From Michigan State University, and the Department of Junior Lewandowskys, where this angry looking guy obviously thinks global warming manifests itself in every weather event, we have the same old ad hominem argument, except published.
Global warming cynics unmoved by extreme weather
EAST LANSING, Mich. — What will it take to convince skeptics of global warming that the phenomenon is real? Surely, many scientists believe, enough droughts, floods and heat waves will begin to change minds.
But a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar throws cold water on that theory.
Only 35 percent of U.S. citizens believe global warming was the main cause of the abnormally high temperatures during the winter of 2012, Aaron M. McCright and colleagues report in a paper published online today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“Many people already had their minds made up about global warming and this extreme weather was not going to change that,” said McCright, associate professor in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and Department of Sociology.
Winter 2012 was the fourth warmest winter in the United States dating back to at least 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some 80 percent of U.S. citizens reported winter temperatures in their local area were warmer than usual.
The researchers analyzed March 2012 Gallup Poll data of more than 1,000 people and examined how individuals’ responses related to actual temperatures in their home states. Perceptions of warmer winter temperatures seemed to track with observed temperatures.
“Those results are promising because we do hope that people accurately perceive the reality that’s around them so they can adapt accordingly to the weather,” McCright said.
But when it came to attributing the abnormally warm weather to global warming, respondents largely held fast to their existing beliefs and were not influenced by actual temperatures.
As this study and McCright’s past research shows, political party identification plays a significant role in determining global warming beliefs. People who identify as Republican tend to doubt the existence of global warming, while Democrats generally believe in it.
The abnormally warm winter was just one in an ongoing series of severe weather events – including the 2010 Russian heat wave, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines – that many believed would help start convincing global warming cynics.
“There’s been a lot of talk among climate scientists, politicians and journalists that warmer winters like this would change people’s minds,” McCright said. “That the more people are exposed to climate change, the more they’ll be convinced. This study suggests this is not the case.”
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McCright’s co-authors are Riley E. Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and Chenyang Xiao of American University.
Nature Climate Change is part of the Nature Publishing Group, which publishes the flagship journal Nature.
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“What will it take to convince skeptics of global warming that the phenomenon is real?”
Uhm. Rising temperatures?
Maybe rising temperatures everywhere at all times?
Question of the week: Do two McWrong’s make a McCright?
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“Only 35 percent of U.S. citizens believe global warming was the main cause of the abnormally high temperatures during the winter of 2012, Aaron M. McCright and colleagues report in a paper published online today in the journal Nature Climate Change.”
Ask these same people AFTER the very cold winter of 2013-14, and again AFTER the very cold winter of 2014-15. I bet the number of warmist acolytes will be much reduced – possibly by increased winter mortality – no irony there.
Bundle up good people, and lay in some extra firewood – the central and eastern 2/3 of North America will be very cold this winter, much like last winter. Europe will also be cold and Russia will be very cold.
“As this study and McCright’s past research shows, political party identification plays a significant role in determining global warming beliefs. People who identify as Republican tend to doubt the existence of global warming, while Democrats generally believe in it.”
Or maybe both party identification and belief in AGW are both determined by something else, like empiricism vs. rationalism, or hard-headedness vs. wooly-mindedness.
From the Pen of Theodore Dalrymple:
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
I tend to agree with the above, but in addition I believe if, wherever political correctness appears, you substitute CAGW the quote reads just as true, if not more so.
“Many people already had their minds made up about global warming and this extreme weather was not going to change that,” said McCright,
Maybe the reason people don’t find extreme weather to indicate climate change is that they understand that these are WEATHER events not climate events. Maybe many common folk have come to understand that extreme weather is one thing and climate is yet another, Maybe the public has figured this out while the “experts” who should know better keep confusing weather with climate. After all, ‘climate’ are weather trends over an absolute minimum of 3 decades to hundreds of years. One weather extreme to the cold can be matched with one weather extreme to the warm and thereby they cancel each other out from a climate standpoint.
