Study: Skeptics reject charity appeals which blame disasters on climate change

golden-fleece-money-box[1]Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A study by Daniel A. Chapman and Brian Lickel, of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, claims that skeptics are less likely to contribute to a relief appeal for a natural disaster, if the appeal blames the disaster on climate change.

The abstract of the study;

This research examined whether framing a natural disaster as the product of climate change impacts attitudes toward disaster victims and humanitarian relief. Participants (n = 211) read an article about a famine caused by severe droughts, with one condition attributing the droughts to climate change and the other condition made no mention of climate change. All participants then responded to measures of justifications for or against providing aid, attitudes toward the possibility of donating, and climate change beliefs. As predicted, those high in climate change skepticism reported greater justifications for not helping the victims when the disaster was attributed to climate change. Additional moderated mediation analyses showed there was an indirect effect of climate change framing on attitudes toward donating through donation justifications.

Read more: http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/06/15/1948550615590448.abstract

It seems obvious to me why this is happening. Charity is a leap of faith – you give, because you want to help, and because you believe the person asking for your help is credible. Asking a skeptic to help victims of climate change, is a bit like asking someone to help victims of the tooth fairy. It undermines the credibility of your appeal.

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June 17, 2015 6:46 am

Like earthquakes? And tsunamis?

LeeHarvey
Reply to  Jimmy Haigh
June 17, 2015 7:23 am

And volcanoes. Don’t forget volcanoes.

rabbit
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 10:26 am

I’m waiting for the tar sands to be blamed for solar flairs.

Reply to  Jimmy Haigh
June 17, 2015 9:47 pm

Excluding the earthquakes caused by naked coeds that seem to be localized to Malaysia.

schitzree
Reply to  jamesbbkk
June 18, 2015 10:34 am

Must be why we get so few earthquakes here in Indiana. Usually to cold for the coeds to get naked. >¿<

Reply to  jamesbbkk
June 18, 2015 11:35 am

The earth moves here when my wife takes her bra off.
Her (.)(.) ‘s hit the floor

cnxtim
June 17, 2015 6:47 am

The tooth fairy has more integrity than AGW “scientists”
[Please do not insult the integrity and moral character of good, hard-working “tooth faeries” … by comparing them to AGW scientists. .mod]

Gary
Reply to  cnxtim
June 17, 2015 7:07 am

Right. She makes a fair trade right up front and doesn’t try to scare you. Even though she’s sneaking around your room at night in the dark, it’s all very benign, unlike the monsters under the bed or in your anxiety closet. They’re alarmists.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  Gary
June 17, 2015 7:17 am

You must have had a benevolent Tooth Fairy.
I spent my childhood in constant fear of an evil sprite who would come into my room at night and extract my teeth with a pair of Vise Grips.

Stevan Makarevich
Reply to  Gary
June 17, 2015 8:39 am

Please! The tooth fairy was a “he”, not a “she”.
http://www.mommybknowsbest.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Toothfairy-Movie-Shots.jpg

Gary
Reply to  Gary
June 17, 2015 9:14 am

Bruce, not Caitlyn?

Resourceguy
June 17, 2015 6:47 am

Most of the money for supposed climate change disaster recovery is taxpayer fund transfers by government without consent anyway. That is why Jerry Brown attends disaster panel presentations at AGU. Each hour of attendance and press release on the topic is worth about $1 billion in high speed rail funds.

Ben Palmer
Reply to  Resourceguy
June 18, 2015 3:20 am

How about donating some of the grant funds instead of giving it to “Climate Scientists” or the IPCC?

Michael 2
June 17, 2015 6:48 am

It also makes it seem like a get-rich quick scheme, an Al Gore moment.
I have little sympathy if the disaster is a bunch of millionaires losing beach front property at Galveston when they ought not to have built those houses there in the first place.
On the other hand if it is a perfectly natural disaster happening to reasonably honorable people of modest means, then I am generous in charity regardless of what the media foolishly claims about the disaster.

Ken
Reply to  Michael 2
June 17, 2015 7:06 am

In 1994 or 95 I went to a July 4 party in a brand-new $2mm house on Pensacola Beach. Three months later that house was gone.
I live in tornado alley, so some people say that I am no different that the people who build on Gulf of Mexico beaches. But tornadoes are actually very rare and very small. Even though hurricanes are far more rare, when they do come, they cut wide swaths. There is no comparison, IMO. I have lived in tornado alley most of my life and have seen 2 tornadoes. None of them were near my home.
However, the real key to settling the issue of risk management is to let the insurance industry decide on relative risk and to charge accordingly through premiums. In this way, I would not pay premiums for insurance on beachside properties, and the high premiums might dissuade building on beaches.

