From Yale University and the “I’ll bet this guy never reads RealClimate and WUWT” department:
Climate science literacy unrelated to public acceptance of human-caused global warming
Those who score highest on test are more politically polarized, study finds
Deep public divisions over climate change are unrelated to differences in how well ordinary citizens understand scientific evidence on global warming. Indeed, members of the public who score the highest on a climate-science literacy test are the most politically polarized on whether human activity is causing global temperatures to rise.
These were the principal findings of a Yale-led study published Feb. 5 in the journal Advances in Political Psychology.
In the study, a nationally representative sample of 2,000 U.S. adults completed a test measuring their knowledge of prevailing scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of climate change. They also indicated whether they believed that human activity is responsible for global temperature increases in recent decades.
Consistent with national opinion surveys generally, the study found that the American public is split on the existence of human-caused climate change.
“The study participants were deeply divided along partisan lines, with about 50% saying they do believe in human-caused climate change and 50% saying they don’t,” said Dan Kahan, professor of law and of psychology at Yale Law School and the lead researcher on the study.
Disagreement did not diminish, however, as the study subjects’ climate-literacy test scores increased. On the contrary, “those with the highest scores were even more politically polarized,” Kahan said.
The climate-science literacy test consisted of questions derived from reports issued by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
“Generally speaking,” said Kahan, “both those who accept human-caused climate change and those who don’t displayed very poor comprehension of climate science.” For example, he said, most participants recognized that carbon dioxide increases global temperatures, yet mistakenly indicated that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 are expected to “reduce photosynthesis in plants.”
“If you know carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse gas’ but think it kills the things that live in greenhouses,” Kahan said, “then it’s safe to say you don’t know much about climate science.”
Regardless of whether participants said they accepted that human activity caused climate change, most recognized that scientists expect climate change to create serious environmental dangers, including increased coastal flooding. However, the vast majority of study participants also associated global warming with risks wholly contrary to scientific evidence, such as an increase in the incidence of skin cancer.
Study participants who scored highest on a general-science-literacy test did the best on the study’s climate-literacy test. But contrary to the researchers’ expectations, those participants were not more likely to agree on whether human activity is causing climate change.
“Despite consistently giving the correct answers to climate-literacy questions,” Kahan noted, “the most science literate study participants were even more politically polarized.”
Previous studies, Kahan said, have found the more science-literate members of the public are more polarized. “Nevertheless,” he stated, “one might reasonably have supposed that those individuals must at least differ in their levels of climate-science literacy, maybe because of biased interpretations of the evidence. But apparently that’s not what’s going on.”
Kahan dismissed as “ridiculous” the suggestion that the study implies there is no value in climate education. “We need even more research on how to communicate climate science effectively, so people can make informed individual and collective decisions.”
Nevertheless, Kahan said the results justify reassessing at least some popular common science-communication strategies. “One conclusion,” he stated, “is that it’s misguided to fixate on what percentage of the respondents in an opinion survey say they ‘believe in’ climate change. What people say they believe about global warming is not a measure of how much they know, or even how worried they are about it; it is an expression of their cultural identities.”
According to Kahan, the study also casts doubt on the value of social-marketing campaigns that feature the message that “97% of climate scientists” accept human-caused climate change.
“Republicans and Democrats alike already understand that climate scientists have shown we face huge risks from global warming,” said Kahan. “Just telling people that over and over — something advocacy groups have been spending millions of dollars doing for over a decade — misses the point: Positions on climate change have become symbols of whose side you are on in a cultural conflict divorced from science.”
“That’s what has to change if as a society we are going to make use of all we know about the dangers we face and how to abate them,” he said.
Kahan pointed to the success of local political leaders in southeast Florida in depoliticizing discussions of climate science, an example that is discussed at length in the study.
###
The study was sponsored jointly by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School, the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Skoll Global Threats Fund.
Related: a booklet from the U.S. Government on “climate literacy” here
In other news, a study on studies about climate “science” studied several previous studies and arrived at the inescapable conclusion that we are all doomed.
That’s what I’ve been saying all along.
Inescapable conclusion that we need more studies
“65 percent of all the world’s statistics are made up
right there on the spot
82.4 percent of people believe ’em whether they’re
accurate statistics or not”
Source: click here
I forgot to say, the study on studies also concluded that it’s actually worse than we thought.
Literacy is about being “well read.”
That doesn’t mean being able to recall the politically correct answers to some controversial discussion.
It does now!
As someone who often goes trolling in youtube comments and other low-intelligence venues, I’m astounded by how many people will simply ignore ANYTHING not backed by wikipedia
So far in “climate science” all answers are correct so how could anyone get one wrong?
I presume that the study metric on “Climate Science Literacy” is how familiar the test subject is with what the MSM and the warmistas say that “Climate Science” is.
If your idea of climate science is not “How fast is man made global warming destroying earth’s survivability ?” then they probably consider you to be climate science illiterate.
Frankly, I don’t think climate science has much at all to do with global warming nor with sea level rise and ocean acidification.
Man’s increasing numbers have certainly altered his local environment. Well I can’t find any fig trees to climb for free clean green renewable energy. And If I tried to climb a tree of any sort, like I used to do as a kid, I would likely be hauled off to Jail, or the psych ward.
I spent many a happy time as an eight year old swinging on the very top of a 120 foot pine tree, and enjoying the view of the surroundings, before finally winding up the rubber band engine on my 15 inch balsa stick and rice paper Spitfire model, and launching it from the treetop. I got my rear end whacked every time I did that, but they knew I would be up there again tomorrow anyway.
I think they were just PO’d that they couldn’t come up the tree after me.
And the tree was surrounded by mostly native trees with lower height so there was no way to get a fire engine ladder truck near me. Well I could get down any time I finally decided to climb down.
But you haven’t lived until you have been up a pine tree where you could actually reach up higher than the top of the tree, while hanging on with one hand, and swaying it back and forth.
The tree is gone now, and so is the rest of the forestry plot. All replaced by apartments, that don’t even have a roof you can get on top of to see the sights.