Anyway, if Global Warming is what we’re really talking about, why have they changed the name of it to “Climate Change”? The answer to that is clear: there’s no credibility to claiming that the earth ‘has a fever’ when snow, ice and polar winds repeatedly cause havoc and people notice that there are very few hot spells to cancel them out.
Anyway, if Global Warming is what we’re really talking about, why have they changed the name of it to “Climate Change”?
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When people mention Climate Change, I point out that GHG theory says that CO2 will cause warming, so the term “Climate Change” is incorrect. It doesn’t describe the effects of CO2.
Rather Climate Change describes the effects of humans in general, such as land use, industrialization and urbanization. The only solution to this problem is to get rid of humans, because without urbanization and industrialization the planet cannot support 7 billion humans. And with urbanization and industrialization the climate will continue to change, regardless of CO2.
Quite simply we cannot solve Climate Change without eliminating modern society. We must return the urban and industrialized populations of the world back to the farms, the same way Pol Pot did in Cambodia, with much the same result on the earth’s population as Pol Pot had in Cambodia.
so when we talk about Climate Change we are really talking about population elimination, not CO2 emission control, because even if we control CO2 human activity will continue to change the climate. CO2 control simply limits our ability to urbanize and industrialize, because CO2 free energy sources are very limited, which ultimately means we cannot support 7 billion people. Someone is going to have to go.
Then I ask this question: Do you support culling the human population of the planet? Because when we talk Climate Change that is where any legally binding treaty will ultimately lead us. To a culling of humans by war, starvation or mass sterilization; a “no child” policy enforced by all countries. Is this the sort of world you hope for?
What will happen if we have a legally binding agreement on Climate Change, and a country breaks the agreement? History shows us the answer: First there will be warnings, then sanctions leading to poverty and death, ultimately leading to terrorism and war to try and escape the effects of sanctions.
So rather than solving the problem, the proposed solution will cause a worse problem.
Regarding the name change:
“An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions or actions which under their old names have become odious to the public.” Carl Sagan
I would add that all deceivers practice this art.
Of course ones political views play a role. But this guy simply has the wrong end of that stick. People with a collectivist outlook on the world tend to be more inclined to accept authority and “consensus” views. People who think for themselves, instead of letting others do that for them, tend to question authority and consensus. No prizes for guessing that the former are more likely to vote Democrat and the latter more inclined to vote Republican.
it could be that the former tend to vote for political parties, and the later tend to vote independent. wasn’t it Washington himself that pointed out the greatest threat to the new republic lay in the tyranny of political parties? we see this in today’s politics, whereby elected officials are required to vote along party lines, rather than vote their conscience, making compromise impossible.
Ah, a sociologist talks about the extreme weather.
Makes me wonder what his colleagues Marcuse, Horkheimer and Adorno would make out of Global Warming. Well, it would be pretty obvious given their great work, Critical Theory.
It is easy to by cynical about Global Warming. the exact same folks that told us that Global Warming was going to kill us were telling us the same thing about Global Cooling and the coming Ice Age only 50 years ago.
they were clearly wrong then. why is this time going to be any different? 18 years and counting, The Pause tells us they still haven’t got a clue.
Fool me once…
‘Perceptions of warmer winter temperatures seemed to track with observed temperatures’
Why introduce perceptions when you have observed temperatures?
If they want to convince me about the planet warming up because of CO2, they would have to show me undeniable proof!
Evidence of the tie between climate models and extreme weather would be nice. Even a little, just a tiny bit, would be nice. BTW using the “must be” does not count as evidence, as in “We don’t know so it must be global warming.”
Short of that when alarmists accept that positive weather events (ie like less brutal winters, longer growing seasons, polar bear populations growing, etc) we can maybe then look at the tie to extreme weather.
The argument should be about man-made global warming not global warming. The argument is continually misstated by those who champion man-made carbon dioxide as the reason for global warming.