PCLM-D-24-00242

Political ideology and views toward solar geoengineering in the United States

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Debnath,

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Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?-->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: 1. Intro feels a bit repetitive in places, you should re-read and try to scrub it of saying the same thing multiple times.

2. Page 8 says “These descriptive statistics indicate that over 50% of respondents have never heard about SG”, but that’s not what was stated above; the question above was whether they’ve heard about SG in the last year. One of these is wrong, just need to be a bit more careful in wording. (Same comment throughout; you consistently label the group as “has never heard of SG”, which doesn’t appear to be the question you asked.)

3. The rest of the statistics are a bit challenging to interpret if it is true that half the respondents haven’t heard anything… I don’t know that you need to do anything about that, I just find it fascinating that people are willing to answer questions (e.g. how could one meaningfully have concerns about research, or how big a difference might it make) if one has never heard about it? At this point, the only context the person has is the person asking them the question, and so the results are easily skewed.

4. A side point related to that would be that I don’t actually comprehend how one could meaningfully answer a question about the concerns of research without knowing more about what that research entails. Indeed the question as worded makes no sense at all; just exactly how were you thinking one could conceivably know more about the effects of SG on the atmosphere without doing research? Some people might be having different internal conceptualizations of what “research” means when answering the question (e.g., computer modeling, vs cooling the planet by a degree just to “test” it).

5. Figures could be cleaned up a bit; the angled text doesn’t line up well with the bar chart columns. Also, in plotting these (or in discussing them), worth being explicit about the expected uncertainty from sample size. This is relevant in asserting e.g. whether the drop from 14% to 6.6% means anything; you have this in Fig 4 but worth a quick note earlier.

6. Page 11, 5th last line, I don’t think you need to say “it raises questions” when it is simply a fact that the two preferences differ. However, I think the real underlying issue here is framing this as binaries. An informed conservative who views that SG could contribute to reducing climate risk might view that taking an extra decade or two to decarbonize will be much more efficient economically, but you’re forcing that person to choose between two cases that imply either no investment in reducing emissions, or doing the same emission reduction one would have done had one not known about SG (a reasonable way to interpret your categories). Similarly, the scientific recommendations are typically framed as recommending the latter, but if one parses the arguments, the argument is really mostly against only doing SG and not pursuing emission reduction at all, and one could argue (I might not, but one could) that it is entirely rational to allow a slower rate of emission decline given the existence of SG… the scientific recommendations don’t really get at that distinction, largely IMO for political reasons (to not make it sound to the environmental left that this is an excuse not to cut emissions). Ok, that’s too long-winded for you to do much about, and your questions are the way they are, but I worry that the results of your study are partly a result of losing nuance that the people answering the questions might actually have. If you do do follow-up work, you should try and avoid this sort of either/or line of questions. (This is relevant to the text on p12 as well.)

7. If you’re sufficiently OCD, you could correct your Latex… mostly in the references where things that are supposed to stay capitalized need to be in braces like {US} or {Republican} or {Sweden} or {Yale}. (Also note that one of your papers was in volume 0, issue 0.) Also, abbreviating as in “vs.” with a period makes Latex insert a inter-sentence space (vs “vs.\ “) Ok, that’s enough OCD for now!

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Reviewer #1: No

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Political ideology and views toward solar geoengineering in the United States

PCLM-D-24-00242R1

Dear Dr. Debnath,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Political ideology and views toward solar geoengineering in the United States' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Lily Hsueh, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Arizona State University

Academic Editor, PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

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publication criteria?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?-->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Thanks; nice job!

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what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy

Reviewer #1: No

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