From ScienceNordic:
Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing … But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists.
The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings. Therese Asplund, who led the study, was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change, but got a lesson in reality from swedish famers.
Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicals ATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem. But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues.
Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course: “They explained that they didn’t quite believe in climate changes,” she says. “Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities.”
The paper:
Climate change frames and frame formation: An analysis of climate change communication in the Swedish agricultural sector
While previous research into understandings of climate change has usuallyexamined general public perceptions and mainstream media representations, this thesis offers an audience-specific departure point by analysing climate change frames and frame formation in Swedish agriculture. The empirical material consists of Swedish farm magazines’ reporting on climate change, as well as eight focus group discussions among Swedish farmers on the topic of climate change and climate change information.
The analysis demonstrates that while Swedish farm magazines frame climate change in terms of conflict, scientific uncertainty,and economic burden, farmers in the focus groups tended to concentrate on whether climate change was a natural or human-induced phenomenon, and viewed climate change communication as an issue of credibility. It was found that farm magazines use metaphorical representations of war and games to form the overall frames of climate change. In contrast, the farmers’ frames of natural versus human-induced climate change were formed primarily using experience-based and non-experience based arguments, both supported with analogies, distinctions,keywords, metaphors, and prototypical examples. Furthermore, discussions of what constitutes credible climate information centred on conflict versus consensus-oriented frames of climate change communication along with different views of the extent to which knowledge of climate change is and should be practically or analytically based.
This analysis of climate change communication in the Swedish agricultural sector proposes that the sense making processes of climate change are complex, involving associative thinking and experience- based knowledge
As a Swede although living in Norway I can attest to that Scandinavia is a massive warmist/UN-IPCC/climate change/global warming stronghold. Nowhere in the public space and in the MSM are dissenting voices allowed, except in the comment fields and on blogs.
Some recent examples:
Recently The Norwegian labor party got a new leader. In his inauguration speech the main point of his policy would be to use the wealthy Norwegian Pension-Oil fund as a tool to save the climate.
No reporting on the hullabaloo about the bullying of Lennart Bengtsson has appeared in the Scandinavian MSM except a small article in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
From page 58, the analogy used for natural change by Swedish farmers:
Analogy: Between experiences of weather and agricultural practices since 1950 compared to today’s experience.
It’s far more interesting than it first appears.
They are saying that the effect of changes in agricultural practices dwarf the effect of climate change
That isn’t saying that climate change isn’t happening.
It’s saying that it isn’t important.
Hoser says:
June 30, 2014 at 8:38 pm
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When will the raw data start coming in?
And how long will it before they have to adjust/recallibrate the data (like they did with ARGO) because the initial raw data is not showiing what they expect to see?
Per Strandberg (@LittleIceAge) says:
July 1, 2014 at 3:51 am
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It is amazing the slant that is put on things. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/pre-viking-tunic-found-glacier-climate-change_n_2932431.html
The receding glaciers in Norway confirm that it was far warmer in Norway about 1700 to 2000 years ago than it is today. The receding glaciers in Greenland show that it was far warmer in Greenland at the time of the Viking settlement some 800 to 1200 years ago.
The take home from this is that there is hard evidence in the region that climate naturally changes, and that today;s warm temperatures are far from unprecended. We have a long way to go before we see again the warmth in the Northern Hemisphere that these previous generations enjoyed. It is no coincidence that the pinacle of advancement of Northern Hemisphere civilisation took place in warm periods. .
A group here in Kansa was studying the same thing–or at least the sociologist in the group was studying farmers’ attitudes. The goal was to figure out how to persuade farmers to alter their crop selection to plant crops for ethanol production. She was quite unhappy that farmers did not accept the academic line of global warming, and based crop selection decisions on known weather patterns, prices, crop rotation schedules, and the like; in other words, experience and planning needs, Their attitudes towards climate could be summed up as “God or nature will do what they will do and we will live with it.” I don’t think any papers came out of the study.
A few days back the barn of a nearby farm caught fire and burned to the ground. According to the owner he heard a crackling sound after walking outside to see why the dogs wouldn’t stop barking. He walked toward the barn with goose bumps on his arms. Seeing fire he ran to free the cows and pull the tractor and propane from an adjacent building. A family driving by saw the fire and pulled into the driveway to help out. The fire department was there in minutes. It took over 12 hours to put the fire out. The farm family lost some family heirlooms including 100 year old barn boards of sentimental value as they were from the original barn built by the farmer’s grandfather when he first settled the land. There were no injuries. The following morning a lady drove up to the farm with coffee and homemade muffins. She had seen the blaze on television and suspected the family hadn’t had breakfast. She was of course correct.
Farmers face real problems every day. No wonder they are skeptical of climate change. And the world is full of wonderful people, ready to help out or make homemade muffins.
Re: ROM says:
July 1, 2014 at 2:37 am
“They are now ignored by nearly the entire Australian farming community as they have nothing to offer at all except fear, stress and a deadly hopelessness for the future.”
Well said. City slickers would have drawn the same conclusion if they hadn’t stayed inside and depended on the news media to tell them what was going on outside. You’d think their occasional visit to the seashore of their youth would raise questions.
