From ScienceAlert and the “you knew it was just a matter of time before some misguided social justice warrior made the claim” department. h/t to WUWT reader “ozspeakup”
Racist Attitudes And Climate Denial Have a Disturbing Link We Never Knew About
Something is very wrong here.
The drivers behind climate change denial look to be even more complex than we thought, with new research finding evidence of a “racial spillover” – in which racist attitudes have become linked with skepticism over climate change.
A new study examining attitudes to climate change during the Obama presidency found white Americans became significantly less concerned about climate change during the presidency, and that white racist attitudes could be helping to fuel climate denial.
“I’m not trying to make a claim in the study that race is the single most important or necessarily a massive component of all environmental attitudes” the researcher behind the study, political scientist Salil Benegal from DePauw University, told Sierra.
“But it’s a significant thing that we should be looking out for.”
To examine the extent that racist attitudes might be associated with views on climate change, Benegal examined trends in public opinion during the course of the Obama presidency.
Not only was Obama America’s first black president, but over the course of his presidency he became a notable advocate of environmental causes, and Benegal wanted to examine the extent to which today’s fractured climate debate on climate might have been influenced by his time in office.
“There has been increasing polarisation on this issue,” Benegal told Think Progress, “and this is one thing my own research has been examining for a while – trying to figure out what are some of the root causes of this polarisation.”
Benegal analysed nationally representative surveys conducted by Pew between 2006 and 2014 in which respondents were asked, among other questions, to rate the seriousness of climate change.
After controlling for the expected effects of factors such as political partisanship, ideology, and education, the data showed that – compared to the views of respondents who identified as black Americans – white Americans became 18 percent less likely to see climate change as a very serious problem over the course of Obama’s presidency.
…
The findings are reported in Environmental Politics.
You can read the rest here
Words fail me.
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When all else fails invoke racism or the welfare of children.
… and ends up benefiting the welfare of neither – which is almost always the case when any issue is exploited for political gain.
Or the Holocaust…
They use the term and now they follow the same reteric as Adolph did. He blamed the future holocaust victims for everything and next they got yellow stars that were compulsory to wear in public.
That will be the next suggestion it is following a frightening trend.
Well, this is about as good as climate modeling and proxy selection itself. It conforms to the mainstream, award-winning nonsense.
Definition of a Racist: “A person that successfully wins an argument with a liberal”
Paul S
Definition of a Racist: “A person that argues with a liberal”.
Definition of a Racist: A person that, when is labeled as such, makes a liberal feels better about their own views, choices, and superiority.
Or who does not agree with a liberal enthusiastically enough.
As noted by Judith Curry last week, one of the problems with mainstream science is that you often find what it is you’re looking for…that is, what you shine a light is what you see, but it’s not necessarily all there is to see. In the case of climate change, it’s the fingerprint of CO2 that has the light shining on it. I suppose the philosophical corollary, in this case, is racism. If you go looking for racism everywhere, then it’s not too terribly difficult to understand why you’ll find its fingerprint everywhere…whether it’s really there or not.
rip
I had one young radical tell me that all whites are racist, the only difference is how well they hide it. She assured me that if you dig hard enough, you can always find proof.
She doesn’t realize that the near universal response of people who are told that is gonna be “well, if I gotta do the time, I might as well do the crime.”
Or, to borrow a line from the original “Incredibles’ – ‘If Everyone is Racist – then No One is.”
Pinched from Gilbert and Sullivan if not earlier. “if everybody is somebody then no ones anybody”
How does she explain tens of millions of whites voting for Obama and for black, Asian and Latino governors and senators? Obama got 43% of the white vote in 2008. He obviously couldn’t have won without a large share of white voters.
Voting for Obama is just part of the scheme to cover up their racism.
Felix
Inverted racism.
You’re white, you vote for a black president because he represents non racist behaviour, therefore, you’re racist.
Seemples.
When have logic and consistency ever been part of Leftist discourse?
Blacks and Asians are just as racist at whites, but that’s not relevant I guess.
According to the left, you have to have power to be a racist and only whites have power.
Apparently the daughter of a white unemployed coal miner has more power than the son of a multi-millionaire black lawyer.