But as I recall, the climate was pretty much the same back then as now.
Oh and yes; there actually was a fig tree that I could and did climb to get free clean green renewable energy from the figs. Well I used to throw them at the next door neighbor as well.
So I expect the climate will still be ok, long after I have launched myself into oblivion from some place or other; well of course in spirit.
g
That was you up in the next tree?
excellent, just excellent
Regardless of the question, it’s always the same answer
There’s no doubt Kahan has made up his mind about “man-made global warming” and says it’s a matter of better communication to resolve a “cultural conflict” that prevents people from seeing it his way. It’s not a cultural conflict. It’s a difference in how people look at the evidence. It is not “settled science” despite what he may think
Well, at least he seems to have objectively analyzed the evidence he gathered. For example, he threw the 97% claim directly to the wolves when his data showed that people well educated in climate science could also dismiss the claims of catastrophic warming, and he didn’t use the “D” word anywhere or indicate that greater knowledge was somehow a problem. Overall, the article shows that’s he’s willing to listen and will at least try to understand the opposing position.
Now, consider this: this is from the press release that got through Yale’s publishing and public relations group. This is the CENSORED, politically acceptable version. I suspect that if he’s willing to commit this much heresy in public that he may be fuming in private.
I hope to see him joining Curry’s group before too much longer. I only hope that if he does so he doesn’t lose his livelyhood. Even if he still sides with the alarmists, the people who will listen and understand are far more moderate in their actions, seeing the harm that these “green” actions can do, and will hold back when the costs become too high. In short, they can still be reasoned with.
I’ve seen Kahan’s work before.
He is a dyed in the wool alarmist and it does affect his ability to analyse his data.
But he seems to be honest. He may be blinkered by his prejudices and over-awed by the authority of the establishment but he is trying to find the truth.
He is not Lewandoesky.
“Republicans and Democrats alike already understand that climate scientists have shown we face huge risks from global warming,” said Kahan”
I would say this is a FAIL.
It is troubling that the study authors are themselves unaware of the very limited risks of our added CO2, and its very real benefits. (plant food and a 1 C warmer is net beneficial)
I wouldn’t use the word “fail”, I’d go right for “lie”.
BINGO!
I once saw a climate survey from Yale, which was suppose to test a persons knowledge on the climate. The problem was many of the answers they (Yale ) deemed correct were wrong. Then again what could one expect from an institution so into AGW.
Yep. At a certain point when you error so greatly in what you believe everything is examined from an incorrect perspective and results in wrong answers.
Salvatore Del Prete
Hence my amusement with the famous 75 out-of-13,500 = 97% survey. I would have answered “yes” to both questions.
Here, how do you answer the biased questions truthfully, without contributing to the biased results of the study they want to create? Oereskes reigns supreme inside the faculties of these type of institutions, doesn’t she?
I’ve stated this previously,
http://www.climateaccess.org/sites/default/files/Kahan_Tragedy%20of%20the%20Risk-Perception%20Commons.pdf
In the original study, CAGW skeptics scored higher than the believers. The difference was small. but significant at the 5% level. I suspect that Kahn wanted to show that skeptics were more ignorant than believers,, and when this didn’t pan out, he publihed some nonsense about polarization. If the study was really about polarization, and not a rationalization for the result of a study showing skeptics more knowledgeable about science-, significant at the 5% level, and math-significant at the 1% level, the natural inclination would be to look for knowledge and polarization on other topics- like free trade policy, defense spending, spending on education, etc.
Well, RA, you’ve got Yale and Harvard. What’d you expect? And I’ve been there – more than euphemistically.
I also wonder the science when so many of the questions start “Climate Scientist believe — “. What kind of answer do you give then. My point is what can they prove.
They based it on: completed a test measuring their knowledge of prevailing scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of climate change. The climate-science literacy test consisted of questions derived from reports issued by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In other words skeptics even understand the garbage scientific beliefs as good as the AGWs. I wonder how good the AGWs would score on a test of reality?
It depends on whether or not you let them use crayons. They may be able to draw a picture that looks like reality, but I don’t think the math will back them up. Will you give partial credit for properly colored landscapes?
They use the equivalent of crayons, computerized climastrology models that they actually believe represents reality.
Crayons? So the error margin would be determined by how well they keep inside the lines?
So if the study questions get the basic science wrong, how on Earth can they determine those whose stand is based on factual scientific data and those whose stand is based on politically manipulated data or outright fiction? I wonder how many of the questions on this survey have the science wrong based on CAGW “science?” I’m going out on a limb and guess all of them. Then I’d like to see the survey sample. They are really pulling out all the stops in the propaganda war… hopefully the last gasps of a dying meme.
Unfortunately the goal will give so much power, money, and influence to the leaders if they win I really doubt they will give up.
Is Climate Change terrible and man-made (please check only one):
❏ Yes
❏ Of Course
❏ You Betcha
❏ Yup
❏ Burn the witches!
Most participants realised that by reading the bumps on the head one could predict the patients personality and general disposition.
“If you know carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse gas’ but think it kills the things that live in greenhouses,” Kahan said, “then it’s safe to say you don’t know much about climate science.”.
So it’s safe to say that Kahan doesn’t know much about climate science. (Greenhouse gases do not act like greenhouses).
… and if you put too much CO2 in a greenhouse it will absolutely have a detrimental effect on the plants there… along with the bacteria, insects and other organisms in said greenhouse.
Greenhouse growers routinely inject CO2 into their greenhouses bringing the ppm up to 1,000 to 1,200 in order to encourage more rapid and robust development.
NielsZoo
Care to quantify that claim a little bit? If I double CO2 levels in a greenhouse, every plant in the greenhouse grows better, faster, taller, with more seeds, stronger limbs, longer stalks, more leaves. NOTHING is harmed.
If I triple CO2 levels in a greenhouse, every plant in the greenhouse grows better, faster, taller, with more seeds, stronger limbs, longer stalks, more leaves. NOTHING is harmed.
