Yes that’s it, the locals are just too stupid to notice global warming because they are conflating it to local temperatures. Let’s remind everyone bloviating about AGW the next time we have a heat wave and record setting local temperatures are recorded, that these local temperatures don’t matter.
Study finds local temperature influences belief in global warming
Columbia Business School’s Center for Decision Sciences’ study depicts how beliefs on global warming are mistakenly influenced by daily temperature
NEW YORK – May 27, 2011 – A study by Columbia Business School Professor Eric Johnson, co-director of the Center for Decision Sciences (http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/decisionsciences) at Columbia Business School, Ye Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Decision Sciences, and Lisa Zaval, a Columbia graduate student in psychology, found that those who thought the current day was warmer than usual were more likely to believe in and feel concern about global warming than those who thought the day was unusually cold. The study, recently featured in Psychological Science, explains why public belief in global warming can fluctuate, since people can base their thinking off of the day’s temperature. The researchers behind this study are also affiliated with Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, CRED (http://www.cred.columbia.edu/).
The team surveyed about 1,200 people in the United States and Australia in three different studies in order to determine their opinions about global warming and whether the temperature on the day of the study was warmer or cooler than usual. Respondents who thought that day was warmer than usual were more concerned about global warming than respondents who thought that day was colder than usual.
“Global warming is so complex, it appears some people are ready to be persuaded by whether their own day is warmer or cooler than usual, rather than think about whether the entire world is becoming warmer or cooler,” said lead author Ye Li. “It is striking that society has spent so much money, time and effort educating people about this issue, yet people are still so easily influenced.”
The study also revealed that respondents were fairly good at knowing if it was unusually hot or cold–perceptions correlated with reality three quarters of the time. While politics, gender and age all had the predicted influences – for instance, on the researchers’ 1-to-4 scale of belief in global warming, Democrats were 1.5 points higher than Republicans – after controlling for the other factors, the researchers found that perceived temperatures still had nearly two-thirds the power as political belief, and six times the power as gender.
These results join a growing body of work that shows how irrelevant environmental information, such as the current weather, can affect judgments and opinions on climate change.
No, honest guv, I don’t have a thermometer, I modelled, honest guv, I did, I modelled it.
“The study, recently featured in Psychological Science, explains why public belief in global warming can fluctuate, since people can base their thinking off of the day’s temperature.”
Psychological Science must be pretty hard up for material to publish. It’s troubling to think that someone in academia thought this was worth $tudying.
I wonder if any of the studies incorporated ‘perceptional offsets’ (I just made that up…good isn’t it?) due to the use of central heating or air-conditioning.
Hmnn that was quite a cool summer…yes but were you using the aircon?
Warmists never cease to amaze me as they twist and turn in their attempts to convince us that they are right about Global Warming…and surely they dug this hole for themselves during the mild winters of the nineties which were incessantly blamed on Global Warming…!
They’re really on the back foot here in Australia right now. Dr Flim Flannery was on the telly last night squirming as he tried to sell his Carbon Tax during what has been one of the coldest weeks in Australia for many years…the only heat around was the radiation from his blushes!
I imagine their results would similar if they were studying belief in the Tooth Fairy or the Loch Ness Monster and be inversely related on whether or not they believed Bill Clinton had sex with that woman.
Uh, duh…….
Oh, so now it’s down to “Weather” you are a female democrat, now, is it? Brother! Oh…Sister! The whole democraphic is skewed. Maybe if you show pictures of cute ursis maritimus cubs, it will temper the response? Is this “preliminary work” to eventually lead to making all data irrelevant, as well…just to confuse the non-issue further? The conditioning experiment is progressing nicely.
News Flash: Scientists Have Discovered That Individual’s Sex Lives Determine Their Perception of Global Orgasm!
This has got to be why I made this post yesterday: http://pindanpost.com/2011/05/27/wheres-the-warming/
And this morning it is another degree colder still…just 7C below May’s average
Pay no attention to that blizzard outside; the Earth is hot, blazing hot. Trust us. Don’t be influenced by what you see and feel. Believe in the models! Believe in Gaia and in Her Profit, Al Gore. Look, see this map with the red area all across the Arctic where there aren’t any thermometers or people to tell us any different? That, that is what you should believe.