Med Bennett
It would be perfectly acceptable in the UK to call someone a white B’stard. But try calling someone another hue of B’stard and you’re up in front of the beak.
I and a colleague were witness to a robbery by an Asian gang. He was treated as more criminal than the gang and when I went to back him up so was I and made to give name address and place of birth which turned out to be only ten miles from the gang leader so they changed their tune totally.
It left me with total contempt for the law and our police force.
Racism in America is relatively mild compared to great many countries on earth. America at least has laws against racism.
In the end racism is more like tribalism. It isn’t about color it is about tribe. Two groups of people of the same color hate and fear each other for much the same reasons as people of different colors.
When someone says you are a racist they are more likely saying you don’t belong to my tribe.
Good comments Ferd,
I’ve done business on six continents and in many countries. In my experience, English-speaking whites are the least racist people on the planet, the most open to other societies and their views and values.
Tribalism is rampant in the third world, and not uncommon in the second.
Were the Hutu’s racist when they slaughtered about 1 million Tutsi’s in Rwanda* in 1994, or was it just tribal – or did it just feel like “the right thing to do”?
Were the Muslims in Northern Sudan racist when they launched slave raids in the South, or was it just tribal – or was it “nothing personal, just business”?
Regards, Allan
* https://www.thoughtco.com/location-of-conflict-tutsis-and-hutus-3554918
The bloody history of Hutu and Tutsi conflict stained the 20th century, from the slaughter of 80,000 to 200,000 Hutus by the Tutsi army in Burundi in 1972, to the 1994 Rwanda genocide. In just 100 days during which Hutu militias targeted Tutsis, between 800,000 and 1 million people were killed.
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Sudan#cite_note-hrw-SaSRiS-1
Slavery in Sudan began in ancient times, and recently had a resurgence during the 1983 to 2005 Second Sudanese Civil War. During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, many Nilotic peoples from the lower Nile Valley were purchased as slaves and brought to work elsewhere in North Africa and the Orient by Nubians, Egyptians, Berbers and Arabs.
Starting in 1995, many human rights organizations have reported on contemporary practice, especially in the context of the Second Sudanese civil war. According to reports of Human Rights Watch and others, during the war the government of Sudan was involved in backing and arming numerous slave-taking militias in the country as part of its war against the SPLA.[1] It also found the government failed to enforce Sudanese laws against kidnapping, assault and forced labor, or to help victims’ families locate their children.[1])
Another report (by the International Eminent Persons Group) found both the government-backed militias and the rebels (led by the SPLA) guilty of abducting civilians, though the abducting civilians by pro-government militias was “of particular concern” and “in a significant number of cases”, led to slavery “under the definition of slavery in the International Slavery Convention of 1926.[2][3] The Sudanese government maintained that the slavery is the product of inter-tribal warfare, over which it had no control.
AFAIK, Japan still denies full citizenship to people of Korean descent, even those whom were born in Japan, speak the language fluently, and are thoroughly assimilated into the culture.
ferd,
I totally agree with your assessment re: tribalism. We (humanity) are at our best when we’re actively working against tribal instincts. Unfortunately, those instincts are pervasive, divisive, and…uh…durnnit, where’s Jackie Chiles when you need him?
Seriously, though, we’re all guilty of it, especially here, when confronted by the alarmist who dares wander into our sanctum. 🙂
But true racism? Well, I’ve seen it, but thankfully it’s rare. In general, I think we’re all more likely to err on the side of overt non-racism, due in no small part to the cancer inflicted upon us by King George.
rip
DNA testing shows me to have black white and Asian so any dislike is based not on racism but on behaviour of that group. Many blacks are loud and aggressive or whining self pitying hard done by, bleating about slavery that ended a generation ago at least. Many Asians are narrow minded religious and or sexist bigots. Many whites are arrogant self righteous prats. Fortunately most of all these groups are not and it is the worst who are most noticeable.
Slavery ended over 150 years ago.
Government endorsed racism against blacks was ended more than 40 years ago.
He forgot to add “sexist, homophobic, and Islamophobic”. Anyone who disagrees with a leftie will get called the litany of disapproval.