If I quadruple CO2 levels in a greenhouse, every plant in the greenhouse grows better, faster, taller, with more seeds, stronger limbs, longer stalks, more leaves. NOTHING IS HARMED.
Now, if I fail to water ANYTHING in the greenhouse, everything (eventually) dies, right? Therefore, water essential for life. Therefore, if I flood the greenhouse – filling it completely to the top window with water, everything should grow better, right?
Your statement is as truthful as my last.
There is NO HARM from CO2 levels below 1200 ppm to ANY life on earth – except politicians and Big Science “scientists” who need political funding to advance Big Government interests of hurting people for power and control.
@RACookPE1978
I believe NielsZoo meant CO2 levels of 40000ppm – that is certainly toxic (well to us anyway)
xyzzy11
So is flooding the greenhouse. But plants need water,right? So if NielsZoo has a point to make, he better not pretend to make it with a flooded greenhouse. Nor burn the greenhouse up with a flamethrower to heat it some winter night.
–xyzzy11
February 23, 2015 at 6:10 pm
@RACookPE1978
I believe NielsZoo meant CO2 levels of 40000ppm – that is certainly toxic (well to us anyway)–
Quote:
“By using the energy of sunlight, plants can convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and oxygen in a process called photosynthesis. As photosynthesis requires sunlight, this process only happens during the day. We often like to think of this as plants `breathing in carbon dioxide and `breathing out oxygen. However, the process is not exactly this simple. Just like animals, plants need to break down carbohydrates into energy. Oxygen is required to do this. Then why do the plants get rid of all the oxygen they produce during photosynthesis? The answer is, they do not. Plants actually hold on to a small amount of the oxygen they produced in photosynthesis and use that oxygen to break down carbohydrates to give them energy.
But what happens at night when there is no sunlight which is needed in photosynthesis? Interestingly, in order to maintain their metabolism and continue respiration at night, plants must absorb oxygen from the air and give off carbon dioxide (which is exactly what animals do). Fortunately for all of us oxygen breathers, plants produce approximately ten times more oxygen during the day that what they consume at night.”
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2860
Question if plants always had sunlight, and therefore did not need to breath oxygen like animals do, then could plants survive with CO2 levels as high as 40000ppm?
If you walk into an atmosphere of CO2 and you’re pulled out you will start breathing with no detrimental affect (other than the effect of the initial deprivation.)
If you walk into an atmosphere of CO and you’re pulled out you will still die without major intervention.
CO2 –> lack of oxygen –> nontoxic
CO –> poison –> toxic
As the toxicologists say: “It is the dose that makes the poison”. Water, salt, food, oxygen, whatever.
Mike Henderson,
Not so straightforward, Mike,
Acidosis will killya and that’s from too much CO2, not too little oxygen.
Mr. Robinson, Cook, xyz’, gb’, et al. My point was to emphasize the stupidity of Kahan’s comment about killing things in greenhouses… and your responses made my point. If you’re going to ask science based questions one should at least make statements that make sense and provide enough data to make a valid determination. You all assumed a set of levels for CO2 that are either helpful, ideal, dangerous or lethal. If asked can CO2 kill everything in a greenhouse I’d probably answer yes as I’d assume that a 100% concentration at 1 atmosphere would be the LD100 for CO2 for most organisms… but I’m not a biologist. There may be somethings that are happy in that environment. TYoke’s comment kind of nailed it… the dose is everything. I was lazy and instead of digging up partial pressure LD levels I just said “too much.”
But it also makes the point about “skeptics” vs. warmists… every response to me in this thread laid out valid scenarios and parameters the individual answers were based on. The basic science is integral to truth… we on the “skeptical” side use it and they warmists don’t appear to place too much value on it.
Y’all, it was a casual comment, aparently intended for humorous effect. Let’s interpret it in the way he clearly meant it without getting too much in detail.
“If people get basic science critically wrong, such as thinking CO2 is a deadly poison at any concentration, then they cannot be said to be knowledgable about climate change”. This is followed by the results, in which a large fraction of people got lots of basic facts wrong. Most of the examples were on the alarmist side, such as belief that climate change will somehow cause mass skin cancer. We’ve all dealt with Chicken Littles here.
If you lie to people about carbon dioxide being a dangerous pollutant, you shouldn’t be surprised to find out that those people think it harms plants. Wouldn’t it be logical to assume a dangerous pollutant is harmful? Maybe people would be more informed about climate science if people stopped lying to them.
Ok I’m wrong and I stand corrected. Won’t make that mistake again.
I wish that these researchers could find out, before they begin a study, what it is that the two sides are actually saying. They always beging with the assumption that one particular side is right, and then frame everything in the context of that side’s position. If they could just find out beforehand what the other side is saying (eg. that CO2 is genuinely a GHG but its effect has been exaggerated) then they could frame and conduct much more meaningful studies.
And you have made the same error… because I’ve never seen any science and repeatable experimental data that validates the “greenhouse” effect. I’ve never seen any science or repeatable experimental data showing that CO2 has anything whatsoever to do with temperature… other than lowering the equilibrium temperature of the average gas mix of in our atmosphere as per Gas Law. That would be a far larger problem than surveys and polls, teaching basic physics and chemistry.
It isn’t whether or not there’s a human component to global warming, (there is), the issue is whether It’s catastrophic or not.
The human component is UHI, at this point in time anyway. Once the geoengineering begins you can be sure that they will be opening Pandoras box.
Advances in political psychology kind of says it all.
Like George Smith above, I too wonder what this twit classes as understanding climate science?
The level of understanding Dan Kahan has shown to date, presumably is his metric.
So anyone who understands the nature of weather and the ever changing cycles of the planet would naturally be defined as ignorant of “climate science” as approved by advanced political psychology.
How about understanding of the scientific method?
Only a pseudo scientist would continually prattle on about what people believe, with respect to science.
Science actually provides a method to bypass belief and advance knowledge.
Something about define your terms and specify your measurements, then what can you prove?
And how can you be disproved?
