risks. Second, I don’t understand the difference between section 2.1 and 2.2 that both talk about risk perceptions (it may be a typo). This needs attention. Three, section 2.2 “Risk-relevant Characteristics of Climate Tipping Points” and 2.3 “Perceptions of Climate Tipping Point Risk” are far too long and can be summarised. I think it’s important to remember that the study is about the public in Norway and how they perceive climate risks about tipping points. The literature review and background information should provide enough context for this, so this section can significantly be summarised to be more specific about what readers need to know (think about the audience for this piece and what they may already know).
With regards to the description of the study participants, it would be interesting to provide more information (if possible) to know which audience may have not been able to be represented with this method. It is important to be clear about the limitations of our studies, and this is one where it is likely that some publics within Norway remained invisible (e.g., immigrants, international students, refugees, people with some disability, non-binary, etc.). Also, what is the level of study from study participants?
Where the results of the t-tests independently verified? And if so, how?
Finally, on the conclusions, the manuscript fails to provide meaningful recommendations to other potential audience of this study (e.g., government and academia). If the authors believe that the public in Norway need to know about tipping points, then it would be important to explain this. In other words, the conclusion should describe why this knowledge is necessary and what is needed or recommended to disseminate this knowledge. For example, if people in Norway understand the risks of tipping points, could we expect some sort of change? In what way? This takes me to my next comment. The manuscript should provide future research opportunities and also be clear about the limitations of the study.

Minor comments:
Page 1 line 25: Incorrect factual statements are made in the introduction when referring to “internationally agreed-upon targets”. Nationally determined contributions are the opposite of internationally agreed. The Paris Agreement is based on a bottom-up self-determined approach.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-RC3
- AC3: 'Reply on RC3', Christina Nadeau, 08 Nov 2023
  
  Thank you for dedicating your time to reviewing our manuscript and offering valuable feedback. We sincerely appreciate your efforts in providing detailed comments. Your input is important for improving the quality of our research. With great consideration of your insightful suggestions, we are implementing the following modifications to the manuscript:
  We will integrate the intention of the study and state the research questions more clearly and earlier in the introduction so as to inform the reader of the purpose of the study.
  Thank you for your recommendation regarding the affective dimensions of climate risk perceptions. We had considered this literature in our review, but since our study does not include any measures of affect or emotion, we decided to leave it out of our initial manuscript. However, given the growing importance of this work, and the interdependence of beliefs and emotions, adding a brief comment on effect, could add a layer of depth to our section on climate risk perceptions.
  There was indeed a typo in the manuscript, and this will be rectified in order to make sure that sections 2.1 and 2.2 are more clearly seen as separate and unique sections.
  We do think that sections 2.2 and 2.3 provide important information for the reader but do appreciate that the sections could be summarised somewhat in order to more clearly and concisely get across our main messages.
  The study participants are representative of the Norwegian population with regards to age, gender, and geographic location (quota sample), and we do not have data on other demographic variables of potential interest (e.g., immigrants, international students, refugees, people with some disability, non-binary, etc). We will add information about educational attainment to the participant section of the manuscript as well as a brief discussion of ‘invisibility’ to give a better understanding to the reader about our sample and its limitations in reflecting certain dimensions of diversity.
  We will include information about the t-tests for independent means in the revised manuscript.
  You highlight some very important questions regarding the importance of the knowledge of climate tipping points, in particular: if the general public knows the risks of climate tipping points, could we expect some sort of change? We believe that the increasing profile of climate tipping points in scientific literature and in the media calls for an understanding of how this knowledge is being processed and understood by all people, especially those in government. It is important that we make clear our recommendations and research opportunities surrounding climate tipping points in the social sciences, and we will adjust our conclusion to include a clearer message about this. We will also make clearer the limitations of our study and how future research can address these.
  We will change the phrasing on page 1 line 25 to reflect the fact that the Paris Agreement contains global goals that have been internationally agreed upon, but no (emission) targets.
  Again, thank you for your time and recommendations to improve our manuscript. We believe your comments will lift our work to a higher standard.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-AC3

