I have three thoughts on this. 1. Like Lewandowsky, they didn’t bother to get opinions from the most central collection of climate skeptics in the world, WUWT. But reading the article, I think they really mean ‘people are more ambivalent than we thought’, which is what many public surveys have shown us about climate change opinion. 2. As our detractors are fond of pointing out with paleo and surface temperature studies, one country (Norway) is not representative of the world. 3. The picture provided of the researchers, oozes ambivalence. At least it’s not these clowns.
Using a brand new survey method, researchers in Bergen have asked a broad spectrum of people in Norway about their thoughts on climate change. The answers are quite surprising.
Some 2,000 Norwegians have been asked about what they think when they hear or read the words “climate change”. There were no pre-set answers or “choose the statement that best describes your view” options. Instead the respondents had to formulate their views on climate change in their own words. The answers have provided striking new insight into what the average person on the street in Norway thinks about climate change.
“The way we formulate the questions ensures that the respondents give more nuanced answers. We see, for example, that many of the people who might otherwise have stated they doubt that climate change is due to human activity make provisos and say that some changes probably are caused by human activity when they are given the opportunity to respond in their own words. Climate-change sceptics are thus more ambivalent than has been suggested in previous surveys,” says Endre Tvinnereim, a researcher at Uni Research Rokkan Centre.
Language analysis
The respondents were drawn from the Norwegian Citizen Panel, and the survey is part of the LINGCLIM project at the University of Bergen. This project is looking at the language used and the interpretations that prevail in the climate-change debate.
The survey was carried out in 2013 as an online questionnaire. This kept the costs down, making it possible to collect data from a sample pool of respondents.
Published in Nature
The researchers analysed the results, and the study has now been published in the highly respected journal Nature Climate Change. Very few researchers in the social sciences and humanities manage to get their research published there. However, the study by researcher Tvinnereim and Professor Kjersti Fløttum at the University of Bergen is arousing interest.
The researchers divided the answers they received into four categories using the text analysis method Structural Topic Modelling (STM). These are the four main topics that Norwegians associate with climate change:
- Weather and ice
Focus on the physical consequences of climate change such as unstable weather and melting ice
- The future and consequences for man
For example, risks and challenges that will affect their children and grandchildren
- Money and consumption
References to negative effects of the consumer society, the need to help poor countries, statements related to politics, issues related to economic motives behind climate policy
- Causes
What is causing climate change? The impact of human activity.
Views are often balanced in that the participants believe that both nature and human activities affect the climate
A single respondent could give answers that belong to several categories. The researchers got the most responses in the category “weather and ice”. In second place came the “the future and consequences”, followed by “money and consumption” and finally “causes”.
Gender differences
Slightly more women responded that they thought about things related to “weather and ice” than men. Otherwise, there were no differences between the sexes.
Nor were there significant differences in the responses between people with different educational backgrounds.
“Previous studies have shown that people with lower education are more sceptical about climate change than people with higher education. We did not observe any such correlation in our survey. Education had little impact on what people chose to attach importance to,” says Tvinnereim.
Major differences related to age
One aspect where we did find major differences was the respondents’ age. The older the respondent was, the less concerned he/she was about the “future and consequences”; the younger respondents tended to have a large proportion of their answers in the category “future and consequences”.
“We see that the older respondents write more about weather and ice and are less focused on the future in their responses,” says Tvinnereim. This may be because climatology focused more on physical aspects in the past, whereas now there is more talk about solutions and consequences for society. It may also be because older people do not have so much time left and are therefore less worried about the future, apart from when they think about their children and grandchildren.
“From the perspective of the LINGCLIM project, this study draws a representative picture of the diversity of opinions and attitudes that exist among people regarding climate change. The study clearly shows how the language used in the climate debate affects public opinion and how language is interpreted and reproduced by the general public in Norway. Our results thus provide important contributions to the knowledge base needed to make relevant decisions on actions,” says Professor Kjersti Fløttum at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Bergen.
New questions
The researchers now want to use this same method in other projects in order to obtain more in-depth knowledge about what people really think and believe.
“It will be interesting and important to use this method to investigate new issues and in more countries. For me as a linguist, it will also be important to analyse the material we have in greater depth and investigate variations in the freely formulated answers provided by the respondents. Climate change appears to be associated with everything from physical realities to people’s subjective attitudes, values and interests,” says Fløttum.
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Maybe we should start referring to Alarmists as “Model Deniers”. As in they deny the models have failed, and without adjustments to the temperature record, they would show they have failed spectacularly!
“Observation Deniers”
It is the observed record that is ignored, adjusted, fudged, and hidden.
Better still, how about, “model idiots”.
Although they will be likely to misinterpret this monicker.
As demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbxz8sCnAL4
I think the “PC” term is “Reality Challenged”.
PeterinMD
How about “Data Deniers”.
Eugene WR Gallun
I think it’s good that they are asking open-ended questions, and using language like ‘ambivalent’
There are too many papers of this type that just force everyone into one of two categories, creating or enhancing polarisation.
One interesting finding is
“those less concerned are more likely to bring up the Attribution topic”.
But on the whole, the paper isn’t very informative.
I don’t know if I care or not ;o)
Humans everywhere, including scientists are prone to certain common biases.
As we all know.
But, these biases tend to work in favour of creating catastrophe and conspiracy obsessed thinking.
Thought patterns and news output and the concerns of the populace, tend to fixate on single catastrophic or worrying events.