The CO2 killing plants nonsense, it is not entirely people’s fault if they fall for it. There have been some serious attempts to push this rubbish in trusted science outlets.
http://www.mpg.de/6650626/carbon-dioxide-crop-yields
Lucky people who run commercial greenhouses understand their business, better than scientists who try to dream up scare stories for people who trust them to do their job.
Just calling CO2 a “pollutant” implies that it is harmful to living things, doesn’t it?
Yes
In 2012 the total global anthropogenic CO2 emissions amounted to 35.47 Billion Metric Tons, of which between 50 to 54 percent was absorbed by the oceans and other ecological systems. Very impressive until one considers the Earth’s atmosphere weighs in at 5.5 Quadrillion Metric Tons, the Troposphere 4.4 Quadrillion Metric Tons. If you do the math, 18 Billion / 4.4 Quadrillion you resolve to 4.1 ten thousandths of a percent addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. Now the question is Anthropogenic CO2 abatement worth the almost $1 Billion a day invested in rent seeking, grant chasing, and politicians trolling for Green votes. Of course the IPCC has found this $359 Billion (2012) figure to be deficient and following the IPCC guidelines feel that $700 Billion is more appropriate
‘In 2012 the total global anthropogenic CO2 emissions amounted to 35.47 Billion Metric Tons,’
If the underlying estimates are correct.
I couldn’t find the survey (and wasn’t going to look any harder anyway), but here’s his homepage
http://www.culturalcognition.net/kahan/
if you really have to go there . . .
and
http://www.culturalcognition.net/picture/rollerblading_memorial_day_09.png
one last try (bad internet connection and -18F at the moment)
http://www.culturalcognition.net/picture/rollerblading_memorial_day_09.png?pictureId=17139874&asThumbnail=true&__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1397856850204
It irks me when people conflate Anthropogenic Climate Change with Climate Change and Anthropogenic Global Warming with Global Warming. Climate Change is studied by Paleoclimatologists who work with ice and ocean sediment cores. They are interested in time frames of tens and hundreds of thousands of years and geological epochs. For instance, the climate record shows that there have been 5 interglacial (warm) and 4 glacial (cold) episodes during the current 400,000 record. The current 164 year temperature record is statistically irrelevant.
Kahan left this message at JoNova
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/02/skeptics-know-more-about-climate-science-than-believers/#comment-1683934
which makes it an exceptional survey able to precisely discriminate just what from so what and begs the question – just where is the font of truth and knowledge???
First Dan Kahan says that the study participants were 50/50 on the idea of human-caused climate change. Then he adds, “those with the highest scores were even more politically polarized.” That threw me for a loop. How do you get “even more” polarized than 50/50? Wouldn’t 60/40 or 97/3 be less polarized than 50/50? But then I read on and found a clue to help me understanding their thinking:
So, the reason those with the highest scores were “even more politically polarized” than 50/50 was because their answers were “contrary to the researchers’ expectations.” They expected them to be “more likely” to agree that human activity is causing climate change, but they weren’t. There you have it. Those who disagreed with the researchers were more politically polarized than those who agreed. In the minds of researchers, if the study participants with the highest scores were, for example, 60/40 in disagreement with them, they would be considered more politically polarized than if they were 60/40 in agreement with them.
What these researchers have done is inadvertently admit to having a “political” bias. I’m just surprised that peer review didn’t question the conclusion that disagreeing with researchers can make a subgroup “even more politically polarized” than the main study group that was already 50/50. That’s just impossible (unless you define yourself as being neutral and only those who disagree with you as being polarized. But that would be a completely biased definition).
Louis
The “researchers” bias began in their religion of “I am a university-trained educator trained to be a university-trained educator to doubt and hate ALL religions (except those religions that are politically corrupt (er, correct) in hating christian fundamentalists even more than I do) therfore ALL people who disagree with me ARE hate-filled-racist-bigoted-homophobes-woman-hating-conservative-christian zealots who want to fight the Crusades again to kill innocents for their military-industrial complex capitalist killers …” Therefore, ANYBODY who disagrees with me is a …. (fill in the blank) … and MUST BE an anti-science anti-vaccination anti-evolution christian freak homophobe know-nothing ignorant backwoods hick who can’t spell and is in the pocket of the greedy oil companies who want to kill bambi and boil orcas and dolphins in a coral-ringed pot of black oil ….
They cannot tolerate the thought that anybody who disagrees with them might be more intelligent than they or more informed than they. THAT thought is polarizing!
So, in their biased, hate-filled minds, NOBODY can disagree with “their science” because “their science” is their religion.
+1
If I’m reading the summary correctly, there were two types of questions, “Facts” and “positions”. People who did well on the facts tended to come down strongly on the position questions, while the people who didn’t know as much were sometimes in the gray area. I think you are interpreting this in a far more negative way than you should.
In general, “conservatives” tend to be more rational and practical than leftists, who tend to base their epistemology along ideological and emotional lines. Leftists also tend to be more trusting of government than conservatives.
It seems more compassionate to be a Leftist in college, but when leftists get jobs and see all their hard work being eaten up by taxes, and realize their children and their children’s children will somehow to pay off the $18 TRILLION in national debt and $100+ Trillion in unfunded liabilities, they often realize that perhaps leftist ideologies have a major downside….
That’s why so many leftists blindly believe in CAGW. It sounds compassionate to be for “saving the world”, but if they clearly evaluated the facts behind the CAGW hype, they’d realize that perhaps the CAGW hypothesis isn’t the “settled science” government officials pretend it to be…
“For the vast majority of mankind accept appearances as though they were realities, and are influenced more by those things that seem, than by those things that are.” ~Machiavelli– The Prince.
“…contrary to the researchers’ expectations…”
Why are they predicting a particular expectation, before they’ve even done the research? Isn’t the point of research to enter with an open question and see what results fall out the back end?
I think most researchers have some expectation. You research to confirm or negate that expectation. Give these guys credit – they ADMITTED the results differed, instead of fudging the data or pulling some other crap to hide the results that disagreed with their preconceptions. It’s a step in the right direction.