It is SIX HIRB
Sexist
Imperialist
Xenophobic
Homophobic
Islamaphobic
Racist
Bigot
When people repeat words and lables too much they lose all meaning. None of those terms mean anything. The people who use these just sound absurd. The more whingey and high-brow the posturing, the more fake and rediculous they seem. There was a common place saying when I was a boy, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” When people call someone a ‘racist’, it’s actually their own prejudice, dishonesty and inner projection that’s on display. Instant negative credibility.
You are wrong. Real racism hurts like hell and leaves you less of a person than you might have been. Using racism whenever you do not agree or when the real problem is the racial group was being antisocial trivialises a serious problem of true racism.
In the same vein, the Holocaust. In a Western culture gripped by moral relativity, it’s one of the few events still agreed to be unambiguously evil. Those who died in and those who survived that brutality deserve better than to be just another pile of mud to sling in Internet arguments.
Experiencing social rejection lights up the same parts of the brain associated with physical pain. I’d predict a strong correlation between high pain tolerance and resistance to social pressure.
You forgot “Deplorable”
Perhaps….BUT AT LEAST I DON’T TELL LIES !
and I’ve still got my driver’s licence !!
ps…..AND I’m possibly a Deplorable too !
(see entry below ! )
True, but anybody who disagrees with ‘you’ appears to be called the litany by the friends here. Tribalism lives. Also certain misogyny, xenophobia, and fear / hate of gays is apparent. Not that all would, but some do show that and go unchallenged by the majority. Even I shut up, because I know tribalism is strong.
Agreed. There is absolutely no difference between a dispute based on religion or skin color.
The conflict exists because the people are in different tribes. Tootsie vs Hutu. Protestants vs catholics. If I hate all white people does it make a difference if I am white. How can justice be blind if my color determines if my actions are legal.. Otherwise the law itself becomes racist.
I think it’s “Tutsi”. Tootsie was transvestite character played by Dustin Hoffman in the eponymous film.
I suspect auto-correct ‘helped’ Ferd.
Correlation does not equal causation.
Well, somebody had to say it.
And if a male can be born female, then why can a black not be born white? And thus the question of whether we are black or white is not based on our color but rather what we choose to be.
It’s amusing how the so-called progressives so often fail to notice the corners they paint themselves into. Especially when it comes to their favorite talking points about race, gender, and sexuality.
My brain hurts after reading that. It will take me weeks to get that out of my braincase.
Stuff like this is truly evil in a deep unspeakable way. It is almost as if one of Lovecraft’s old gods are manipulating these people.
To quote Admiral Painter as played by Fred Thompson in ‘The Hunt for Red October’, “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it.”
Lots of good quotes in that movie.
Interesting, because I too have done a study, on Climate Belief. I am not trying to make a claim in my study that congenital idiocy is the single most important or necessarily a massive component of all Climate Belief, but it’s a significant thing that we should be looking out for.
“But it’s a significant thing that we should be looking out for.” [face palm]
Why would a climate scientist need to be aware of racism? How does racism effect the weather or climate…it cannot.
The fact that the authors though this important is more telling of the author’s bias than anyone else’s.
If one does not have an irrefutable argument, the only thing to fall back on are various and sundry ad hominem attacks. It beats admitting that they are wrong and losing face!
The disturbing thing is, they believe they’ve found something important. The ad homs are just their exasperation that everybody else is so evil.
Most of Sociology has become an exercise in choosing out the inference that suits the sociologist’s prejudice from very equivocal data.
As as engineer I had a low opinion of social science and took a degree in it to find out if it was as rubbish as it appeared. It was mostly not. It was merely selectively badly reported.
I did the same for climate studies and found out in days when I put the through the QA assessment for the cheapest product I could find and found it failed it is the lowest category of do not use this supplier until approved by an external test house. Needless to say I never followed up the study of this subject.
Even product costing a few dollars required standards of data to be from certified instruments and in controlled environments and certainly not derived data used for sub degree comparisons.
When you disagree with someone’s viewpoint or opinion, call them a racist or a nazi.
Chapter 1, paragraph 1, socialist domination handbook.
Thanks for mentioning “nazi,” as its certain to come up again. MSM certainly had a heyday with it yesterday, re: criminal illegal immigrant detention.
Godwin lives!