I remember hearing from my father and my great uncle Bob that the weather would usually fluctuate between harsh and mild winters every 10 or 11 years, give or take. Guess what? My dad knew absolutely nothing about sun cycles. Neither did uncle Bob. But both men grew up depending on personal agriculture. Though they were not super-sized farmers, they had massive gardens, pigs, goats, maybe a few cows on occasion, fruit trees, berry patches, etc. They also depended upon hunting and fishing and wild produce such as persimmons, poke, mushrooms, paw paws, etc. I grew up with a large garden(s) and canning, hunting, fishing, etc. It was a sacred part of my hillbilly culture. I still eat wild strawberries every spring, poke in the early summer and paw paws in the late, persimmons in the fall. Then I hunt in the winter (you can fish anytime). My family has always been close to the earth and to the weather. I can predict rain better than any meteorologist, at least in my little town, in my little place, as long as I’ve been outdoors for a goodly spell. I grew up watching the stars, watching the clouds, listening to the birds and such. Trust me. Climate changes. Always has. Always will. I also know that people can and do adjust to their given climate – or they migrate to someplace else. I just hope it never turns towards the brutal cold.
Farmers are no fools. Nor do they suffer fools easily. It is very difficult to pull the wool over their eyes. People would be wise to listen carefully to what they have to say. Honest people working in what probably is the ONLY completely legitimate and noble profession… feeding the world. GK
“Insights into how climate change is framed in various contexts are essential for
the study of how climate change is perceived and responded to.”
Yes, when putting lipstick on a pig, the brand and color of the lipstick are of the utmost importance.
“I’m from the Government and here to help” climatized version:
“I’m a Academic Climate Scientist and I’m here to explain our modelled version of reality to you.”
Check out original Swedish and Norwegian temperature data from meteorological year books:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-sweden-and-norway-280.php
Especially checkout temperature data made public (red) vs. full original datasets (blue):
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/AORIT/Sweden/8a.gif
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/AORIT/Sweden/8b.gif
Perhaps farmers are a bit more in contact with the real world.
K.R. Frank Lansner
The words and actions of politicians and bureaucrats contribute nothing. They are experts at it.
Farmers are the best at identifying bulls**t.
Do people know that the Church of AGW set up a website with fonts, formatting, etc. similar to this one, presumably to trick people into buying their faith-based pseudoscience? I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise at the tactics they’re willing to use to achieve their goals.
Another paper talking about talking about.
Alan the Brit says:
July 1, 2014 at 3:49 am
Mario Lento says:
June 30, 2014 at 10:57 pm
The argument is silly. Climate changing is a given. Otherwise the word climate would have been defined as “homeostasis until the advent of industry.” The real deniers are CAGW believers.
The ONLY thing that doesn’t change is the Human ability to invent scare stories & manipulate & control other Human beings for profit & power! After all, what kind of person wants to frighten others? IMHO, that is. 😉
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Alan: As you and I agree… this then turns into a circular argument. People want to frighten people into action – which is manipulative. 🙂
Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges.
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What was she doing gathering realworld data? She should be modeling what farmers think about global warming!
Dr. Strangelove on June 30, 2014 at 9:58 pm
Correct peninsula, wrong country -> wrong academy …
Ok, everybody, its important to understand this paper is NOT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE! This is a communications thesis about framing techniques and efficiencies in message delivery. The author determined that, on the topic of climate change, message framing topologies did not work in getting a climate change/mitigation message across in a specific focus group, that the framing topologies chosen by many in messaging climate change were adverse to the focus group, whose own benchmarks did not provide credibility to the message regimes…. The validity of the climate change meme was not empirically being tested, only the message delivery. It’s immaterial to the study wqhether climate change is real or not. The author’s surprise appears to stem from the fact that the more or less universal message delivery model did not work in a select focus group, and that the focus group had their own points of reference to validate the message, something that many non-agrucultural groups apparently lack.
“Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing”
Wait can someone clear this up. Where exactly HAS climate truly changed in the last 200 years? If I were to pick up some very old books on the regions of Europe and the climate there, would I experience a different climate if I were to go there than what is described in those books? The Arctic is still tundra, taiga, and ice sheets right? A global increase in average temperature does not constitute as climate change; does anyone have any actual examples of regions that have experienced a shift in climate in the past 200 years?
How many times do we have to see “surprised”? These people live in a cocoon world of their own making and stuck in group think. They think everyone is naive enough to fall for their conjob. Thus, they keep getting surprised!
Heh, this researcher makes it sound like Swedish farmers speak in gobbledegook. Somehow, I doubt it.
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She chose the career-conserving path, a logical step in a climate of pre-ordained outcomes and with room for more self identification by limited descriptive studies in many fields of “research.” The alternate path of open mindedness is not safe in this climate.
WSJ did an excellent piece, totally debunking the claim of a 97% consensus. There never was such a thing. Just a typical leftist strategy to coerce the rest of us into accepting their latest scheme to grab power and tax money from the people using AGW as an excuse.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579578462813553136