BFL
Reply to  Ken
June 17, 2015 8:06 am

Except that flood insurance is subsidized heavily by the taxpayer:
“Or, consider the coastal areas in Florida. In a little less than two generations, the population living there increased fourfold, by 10 million people. Coastal exposure now represents 79 percent of all property exposure in the state, with insured value of $2.8 trillion. You’d think that frequent hurricanes would chill the rate of development, right? Not in the slightest: why should they, if insurance is filthy cheap? The path that Hurricane Andrew blazed along the Florida coast in 1992, at the time leaving $25 billion in losses, has been so lushly redeveloped that the same storm would now cause more than double the losses, estimated by a Congressional report at $55 billion. Prediction models of erosion rates expect that over the next 60 years erosion may claim one out of four houses within 500 feet of the U.S. shoreline.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/25/washington-is-encouraging-the-next-hurricane-sandy-by-creating-new-subsidies-for-flood-insurance/
However corruption in some less regulated portions of the insurance industry like with hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York may make some small difference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/nyregion/hurricane-sandy-victims-say-damage-reports-were-altered.html?_r=0
http://www.ibtimes.com/fema-opens-review-every-single-hurricane-sandy-flood-insurance-claim-after-fraud-1844358

knr
Reply to  Ken
June 17, 2015 12:59 pm

Insurance is fear based product , for you do not buy it for what you know it will happen , but because you fear what may happen.
If it therefore very much in its own interest to ‘up the fear factor ‘ and CAGW fits that bill very well, with the added advantage that it is highly unlikely they will ever have to pay out, unlike other areas where there is some risk they may have to.
Trusting the insurance industry over CAGW is like trusting ‘snake oil shipping co’ over the effectiveness of snake oil.

Katherine
Reply to  Michael 2
June 17, 2015 7:45 am

If a charity that’s trying to raise funds to help victims of a natural disaster trots out “global warming” as having caused the disaster or made it worse, I’d have grave doubts about that charity and its administration. If they wave the flag of unproven global warming, how can I be sure they’re not just claiming the funds raised will help the victims of the natural disaster. I’d have to take their word for it, and linking their cause to global warming undermines their credibility. So of course I wouldn’t donate to that charity.

tom s
Reply to  Katherine
June 17, 2015 9:43 am

Yep.

Leonard Lane
Reply to  Katherine
June 17, 2015 11:01 am

Did they study the opposite side? Do those who believe in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) donate more when it is mentioned and less when climate is not mentioned at all in the call for disaster help? Just another study to make skeptics demons and believers saints?

HFB
Reply to  Katherine
June 17, 2015 4:24 pm

As may have happened with the Red Cross and the Haiti earthquake? They appeared to have kept trolling for donations well after they met their goal.

schitzree
Reply to  Katherine
June 18, 2015 11:01 am

Read the paper. I don’t see anywhere that they even considered checking to see if climate faithful are MORE likely to give if the disaster is blamed on climate change.

Thus, not only should climate change skepticism influence the perceptions of whether the cause of the disaster is anthropogenic or not, but it should also have distal (i.e., not logically connected), second-order effects on how they perceive the victims and need for aid following a disaster framed as being caused by climate change.

So they also never even considered whether a skeptic might reject a request for aid made in the name of climate change because they don’t trust those who are trying to collect that aid, rather then that the disaster victims don’t actually need it.

schitzree
Reply to  Katherine
June 18, 2015 11:05 am

Sorry. I read the paper. Wasn’t trying to tell anyone else they need to read it.
Actually just the opposite. DON’T read the paper. It’s a waste of your time >¿<

rishrac
Reply to  Michael 2
June 18, 2015 1:43 pm

Or New Jersey. There’s the beach and a couple of feet above it are houses that are worth a fortune. The taxpayers are also footing the bill for beach replenishment for people who could pay for it themselves. Bottom line is they shouldn’t have built there in the first place. Before politicians became so greedy, there was no building on the ocean side of Rt. 9 and few if any lived at the shore year round. Almost all had a house somewhere else.

Robert Ballard
June 17, 2015 6:51 am

Damn skippy !
I recently was incited to write to the trustees of Boston University regarding the public statements of one of the faculty. I am sure I was not alone as the issue was then put to rest. Don’t spit in my face if you want me to make a donation seems to me to be comically facile.

Ken
June 17, 2015 6:53 am

It’s called marketing. If a relief effort wants to appeal to a broader market, it should leave the political drivel out. Besides, I already give plenty to relief from AGW through my Federal Income Taxes and through the interest I pay (along with the rest of you) on the skyrocketing national debt.
How I decide what charities I give to is my business.

June 17, 2015 6:53 am

How can people base their careers on such crap?

Tom in Florida
Reply to  David Johnson
June 17, 2015 7:00 am

Because they can

ShrNfr
Reply to  Tom in Florida
June 17, 2015 7:40 am

t worked for Gore, didn’t it?

Reply to  Tom in Florida
June 17, 2015 2:42 pm

And isn’t there a shedload of this – ‘because they can’ – career building.
The Climate religion.
But also the governance tribe;
the regulator clade
the Helf n Safety brigade;
[I work in H&S. ALARP is my goal).
ALARP
As
Low
As
Reasonably
Practicable
Hey – folks – see the fourth word: Reasonably
Vitally important – and omitted by some Taliban H&S Freaks, who seek Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
As Low As Possible – which = zero.
Equals no-one does anything (except pay their wage, their bonus, and health insurance . . . . . . . .)
Auto

John W. Garrett
June 17, 2015 6:55 am

I’ll tell you one thing— if these G*dam*d pop-up advertisements in the middle of the text don’t go away soon, I will.
It is getting seriously obnoxious.

spock2009
Reply to  John W. Garrett
June 17, 2015 7:01 am

John: Possibly you should consider one of the browser pop-up blockers available. I use them and don’t seem to have the problem(s) you are experiencing.