Anyone see the questions yet? It makes me wonder if their own bias and lack of understanding of REAL climate science led to them slipping in some misinformation or outright lies that are often parroted as “fact”…that skeptics would have answered correctly but been considered “wrong” about.
For instance, it is rare for true believers (including many scientists) to know that there is no significant change in rates of sea level rise or that extreme weather events (outside of record high temperatures) are not occurring more often.
I may have participated in this. It sounds familiar. When I was taking the survey (if this is the same one), I repeatedly chastised the question reader over the questions. They were framed in a manner that directed the participant to validate CAGW in order to answer correctly. After being polite while answering the questions I asked if the call was being recorded. When the answer was yes, I lambasted the poll and the “unknown” entity that had commissioned the poll over the blatantly obvious political goals poorly hidden in the questions and answers.
Do they not understand take we are skeptical of the IPCC’s “correct” answers? If we agreed with the IPCC, there would be no skeptics. Sigh… GK
Translation : How can we effectively indoctrinate scientifically literate skeptics?
Pah! They should educate themselves first before they organise tests for others. They should also root out their own political bias before accusing others of it. I am proudly Left of Centre politically and absolutely reject the IPCC and it’s conclusions. It also angers me to hear bs that only Conservatives share my view.
I too am left of center (centre?) and I share your view. Over here, there are no conservatives anymore – just Republicans and Tea Party – not conservatives. Pretty much they are all wing-nuts working hard to make voting not matter. Beyond sad.
You don’t think, Bubba, that Democrats are diluting the vote by working hard to prevent voter ID requirements while, at the same time, legalizing millions of left-leaning illegal immigrants? I’m not sure I understand what you think Republicans are doing “to make voting not matter.” Nothing they are doing holds a candle to what Democrats are doing to destroy the concept of “one man, one vote.” I’m also not sure why you think the Tea Party is not conservative. Smaller government and lower taxes have always been a conservative platform. Please explain.
Louis –
Yup. I’ll agree that the Tea Party are at least approaching conservative at least in terms of limiting size and taxes. But other values are a problem. I agree that the Democrats have lost it – they’re actually Progressives in my mind, which is an excremental term and they should come out of the closet and show they are Marxists whose intent is to know what is best for us.
I have some slim hopes that Republicans, whatever that is anymore, might just stand up and say enough of this climate agenda crap, but I think it risks too many votes.
Please understand that I “hide” behind a pseudonym because I am a skeptical scientist living in the caustic state of Vermont where Bill and Bernie need us to turn off fossil fuels and wrought the ridgelines with impoverishing renewables . . . the dark side is here.
I see no one in any party with enough courage or hope or knowledge to change the vector.
Did not mean to offend or anger you. Really I am apolitical and quite pissed off that sense has left the building.
After the explanation, Bubba I agree with you.
This is why so many people in the general public can be swayed by political or emotional argument. I would bet that even the “highly literate” in this sample are not really experts. For example, out of 2000 randomly sampled people, how many are medical experts?
Can anyone explain to me how a group can be more polarized than 50-50? Is it even scientifically possible? To me, Kahan’s statements above sound equivalent to claiming to have measured a temperature below absolute zero. It doesn’t make sense.
Louis,
You’re right, of course, and it’s horrible that the illogical expression isn’t jarring to the people that wrote it.
My fellow Canadians have long been keen to declare how “polarized” American politics are. I have often pointed out that there are two parties…
Anyway, I’ve tried to think of possibilities for “more polarized”. Although the dictionaries only want there to be two poles in anything, there are multi-pole vectors in mathematics, apparently. (please no quiz on that!)
There are, of course three and four-pole relays and breakers, so maybe, having more poles might qualify as being somehow more polarized, even though they are less polarized.
He certainly hasn’t tried to disguise his bias.
I like the “send more money line”
” “We need even more research on how to communicate climate science effectively, so people can make informed individual and collective decisions.”
We don’t just need to communicate better, we need to research how to communicate better. And that is a mono-pole view amongst climatologists and associates. Apparently, there are physicists that hypothesize such a thing. (monopoles, I mean)
The purpose of this survey was to show that as knowledge becomes more accurate on climate one’s opinion more closely aligns with opinion of the researchers (or perhaps the corollary) . As it began to emerge that the researchers had failed to make this connection they felt more and more polarized with respect to their grant funders.
I read the booklet. One of many problems with their “science” is that it promotes politics as science:
The overwhelming consensus of Doctors polled in the study agreed that dietary cholesterol is the primary cause of heart attack and stroke. The study concluded that cholesterol intake was linked to early death.
+1
Ah yes! And not only that, but there are hundreds of peer reviewed papers (by REAL Doctors!) that endorse that belief. The cholesterol science is settled!
I have a feeling this one is going to become quite a thorn…
“Positions on climate change have become symbols of whose side you are on in a cultural conflict divorced from science.”
For those highly literate in climate science, this might be exactly backwards. I wonder how many see the climate scare as being similar to other scares in the past, adopted by government as a way to concentrate more power in the hands of the executive?
How many have come to see “climate alarmism” as justification for social engineering as the purpose of government. This is where I part company with modern liberals. I see that government should help people and institutions to adapt to technological and economic change. But I don’t accept that government should drive change according to an ideology or a blueprint. That was what was wrong with communism as implemented by the Soviet Union and other countries.
Nobody knows the best way to drive social and technological change. That’s the best reason for government not trying to do it. Leave it up to the people themselves to know how best to evolve as society.
(Fairly close to Thatcherism, but I am not a Thatcher conservative.)
It’s the role of religion in society to say how everybody should behave and to prescribe a certain way of life. It is one of the reasons Protestantism arose in the first place. Today it is one of the reasons why so few people practice religion in their everyday lives, no matter whether they are Christians (Protestant or Catholic), Jews or Muslims. Look about you and you see that the most fervent members of these religious groups do not shrink from attempting to force their beliefs onto others “even unto death”, as St Paul told us.
I was a social and political liberal at a time when I studied climate merely as a branch of science. But over time, while becoming more socially liberal, I have moved well into the camp of the political conservatives, Not the “Tea Party” kind of conservative, but the kind of conservative once called a “whig”, which included virtually all the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution.