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on esd-2023-23', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Sep 2023
1. General comments
This manuscript examines the current state of knowledge around climate tipping points in the general population of Norway. The two research questions raised in the manuscript are highly relevant and require urgent answers. The methodology that is used to address the research questions is principally solid. A major strength of the study is the large and diverse sample that has been recruited. The results of the study appear to be quite informative. In some ways, the present findings may even help understand previous findings in the field. Thus, the present research has the potential to make a significant contribution to this emerging research area.
However, in the current form, it is difficult to fully assess the quality of the manuscript and the underlying research given that critical information on the experimental treatment, questionnaire, codebook, and the data is missing. Some sections of the manuscript seem half-finished (e.g., some headers and sentences appear twice). There are also plenty of unclear statements and formatting errors. I hope the following comments will help the authors improve the manuscript.
2. Specific comments
Introduction
Lines 28-30: “Among the many reasons for his [sic!] inadequate response to the climate challenge (Stoddard 2021), public risk perceptions and the corresponding support for climate action have been paramount.” First of all, I would not use the term ‘paramount’ – other factors can be considered as equally important as policy support and risk perceptions. Secondly, if the authors wish to invoke the concept of policy support, then I would encourage them to explain the interrelationships between policy adaption, policy support, and public perceptions of climate change more clearly while citing recent sources such as Yeganeh et al. (2020) and Bergquist et al. (2022).

Lines 30-33: “[Lenton et al. (2008] argued that the persistent lack of climate urgency, i.e., insufficiently high-risk perceptions, stems from a “false sense of security” (p. 1792) founded in smooth, gradual projections of climate change.” Lenton et al. (2008) merely say that “Society may [!] be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change” (p. 1792). The ‘may’ should be included in the indirect citation as well -> may stem from… Aside from this, I encourage the authors to be more careful when invoking concepts such as risk and urgency (not to equate them). A person who perceives climate change as a significant threat may not necessarily perceive it as an urgent threat. Communicating the risks associated with climate tipping points may affect both types of perceptions. This could be further explored in the introduction or discussion section.

Literature review
Sections 2.1 and 2.2 contain a lot of information, not all of which is relevant to the focus of the present study. The sections could be shortened to create a more consistent and clear narrative structure. For instance, when the tipping point risk characteristics are explained, the authors should focus on the main points; each of the characteristics could be explained in only three or four sentences. To structure this section, it could also help to first highlight that the reorganization/state shift is the focal process and the remaining characteristics merely describe how this process unfolds (i.e., in a nonlinear, potentially abrupt fashion) and what it entails (i.e., potential for severe, long-term impacts…).

This brings me to the next point: there is not a clear consensus as to whether ‘irreversibility’ should be considered a CTP characteristic (e.g., Armstrong McKay et al., 2022). After all, irreversibility is a high standard that is extremely difficult to prove. The authors acknowledge this in some parts of the manuscript when they use alternative terms such as ‘limited reversibility’ and ‘irreversible at human timescales’. For reasons of consistency, I would choose a single term, perhaps limited reversibility (or another term that carries the same meaning). From a risk analysis perspective, this can also be framed as a question of controllability: once a tipping point has been crossed, it becomes much more difficult for humans to control exactly how a natural system operates. This is because the regime shift comes with a certain degree of stability/persistence.

Section 2.1: The authors may want to engage with more recent publications from the field of public perceptions of climate change. Importantly, some of these publications show that in many countries climate change is not perceived as a distant risk anymore (e.g., van Valkengoed et al., 2023; I strongly recommend this review).

Sections 2.1-2.3: The summary of the previous literature contains statements that are imprecise and potentially misleading. For instance, the authors state that “[Bellamy and Hulme (2011)] found that climate tipping points increased concern only among participants with an egalitarian value set […]” (lines 196-198). The study that is cited here is a cross-sectional study, not an experimental study. Bellamy and Hulme (2011) merely found that egalitarians were most concerned about climate tipping points. It cannot be concluded that there was an ‘increase’ in concern or any other variable.