Reply to  John W. Garrett
June 17, 2015 7:02 am

Suggest ‘ADBlock Plus’. With Firefox browser, go to Mozilla to add it, not to the AD Block site.

Stevan Makarevich
Reply to  kokoda
June 17, 2015 8:41 am

+1
I installed it a couple of weeks ago after someone recommending it here, and it’s brought back the joy of web surfing of ALL sites!

schitzree
Reply to  kokoda
June 18, 2015 11:07 am

I just read it on my phone. No popups here ^¿^

Brian H
Reply to  kokoda
June 19, 2015 1:30 am

Stephen;
Probably me. I’ve expressed puzzlement at remarks about ads, traced the difference to AdBlocker Plus which I’ve used for years, and recommended it a few times. I’ve limited the comments, though, because the site needs to be paid for somehow, and my modest pensioner donations don’t necessarily carry the freight.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  John W. Garrett
June 17, 2015 7:03 am

What, you’re not in the market for an IUD or a new Hyundai?

MarkW
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 8:36 am

Some of these ads make me want to reach for the nearest IED.

Ernest Bush
Reply to  John W. Garrett
June 17, 2015 10:13 am

If you are using an iMac, I use AdBlock and it cleans up all sites I visit.

Owen in GA
Reply to  John W. Garrett
June 17, 2015 12:07 pm

If it is a reputable product I click on the link. After all, our host get a couple of microbucks per click. If you use adblocker, you get rid of a bit of aggravation, but you deprive our host of a tiny bit of revenue to keep this operation running. Of course if that makes you feel the least bit guilty, there is always the fling funds link to cut out the middle man.

June 17, 2015 7:00 am

Asking a skeptic to help victims of Global Warming.
There, fixed it for you.

TonyL
Reply to  kokoda
June 17, 2015 7:13 am

+1 My thoughts exactly, make them own it.

Reply to  TonyL
June 17, 2015 7:36 am

TonyL…a year ago I sent an email to Heartland after their conference and stated why they should use Global Warming and not Climate Change. Joe Bastardi advocates the same position. Never had a reply from Heartland.

LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 7:09 am

One man’s climate refugee is another man’s dumbass who shouldn’t have built a house on a flood plain.

schitzree
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 18, 2015 11:15 am

Ohhhh, maybe THAT’S why we haven’t seen all the millions of climate refugees. They can’t afford to flee from the climate.
‘For just a dollar a day, you too can help a stranded climate refugee resettle to Siberia.’

LeeHarvey
Reply to  schitzree
June 18, 2015 11:57 am

If a dollar a day would get the bleeding hearts of the world to STFU, I’d probably be willing to pay it.
Things being what they are, I say that if the economics of one’s life make it a resonable choice to settle in a shanty on the beach, then there should be no real impediment to heading upslope in the event of a succession of unusually high tides.

Taphonomic
June 17, 2015 7:14 am

I used to be a member of the Nature Conservancy. I liked the way they did things. Instead of complaining about pollution, trying to get BS laws passed, or staging protests, they would use their money to buy land to protect it. I first encountered this when I went fly fishing on the McCloud River. They had bought the land to keep it from being developed but they still allowed people to fish it.
However, years after I joined, they jumped onto the AGW bandwagon and their monthly magazine soon became all AGW, all the time. “Help us protect this piece of land from the ravages of global warming. Send money!”
I sent their president a resignation letter explaining why I was terminating my membership.

Reply to  Taphonomic
June 17, 2015 7:38 am

If more people knew and followed your course, it would help to change the political advocacy.

schitzree
Reply to  kokoda
June 18, 2015 11:25 am

It is happening, albeit slowly. And eventually we’ll get to a point that the number of voters they loose will exceed the number they gain from climate faithful.
At which point they’ll all be loudly declaring that THEY never fell for the scam. Just look at their voting record. THEY never voted for carbon taxes or prices or whatever. Hell, it’ll even be true for most of them. ^¿^

Scott M
Reply to  Taphonomic
June 17, 2015 7:44 am

They are likely receiving more than 10,000x your subscription fees to keep the “advertising for GW” coming, We know there are huge sums of money spreading the gospel, this is only one of many ways..

Taphonomic
Reply to  Scott M
June 17, 2015 8:07 am

Maybe, but they aren’t getting my $$. I can’t control what others do, but I can control what I do.

etudiant
Reply to  Taphonomic
June 17, 2015 10:01 am

Not an easy choice.
For the Nature Conservancy, the issue is getting the land. My guess is that they found the CAGW pitch to be popular with governments and effective with the public. It must be, judging by the way the National Audubon Society in the US has similarly tied itself to the CAGW meme. So the question is whether to support a good process because its leadership and voice is supporting bad causes.

DirkH
Reply to  etudiant
June 17, 2015 12:40 pm

“For the Nature Conservancy, the issue is getting the land.”
So, if a lie works better, you lie? I think that’s a recipe for disaster. It is also the “Ends justify the means”, “If you want to make an omlet you have to crack a few eggs” recipe of the Left.

