Fox News reports:
Study: Global warming skeptics know more about climate science
Are global warming skeptics simply ignorant about climate science?
Not so, says a forthcoming paper in the journal Advances in Political Psychology by Yale Professor Dan Kahan. He finds that skeptics score about the same (in fact slightly better) on climate science questions.
The study asked 2,000 respondents nine questions about where they thought scientists stand on climate science.
On average, skeptics got about 4.5 questions correct, whereas manmade warming believers got about 4 questions right.
One question, for instance, asked if scientists believe that warming would “increase the risk of skin cancer.” Skeptics were more likely than believers to know that is false.
Skeptics were also more likely to correctly say that if the North Pole icecap melted, global sea levels would not rise. One can test this with a glass of water and an ice cube – the water level will not change after the ice melts. Antarctic ice melting, however, would increase sea levels because much of it rests on land.
Liberals were more likely to correctly answer questions like: “What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures to rise?” The correct answer is carbon dioxide.
The study comes on the heels of a 2012 study that found that global warming skeptics know just as much about science; the new study specifically quizzed people on climate science.
…
More: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/12/study-global-warming-skeptics-know-more-about-climate-science/
The study will be published on the Advances in Political Psychology website
Kahan, Dan (2015) Expressive Rationality and Cultural Polarization: Theory and Evidence, Advances in Political Psychology, Vol 2,
Kahan, Dan M., Wittlin, Maggie, Peters, Ellen, Slovic, Paul, Ouellette, Lisa Larrimore, Braman, Donald and Mandel, Gregory N., The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change (2011). Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper No. 89. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1871503
Jo Nova also has an analysis here
“What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures to rise?” The correct answer is carbon dioxide.”
Without Oxygen, there would be no AGW!
Indeed. All non photosynthetic life is a combustion process.
I know more than most climate scientists about the subject. Mainly because I put together my own theories rather than parrot what I was told in a game of academic Chinese whispers at University.
wickedwenchfan, similar for me.
Very similar except…
I doubt more than most climate scientists about the subject. Mainly because I put together my own theories rather than parrot what I was told in a game of academic Chinese whispers at University.
And none of my theories can be proven.
MCourtney,
I agree it is valuable to start fresh and think, here is someone who advocated it.
John
tell that to the Pope:
from BBC last nite: Pope Francis appoints 20 new cardinals: One of the new cardinals, Soane Patita Paini Mafia, hails from Tonga, a Pacific island where a tiny Catholic community of some 17,000 is threatened with losing its home because of climate change…
from AP’s Nicole Winfield today: One hails from Tonga, where climate change is threatening the very existence of the archipelago…
Tonga has never before had a cardinal, and Mafi’s concerns about climate change are very much in line with those of the pope, who is writing an encyclical on the environment that has already irked climate change deniers in his own church…
Daily Mail today: Mafi represents a region grappling with climate change, which is one of the major concerns of Pope Francis. In a recent interview with the Jesuit magazine America, Mafi spoke about the “permanent vulnerability” low-lying Pacific islands such as Tonga face from global warming.
Francis has said climate change is mostly man-made and is expected to lay out his call for greater stewardship of God’s creation in an upcoming encyclical that has elated environmentalists and alarmed climate change skeptics, including those within the church…
12 Feb: Reuters: Vatican mulling new department to tackle environmental issues
The Vatican is considering setting up an environmental think tank, a spokesman said on Thursday, which could influence the opinion of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics on such thorny issues as climate change…
“We see a growth in the awareness (of environmental problems) and in the importance of reflection, commitment, and study of environmental issues and their relation to social and human questions,” he told reporters at a briefing.
Pope Francis has said that man is destroying nature and betraying God’s calling to be stewards of creation.
Last month, he said he believed man was primarily responsible for climate change and he hoped a U.N. summit in Paris in November, due to agree a global pact to limit greenhouse gases, would take a courageous stand…
The pope’s keenly awaited encyclical, or message to the whole Church, on the environment is due in ***early summer…
http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/02/12/pope-environment-idINL5N0VM52420150212
***right in time for the Bonn Climate Change Conference in Germany, 1-11 June, probably!.
The thing they can never wrap their tiny brains around is that it is precisely skeptics’ knowledge about climate change which makes them skeptics to begin with. The whole idea of it being a cultural thing or based on politics is both wishful thinking on their part and propaganda based on their own culture and political bias. Classic psychological projection.
being CAGW-infested Yale, and considering the previous Kahan study on the topic, i’m not sure the present study is being properly described. any thoughts?