/sarc²
“It is striking that society has spent so much money, time and effort educating people… yet people are still so easily influenced.”
What makes the “workers” try to think for themselves? We need some more $$ to study that, too.
I base my understanding of secular trends in climate change on how the ecosystem is responding to stimuli. I live in a very good place for detecting succession, it’s near the Mediterranean / Marine West Coast transition. During the warm 80s and 90s, I was seeing the NW species stressed and meanwhile, things like Yuccas started to show up (I have a few on my land). Ever since the late 90s the trend has reversed. I am seeing more Douglas Fir seedlings, the Coast Live Oaks are going haywire (both from the standpoint of mature tree growth and new seedlings) and the Redwoods look very healthy. I’ve also noticed Steller Jays pushing out Scrub Jays. Raccoons and Deer are increasing.
charles nelson says:
May 27, 2011 at 4:16 pm
I think the obesity epidemic, and epidemics of auto immune diseases are also playing a role. I see more and more people who will break a sweat walking at a moderate pace outside when it’s 68 deg F and 40% RH. These are clear cases of abnormality. People’s personal “climate control” systems are not working well in an increasing number of cases.
Of course, this also sorta backfires on the AGW crowd.
If most of their believers live in cities, they’ll tend to believe in AGW due to the Urban Heat Island psychological effect… whether the globe is warming or not.
Isn’t it funny that the increasing Polar Bear Populations and the increasing arctic ice are both ignoring the models?
Let’s recall that Jim Hansen’s allies in Congress left the council chamber’s windows open before his testimony, during the hot DC summer of 1988, so that the air conditioning would be over taxed and the senators would sweat their way into believing his 99% blarney.
It appears that influencing people with local temperature is OK so long as the perception goes in the right direction.
I wonder how lead author Ye Li is going to feel when the realization finally sinks in that AGW has been a studied misdirection from the word go, and he discovers that he, too, was, “so easily influenced.”
Really?
I though the Alarmists & Media were the ones suffering from that problem…..
Next, they should do a study on whether air conditioning impacts congressional hearings on global warming.
Global warming is so complex, it appears some people are ready to be persuaded by whether their own model shows warmer or cooler than usual, rather than think about whether the entire world is actually becoming warmer or cooler.
“Global warming is so complex, it appears some people are ready to be persuaded by whether their own day is warmer or cooler than usual, rather than think about whether the entire world is becoming warmer or cooler,” said lead author Ye Li.
This is why “C” students manage “A” students (read PhD’s.) And “B” students teach, ughhh, hmmmm… do silly research, draw kindergartenish conclusions, worry, fret…
Global Warming complex? What’s complex about a minuscule gas, necessary for life on earth, causing the globe to warm 100 years from now & causing a great flood… destroying mankind??? Easy to understand!
Immediately followed by the study showing how computer scientists believe their statistics, trends, and computer models….over real life
Doesn’t have to be local temps – the Moscow heatwave scored good points last year. Around the same time there was much less media coverage to the cold waves sweeping north along the eastern flank of the Andes.
“Global warming is so complex,……..said lead author Ye Li. “It is striking that society has spent so much money, time and effort educating people about this issue, yet people are still so easily influenced.”
========
Ummm, the money spent by what you call “society”, came out of my pocket.
My education (into which I still put some “time and effort”) continues, and contrary to your conjecture is not “easily influenced”, maybe it’s time to try another tack.
My home is heated by gas, and my gas bill shows a month-by-month comparison of previous and current consumption – March & April this year were significantly higher than last year’s. That isn’t a “perceptual” thing, it is a hard fact. If there is warming, it certainly isn’t global.
Research published by Penn and Teller confirmed that liberals are 3.75 times more likely to ban substances without understanding the nature and benefit of the substance. Recently, liberals have suffered extreme confusion with contradictory studies by liberal icons. Ralph Nadar has exposed a carcinogenic element in cleansers while Jane Fonda endorses the same carcinogen in L’Oreal cosmetics. The liberal decision on whether or not to ban silica has become a battle celebrity.
Coincidentally, my friend just sent me a link to a study titled
Visceral Fit: While in a Visceral State, Associated States of the World
Seem More Likely
http://pbjlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Risen-Critcher-2011.pdf
which happens to be on the subject.