Ben of Houston
Reply to  etudiant
June 17, 2015 12:56 pm

You cannot support truth with lies, and trying to do so weakens the argument past redemption to anyone who knows the truth.
I left my last church over the pastor’s insistence on using discredited facts to support the existence of creation instead of evolution. Whether God exists of not, pulling up the chance of an amino acid randomly forming whole cloth from constituent atoms isn’t evidence, it’s ignorance.

Marty
Reply to  Taphonomic
June 17, 2015 1:12 pm

Exactly the same for me. When the Nature Conservancy first started I was a regular donor. It seemed like a good idea. Instead of protesting or collecting government grants they were using private money to buy and preserve sensitive lands. But then their tone changed into the same old typical environmental exaggerations, lies, and false guilt. I dropped my membership and stopped sending them money.

June 17, 2015 7:16 am

211 participants? The article is pay-walled so I have not read any more than the abstract. My guess is that this is a student sample and that these results mean absolutely nothing. If someone has access to the Social Psychological and Personality Science Journal I would be interested in the details of the sample of participants.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  bernie1815
June 17, 2015 7:21 am

I’m franky surprised that they could find any skeptics among the student population at UMass Amherst.

Paul
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 7:26 am

Actually, they couldn’t find one. They used the results of a sophisticated skeptic model for their predictions.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 7:27 am

Ah… that explains it. Modeling a skeptic as evil would have the intended result.

Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 7:30 am

LeeHarvey: That was my first reaction. Still it is better to be specific rather than assume the make-up of the sample.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 7:33 am

@ bernie –
If the academics can go off half-cocked, why can’t we?

Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 11:22 am

Could it be a skeptic is anyone who think Humans cause 3 K or less warming per century?

benofhouston
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 12:59 pm

The skeptics were probably from the engineering department.

schitzree
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 18, 2015 11:37 am

I’m betting on there being 6 skeptics in their whole sample, who donated MORE then average to ALL aid requests, but slightly higher for those without CC then those with it.
Then, thanks to the miracle of Lew-paper surveying adjustments, they were able to get the results the expected at the start.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 18, 2015 12:15 pm

@ benofhouston –
But, really… are there many skeptics who didn’t come from engneering or the hard sciences?

Luigi Mariani
June 17, 2015 7:21 am

I think that the degree of charity towards the victims of natural disasters is not a credible divide between “skeptics” and “believers”.
In my opinion the correct divide is represented by the degree of rationality adopted to approach real questions. By this point of view you can retrieve a prototipe of the skeptical thinking in the introduction to the treaty “De re rustica” of Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (the main agronomist of the ancient Rome) written in the first years after the birth of Christ:
“Again and again I hear leading men of our state condemning now the unfruitfulness of the soil, now the inclemency of the climate for some seasons past, as harmful to crops; and some I hear reconciling the aforesaid complaints, as if on well-founded reasoning, on the ground that, in their opinion, the soil was worn out and exhausted by the over-production of earlier days and can no longer furnish sustenance to mortals with its old-time benevolence.Such reasons, Publius Silvinus, I am convinced are far from the truth;” (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Columella/de_Re_Rustica/Praefatio*.html). All the book of Columella was devoted to show that a rational approach to crop production is able to overcome these pre-concepts that unfortunately are also prevalent today.

June 17, 2015 7:32 am

The entire field of social sciences and behavioral psychology has been tainted by the recent [LaCour paper,] just retracted by Science.

Science is retracting a study of how canvassers can sway people’s opinions about gay marriage published just 5 months ago.
http://news.sciencemag.org/policy/2015/05/science-retracts-gay-marriage-paper-without-lead-author-s-consent
“It claimed to show that a relatively brief conversation with a canvasser who identified themselves as gay and as an advocate for gay marriage could persuade voters in California to become more supportive of gay marriage. The goal was to test whether persuasion methods used by advocacy groups to sway voters actually worked.”

Basically, Mr. LeCour likely faked the entire interview database, cutting & pasting together a database by using another survey database and pasting in fake results for his paper. His spectacular finding was that people’s deeply held beliefs could be changed a brief conversation with a polling interviewer if the interviewer revealed himself/herself as gay. It went against a massive and decades long area of research that showed such an occurrence was unlikely. The Progressives though liked the LeCour results (their confirmation bias kicked in) since it supported their internal belief that deeply held opposition to gay rights and gay marriage were easily overcome with simple brief exposure to a message.
Mr Le Cour’s job offer from Princeton was revoked. Meanwhile his PhD thesis and award are now under review at UCLA. No one at UCLA including Mr LeCour’s thesis advisor is talking to the media as the internal review is underway.
What this sordid LeCour episode represents is a basic failure at Science magazine to do a proper peer-review and ensure the database from the study was adequately examined by the reviewers.
Sound familiar???

Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
June 17, 2015 7:38 am

Sorry, the name of this perp is LaCour, not LeCour.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
June 17, 2015 7:38 am

It never occurred to these people that maybe the typical pollee just wanted to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation with a person who they didn’t want to offend?

Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 7:44 am

Based on the reporting so far: few, if any, of the interviews used in the LaCour paper actually happened. Kinda hard to offend anyone if the “scientist” just makes stuff up to get published and get a sweet job offer.

LeeHarvey
Reply to  LeeHarvey
June 17, 2015 7:53 am

I get that… but what I’m saying is that his advisor apparently had blinders on when he was allowed to even put such a thesis together.

Scott M
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
June 17, 2015 7:39 am

Results can be swayed, if they couldnt politicians would not go door to door as they have for 100’s of years. Of course the methods of the paper were suspect, and downright juvenile IMO

Reply to  Scott M
June 17, 2015 7:57 am

Pols typically promise to use other people’s money to buy support from another group.
The fantastical claim in the LaCour paper was that a simple “enlightening” conversation with a gay person could sway deeply held, often religious-based, beliefs.
That is simply why, even if big-name Climate Scientists stood up today and said, “We were wrong,” most on the Left who “believe” in Climate Change simply would not be swayed from their core belief system of the supposed evils of the CO2 molecule.

indefatigablefrog
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
June 17, 2015 11:23 am

Far too familiar. And if this is how utterly shambolic a fraud must be before the perp. is caught, then how many such frauds go undetected? Here is the other recent massive fraud in social psychology. For the record. Diederik Stapel and his career of deception:
http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/StapelLying.pdf

Scott M
June 17, 2015 7:37 am

Most of the money doesnt get to the disaster, look at the poor Haitians and the earthquake, most of the funds stolen, with the worst perps being the Clintons. These disasters are treated as opportunities by many of the elites..

Reply to  Scott M
June 17, 2015 7:52 am

Hurricane Katrina, while a catastrophe for New Orleans, was a god-send for Pope Algore and his self-enriching lie-machine that pumped up his now-discredited movie.

June 17, 2015 7:39 am

Surely the equal and opposite conclusion is that blaming climate change for a disaster, generates more aid.

Charlie
June 17, 2015 7:44 am

There shouldn’t be a comma after ‘appeals’ in the headline.
[Noted. .mod]

Alba
Reply to  Charlie
June 17, 2015 8:27 am

Well spotted. Pity it hasn’t been fixed. Anybody who understands about punctuation will know what a difference the comma makes to the headline and why, therefore, it should not be there. Unfortunately understanding about the use of commas and apostrophes is not what it used to be.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  Charlie
June 17, 2015 3:24 pm

Well, if you’re going to get all grammary on us, not only is the comma incorrect, but ‘which’ should be replaced with ‘that.’

Jim
June 17, 2015 7:48 am

Blah, blah, blah, therefore climate skeptics are nasty.

commieBob
June 17, 2015 7:56 am

Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson (1969) was once challenged by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam to “name me one proposition in all of the social sciences which is both true and non-trivial.” It was several years later than he thought of the correct response: comparative advantage. “That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that is is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them.

Daniel A. Chapman and Brian Lickel have encountered the bane of the social sciences. The vast majority of papers are false, obvious and/or trivial.
In all of social science, Samuelson could think of only one example that did not suffer from that.

Reply to  commieBob
June 17, 2015 10:31 am

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem led me to give up Economics. arrow’s theorem is true, far from obvious (given many people’s desire to attach logic to public policy) and non-trivial. I am surprised Samuelson did not note this – of course, it undermines much of neo-classical economics but that is another story.

commieBob
Reply to  bernie1815
June 18, 2015 5:20 am

I looked it up. Now my brain hurts. Thanks bernie. 😉 Anyway, you are right, it is neither obvious nor trivial.

Scottish Sceptic
June 17, 2015 7:59 am

What’s the point in giving money to a “charity” which then promotes political propaganda like WWF or the UK RSPB?

indefatigablefrog
Reply to  Scottish Sceptic
June 17, 2015 1:18 pm

I used to give money to the RSPB. However I live on the Somerset Levels and I soon became aware that the RSPB were advocating the intentional flooding of the land around me.
The RSPB, Environment Agency, Royal Society and BBC all seem to think that the Somerset Levels should be mostly underwater for most of the year.
The people are told that they must learn “resilience”.
They must be resilient whilst these intellectually deficient experts busy themselves flooding people’s homes and ruining people’s lives.
I no longer donate to the RSPB. I do still pay for the other organizations through my taxes and TV license. What a bunch of nasty imbeciles they all turned out to be.

John Archer
June 17, 2015 8:07 am

What a totally counterintuitive result!
I’m stunned. 🙂
I’m stunned people get money for this sh1t.

Bezotch
June 17, 2015 8:15 am

Naturally skeptics are less likely to donate if climate change is claimed as the cause. It introduces doubt about what the priorities of the relief fund are. Are my funds going to provide food, shelter and medicine, or are they going to be diverted to further a decarbonization agenda. Credibility is important. Starting out by making claims of a dubious and unprovable nature does not enhance ones credibility. There is no shortage of charlatans hijacking or starting charities to further their own agenda.

Reply to  Bezotch
June 17, 2015 8:31 am

Which should be a huge reason the Vatican should have stayed out of the UNFCCC’s Climate Change fraud. But the bribe from the UNFCCC by promising the Vatican a piece of the annual $100 billion Climate Aid fund was too tempting to turn down. Thus we are about to blessed by the pontificating Encyclical on CC, which in the long run will inflict even more damage on the Holy Roman Catholic Church when the CC meme eventually collapsing under the weight of its own lies.

