Google has a superb new toy called Google Trends, which allows you to track how often a particular term is searched for on Google (here its .co.uk variant), and how often it crops up in the news. Here’s a little sample which shows the frequency of searches on ‘climate change’ (blue) and ‘global warming’ (red) – high resolution version here.
Annoyingly, Google Trends doesn’t quite manage to label all of the spikes properly. (As far as I can tell, the little spike in early 2005 is Kyoto entering into force; the big spike mid-05 is the Gleneagles G8, combined with Hurricane Katrina; and the increasing incidence of news stories in late 2006 is a combination of Schwarzenegger announcing clean tech plans, media stories about glacial melting and the Gulf Stream, and – above all – the Stern Review.) But what a great tool, all the same.
By the way: David and I are currently working on a research paper for the London Accord, which will be ready in a couple of weeks. It’s designed to look at the social and behavioural trends that really underpin climate change, and to identify ways of getting better at understanding what drives them (as David likes to put it, “we’ve spent millions on understanding the science and technological dimensions of climate change, and about 54p on understanding the social dynamics”). We’ll post it here when it’s ready.
