The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk. A large survey of U.S. adults (N = 1540) found little support for this account. On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.
Unless they're members of a cult.
On the same topic, Environment Canada is trying to tell Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent what Canadians think. At least those Canadians who have drunk too much of Al Gore's AGW koolaid.
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110704/environment-memo-foi-kent-110706/
And Al Gore flunked out of Divinity School. Perfect training for starting a cult
New rhetoric same as the old. Seems the agencies responsible for steering the debate will not now or ever come around to common sense.
bverwey
Probably the greatest gift to modern society would be for someone from the legitimate science community to write "Spotting a Con Job For Dummies".
Five lawyers and two psychologists walk into a "global warming" debate...
richfisher is right on.
I would like actually to see a proper summary of the Global
Warming "science".
Mostly one relies on the word of people directly involved. So when
Hans Tenneke, the former head of KNMI, the Dutch national
meteorological institute, says that it is bunk, I am inclined to
believe him.
The worldview classification used by the paper is kind of strange, in that they set up a "Hierarchical/Egalitarian" axis and an "Individualistic/Communitarian" axis and then proceed to ignore half the categories, e.g. they ignore egalitarian individualists.
Also, according to the table on page 22, less than half the respondents knew that the Earth takes a year to go around the Sun. I'm not sure that their views on climate change will be particularly well-informed...
Your quote continues --
// More importantly, greater scientific literacy and numeracy were associated with greater cultural polarization: Respondents predisposed by their values to dismiss climate change evidence became more dismissive, and those predisposed by their values to credit such evidence more concerned, as science literacy and numeracy increased. We suggest that this evidence reflects a conflict between two levels of rationality: //
So. Ideology trumps educational background. What else is new?
You oughta see the results for engineers who work for oil companies.
OR
// It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. //
Upton Sinclair
One thing which is doing in public interest in "global warming"
is the lack of specificity in the predictions. If one half of a continent
is burning hot and the other half is freezing cold, the mean value
of temperature is not likely to be of much importance.
they may "do" their science poorly, but they lie damn good
@rcp at July 6, 2011 1:47 PM
If that's the case, they probably also don't know that Earth's orbit is elliptical, "causing" winter every year. And the people that promote AGW/CAGW know that they don't know, so they assume that they can get away with any sort of bafflegab.
Where have all the real journalists gone?
Instead of trying to establish reasons why so many people (incomprehensively) refuse to believe what they themselves do, the authors might have done better to actually research the climate change data and evidence and then they would have realized that the skeptics base their opinions on fact.