May 2012: CarbonBrief: Ros Donald: Inaccuracy through two degrees of separation – Mail mangles science literacy findings by misreporting Fox
Mail Online mangles Fox report on Yale study
Lead researcher says difference between skeptic and non-skeptics’ science literacy is not statistically significant
According to the Mail Online yesterday, “Global warming sceptics are BETTER-informed about science than believers”. Pretty arresting. But a closer look at the article reveals that the Mail’s top line, reporting on research just out, mangles not just the study, but reporting on the findings by Fox News…
As we discussed earlier in the week, the study explores whether levels of science literacy among ordinary people or their unconscious tendency to fit their beliefs to those of their social and cultural groupings are the most accurate indicator of public concern about climate change.
The study finds finds that contrary to the first theory, the most scientifically-literate members of the public aren’t the most concerned about climate change. Instead the result fits much more closely with the second theory – surprisingly, science-savvy people tend to be even more polarised according to their social groupings than those less well-informed…
We emailed the lead author on the research, Dan Kahan, to find out where Fox got the information from in the first place. He told us:
“Who gets science more — the people who believe in climate change or those who don’t?” was a question people asked me periodically about the working paper. When they did, I sent them this graphic:…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/05/mail-mangles-science-literaacy-study-through-fox-news-slipup
2012: Nature: The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks
by Dan M. Kahan, et al
Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare…
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n10/full/nclimate1547.html
The prior study by Kahan et al.
http://www.climateaccess.org/sites/default/files/Kahan_Tragedy%20of%20the%20Risk-Perception%20Commons.pdf
“As respondents’ science literacy scores increased,
their concern with climate change decreased (r = -0.05, p = 0.05). The difference is small—but neverthe-
-5- less inconsistent with the science-illiteracy theory prediction that those who scored higher in science literacy
would be significantly more concerned. There was also a small negative correlation between numeracy
and climate-change risk (r = -0.09, p < 0.01)—a result inconsistent with the “bounded rationality”
theory prediction. "
So the science score difference between skeptics versus true believers was small, but significant at the
5% level. Likewise skeptics scored better on the numeracy test. Again the difference was small, but significant at the 1% level.
I think Kahan originally wanted to show how skeptics would score more poorly than true believers. When THAT didn't pan out- in fact, he got results OPPOSITE to what he expected- he went off on a trivial and meaningless tangent about "polarization". Of COURSE the more knowledgeable a person is on a subject, the more confident that person is about his or her political stance.
I don’t believe the links and Fox headline do justice to the findings of the 2012 Kahan study so I think this is a good opportunity to remind WUWT readers what exactly the previous study found. The Fox headline that “global warming skeptics [are] as knowledgeable about science as climate change believers” doesn’t really capture the study’s money quote:
On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.
IOW the more you know about science, the less likely you are to buy into the alarmist’s climate catastrophe. So much for anti-science. As for the “we just haven’t communicated the dangers well enough” meme that crops up with painful frequency, the study found the following:
A strategy that focuses only on improving transmission of sound scientific information, it should be clear, is highly unlikely to achieve this objective. The principal reason people disagree about climate change science is not that it has been communicated to them in forms they cannot understand.
As for the attempts by AGW believers to shame and name call against anyone who doesn’t toe the line, there was this:
Individuals are prone to interpret challenges to beliefs that predominate with their cultural community as assaults on the competence of those whom they trust and look to for guidance (Kahan, Braman, Cohen, Gastil & Slovic 2010). That implication – which naturally provokes resistance – is likely to be strengthened when communicators with a recognizable cultural identity stridently accuse those who disagree with them of lacking intelligence or integrity.
Funny how that works huh? Such encounters account for the raised hackles I experience when some pseudoscientific AGW anti-human hacktivist calls me a flat earther or oil shill or anti-science ostrich or other such nonsense (I could list dozens more such descriptors I have been labeled with over the last half-dozen years or so). Now I know I am engaging in the same thing with my labeling, but I choose to fight fire with fire, and aside, if the shoes fit…
Good to know he cites his previous paper with approval.
an opinion poll where you are graded on what you think someone else believes….
…and they still failed it
The ignorance of AGW believers goes way beyond the findings of this study.
All my left wing friends believe in AGW totally,yet have not a clue what any details entail.