Liberals = cognitive dissonance = never knowing when you’ve overplayed your hand
“A new study examining attitudes to climate change during the Obama presidency found white Americans”….are sick and tired of this crap
Latitude
Before we get carried away with this, remember there are people on this blog who are not white, and also sick and tired of this crap.
I could be one of them for all you know.
I have always assumed that you were …. well you know … Ginger.
But when I read your posts I always make an effort to imagine you are normal … to keep my (admitted) biases from getting the way of what your are really saying.
🙂
DonM
Rest assured, I’m anything but ginger.
However, I do occasionally wear the Kilt, and when asked what’s worn under it, my reply is always, there’s nothing worn under my Kilt, it’s all in perfect working order.
🙂
Latitude’s comment doesn’t necessarily imply he is white, HotScot. It implies he’s tired of the racist canards directed against white people, especially white men. It’s the new national pastime.
Plenty of black people have expressed the same impatience Latitude expressed, such as Thomas Sowel, Larry Elder, Candace Owens, Tommy Sotomayor, and Jesse Petersen to name a few.
Pat
Fair comment.
Okay, at this point that completes the list of finger waving attack angles. From this point on the claims will have the prefix of neo- ‘fill-in-the-blank’
Funny, I’d have thought the racists were environmentalists who want to stop 3rd world countries using cheap fossil fuel energy
Smells like Lewandowsky.💩
The Polish football player?
He scored … +1
It makes sense. Attitudes about climate change are highly correlated with the party people support. link
There are some folks on the far right who are indeed racist. They would probably rather vote Republican than Democrat. So, you have some folks who don’t believe in CAGW and are racist. Maybe even most racists don’t believe in CAGW. The loony left, who fervently believe in CAGW, try to tar all skeptics with the racist brush.
Turn about is fair play:
It makes just as much sense.
One of the best comments. But, ‘bearded bomb carriers’ is something that only a ra-cis-t may say. Thus, a Dim still sticks fingers to ears and say LA-LA-LA I don’t hear you, ra-cis-t!
Disclosure. I have a multiracial family, with racially African-American like persons (lets call them ‘African’ yet that is not a full description), with transsexual and gay in-laws, and a bunch of feminists. I don’t want religion of peace to behead them, nor the KKK around. Thanks.
KKK – as in southern democrats.
I don’t think many present day Dims are KKK members? Right? Not that I would know.
Of course, KKK now and then are also different.
You’d be surprised. Most of those I’ve seen here in Indiana who fly the confederate flag (despite not having any ancestors from any further South then Kentucky) have been diehard Democrats. Even when Obama ran for President, they just didn’t vote for that election.
>¿<
Flying the Confederate flag doesn’t make one a racist.
“Flying the Confederate flag doesn’t make one a racist.”
It is according to leftists.
But I’m sure someone with a PhD in Sociology can, after careful research, find a correlation.
Robert Byrd, Democrat leader in the Senate was one prior to moving to Washington.
The late Senator Byrd wasn’t just a member of the KKK, he was a leader in his local chapter (a Grand Kleagle). and yet that racist, who opposed the Civil Rights legislation when it was voted on, not only was a lifelong Dem, he was celebrated as a leading member of the party during his long tenure as a Senate Dem. One whom Hillary called her mentor and friend.
Modern Progressive democrats have taken bigotry FAR beyond race.
KKK is not different – except maybe more inclusive, adding Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Italians to the mix. Maybe more. My Father-in-law used to tell me that I wasn’t really a conservative, because real conservatives hated all those listed above, plus, of course, blacks. He hated them. He was a conservative. He was a diehard Democrat.
Somehow, he voted for Obama. Twice.
In truth, he hated everyone. I’m pretty sure that included himself.
Past tense, because he died last year.
I remember seeing this on T-shirts back in the 90s.
“I’m not prejudiced. I hate everybody.”
I wish I could remember which left wing politician it was, but they were on a publicity tour somewhere in Africa, and during a speech the politician referred to the locals as African-Americans.
MarkW
Probably Prince Philip. Known for his racist faux pas.
It reminds me of something Dan Quayle would have said. link
Have every word you say recorded for posterity, then mined for jewels, and see how smart you sound.
BTW, Obama had many more such quips.
That’s one reason I post anonymously.