John Greenfraud
June 17, 2015 8:15 am

“As predicted, those high in climate change skepticism reported greater justifications for not helping the victims when the disaster was attributed to climate change.”
It’s true, I never donate to schemes or scams. But they didn’t need a study to determine the real truth. All you need is the tax returns of people like Joe Biden, and the far-left in general, that demonstrate most are all-in for donating other people’s money to charity, but not so much of their own. Clinton Global Grifters Inc. is a thinly disguised money laundering scheme that pedals influence and reroutes misdirected government money into its own coffers, which then largely benefits (you guessed it) the Clinton’s. The people the donations were originally intended intended to help rarely (if ever) receive direct assistance. some estimate at less than 10% of the take, and the effectiveness of that ‘assistance’ is itself questionable.

Jpatrick
Reply to  John Greenfraud
June 17, 2015 8:55 am

Perhaps the more important point to the text you quoted is that it’s a lame attempt to shift blame to the skeptics. It is demagogue rhetoric and it does not even belong in social science studies.

jorgekafkazar
Reply to  John Greenfraud
June 17, 2015 8:42 pm

It’s not charity to donate other people’s money. It’s called theft.

Gregory
June 17, 2015 8:15 am

No, because they don’t want to give their charity to alarmist organizations that support climate change rhetoric. Take a look at the money raised by Mercury One for disaster relief and you will see the money flows to help people in real need.

Jpatrick
June 17, 2015 8:35 am

The wrong subjects were studied. The ones who should be examined are the ones who make the appeals for charity, using “climate change” as an excuse. Perhaps that study will appear as a followup to this unimportant result.

Neo
June 17, 2015 8:41 am

I bet that a solicitation from a KKK affiliated group for inner city education would have the same sort of problems.

June 17, 2015 8:47 am

Small sample size but a believable result.
Everyone knows that some of the money given to a charity will be spent on trying to prevent the next such disaster. That’s just wise.
Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a woman to fish and she gets a bicycle, or something.
If you think they’ve got the cause wrong you’d be wasting your cash giving to that organisation.
There are others who attribute the impact of disasters to poverty and poor infrastructure. They may be more appealing.

Stevan Makarevich
June 17, 2015 8:52 am

“As predicted, those high in climate change skepticism reported greater justifications for not helping the victims when the disaster was attributed to climate change.”
Nice the way they phrased this. For myself, it isn’t a case of not wanting to “help” victims, it’s because I would never trust an organization attributing the disaster to climate change. There are many other organizations who use donations where intended and provide actual help to those in need, such as Salvation Army, without wasting donations on political matters and “administration costs”.

Reply to  Stevan Makarevich
June 17, 2015 9:43 am

Stevan…very well stated

June 17, 2015 9:39 am

This seems like a way to label skeptics as greedy, people hating monsters. Nothing more than another attempt to smear and deflect, but also project your faults on your opponent. The Democrats are all the time telling us the rich need to give more and stop being so greedy, but when you investigate you find out that they give nothing to charity, literally. The same principle. The “charities” (used loosely) that promote AGW are probably pocketing most of the money for their selves, but a study like this deflects and calls those who don’t believe in CAGW greedy and selfish. The reality is the AGW believing charity is the greedy and selfish one.

paqyfelyc
June 17, 2015 9:44 am

Hu ? “there was an indirect effect of climate change framing on attitudes toward donating through donation justifications.” ?
thanks, Captain Obvious …
“help me, my house was blown up by climate change” pretty much sounds like “help me, my house was blown up by the giant spaghetti monster ” to a skeptic ear. I may help a lunatic, but surely not so easily.
“As predicted, justifications for helping or not the victims depended on whether the disaster was attributed to climate change when subjects had strong opinion on the issue.” sounds like a smear of skeptics. useless.
And shocking.

June 17, 2015 9:48 am

Definitely not: no, non, nyet, never The problem with giving is the subsequent tsunami of pleading for more, and more and more. Your name get passed around in a perpetual loop.

michael hart
June 17, 2015 9:53 am

“Additional moderated mediation analyses showed there was an indirect effect of climate change framing on attitudes toward donating through donation justifications.”

Can anyone translate that bit for me?

Jpatrick
Reply to  michael hart
June 17, 2015 10:46 am

Moderated Mediation Analysis is a mathematically rigorous way to torture confessions from otherwise useless data. I believe there is an SPSS module that uses it. I’m not really in a position to say whether these researchers misapplied the method or not.

June 17, 2015 9:55 am

US Government Grant Application Request: Develop a study using any science available to make climate skeptics look bad. Funding will be generous. Guaranteed to pass peer review. Future career opportunities available.