In their short summary of the study by van Beek et al. (2022), the authors write that “[van Beek et al. (2022)] observed an increase in concern and perceived seriousness of climate tipping points” (line 190f). However, it should be noted that the changes that van Beek et al. (2022) registered on their quantitative measures of concern and seriousness were nonsignificant. That is, the present summary of van Beek et al. (2022) seems to disregard the quantitative findings and only reports the results from the qualitative analysis.

Line 204f: “[…] a study by Formanski et al. (2022) found no difference between climate risk perceptions related to linear versus non-linear climate change”. Given that the present study is in many ways similar to the Formanski et al. (2022) study – e.g., in terms of the design and the dependent variables (for RQ-2) – it would make sense to briefly describe the methodological approach and explain the main findings of this previous study. In general, I encourage the authors to pay particular attention to the most recent publications in this field that directly relate to their research questions – e.g., Bellamy (2023, -> RQ-1) and Formanski et al. (2022, -> RQ-2).

Methodology
“In part 1a, all participants were asked a series of questions about their climate change risk perceptions” (line 256f). The authors need to provide a list of all questions that were asked here, as well as an explanation for how the responses to these questions were processed/aggregated.

The authors also need to disclose all questions that were part of the “tipping point knowledge test”. In the results section, the authors present statistics about which tipping point characteristics were most frequently identified. However, from the method section, it is not clear which question stimulated these answers. Section 3.1 only states that participants were asked to name an example of a CTP.

Appendix A – which is said to present the stimulus materials (i.e., information packages) – is missing in the document.

Sample composition: “A nationally representative sample was recruited […]” (line 275f). The authors need to specify in which sense the sample is ‘representative’. To me, it looks like the sample is a quota sample, not a probabilistic sample. That would, however, mean that the sample is only representative of the Norwegian general population in terms of selected demographic characteristics (e.g., sex, age, region). If that is the case, the authors need to state this explicitly and provide the quota plan.

Data analysis (knowledge): Is a qualitative categorization necessary? The authors could just present the familiarity ratings and the frequencies for correct/incorrect CTP examples – and then they could probably draw the same conclusions from this data. Yet, this would not require the presentation of a category system. However, if the authors still wish to use a categorization procedure, then I would advise them to avoid the category label “no knowledge” and to use “no demonstrated knowledge” (see Figure 3, p. 13) instead.

Data analysis (risk perception): Instead of conducting separate independent-sample t-tests on the test scores for t1 and t2, it would be better to conduct an ANCOVA on the post-test scores, with the pre-test scores as a covariate. This is an elegant way to test whether there are differences between the experimental groups at the post-test stage while taking the pre-test scores into account. The paired-sample t-tests (from line 383 onwards) can then be presented as simple ‘follow-up analyses’.

Results
Section 4.1, 4.4: The authors should try to meet the journal article reporting standards for empirical research articles in psychology and social sciences. That is, mean values and standard deviations should be reported for each experimental condition (e.g., in a table), as well as exact p-values and standardized effect sizes.

Section 4.1: The authors find that only a few survey respondents rated the information on climate tipping points as “new to them” (see lines 339-341). It is concluded that this indicates socially desirable responding. However, the authors should keep in mind that the free recall of memorized information is generally more difficult than the recognition of memorized information. It is possible that many survey respondents had previously heard of specific tipping elements but were unable to recall that information during the free recall task (“name an example…”). The authors should therefore not simply dismiss their findings on this measure as socially desirable responding. While social desirability could certainly play a role, the present findings could also be an indication that laypeople may be more aware of CTPs and the consequences of unmitigated climate change than researchers often assume (even though that CTP knowledge might not be highly accessible, as it was only activated through the confrontation with specific stimulus materials). The authors should also consider the possibility that many laypeople may be aware of the catastrophic consequences of unmitigated climate change, but they may not associate these impacts with the concept of tipping points or simply do not know the relevant terminology. This tends to be a principal weakness of studies that only ask people ‘whether they have heard of climate tipping points’. Thus, the present results give us limited insights into laypeople’s expectations about how climate change will unfold in the future. This is yet another reason why the authors need to be cautious in their interpretation of the present results.

