How do you persuade U.S. political conservatives to back climate action? By getting other conservatives to explain why it's important, it turns out.

A set of online ads by leading conservatives - from a retired Air Force general to a former South Carolina Congressman - succeeded in driving greater concern about the threat among right-learning viewers who saw them, a study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has found.

"I think the big takeaway is ... that it works," said the report's lead author.

That could mean the United States is edging closer to tackling a thorny problem: how to shift public opinion on climate change among a relatively stubborn subset of its population, one prerequisite to driving a faster response to climate change.

How much is that swifter action needed? Just look at the record-smashing deadly heatwave that shocked the normally mild U.S. Pacific Northwest and western Canada and caused hundreds of deaths - or the 50-degree Celsius heat Iraqis are dealing with as power supplies grow unreliable.

A hotter and more volatile planet already is leading to a global surge in lawsuits demanding authorities and companies deal with the threats - and campaigners are winning more than half of those cases.

But efforts to capture more climate-changing carbon dioxide and bury it below ground - to keep global heating from getting further out of control - are in trouble, with the storage capacity now being developed far below what is needed to meet national and corporate net-zero goals, experts warn.

"Worldwide, we're facing a very deep problem," noted Stuart Haszeldine, a carbon capture and storage expert at the University of Edinburgh.

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Laurie

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