According to a new study, we are more likely to be skeptical about climate change, if we are worried about paying our living expenses.
Skepticism about climate change may be linked to concerns about economy
Americans dismiss scientific evidence of climate change despite education efforts, study finds
WASHINGTON — Americans may be more likely to accept the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change and its potentially devastating effects if they believe the economy is strong and stable, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
The findings may help explain why many Americans haven’t been swayed by public education and advocacy efforts indicating that climate change is being caused by humans. People who are concerned about the economy and who are strong supporters of the free market system may be more skeptical about climate change and downplay its potential effects, the study found. The research was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General®.
“The problem isn’t primarily ignorance about this issue,” said lead researcher Erin Hennes, PhD, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University. “Even when people are exposed to the same information, their attitudes about climate change may be polarized because they perceive the information in different ways.”
The vast majority of climate researchers and many scientific societies, government agencies and intergovernmental organizations have concluded that human-caused climate change is a real threat. However, only half of Americans believe human-caused climate change is real, ranging from 10 percent of conservative Republicans to 78 percent of liberal Democrats.
Hennes and her fellow researchers were inspired to study this issue after noticing that belief in human-caused climate change dropped by 11 percent in the United States during the major recession from 2007 to 2009.
Read more: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/05/climate-change.aspx
The study:
Motivated Recall in the Service of the Economic System: The Case of Anthropogenic Climate Change
The contemporary political landscape is characterized by numerous divisive issues. Unlike many other issues, however, much of the disagreement about climate change centers not on how best to take action to address the problem, but on whether the problem exists at all. Psychological studies indicate that, to the extent that sustainability initiatives are seen as threatening to the socioeconomic system, individuals may downplay environmental problems in order to defend and protect the status quo. In the current research, participants were presented with scientific information about climate change and later asked to recall details of what they had learned. Individuals who were experimentally induced (Study 1) or dispositionally inclined (Studies 2 and 3) to justify the economic system misremembered the evidence to be less serious, and this was associated with increased skepticism. However, when high system justifiers were led to believe that the economy was in a recovery, they recalled climate change information to be more serious than did those assigned to a control condition. When low system justifiers were led to believe that the economy was in recession, they recalled the information to be less serious (Study 3). These findings suggest that because system justification can impact information processing, simply providing the public with scientific evidence may be insufficient to inspire action to mitigate climate change. However, linking environmental information to statements about the strength of the economic system may satiate system justification needs and break the psychological link between proenvironmental initiatives and economic risk.
Read more: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-xge0000148.pdf
Studies like this make me optimistic about the future.
Greens frequently attack democracy and democratic choice, in my opinion because they are well aware whenever democratic governments genuinely attempt to introduce the economically damaging climate policies they demand, popular support for green politics collapses.
As long as we retain our ability vote out politicians who mess up the economy, there will be a limit to the amount of damage green demagogues can do to our quality of life.
Here’s a study for them to do:
A STUDY OF MASS DELUSIONS AND HYSTERIA
THEORY:
Climate change Belief is not merely the result of ignorance or lack of exposure to actual climate science, but likely has a motivational and a psychological basis.
However, the fact remains, regardless of whether the economy is healthy or not, that the manmade global warming scam and all bad policies that relate to the scam are bad science and evil, respectively. Bad science is bad science; we should reject it under any conditions. It would do us well to teach our kids real science and help them identify and reject. misinformation and illogical concepts when they are asked to believe them.
So what they are saying is “Let’s figure out how to make our propaganda more effective”. They have already determined the outcome: “Everyone turns their thought processes over to Big Brother and all dissent is crushed.” The problem is putting on the white lab coats and stating the the sky is purple didn’t seem to sway all the people who could look up and see it was blue. They believe that the messaging about the purple sky was the problem and if they could get more power to improve the messaging (By suing into penury anyone who dares look up during the message for instance – or more directly by knee-capping anyone whose eyes stray upward.) they will finally achieve the goal.
1984 was a warning, NOT A PLAYBOOK!
Education efforts? LOL. It’s a slicker propaganda/indoctrination program than any Soviet/Naz* effort. Children are particularly targeted — the younger the better.
In other words, people with no money worries are less likely to be concerned when govt wastes their money.
Now all we have to do is find this mythical person with no money worries.
mods: There appears to be a format issue. The text is squeezed into space to the right of the picture that is only about 4 characters wide. I’m using IE 11 on a Windows 7 computer.
Looks okay from here.
I’m still seeing it.
I don’t see it when using Chrome.
It is very hard to believe in something that you can not see. The average person can not tell the difference between 25C and 25.1C or 24.9C. I can not go down to Santa Monica peer and see that the water has risen a few centimeters, any more than I can determine that the whole coastline has moved north a few centimeters. As for climate change, I do not see any difference. One thing I do notice is that there is less smog.
pier reviewed in other words
Yeah and when concern about the economy reaches 100% of the people, then Climate $Change$ will quietly disappear!
Hennes and her fellow researchers were inspired to study this issue after noticing
that belief in human-caused climate change dropped by 11 percent in the United States during the major recession from 2007 to 2009.a potentially profitable coincidence.With the new and improved measuring the TSI is 1360 w/m^2. The problem with the 0.7 C is that it was calculated using 1368 w/m^2. It was never recalculated to the new and improved rate of warming to 0.335 C. Additionally, in pure number terms, (it seems nobody reads anything) the research ( not skeptic research either) has shown that at least half of the heat that is claimed to be observed is from natural causes. (I did say claimed). Ironically, I never claimed it wasn’t warming, especially since 1979, what I disagreed with is the correlation between co2 and temperature. I also disagree about the consequences of it being warmer. Historically not that cold during the early 1970’s, but still colder, among governments food became an issue. As in anything that changes, there are issues, but warming is a decided plus, not a negative. A colder world is definitely a scary world. That’s why I believe that CAGW is a detriment in finding out the real cause of climate change.
Anybody can see the graph of the TSI that the measurements have changed. And they are in color too! Do people actually do the math or just believe everything that someone else says? Do they think about what they are being told? Drinking acid laced cool aid is not my idea of independent thinking. ( I’m referring to Jonestown where everybody committed suicide in a religious fevor) . I put CAGW in the same category.
Weasel words are “may be”, but of course the other possibility is “may not be”. They really don’t know. But with enough grant money stuffed in-pocket, they will surely continue to “study” this burning question, ad nauseum.