Discussion
Lines 418-421: “Our results contrast with recent findings by Formanski et al. (2022) […]. One explanation for this difference might be that Formanski et al focused on a single characteristic of tipping points (non-linearity), which might not be the feature that generates most concern”. The treatment materials by Formanski et al. (2022) also highlighted another feature – severe impacts. However, it is true that other features such as the limited reversibility of the impacts were not explicitly mentioned, which is a valuable observation. At the same time, the authors could also consider the fact that there were other differences in terms of the specificity, scope, and length of the materials - Formanski et al. (2022) acknowledged that the length and simplicity of the materials could explain their null findings. A simple reframing of climate change as a dynamic phenomenon (with the help of the CTP concept) may not be enough to increase concern; yet the current study indicates that a more elaborate discussion of CTPs and the associated risk characteristics could help!

Lines 426-429: “We did not observe any effect of information of climate tipping points on beliefs about whether or not it is too late to act on climate change. This could be attributed to the public's tendency to downplay the seriousness of these risks due to certain cognitive biases, and that systematic risk associated with climate tipping points pose unique learning challenges that is not easily grasped by participants”. First of all, the authors could point out that the null finding on this item is consistent with the results that Formanski et al. (2022) report for the dependent variable ‘efficacy beliefs’. Secondly, the explanation that the authors offer for the null finding would only seem plausible to me if the text presented to participants had, in some way, suggested that the crossing of multiple CTPs is inevitable – why else would they be prompted to believe that it is too late to act on climate change?

Conclusion
The excurse on social tipping points (from line 475 onwards) comes a bit out of nowhere. The authors may want to consider deleting this part or embed it more deliberately, so that it fits into the conclusion.

3. Technical corrections
“Stoddard (2021)” is missing in the references

Some publications that are listed in the references section are not cited in the text (e.g., Trope & Liberman, 2010)

Authors names -> correct spelling errors (e.g., Russil -> Russill)

Throughout the manuscript the authors frequently use phrases such as “could be affected by climate tipping points” (line 58). And when they introduce the concept in line 35, they state that “Climate tipping points refer to dynamics in the Earth system […]”. Technically, tipping points are not ‘dynamics’ within the climate system – they are thresholds; hence, tipping points do not ‘affect’ countries – only the impacts that the crossing of tipping points has can affect countries. I presume that the authors mean the processes that are initiated by tipping events, not the ‘tipping point’ itself?

The authors use formulations such as “the effects of climate tipping points on” (line 70). I presume that the authors mean the effects of the ‘presentation of’ or ‘exposure to’ information on climate tipping points?

Line 323: “50% indicated little or no familiarity” – in case two categories were combined here, the authors should provide frequencies for each category (“little familiarity” and “no familiarity”)
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christina Nadeau, 08 Nov 2023
  
  On behalf of myself and the other authors of this work, thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript and for providing such detailed comments. We are fortunate to receive such constructive feedback from a reviewer with intimate knowledge of this particular topic. Your comments and recommendations will help us refine and enhance the quality of our manuscript. In response to your insightful suggestions, we are making the following revisions to the manuscript:
  
  First, we will include the supplementary material detailing the survey, codebook etc. in the next submission of the manuscript. This was an oversight, and rightly highlighted as a weakness in the original submission. We will also screen the manuscript for errors and resolve these, such as adding Stoddard (2021) to the reference list, removing the references that are not used in the body of the manuscript, and correcting the spelling errors that you identified.
  
  Lines 28 – 30: We will correct the spelling error and will not use the word paramount in this section to acknowledge the other factors that are equally as important in climate action. We will instead use “played a significant role” or something similar. We will also integrate the work from Yeganeh et al. (2020) and Bergquist et al. (2022) into the manuscript, providing an account of the interrelationships between policy adoption, policy support, and public perceptions of climate change. Thank you for providing resources for us to more effectively communicate this point.
  