If I voted in a US election I would have to vote for a conservative. And if the only conservative I could find was a GOP conservative who was not a social liberal, I would have to vote GOP. I might fee bad about doing that, but I would do it because that would be the best way to vote against what I see as the express train that is changing the President into a Princeps, heading an imperial presidency.
My vote would be against the religious belief that mankind is a blight upon the Earth. It would be a vote against the Green Express train that would damage not only the American economy, but the economies of most of the world’s countries, including the poorest. It would be a vote against corrupt use of environmental laws to return America to the poor lifestyles of their great-grandparents, when horses were used instead of fossil fuels, except wind and sun are more expensive than horses.
Positions on climate change have become symbols of whose side you are on in a cultural conflict divorced from science?
Your position in the cultural and political conflict may be inspired by whose side you are on in the science of climate change: those who became scientists to save the world from mankind or those who study science to learn how the universe works.
“Positions on climate change have become symbols of whose side you are on in a cultural conflict divorced from science.”
For those highly literate in climate science, this might be exactly backwards. I wonder how many see the climate scare as being similar to other scares in the past, adopted by government as a way to concentrate more power in the hands of the executive branch?
How many have come to see “climate alarmism” as justification for social engineering as the purpose of government. This is where I part company with modern liberals. I see that government must help people and institutions to adapt to technological and economic change. But I don’t accept that government should drive change according to an ideology or a blueprint. That was what was wrong with communism as implemented by the Soviet Union and other countries. Nobody knows the best way to drive social and technological change. That’s the best reason for government not trying to do it.
It’s the role of religion in society to say how everybody should behave and to prescribe a certain way of life. It is one of the reasons Protestantism arose in the first place. Today, it’s one reasons why so few people practice religion in their everyday lives, no matter whether they are Christians (Protestant or Catholic), Jews or Muslims. Look about you and you see that the most fervent members of these religious groups do not shrink from attempting to force their beliefs onto others “even unto death”, as St Paul said.
I was a social and political liberal at a time when I studied climate merely as a branch of science. But over time, while becoming more socially liberal, I have moved well into the camp of the political conservatives. Not the “Tea Party” kind of conservative, but the kind of conservative once called a “whig”, which included virtually all the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution.
If I voted in a US election I would have to vote for a conservative and if the only conservative I could find was a GOP conservative who was not a social liberal, I would have to vote GOP. I might fee bad about doing that, but I would do it because that would be the best way to vote against what I see as the express train that is changing the President into a Princeps, heading an imperial presidency.
My vote would be against the religious belief that mankind is a blight upon the Earth. It would be a vote against this Green Express train that would damage not only the American economy, but the economies of most of the world’s countries, including the poorest. It would be a vote against corrupt use of environmental laws to would return us to the poor lifestyles of their great-grandparents when horses were used instead of fossil fuels.
Positions on climate change have become symbols of whose side you are on in a cultural conflict divorced from science?
Your position in the cultural and political conflict may be inspired by whose side you are on in the science of climate change, those who became scientists to save the world from mankind or those who study science to learn how the universe works.
Frederick Colbourne, you indicate that you have become more politically conservative while becoming more socially liberal at the same time. I’m curious about what you think of the idea of “redistribution of wealth.” Do you see that as a social issue because it supposedly helps the poor? Or do you see it as more of a political issue that affects the economy and limits free enterprise? Alarmists justify carbon taxes as a way to redistribute wealth from industrial nations to developing nations. What is your opinion on that?
Which shows beyond reasonable doubt it’s not a psychological question and the researchers’ expectations were both biased and irrelevant.
On the other hand, if large segments of climate science have actually went down on the slippery slope to become a full fledged pseudoscience, while others are still resisting, that’s exactly the kind of result you should expect.
“have gone down”, obviosly
Why do you have to be so negative? This is a tale about a scientist coming in with a preconceived notion, finding that he was wrong, admitting his error, and SPEAKING IN A PUBLIC FORUM in support of an unpopular position. While it is not a conversion or anything like that, he is speaking well of skeptics: explicitly stating that they are educated and understand what they are saying, and he is tacitly allowing that they may have valid points.
………..measuring their knowledge of prevailing scientific consensus on the causes and consequences of climate change. ………………
Are these supposed to be top universities in the States? Even someone who studied for a social science degree as a hobby in the UK could tell them that if you take the science consensus as the measure then you are biassing the survey. Even a raw British undergraduate social scientist could tell you that you also need to test their knowledge of the arguments against with equal weighting or the survey is junk and fundamentally flawed by making believers seem more educated than they are and opponents less so.
The only education needed is lesson one that science stands or falls on the accuracy of the predictions made by the theory and we were taught that at 11 in the UK in the old days but it is that is no longer the case worldwide. In real science “very likely” means it no longer qualifies as science.and ins merely a subjective opinion. Even engineers expect better than 90% correlation between the computer models and real for our commercial pound shop products and far better for life critical applications.
When will these kooks get it through their thick undereducated graduate heads that we need the following education at a minimum.
We need to see what methods they used to predict “normal” climate as engineers training has always led to to very different answer to that in the publicly available information from the self styled scientists.
Where do we find unaltered data sets. What is the adjustment level to get the actual data. We should assume that the error is twice this as a minimum and ignore the results if the warming is less than a minimum of five times this error plus the random variation.
This warming difference must also relate as predicted by the models when using actual CO2 levels which in turn must be increasing in line with human CO2 , no more and no less, since the lack of the natural systems in the computer natural system makes this assumption inherent.
We need the education on where the climate scientists have got their data on the natural CO2 systems that are the basis of even the facile pathetic oversimplified CO2 dominated climate modes they use as there seems to be next to no research on the topic compared to the lavish funding for them.
Politically I am aligned to the all politicians are at least semi crooks on the make party for those interested.
I also believe the anti hacking laws in the UK were intended to make disclosures they would have made not admissible in court though they are surfacing years later anyway and these same laws are now being abused to suppress awareness of the “adjustments” made in science as happened in the UEA case.