Obviously there is a natural incentive for humans to take an interest in such events and to try and learn from them or prepare for them.
Of course there are background natural trends, but these have little or nothing to do with with the formation of public opinion.
Big chunks of ice falling off an Antartic glacier are more concerning and newsworthy than slow accretion of ice further inland. The collapse of one section of Bangladeshi river bank is more concerning than progressive silt deposition on the opposing bank. The extinction of one colony of Pika is more worrying than the spread of some other Pika to a new area. etc etc etc etc etc.
Furthermore, natural fears about disaster tend to lead us to fixate upon circumstances which are beyond our control.
And the natural propensity for delusion building confirmation bias tends to lead us to fixate upon stories of disaster and store up concerning impressions as evidence of a trend toward catastrophe.
In this sense, creating a public mind concerned with catastrophic “climate change” was an easy task.
The fact that this delusion has gained so much momentum in such a short space of time is really only indicative of the natural tendency of humans to generate delusional concerns about future catastrophe when left to their own devices.
We used to have a counter-measure to eliminate this drift towards popular delusional psychosis.
The counter-measure was called science.
The real catastrophe here, is the corruption of science to serve the stimulation of mass delusion.
Without the balancing effects of objective criticism we risk sliding helplessly towards a new future of total idiocy.
There’s not much more that the professional fearmongerers of today need to do.
Making the public delusional and worried was never going to be all that difficult.
All that was really necessary was the absurd denigration of the agents of reasoned skepticism.
Once the public had been lead to suspect the motives of those who would try to help steer them back towards balance and reason – they were effectively cast adrift in a flotilla of fools.
To be honest, the chief brainwashers could now probably stand back and take a holiday.
From here on, the useful idiots can be left to brainwash themselves.
Soylent Green Is People !
Totaly biased questions. Consider the one here (you can rephrase the others using a similar reversal of intent).
The future and consequences for man
For example, risks and challenges that will affect their children and grandchildren
Rephrase the eample answer as
For example, opportunities that will accrue to children and grand children.
Better yet ask the quesation without including a biasing prologue example.
If someone is ambivalent about something, it means they are open to persuasion. Warmunists are watching in horror as skepticism about manmade climate keeps getting bigger, and are desperate to explain it, and find a way to combat it. This “ambivalence” thing would be something they could latch onto, and say, “there is still hope of reaching these people. We just need to find the right way to communicate climate change.” They are in denial, big time.
Apparently this is the sort of science that the public want.
This is today’s contribution from the BBC and the Royal Society:
“So why don’t chimps cook? Not being able to control fire is one reason and another, according to Dr Warneken.”
These self-styled “scientists” make Derek Zoolander look like Albert Einstein:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32976352
Interpretation of polls of this sort should bear in mind the polls held just prior to the last UK election.
Meh pretty much describes my ambivalence on this study.
Such surveys are such a waste of time if they don’t question people about the cost of doing something about it. If surveys asked the question , do you feel strongly enough about climate change that you would be happy to see power prices quadruple over a ten year period, that supply would be intermittent and the measures you take would make little difference to the climate I think most people would say don’t bother , whether they were a believer or not. To try to use such surveys as an excuse to implement government ( or global) policy is ridiculous. In the end belief or not is irrelevant. If you do believe ,how much money do you want to sacrifice to attempt ( and likely fail) to do something about it. I think you’d be amazed how little of their own money warmists would genuinely want to spend on trying to do something. Their all happy to spend everyone else’s money.
If I lived in Norway, I’d be rooting for human ability to cause warming to be real. I’d want to move the thermostat up a few degrees. I’m in a ‘temperate climate’ and thinking of moving another 300 miles closer to the equator to get away from all the snow as it is.
Ambivalence; Watching your mother-in-law driving your new BMW off a cliff.
”Some 2,000 Norwegians have been asked about what they think when they hear or read the words “climate change”.
Virtually every mention of climate change in the media, is flogging a one sided view of what is meant by the term. For the poorly informed, this is the impression they have of what it means. It’s amazing really that anyone should indicate any doubt about our impending doom… but they do.
Eamon.
And the point of this survey was….????? Please don’t tell me I paid for it.
They are looking for a way to dismiss the recent polls showing growing skepticism and they want a paper to “prove” that such views can be discounted.
This is all designed as part of the overall effort so they can proceed with their plan to “save the planet” come what may. This will translate into “Ignore the people, they don’t know what they’re saying or they don’t mean it” advice and give the green light (pardon the pun) to getting on with tearing down capitalism and bringing the human species to its knees.
Hmmm. It’s only ambivolence if you have no idea that the data tells CAGW skeptics…
“The study clearly shows how the language used in the climate debate affects public opinion”
Give’m a box of Nobels for that. I think they are beginning to understand that humans process information, unlike the common potty plant.
interesting idea – using linguistic analysis – altho they might turn the magnifying glass on themselves too – “scepticism frequently turns into ambivalence” – what do they mean by “ambivalence” – it could mean that skeptics aren’t as stubborn as alarmists – which is a good thing – skeptics should be more “scientific” and rational
or could it reveal wishful thinking on the part of the researchers – that some skeptics aren’t so certain of their position – and will quickly jump ship if the right pressure point can be found
this reminds of a bloggers advice to men to be absolutely certain in thought and action in order to appear more “manly” – alarmists might appear more manly – and appear more wrong as evidence accumulates against them – a small price to pay?