Pretty much every liberal that I have met is a racist.
They are convinced that minorities are incapable of helping themselves, and that only government, can improve their lot in life.
There’s a video on youtube in which white liberals explain why they think voter ID laws are racist, and then actual backs are interviewed about the frankly racist ideas those white liberals have about blacks vis-a-vis having/getting an ID.
commieBob
Whoa!……..Stop right there.
I’m as far right as one can get. But I’m not a tattoo canvas, waving a swastika, carrying a baseball bat and singing some Nazi marching tune. That’s a fascist.
I’m a member of the UK Libertarian party which campaigns for a small government, low taxes and the rule of law. That’s right wing.
I’m sick to death of being branded as an extremist when fascism emerged from the left, not the right. It even contaminates the language of the right, describing fascists as extreme right.
They aren’t, they are extreme left!
They even have a secondary fascist wing called antifa.
The fekkers just make up political movements as they go along.
Some of them describe themselves as the alt-right. Antifa is a social justice warrior antifascist group.
As for myself, I come down reliably somewhere between Tommy Douglas and Ron Paul on almost all issues.
the misnamed Antifa are a bunch of modern day brown shirts.
One of the things I find funny is how Antifa folks and others who identify as Progressives are so clueless about the concept of “force” and that one of the greatest concerns of the framers of the Constitution was ensuring there would be no monopoly on the means of applying force.
In other words, they don’t get that the deplorables they hold in such high contempt are also the folks most likely clinging to their guns and their religion.
Interesting how most ‘skeptics’ seem to want to bring the huge benefits of cheap, reliable energy to the world’s poorest inhabitants, most of whom reside in Africa and Asia. Unless I’m mistaken, the vast majority of these people are not white. It is the eco jihadis who want to deny the world’s poor the opportunity to lead longer, healthier and happier lives by denying them access to the very means to improve their lives on a grand scale. I would suggest that the so called racists’ sit, very squarely, on the alarmist side of the fence.
WEAK!! What a load of idiotic crap.
And there is nothing political in any of this, right:? Okay, sure.
And it’s really marginalizing the issue – after thirty years of being compared to Nazis and Holocaust deniers, being called a ‘racist’ is pretty tepid.
I’ll tell you this, though, I sure don’t give a tin-s*** what white progressives think anymore.
Benegal has discovered something different than he thinks. Actually Climate Science has been a шнутемаиs thing up until climategate (approximately) after which шнутешомеи seemed suddenly to number greater proportions of young climate graduates. Judith Curry was a prominent exception but she was pushed out once she reacted to the horrors revealed in climategate and shifted over to a more sceptical viewpoint on the science. Other races weren’t that interested in climate science. Its difficult to write in a topic like this because stickhandling around the language seems necessary to make a decent point. Let’s put it that climate science is the only endeavor where diversity is penalized, diversity of thought particularly. I’d be interested to know if others have seen the white, masculine underbelly of climate science.
Here is a pic of a panel of experts at Paris Accord
http://www.thehansindia.com/assets/3033_02.jpg
Obviously all racists!
Well, Obama pushed it – that kind of MADE it a race-issue because any position in opposition to Obama is, by definition, racist.
Could it be that Climate Change Belief is simply far more partisan and that more Caucasian-Americans are conservative by nature leading to a false conclusion.
More likely that More Democrats tend to be Climate Pessimists instead of Climate Optimists
Then there’s that pesky ‘Climategate’ scandal that broke at the beginning of Obama’s presidency.
Bryan A
I have yet to meet an optimistic socialist.
Progressivism, by definition, is the belief that some people are less capable of self-actualization than others. And therefore must be directed and assisted by the fortunate few. I don’t know that this carries with it any categorization, based on phenotype, but it certainly introduces the possibility.
Or that perhaps after hearing years of alarming claims about climate change and how it represented the gravest threat to our nation (claims made by both Obama and Kerry), people became either a) weary of the topic or b) skeptical when the claims failed to materialize.
Or maybe they were smart enough to understand there are more important topics to focus on. Like jobs.
Ah yes, the old leftist line: Anyone who disagrees with a liberal black is a racist.
Of course disagreeing with a conservative black is not a problem because according to leftists conservative blacks aren’t real blacks.