Actually, high levels of CO2 are used by commercial growers to kill pests such as spider mites and whiteflies in greenhouses, whilst at the same time encouraging plant growth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
High CO levels sometimes give “ a crop yield that is two to three times greater”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/6808988/Dutch-aubergine-grower-pipes-carbon-dioxide-into-greenhouses.html
And from the BBC no less….
The concentration of carbon dioxide must be over about 2% (20,000 ppm) before most people are aware of its presence. Above 5%(50,000ppm) CO2 is directly toxic.
Most national Health and Safety bodies set permissible exposure limits for Carbon Dioxide in the workplace at between 5,000 and 10,000 ppm.
The below from Kahan: http://www.climateaccess.org/sites/default/files/Kahan_Tragedy%20of%20the%20Risk-Perception%20Commons.pdf
I’m now convinced. We ARE doomed! But not from CAGW. From American voters that average only 5.9 correct on this test. I can’t be certain, but would be willing to bet a lot that my 6th grade class in the 60’s would have scored 100% on this, or very close. Excluding the laser question – that was very new cutting edge in stuff in the early 60’s, but I think most of us knew it was LIGHT not sound, even then.
Somehow, discussing Milankovitch Cycles seems pointless when less than half of Kahan’s sample know what a “year” is and 1 in 4 do not even know what Copernicus figured out half a millennia ago.
Thanks NEA. Your members have done a swell job of teaching these last 50 years.
Bill Murphy, it can’t be that bad.
Perhaps people didn’t pay attention to the online survey and just clicked through?
These questions are pretty basic. Imagine the scorn that anyone would have if they failed basic questions in the arts:
How many daughters does King Lear have?
In which century did Bach write music?
Who painted Impression: Sunrise?
It would not be socially acceptable to be so unaware of Western culture and people would hide their failings – so it must be true of the scientific basis too.
I’d be surprised if more than 10% of Americans could answer all three questions correctly. It might not even be a majority among college grads. My guess is that most of them might know three Lear daughters, but many would be torn btw the 17th & 18th century (perhaps expressed as 1600s & 1700s) for Bach´s compositions & btw Monet (b. 1840), Manet (1832) & maybe Cezanne (1839) & van Gogh (1853) for the impressionist painting. Hope I’m wrong.
Sadly, I’m afraid it can be that bad, or worse. Milodonharlani’s “10%” above for your arts and lit questions may even be high. Concrete example: Shakespeare is being removed from secondary curriculum in many places in the USA. Reasons given? “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” promotes hallucinogenic drug use. “Romeo and Juliet” promotes teen sex and suicide. “Macbeth” promotes violence. And so on, Ad nauseam. There was even an attempt a few years ago to rewrite Shakespeare to make it “Politically Correct” and thus suitable for the modern classroom. As for Monet and the Impressionist movement in art? Forget it. Most high school students will never hear about it.
Anecdotally, a very long time ago I memorized Hamlet’s solilquy. About 12 years ago I moonlighted for a while as a broadcast engineer at a radio station in Arizona and one day while doing an air check I recited the solilquy (in my best Sir Laurence Olivier voice.) Of the 7 people there at the time, only 2 knew what it was. And one of them was educated in Belgium, not the USA.
Bill,
I am relatively well-self-educated, and I would have had trouble with those three questions. I’m familiar with King Lear & Bach (listened & played) but simply don’t remember such details. But those science questions are more on par with “Who wrote Romeo & Juliet” in the basic subject knowledge required.
As for making Shakespeare PC – they’ve done it with Mark Twain: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-05/entertainment/chi-books-twain-nword_1_new-edition-parents-and-librarians-craig-hotchkiss
And on a similar aside: My (homeschooled) son is doing his first monologue for his drama class – and of course he chose Hamlet’s…
TonyG:
I agree, except since most of them are T&F they’re more like “William Shakespeare wrote Romeo & juliet (T or F)” which means 2000 flat worms in a T maze would have scored ~50%. And a sample of adult citizens only come in ~20% above that? Sad.
Good luck to your son.
Regards
That may be true in the USA but it seems unlikely due to the narrow-minded parochialism of the researchers.
Here in the UK all three political parties – across the divide – are fervent AGW catastrophists (at the top of the parties, at least). Yet research here shows that the more scientifically literate you are the more confident in your sceptical / fearful position.
So, with a different culture and no cultural conflict the same findings are observed. Thus I question the conclusion.
And I note that others above are sceptical despite being left of centre or center.
Mathematically, this is a measure of uncertainty of some hypothesis, in the same sense that the correlation coefficients of randomly correlated sets will range from +1 to -1. That is, if you try to compute the correlation between two sets of vectors which are independent of each other, then you’ll find that half will tend to have the same polarity and the other half will tend to have opposite polarity, on a continuous scale.
What is the hypothesis is being tested here? I think it is obvious that it is the CAGW Hypothesis: man-made CO2 causes climate disasters. Virtually all climate experts, skeptics and warmists alike, understand and accept the concept of greenhouse warming.
So it is the implication of “climate disaster” that is, IMHO, shown to be uncertain here (man-made or otherwise).
The hypothesis was that knowledge of facts about climate would correlate with a support of political efforts to reduce CO2. He did a test on this by having two prongs in the test, facts and position.
When the results came in, he rejected the initial hypothesis and the meat of this article is describing the pattern that emerged: those with strong knowledge of the facts involved came down firmly on one side or the other. People without strong knowlege were more likely to be ambiguous.
Yes, agreed, Kahan tested the political hypothesis, that climate expertise is correlated to politics. But there is another hypothesis, purely scientific, underlying the political hypothesis, which is that man-made CO2 causes climate disasters.
It is the ‘extreme’ uncertainty of this hypothesis which, IMHO, drives the curiously political hypothesis. Furthermore, without this uncertainty, there would be no political alignment of climate expertise according to degree of skepticism.
The buzzwords “raising awareness” and “educate the public” are surefire signs of a con job.
The entire survey evaporates right there.