They are dramatically brainwashed usually by PBS or the NYT.
One very intelligent woman (not sarcastic) I engaged a debate with ,started her argument by explaining the evils of Carbon Monoxide.I t took me a few moments before I realized that she genuinely thought that AGW was about monoxide.
Another friend wants to sell his home in Alameda ,Ca because of the risk of SLR.
I printed out a graph showing him zero SLR in Alameda for the past 60 years at Alameda Naval Air station.
They know nothing yet believe.
BRAINWASHED is not an exaggeration.
Offer to buy his home cheaply, due to incipient, dangerous SLR.
BTW my pointing out my friends misinformation made absolutely no change in their belief.
Give them time, dear Mojo. It’s just a matter of time…
If they are TRULY intelligent, healthy, people, it was only their pride that prevents them from acknowledging that you might just have a point… . They are thinking that, though. Those seeds of truth you planted will not lie fallow. Watered by others/what they read and hear, those seeds will turn into undeniable reality and they will change their actions accordingly. Good for you!
Thanks, Anthony. Interesting article, as the comments show.
Happy Saint Valentine’s day, Janice Moore. You are a kind person.
O Man Who Once {Again!} Said a Kind Word to Me,
THANK YOU! #(:))
You are, too.
Smiling,
Janice
Thats encouraging Janice thanks.
I’ll remember that wisdom when I get the urge to scream “You brainwashed Idiot”.
Heh, I think you SHOULD scream, “You brainwashed idiot!! — just sure to hang up the phone first. 🙂
Thanks for responding!
Any scientists who ‘believes’ in anything ought to be dismissed.
I wish they would do away with the “wind chill” measurement by meteorologists, weather channels, etc.
I would much rather know the actual temperature, and the wind speed variation.
I remember running into the wind with gloves on, but when I turned around and headed home, I had to take my gloves off because I was sweating. – This was in 10F weather.
Drudge keeps putting up the wind chill map – it doesn’t mean anything to me. Sometimes the wind chill is below freezing in Florida. If it is 34 degrees and the wind chill is 25… there is no way that water will freeze…etc…
LOL.
13 Feb: Yale Daily News: FFY postpones Global Divestment Day action
By Jed Finley and Larry Milstein
With the first-ever Global Divestment Day scheduled for this weekend, Fossil Free Yale looks to revive the campus push for divestment. But it remains unclear if, and when, their efforts will come to fruition.
In fact, the event, which was meant to be held on Saturday, has been postponed indefinitely. FFY Project Manager Mitch Barrows ’16 said the delay is due to unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues, including some cancellations from speakers and performance groups…
FROM THE COMMENTS:
Robert Strong: Sorry, Yale. Gotta cancel the Global Warming protest because it’s too cold outside…
Hipnosis: I hope these student are hunkered down in their fossil fuel heated homes. Let them freeze in the cold hugging a wind turbine. The Gore effect strikes again…
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/02/13/with-global-event-ffy-to-broaden-focus/
13 Feb: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: It’s Too Cold To Protest Global Warming At Yale
As this reporter writes this article, the weather in New Haven, Connecticut where Yale is located stands at -9 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill. Saturday is expected to have weather in the low 30s with snow and Sunday will be 20 degrees with snow and rain, according to the Weather Channel…
http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/13/its-too-cold-to-protest-global-warming-at-yale/
That question on gas warming the atmosphere put this whole paper in such a ridicules light it does not matter what its results are.
This is a pure example of the problem with this debate.
If you answer RIGHT on this question (as the author intended) then you come out WRONG.
Crooked science.
Not so, says a forthcoming paper in the journal Advances in Political Psychology by Yale Professor Dan Kahan. He finds that skeptics score about the same (in fact slightly better) on climate science questions,
well DUHHH!
One suspects that both sides could do with segmenting their adherents. I suspect it will go something like:
1. Group A: unquestioning adherents. ‘So and so/this organisation/the Government/the papers say it is true, so I think so too’. They are the group that admits their own ignorance and places trust in others. What they have not yet done is determine who is worthy of their trust, other than basing it on their own gut instincts.
2. Group B: ‘a little knowledge is very dangerous’ group. This bunch have done some ‘research’ which leads them to back one side or the other. What they have not yet done is evaluate how they did that research and whether they have biased their conclusion by how they did it.