Just like conservative women aren’t real women.
Soon to morph into the classic, those who disagree with us aren’t true humans, so they have no human rights.
“white Americans became 18 percent less likely to see climate change as a very serious problem over the course of Obama’s presidency”
The fact that the argument for global warming became steadily weaker during the Obama mal-administration as the pause grew progressively longer is ignored.
No, the only possible explanation is that whites are racist.
“white Americans became 18 percent less likely”….
I think they are making the argument that white Americans are smarter and better informed.
No, they are prolly just ignoring the starting point.
“…white Americans became 18 percent less likely to see climate change as a very serious problem over the course of Obama’s presidency…”. And what was the rate of decline among other racial identifications? ‘Nuff said. P.S. It may be in the full report, but I’m not going to give them any clicks.
So this is just another example of the Left’s use of the Race Card.
Obama was of course the first black US president, but many of his policies were out-right Socialism and he lost more Supreme Court cases than any modern President, so he was arguably operating outside the Constitution and/or the written law many times. And in doing so his Administration suffered 44 9-0 unanimous losses, far more than Bush or Clinton.
The Left had only one option with this situation.
If you objected to Obama’s purely on policy grounds they labeled you a racist by his supporters:
1) to silence you,
2) because many of his policies were indefensible if anyone dug below the surface spin of what they were doing.
For reference see:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/06/obama-has-lost-in-the-supreme-court-more-than-any-modern-president/
I will also add that the Pew Foundation studies clearly show that the current polarization between the Right/Republicans/Conservatives and the Left/Democrats/Liberals is due entirely to the Democrats moving further to the Left on almost every issue, while the Right has moved Left on many social issues such as broader acceptance of LGBT marriage.
Over more than 20 years, it is the Democrats who have moved sharply and further to the left on most issues, while the Republicans broadened their range of views.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pew-research-center-study-shows-that-democrats-have-shifted-to-the-extreme-left/
Pew report source:
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/10/05162647/10-05-2017-Political-landscape-release.pdf
So that much of what the researcher Benegal has found since 2006 is simply the shift in the Left and not some emergence of hidden racism in the US white population. On climate change, it was the concern on the Left that grew, while the Right remained mostly rejecting or skeptical. In the Left’s twisted world view, that makes the Right (conservatives) having an extremist view.
Conclusion: Benegal probably couldn’t critically think his way out of a paper sack. Or if he could, his ideology’s speech restrictions would not allow him to speak outside his Liberal-imposed normative box.
And of course political gridlock is still the fault of Republicans for failing to do what the Democrats tell them to do.
When even the liberal justices on the Court are going Hell No, it’s a safe bet you’re doing something wrong.
Expensive and wasteful climate policies hurt minority communities worse. They drive up prices and divert resources from the inner cities.
Progressives are Out Of Touch on a Biblical Scale; NAACP Should Demand Re-Direction of Climate Change Funding to Inner-Cities
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/progressives-are-out-of-touch-on-a-biblical-scale-naacp-should-demand-re-direction-of-climate-change-funding/
CO2isLife
In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is allegedly chronically underfunded with a deficit of £2.6 Bn in 2016 (don’t quote me on the numbers, this is from memory).
The country is due to spend some £300 Bn on climate change by 2050, so, roughly £10 Bn per year.
Our domestic energy bills have risen some 20% in the last year or so because of the climate change act and the insane subsidies spunked on renewables. And it was announced this week taxes must rise to pay for the NHS.
All in all, I figure the total household tax bill is heading towards 50% of income, much of it stealth taxes so we almost don’t notice. The Europeans are already punishing us financially for Brexit and our government seems hell bent on getting us the worst deal possible.
Nor am I considered a minority. My family and I are moderately well off WASPS, but honestly, it’s getting more difficult to get by day to day.
The climate change act is ruining the UK economy and I can’t see a politician in the least concerned!
Move to Canada – we’re already there on the tax front. The plus side is you can get legally stoned and not realize how much you’re paying in taxes. Plus Justin has awesome socks and is very handsome.
The racist is the one who notices the/any difference.
Salil Benegal has hung himself with his own noose.
A variation of “He who smelt it, dealt it.”?