Brad Rich
June 17, 2015 10:16 am

I will be the first to arrive to help after a flood or tornado. However, when a person sues for whiplash, and they come to court with a neck brace and in a wheel chair, but they run out of court with bucks in hand? How can I have sympathy for that? The Global Warming sympathy plea is ambulance chasers on a larger scale. When a river floods? How stupid is it to build on a flood plain? When beach-front property gets storm surge? That’s what happens on the beach. Those people should have insurance, or in lieu of an insurance company that is gullible enough to insure high-risk areas, they should have a personal risk program that can cover costs. Those are business decisions, and I have neutral sympathy for other people’s business decisions, and I have no sympathy for ambulance chasers.

LamontT
June 17, 2015 10:21 am

Well Duh! If a charity makes an appeal for donations for a disaster because of climate change then I’m going to assume that the charity is primarily a money siphoning scheme and not a particularly good charity. If I feel that disaster needs funding I’ll find a charity with a good through for money versus overhead and go that route but appeal for money based on climate change and I’ll cross you off the list of valid charities I’ll donate to.

Jquip
June 17, 2015 10:27 am

Assuming that we can have knowledge of the charity and how much of its funds go to helping people then the given marketing points to part people with their wallets is largely meaningless. But if a fund is helping starving people that have lost their homes, then it hardly matters as to the what or why of it. They’re starving and homeless. But if a fund is helping victims of global warming, then I’d be inclined to call shenanigans on the charity if they weren’t providing solar powered cell-phone chargers and Schwinn powered local electrical generation devices. As otherwise, the people in need of aid will be burning all the local flora to stay warm.

LamontT
Reply to  Jquip
June 17, 2015 10:41 am

It is easy to research charities in this day and age of the internet. But a solid indicator that the charity is not a good place to give money to help people is them claiming because global warming.

June 17, 2015 11:06 am

Ok, let’s look at the whole picture of charitable contributions. Numerous polls show that conservatives (in the US) contribute FAR more to charities than Progressives. Other polls indicate that a skeptic is more likely to identify as being a conservative, and a man-made global warmer, a Progressive.
The clear and logical conclusion is that skeptics are more likely to contribute to charities than man-made global warmers.
Notice that this study made no effort to compare the actual contributions of skeptics and believers. Otherwise, the result may very well have been, “Skeptics give less to disasters than they otherwise would if climate change is blamed, but still give more than non-skeptics.”

johann wundersamer
June 17, 2015 11:11 am

‘As predicted, those high in climate change skepticism reported’
case A: as predicted
we release a new paper
case B: not as predicted
doughnuts for everyone
but no new paper
case B2 not as predicted anyway
97 percent confidence +
3 percent peer review
new paper + doughnuts for everyone.
post realistic science.

June 17, 2015 11:19 am

Charity is a leap of faith – you give, because you want to help, and because you believe the person asking for your help is credible.
In addition to mentioning Global Warming as a hindrance to donations, the study should have included reference to the United Nations or any of the major Eco-Terrorist groups(Greenpeace, EDF, WWF etc.).
Catholic Charities is no longer a possibility for me. After the Pontiff’s Peoples Army has their workshops, speeches and exorcisms at the Star Studded Paris IPCC Gala I imagine more people will be likewise crossing Catholic Charities from their list.
The Red Cross is probably the only charity I would consider at this point and I’m not even sure about that.
While I can still comfortably ask the rhetorical question about what a bear does in the woods, I am no longer comfortable asking that other question about the Pope and his religious affiliation.

GeneDoc
Reply to  Paul in Sweden
June 17, 2015 11:51 am

Best to give locally–to groups where you can get to know the people and observe how they work. Red Cross is a disaster, based on how much they squandered in Haiti:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/04/the-red-cross-had-500-million-in-haitian-relief-money-and-it-built-just-6-houses/
Of course they’ve pushed back on that story:
http://www.redcross.org/news/press-release/13-Facts-about-the-Red-Cross-Response-in-Haiti
It seems as if they’ve been overwhelmed with too much money to spend effectively.

Reply to  GeneDoc
June 17, 2015 12:49 pm

Yep, non-profit ain’t what it is suppose to be.

Reply to  Paul in Sweden
June 17, 2015 12:28 pm

After the revelations about how much of the aid given to the Red Cross for the relief effort in Haiti actually got to Haiti, any of my donations to the Red Cross with be specific to our local chapter.

GeneDoc
June 17, 2015 11:21 am

I have given to the US organization National Center for Science Education in the past. No more, now that they’ve included AGW in their mandate. Idiots. They added Ben “Dark Alley” Santer to their Board to assist them with their propagandizing. They tried to add Peter “The Thief and Fraud” Gleick in 2012, but saw the light after his confession about his criminal behavior regarding the Heartland Institute (why isn’t he in jail?). Wish NCSE had stuck to fighting the public funding of teaching irrational beliefs (creationism) instead of encouraging it (AGW).

RH
June 17, 2015 11:23 am

I’m waiting for the study that shows liberals and democrats donate less money to military veterans.

jayhd
June 17, 2015 11:36 am

Got an email today from CatholicVote that tries to gin up support for the upcoming release of the Pope’s climate change encyclical. Sent it back requesting I be crossed off their list. Not only do I not give to charities that mention global warming, I refuse to have anything to do with organizations that support the man made global warming hoax.