3. Group C: ‘my career is affected by the politics of this so I choose my position based on self-interest’. This one is the one you have to surmise on, because no-one can admit it without adverse effects on their career. This does not just include scientists and engineers, it includes pressure groups, NGOs, energy companies and, in some cases, financial services .
4. Group D: ‘I’m not a global expert on all the science, but I’ve done enough background research to make my mind up’. These are the ones you should admire the most, since they have tried as citizens to be responsible and educate themselves. They may or may not have reached the right conclusion, but at least they put the effort in.
5. Group E: ‘I consider climate change to be one of the top 3 issues affecting mankind, so I”ve educated myself to be able to challenge scientists and politicians on this matter from a position of knowledge’. This is probably the smallest grouping since it takes time, independence of thought a certain maturity of mindset and a suitable lack of deference to those in positions of ‘authority’.
To see how the battle will play out, you need to see how the data on both sides evolves over time through those two sets of supporters.
The key indication that one side has won the scientific is if Groups D and E shift in time to one side or the other, since that will tell you that the most active thinkers, the most knowledgeable particpants and those most capable of rational, skeptical thought processes have come down in favour of one side.
The most worrying indication that politcs trumps science is if a private position develops which differs to the public one. In particular, if too many in groups D and E in private shift to Group C in public.
Right now it is absolutely clear that most of the General Public is in Group B, with still quite a bit in Group A. It is probably the case that in most subjects requiring significant technical knowledge to allow independent decision-making, the majority of the population in a democracy are to be found in those two groups.
My take on the matter is this: skeptics need to be able to summarise simply, briefly and concisely precisely those pieces of evidence necessary to make ‘global warming caused by humans’ a minor issue rather than a species-threatening armageddon.
The definition of getting that right is the ability to get non-experts to all agree (or > 80% to agree on that) that that would be sufficient evidence to refute the case.
Once you have done that, you have to provide the evidence as currently exists.
Good insight. I agree with this, especially:
But I don’t know how anyone can still be in Group A. This is the end of the world – the most important issue of our time – and has been for a generation.
How has anyone been so trusting as to believe it and so apathetic as to not do any research? This is a mystery.
My own thoughts are that people in Group A don’t believe it. They just avoid any engagement with the end of the world so as they don’t risk becoming hypocrites in Group C.
But I am speculating about the motivations of others. This is obviously biased and flawed guesswork.
…A new study shows climate skeptics have more knowledge on climate science than alarmists…
Not so surprising. This was a strong thread of medieval thought (cf Dr Faustus) – the idea that gaining ANY knowledge was intrinsically evil. There are things that man is not supposed to know.
And the Climate Change believers in Armageddon and nothing if not mediaeval…
I can see no revelational of this survey.
But I do sense bias:
Work of unfettered mind May be better.
Those that I work with (professional geologists and civil engineers in private consulting practice) are unanimously skeptical of the current “carbon” scare. However, in my social circles there are numerous academics and engineers from the local universities and government research labs that are true believers in the theory promoted by the government/media complex. The latter group is “better educated”, so they must be correct. Right?
Interesting study, though I think that each science man (either skeptic or alarmist) has as much knowledge as he allows to have; mening, if you study, you have the knowledge. That theory applies on climate science as much as on other fields, too.
One has to have the temerity to look at all the evidence. A true scientist should do everything in his power to disprove his own theories, not look for evidence to support his own theories. All evidence must be entertained coupled with a good understanding of existing literature on the subject.
Very few have an understanding of all fields now due to specialization in academia. A “generalists” knowledge today would be very difficult and rare indeed.
http://drtimball.com/2011/generalist/
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
Skeptics were also more likely to correctly say that if the North Pole icecap melted, global sea levels would not rise. One can test this with a glass of water and an ice cube – the water level will not change after the ice melts. Antarctic ice melting, however, would increase sea levels because much of it rests on land. Arctic correct fact – BUT HAVEN’T everyone learnt what the teachers should have taught regarding landrise resp Archimedes Principle?
When will they ever learn that land pressed down by Ice will rise when Ice melts AND that neither ice in water or on land causes higher sea levels! Only more Ice on land causes more land to press away more water and thus the sealevels changes!
Only fools and those who tries to scam everyone who learnt those basic physic facts tries such!
Results of online survey of participants of hte climate debate conducted early 2014
“One question, for instance, asked if scientists believe that warming would ‘increase the risk of skin cancer.'”
Questionnaires are tricky things. If a warmer atmosphere leads people to wear less clothing, then it should lead to more skin cancer.