  In lines 30-33 in our quotation from Lenton et al (2008), we will include “may” and “may stem from” as it is not the intention of this work to miscommunicate the message Lenton and his team made in 2008. We will also make sure to edit this section so that we do not equate risk and urgency and will make sure to treat them separately. We should indeed explore this in the introduction and discussion section.
  
  We agree with the comments made by all reviewers regarding the length of sections 2.1 and 2.2 on risk-relevant characteristics of climate tipping points. We will shorten the climate tipping point risk characteristics to a few sentences each. Thank you for the recommendation for the structure of section 2.2, which we will implement during the revision process.
  
  Thank you for suggesting the work of Valkengoed et al. (2023), it is indeed important that we address the changing state of psychological distancing and pull this work into our section on climate risk perceptions.
  
  With respect to the focus on irreversibility as a climate tipping point characteristic, we recognise the importance of consistency throughout the manuscript. Given how irreversibility is referred to in the climate system tipping points literature, it would be more accurate to use the term “limited-reversibility on human timescales”> We will make sure to make these changes to the text, and your comment on controllability is extremely relevant and should be integrated into our text and will add significant strength this section on risk relevant characteristics.
  
  We appreciate you highlighting our incorrect statements regarding Bellamy and Hulme’s (2011) work. We will correct this and instead, state that the authors of this work found that egalitarians were most concerned about climate tipping points and that the knowledge about climate tipping points was not found to increase concern in this group.
  
  Regarding the work by van Beek et al. (2022), it was not intentional to disregard the quantitative findings of the study. We will make sure to expand on our mention of their work and include the nonsignificant quantitative findings of concern and seriousness in order to represent the work more accurately and completely. In our reading, van Beek et al. concluded that their qualitative findings provide a better understanding of the effects of their intervention due to the limitations of the quantitative measurements (esp. ceiling effects).
  
  In order to support and lay a good foundation for RQ1 we will pay more closely to Bellamy (2023). We would have done this more thoroughly; this paper was published only a few weeks before we submitted our manuscript which is why it is not referred to more, but this can now be rectified. We will also do the same for RQ2 with Formanski et al. (2022) and include a more detailed comparison of our methodological approach to theirs as well as expand our explanation of the findings.
  
  We will include a list of all questions asked in the survey, the information packages, and other additional materials in the revised submission.
  
  We will add a more detailed description within the methodology section of where we collected the answers for which tipping point characteristics were most frequently identified and examples of climate tipping points.
  
  You raise very important questions about our participants. The description of our sample does more closely match a quota sample, and we will include details about the quota plan in the revised manuscript.
  
  Given the complex reality of states of knowledge and understanding, we would prefer to use the qualitative categorization procedure in our study. However, in light of the scholarship on recall and memory, we recognise that “no knowledge” does not correctly reflect that category. We will change the label to “no demonstrated knowledge” as you suggest. We will add a brief discussion of this issue, which is important for our arguments about the role of knowledge in risk perceptions.
  We will conduct an ANCOVA on the post-test scores in order to strengthen the validity of our findings in the risk perception analysis section and include this in the final manuscript. Additionally, we will add mean values and standard deviations for each experimental condition, as well as exact p-values and standardized effect sizes.
  
  We recognise that there is more to be said about our results in section 4.1 where we find that only a few survey respondents rated the information on climate tipping points as “new” (lines 339-341). We consider these results important as there is a statistical difference between the two groups, but participants may indeed be aware of the potential for catastrophic consequences of unmitigated climate change outside the context of climate tipping points. Presenting these results will require more expansion in the discussion section and this will be added to the manuscript.
  Thank you for sharing your valuable insights into our conclusion. It is important that we highlight why our results differ from the findings from Formanski et al. (2022) and this could be expanded in our manuscript. It is true that the length of the materials and the content could contribute to why the findings are different. Our intervention was also a limiting factor, and we are sceptical that a short text can really help people “understand” the complexity of climate tipping points and their impacts. There is clearly much more work to be done in this field.
  
  There is definitely something to be said about the public's tendency to downplay the seriousness of these risks due to certain cognitive biases. Also, we will expand upon the learning challenges associated with climate tipping points. There are communication challenges associated with climate tipping points within academia, let alone the general public. More work is needed to understand how communication about climate tipping points shapes knowledge and meaning-making in the general public, among academics, and policymakers.
  