June 17, 2015 11:39 am

“Skeptics reject charity appeals which blame disasters on climate change.”
Now that’s a good idea!! Some people might learn – there are more and more Skeptics

June 17, 2015 11:46 am

Didn´t just recently published that the US Federal government stated that the amount of relief funds will depend on the adoption of CAGW from a particular state?. English is not my mother language, but relief conditioned to political alignment is not blackmailing?

Owen in GA
Reply to  Guillermo
June 17, 2015 12:37 pm

Blackmail is what governments do. a tax policy that taxes one set of behaviors more than another is likewise blackmail, but every government on Earth does this.

LarryFine
June 17, 2015 11:55 am

Stop linking natural disaster fund drives to the hoax, or stop whining when people use their good sense to avoid charities that mix human misery with propaganda.

Reply to  LarryFine
June 17, 2015 12:53 pm

If the charities are just looking for money from the Grubber Stupid, I guess it is not a problem.

Ralph Kramden
June 17, 2015 12:05 pm

Anyone remember the save the tigers television commercial? When it first came out the tigers were endangered by poachers and climate change. Shortly after they dropped the climate change.

CAMarshall
June 17, 2015 12:23 pm

Whether the appeal is sincere/honest or not, by tying it to “climate change” it leaves a taste of fraud by association.

knr
June 17, 2015 1:06 pm

Another ‘Lew paper ‘ style Pop-psychology to attempt to paint CAGW sceptics has not merely ‘wrong’ but ‘mad or bad’ has well.
But there is some basis in truth hear, frankly a charity that can spend thousands flying a journalist around the world to write poor BS articles about ‘climate doom’ , which has little to do with its claimed central mission, and yes I am talking Oxfam, is not one that really needs the money.
So my cash is likley to go elsewhere.

G. Karst
June 17, 2015 1:19 pm

Voting with your pocketbook is the most effective tool for skeptics.
Don’t buy that can of Coke if it has a polar bear on it. etc. GK

indefatigablefrog
June 17, 2015 1:34 pm

“Skeptics are less likely to contribute to a relief appeal for a natural disaster, if the appeal blames the disaster on climate change”.
Might I propose that this is perfectly rational behaviour.
I will not donate money to anyone who cannot correctly identify the causes of a crisis.
If a person cannot correctly identify the causes of a problem then they are very unlikely to be able to identify the most reasonable solution. If they cannot identify the best solutions then the money donated is likely to be wasted on mitigating the effect of a falsely imagined cause, whilst the real cause remains unaddressed.
Hence such a donation is likely to be wasted.
But, maybe it’s even simpler than that.
The simpler explanation is that; people are reluctant to give their money to morons.

Trevor in Aus
June 17, 2015 1:56 pm

This is why I refuse to donate in any way shape or form to the relief organisation, “World Vision” as they have framed famines and droughts in Africa, etc as being products of Climate Change. I sent them an email outlining my position and they replied saying that they base their statements on best scientific knowledge. I told them the’d never ever get another cent from me.

Michael in Sydney
June 17, 2015 2:35 pm

Disaster appeals that are linked directly to AGW can be supported financially by the 97% of the worlds scientists who apparently believe in it. I can keep my money.

Andrew
June 17, 2015 4:13 pm

I could have told you that. If you tell me that someone hit by a Cat 4 cyclone was a “victim of climate change” you’re going to get told “F*** off – and by the way never call me again, your org is on a life ban.”
I don’t need to hoover $gazillions of taxpayer money to research the fact. You insult the intelligence of people and overtly lie to them, then demand money. (Sort of like the Gillard grubiment’s “Carbon” tax. And we know how popular that was.)

kramer
June 17, 2015 4:58 pm

If liberals really cared about the poor, wouldn’t they have created something like a national Higher Optional Tax where people can voluntarily pay more in taxes and where this extra revenue would be used specifically for making social programs better and/or creating addition ones?
Hey Chapman and Lickle, why don’t you two ‘experts’ do a study on why liberals haven’t created an optional tax structure like this? Bet the results (if they aren’t adjusted, massaged, or faked) would discomfort you both…

June 17, 2015 5:47 pm

I’ve stopped giving to most charities – too many now seem to have greens at the helm or in the background and I simply don’t trust that the money is going where they claim it is going. I understand Red Cross is still clean though (I hope so, or I’ll stop giving altogether).

Old woman of the north
June 17, 2015 11:54 pm

Emotional blackmail just gets my back up.

Dodgy Geezer
June 18, 2015 1:43 am

@Stevan Makarevich
Please! The tooth fairy was a “he”, not a “she”.

That looks like the usual Hollywood misinformation. You must stop believing that American films portray reality!
The definitive Tooth Fairy job description (all of whom are female) can be found in Terry Pratchet’s ‘Hogfather’….

Jon
June 18, 2015 2:46 pm

I cancelled my monthly subscription payment to Oxfam when they started saying silly things about climate change. A few weeks later I got a call from a young man asking me why. I pointed out that their commitment to ‘halting climate change’ was right there on the front page of their website, and he was very surprised. He assured me that they didn’t really think that at all. I told him that he should get them to take it down, then, and get back to me when it was done. I’m still waiting.

Brian H
June 19, 2015 1:40 am

In general, leftists are far more willing to donate government funds than their own, and are far out-donated by conservatives on individual or group bases.