Kahan being bashed here, I can not really see why. See also:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/01/30/climate-psychologys-consensus-bias/
A defense of Kahan at Judith Curry’s doesn’t absolve him of the systemic bias evident in the quotes I pointed to just above. Now the question is – can this robust bias prevent him from phrasing questions that are intellectually neutral and scientifically sound? Psychologists generally can’t (warning, sweeping generalization ahead) – they often do not understand the science anywhere near well enough to compose surveys about it, let alone interpret the results. So, what’s an observer to do – go through the minutiae of the survey to see if the surveyor actually has a clue,or dustbin the results as likely meaningless and carry on? At the outset, I have a problem with a survey of 350 million having any serious validity when N=2000, regardless of the selection methodology.
+/- 3%
Einstein once said that there are only two limitless things: the universe, and human stupidity, and he’s not sure about the universe.
That pretty much sums up my opinion on this most recent study.
“The study was sponsored jointly by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School, the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Skoll Global Threats Fund.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skoll
“Skoll owns a Tesla Roadster from Tesla Motors, a battery electric sportscar, the third Tesla off the line P2/VINF003.[10] He is also an investor in the company.”
“Skoll is also the founder, owner and chairman of Participant Media (formerly Participant Productions), a Los Angeles based media company he created to fund feature films and documentaries that promote social values while still being commercially viable……Subsequent films have included An Inconvenient Truth…”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2104053/posts
“What’s the bottom line? FactCheck.org is a LEFT-BIASED organization that has sold itself as “Politically NEUTRAL” to America’s voters and media personnel.
The fact is, the ANNENBERG Public Policy Center (APPC), the sponsoring agency behind FastCheck.org, is itself supported by the same foundation, the ANNENBERG FOUNDATION, that Bill Ayers secured the 49.2 million dollars from to create the Chicago ANNENBERG Challenge “philanthropic” organization in which Barack Obama was the founding Chairman of the Board for and Ayers served as the grant writer of and co-Chair of for its two operating arms.”
So to paraphrase
The most scientifically literate and climate literate group disagrees with climate scientists and the study authors.
Therefore they are the most partisan?
And then there are those of us who agree that the dramatic global warming of the last three decades of the 20th century was indeed anthropogenic, but that greenhouse warming theory is wrong and that global warming is over. Where do we fit in?
You are absolutely correct, the dramatic global warming of the last three decades of the 20th century is entirely mann made.
The only place it appears “dramatic” is in the published works of men.
The raw data does not show it.
The tree rings do not know it.
Sea ice grows below it.
Given the kudged mess that the official holders of the historic weather data have made there of, the absurd claim of a significant trend , less than the base data error, we are left with the more broad indicators.
If warming is dramatic and global, then an arctic ice is what?
davidbennettlaing says:
…there are those of us who agree that the dramatic global warming of the last three decades of the 20th century was indeed anthropogenic…
First, there was no “dramatic global warming”. What was observed is the same warming step changes that have occurred repeatedly in the past, before human emissions mattered:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
When you start out with a false premise like that, then you will reach a false conclusion.
db, I used to believe that graph. Now I know the 1910-1940 rate of warming is adjusted downwards to give the trend that is seen. In other words, the rate of unadjusted warming in the instrumental record is higher.
“Generally speaking,” said Kahan, “both those who accept human-caused climate change and those who don’t displayed very poor comprehension of climate science.” For example, he said, most participants recognized that carbon dioxide increases global temperatures, yet mistakenly indicated that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 are expected to “reduce photosynthesis in plants.”
“If you know carbon dioxide is a ‘greenhouse gas’ but think it kills the things that live in greenhouses,” Kahan said, “then it’s safe to say you don’t know much about climate science.”
I stopped reading, basically, after this quote. What type of climate comprehension test would ask a question that had as an answer that carbon dioxide would reduce photosynthesis in plants? Really! If this represents the quality of the questions asked, then I would have to wonder what value the test would be. As for the higher the score the more polarized, well, I would have to wonder how anyone could actually score “high” on climate comprehension and NOT be aware that AGW is bogus. The suggestion is that there are those that scored high that think AGW exists, thus automatically disproves that they have climate comprehension. And as for his final comment regarding greenhouse gases, I wonder how much he “comprehends” climate.
I really hate it when those polarized tendentious buttheads on the opposite side of this political and scientific debate think they have a right to speak for me.
Here’s what I understand. With increasing CO2, we face huge risks of growing more food. We face huge risks of deserts turning greener. IF the planet does warm slightly due to CO2, then we risk a more liveable world, with less need for burning fuel to heat homes, leaving more fuel to more cheaply transport and deliver that food and material to the poorer people in the world, improving their lives. I understand that almost the entirety of dire predictions come from climate models, and those climate models DON’T WORK. I understand climate scientits claim they DO WORK! One of us has to be wrong.
I understand that weather records are incomplete, imperfect, are constantly undergoing adjustment. I understand that the short span of human record-keeping cannot capture the variability of the climate on geologic time scales. I understand the funding is easier when you’re a climate alarmist, and so alarmism is rampant among so-called objective scientists. Among many other things, this is what I understand.
So, in future, Mr. Kahan, please let my words speak for me, and let YOUR words speak for you. Try not to do it like this, however, unless you want to appear ignorant: “I’m not an alarmist. But if we don’t do something about CO2 soon, we could be in big trouble.” – Gavin Schmidt (stitched together from a comment thread on RealClimate)
Climate Change зависит от альбедо Earth и от солнечной активности,CO2 and метан,антропогенный фактор только ускорители Climate Change.Однобокий рост внутреннего ядра http://go.nature.com/w6iks3 деформируя кору изнутри http://shar.es/1njxx0 меняет форму Earth от которой зависит угол падения и отражения солнечных лучей.
I recently took one of these “tests” just for the heck of it. They asked the questions which you know the answers they wanted to hear from how the questions were phrased. At the end had 65% v 50% average but then I believe their “correct” answers were BS. Some times it pays to lie and so much for PC surveys. It is all in how they ask the question and provide the answers in the boxes to tick.