  We agree that the mention of social tipping points comes a bit out of nowhere, but feel it is important to include this emerging research here for two reasons. Social tipping is often mentioned in conjunction with climate tipping points, and research on social tipping points tends to be motivated, driven, and framed by the knowledge of climate tipping points. We will consider how we can make this connection more effectively, potentially signposting the link between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ tipping points in the introduction of the manuscript.
  
  We will be clearer in our terminology, especially the difference between a tipping point and the change process associated with the passing of a tipping point. You rightly point out that the impacts of tipping processes will affect countries and not the tipping points themselves. We will correct the statement that climate tipping points are not dynamics, but thresholds in the Earth system and that we are referring to the processes initiated by tipping events and not the climate tipping points themselves. Thank you for pointing out this error as it is important to be as clear as possible when distinguishing climate tipping points from the impacts and processes they set in motion.
  In line 70 we do indeed mean the effects of the exposure to knowledge of climate tipping points; we will correct this instance and other such instances in the manuscript.
  
  We will provide the frequencies of these two categories (“little familiarity” and “no familiarity”) in the manuscript.
  We thank you again for your valuable feedback and believe your comments will significantly improve our manuscript.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on esd-2023-23', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Sep 2023

This paper reports on the findings of a nationally representative survey of citizens in Norway on the topic of climate tipping points. In particular, it seeks to examine the role of knowledge as a foundation for risk perceptions. It finds low awareness of tipping points and that information on climate tipping points increases concern about climate change. The paper is for the most part well written and contributes to a very important topic that, as the authors highlight, is extremely under-researched compared to work on perceptions of climate change more generally. The unprompted elicitation of tipping point knowledge is particularly novel (although not entirely unproblematic), as is the conduct of the study in Norway. It is a pleasure to recommend this paper for publication, pending some minor comments.
The paper provides excellent background on risk perceptions of climate change in general and climate tipping points, as well as on the Norwegian context for the study. The section on risk-relevant characteristics of tipping points, however, seems a little too long. The main points could be made more succinctly.
At the same time, this section also seems a little too prescriptive. It is rightly noted that definitions of climate tipping points are varied, but it would be worth unpacking the divergences in more detail and adopting either a more flexible understanding of the concept, or alternatively being prescriptive about only those features that are common to all climate tipping points. For example, irreversibility is identified as one of the key features (and by the public themselves), but this is in fact not a feature of many climate tipping points, e.g., Arctic sea ice, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, ocean acidification, etc. So, it can be contested as to whether identifying ‘irreversibility’ would contribute towards a ‘correct’ understanding of climate tipping points. In other words, it would be good to see some reflection on the problematic nature of ‘knowledge’ about climate tipping points, and what the implications are for the present (and future) research.
A more minor point is that in some places, notably lines 100 to 106, there are repetitions of the text.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christina Nadeau, 08 Nov 2023
  
  We would like to express our gratitude to you for dedicating your time to reviewing our manuscript and offering us kind and valuable feedback. Your comments help us improve and refine the quality of our research. Taking into account your insightful suggestions, we have made the following revisions to the manuscript:
  We agree that section 2.2 on risk-relevant characteristics of climate tipping points should be shortened while still making the important points we seek to deliver to the reader. It was not our intent to come across as prescriptive in this section, but to identify the risk-relevant features common to climate tipping points in the literature (and based on emerging agreement on tipping point definitions in recent reviews). It is of course important to unpack the divergences within the use of climate tipping points in the literature, while also being clear on what features we wish to highlight in our study. The examples you highlight (Arctic Sea ice, the AMOC ocean acidification) are important in understanding why some elements of the Earth system are classified as climate tipping points and others are not. It is our understanding that Arctic Sea ice has been demoted as a climate tipping point in the latest review (Armstrong McKay et al., 2022), and ocean acidification is only mentioned in the same review as a factor contributing to the die-off of low latitude coral reefs and not as a tipping element independently. We base our selection of the risk-relevant features of climate tipping points on the papers by Lenton et al. (2008) and Armstrong McKay et al. (2022), as well as Milkoreit et al. 2017 and Milkoreit 2022, recognizing that the science on this is advancing constantly.
  Regarding irreversibility, we will use the term “limited-reversibility” on human timescales to more correctly reflect this particular feature in the natural science literature on climate tipping points.
  We agree that there should be reflections on the problematic nature of ‘knowledge’ about climate tipping points and the implications of these for present and future research. We will expand our discussion to explore this in more detail.
  We will remove the text repetition in lines 100 – 106, thank you for highlighting this error.
  Again, thank you for your time and recommendations to improve our manuscript. We believe your comments will elevate our work to a higher standard.
  References:
  Lenton, Timothy M., et al. "Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system." Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences 105.6 (2008): 1786-1793.
  Armstrong McKay, David I., et al. "Exceeding 1.5 C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points." Science 377.6611 (2022): eabn7950.
  Milkoreit, Manjana, et al. "Defining tipping points for social-ecological systems scholarship—an interdisciplinary literature review." Environmental Research Letters 13.3 (2018): 033005.
  Milkoreit, Manjana. "Social tipping points everywhere?—Patterns and risks of overuse." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 14.2 (2023): e813.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-AC2
RC3:
'Comment on esd-2023-23', Anonymous Referee #3, 06 Oct 2023

First of all, I think its important to recognise the importance of this work. Understanding climate risk perceptions, specially about tipping points is fundamental to build resilience and reduce shifting vulnerabilities.
With regards to the introduction, it is quite hard to discern what is the research question that the study is exploring. It only comes until line 45-55 (4^th and 5^th paragraph) where readers finally understand the intention of the manuscript. The introduction would significantly benefit if the research question is brought earlier on in the first paragraph and then provide information on what has been done and why it is important to explore climate risk perceptions of tipping points from the public in Norway.
There are three issues I would like to raise on the literature review on climate risk perceptions (section 2). First, I would like to suggest including a brief overview of the literature that studies affective dimensions of climate risk perceptions, as this is another growing field in the literature that significantly influences how individuals perceive climate risks. Second, I don’t understand the difference between section 2.1 and 2.2 that both talk about risk perceptions (it may be a typo). This needs attention. Three, section 2.2 “Risk-relevant Characteristics of Climate Tipping Points” and 2.3 “Perceptions of Climate Tipping Point Risk” are far too long and can be summarised. I think it’s important to remember that the study is about the public in Norway and how they perceive climate risks about tipping points. The literature review and background information should provide enough context for this, so this section can significantly be summarised to be more specific about what readers need to know (think about the audience for this piece and what they may already know).
With regards to the description of the study participants, it would be interesting to provide more information (if possible) to know which audience may have not been able to be represented with this method. It is important to be clear about the limitations of our studies, and this is one where it is likely that some publics within Norway remained invisible (e.g., immigrants, international students, refugees, people with some disability, non-binary, etc.). Also, what is the level of study from study participants?
Where the results of the t-tests independently verified? And if so, how?
Finally, on the conclusions, the manuscript fails to provide meaningful recommendations to other potential audience of this study (e.g., government and academia). If the authors believe that the public in Norway need to know about tipping points, then it would be important to explain this. In other words, the conclusion should describe why this knowledge is necessary and what is needed or recommended to disseminate this knowledge. For example, if people in Norway understand the risks of tipping points, could we expect some sort of change? In what way? This takes me to my next comment. The manuscript should provide future research opportunities and also be clear about the limitations of the study.

Minor comments:
Page 1 line 25: Incorrect factual statements are made in the introduction when referring to “internationally agreed-upon targets”. Nationally determined contributions are the opposite of internationally agreed. The Paris Agreement is based on a bottom-up self-determined approach.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-RC3
- AC3: 'Reply on RC3', Christina Nadeau, 08 Nov 2023
  
  Thank you for dedicating your time to reviewing our manuscript and offering valuable feedback. We sincerely appreciate your efforts in providing detailed comments. Your input is important for improving the quality of our research. With great consideration of your insightful suggestions, we are implementing the following modifications to the manuscript:
  We will integrate the intention of the study and state the research questions more clearly and earlier in the introduction so as to inform the reader of the purpose of the study.
  Thank you for your recommendation regarding the affective dimensions of climate risk perceptions. We had considered this literature in our review, but since our study does not include any measures of affect or emotion, we decided to leave it out of our initial manuscript. However, given the growing importance of this work, and the interdependence of beliefs and emotions, adding a brief comment on effect, could add a layer of depth to our section on climate risk perceptions.
  There was indeed a typo in the manuscript, and this will be rectified in order to make sure that sections 2.1 and 2.2 are more clearly seen as separate and unique sections.
  We do think that sections 2.2 and 2.3 provide important information for the reader but do appreciate that the sections could be summarised somewhat in order to more clearly and concisely get across our main messages.
  The study participants are representative of the Norwegian population with regards to age, gender, and geographic location (quota sample), and we do not have data on other demographic variables of potential interest (e.g., immigrants, international students, refugees, people with some disability, non-binary, etc). We will add information about educational attainment to the participant section of the manuscript as well as a brief discussion of ‘invisibility’ to give a better understanding to the reader about our sample and its limitations in reflecting certain dimensions of diversity.
  We will include information about the t-tests for independent means in the revised manuscript.
  You highlight some very important questions regarding the importance of the knowledge of climate tipping points, in particular: if the general public knows the risks of climate tipping points, could we expect some sort of change? We believe that the increasing profile of climate tipping points in scientific literature and in the media calls for an understanding of how this knowledge is being processed and understood by all people, especially those in government. It is important that we make clear our recommendations and research opportunities surrounding climate tipping points in the social sciences, and we will adjust our conclusion to include a clearer message about this. We will also make clearer the limitations of our study and how future research can address these.
  We will change the phrasing on page 1 line 25 to reflect the fact that the Paris Agreement contains global goals that have been internationally agreed upon, but no (emission) targets.
  Again, thank you for your time and recommendations to improve our manuscript. We believe your comments will lift our work to a higher standard.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2023-23-AC3

Christina Nadeau, Manjana Milkoreit, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Dag Olav Hessen

Viewed

Total article views: 992 (including HTML, PDF, and XML)

HTML	PDF	XML	Total	BibTeX	EndNote
767	174	51	992	48	36

HTML: 767
PDF: 174
XML: 51
Total: 992
BibTeX: 48
EndNote: 36

Views and downloads (calculated since 04 Sep 2023)

Month	HTML	PDF	XML	Total
Sep 2023	223	43	11	277
Oct 2023	170	24	8	202
Nov 2023	83	23	15	121
Dec 2023	31	9	1	41
Jan 2024	34	10	2	46
Feb 2024	32	14	5	51
Mar 2024	81	26	3	110
Apr 2024	35	6	3	44
May 2024	28	9	1	38
Jun 2024	50	10	2	62

Cumulative views and downloads (calculated since 04 Sep 2023)

Month	HTML	PDF	XML	Total
Sep 2023	223	43	11	277
Oct 2023	170	24	8	202
Nov 2023	83	23	15	121
Dec 2023	31	9	1	41
Jan 2024	34	10	2	46
Feb 2024	32	14	5	51
Mar 2024	81	26	3	110
Apr 2024	35	6	3	44
May 2024	28	9	1	38
Jun 2024	50	10	2	62

Viewed (geographical distribution)

Total article views: 955 (including HTML, PDF, and XML) Thereof 955 with geography defined and 0 with unknown origin.

Country	#	Views	%

Latest update: 29 Jun 2024

Short summary

We investigated the role of knowledge of climate tipping points on public climate risk perceptions in Norway. We did this by conducting a national survey of a representative sample of the population. We found a low level of public knowledge of climate tipping points amongst our participants and that exposure to knowledge of climate tipping points did affect climate risk perceptions to a limited degree.


Total:	0
HTML:	0
PDF:	0
XML:	0