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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Invite Salil Benegal to post his thesis here, Anthony. Let’s find out how his ideas fare among the skeptics whose acumen he questions.
He can test his idea that skeptics have racial attitudes below their skepticism, by whether skeptics here can make an analytical (rather than subjective) case.
Of course, these days sociology denies the existence of objectivity in science. It’s all just hegemonic power-mongering. So he may not believe his lying eyes when his experience here refutes his thesis (as it most certainly will).
My cat is racist! I caught her killing mice differently colored than she. Scandal!!
What irony
The author of the study fails to understand that assigning behavior based on skin color is racism. The author is engaged in racism.
Analyzing and grouping behavior according to skin color IS RACISM because it assumes people act the way they do because of their skin color.
Can we see a study of the correlation between the readership increases of WUWT, JONova, trf, not_alot_of_people_know, no_tricks_zone, and so on, and the skeptism of climate change as a serious problem.
Learning a bit of science is a good thing.
It’s garbage because you cannot control in any meaningful way for things like political views or ideology. Those are not things like smoking or age that can be pretty easily controlled for.
Slightly change the way you control for stuff in this study and you can get the opposite result.
Thus it is simply nonsense.
The most important issue is that CO2 is a racist gas as it is incontrovertibly linked to the expansion of white colonialist industries, before which it was a largely minor trace gas minding its own business. Do I need need to add a sarc tag?
” … 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. … ”
—-
Maybe it’s got something to do with CAGW being baseless hogwash. Don’t over ‘think’ it, you don’t have enough bandwidth.
I don’t think the makers of that “study” can “over think” something, as it’s clear they failed to think in the first place.
Then how come it’s the leftist enviromentalists who want to stop Africans and Asians from using cheap fossil fuels? Many hard core enviromentalists probably want that millions of third world people would die off, but they can’t say that in public, because then they would be proving themselves hypocrites.
Only way to stop racism is to stop talking about race this and race that. Funny how it’s the leftists who these days seem to be obsessed about race. Martin Luther King would have been ashamed.
LOL… The Socialists creating enemies of the state so that they can attack them… The usual Socialist tactic. The National Socialists made J*ws enemies. The Soviet Socialists made land owners enemies…. The Democrat Socialists attempt to make skeptics enemies by fabricating a narrative that skeptics are racists.
Well. there you go.
As people frequently point out, it is about politics (or religion), certainly not science. The journal title tells you everything you need to know, and if the authors didn’t assert something political then it wouldn’t be published in such a journal.
Nowadays, the appearance of the R-word is more often than not when it is used in a manner of a child still learning socially acceptable and unacceptable words/actions: They have learned that certain words or actions will produce an immediate response from adults, so they employ it to get attention without really understanding its proper usage.
I think the best quote I ever heard on race and racism was Morgan Freeman being interviewed on 60 Minutes by Mike Wallace (transcript follows):
I think Morgan Freeman nailed it.
It’s like having a bad tooth. Stop wiggling it to see if it still hurts, and go get it pulled.
The left will always invoke racism into everything. Basically, it’s the only thing they have left. And sadly, there are times when it works for them.
“But it’s a significant thing that we should be looking out for.”
Yeah, let’s keep racism alive anyway that we can because … ?
Because it’s in the Left’s political interest to keep minority groups a welfare-dependent underclass. Lay their grievances at the feet of Racism, promise to keep the handouts coming, receive votes.
“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.”
“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”
THEN WHY MENTION IT ?
ISN’T THAT RACIST ???????????????????????
AND WHY “RESEARCH” IT ?
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.”
IT’S NOT MASSIVE…………….BUT IT’S SIGNIFICANT !!
AND that is known as TAUTOLOGY !!
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Did YOU NOT REALISE THAT THIS WAS DESTINED TO BECOME A RACIST ISSUE !!!??
I mean to say………………UNLESS THE MOON IS BRIGHT………………………………………
THEN IT IS DEFINITELY A BLACK and WHITE SITUATION !!!
That is as PLAIN and obvious as NIGHT and DAY !!
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You are right ! Ye Gods ! WORDS FAIL ME !!!!!!!!!
I admit to racism. I hate straw men!
That’s NOT racist……….IT’S SEXIST !
and you probably suffer from hay-fever….so it’s understandable too !
Ever notice, in relation to a straw man, how appropriate are the ideas of being scared (i.e., as with a scarecrow) and in want of a brain (i.e., as in the movie, The Wizard of Oz) ?
Straw men are made to scare, but they have no brains.
… such a perfect description.
And most crows are smart enough to not be fooled by a scarecrow alone.
Next up: NAZI comparisons.
they’ve been there already, at least as long as they’ve been using the holocaust invoking term “denier”
The climate crisis construct is wholly a шнутемаи’s creation and its control is the ratinale for a global neocolonial governance. They are buying the underdeveloped world with cash or they certainly would not get far with these folk. Ive mentioned this earlier on this thread but for some reason, even sceptics dont seem to go there. Missing this factor is what is really wrong with this study on racism and climate science.
It is not climate change denial it is a sloppy work rejection stamp. If a supplier fails I cross it off my list. Global warming failed so climate change is a second product from a failed supplier to be ignored until externally certified as now reformed and demonstrably competent. End of story.
It is really very depressing that no one is prepared to accept the criterion for accepting climate change is real, is to have it externally examined and verified with nothing but information input as the role of climate scientists. The judge and jury should be experts in fields that significantly overlap and in many cases have far more up to date skills than the climate scientists demonstrate in their released work.
Data in one area where the quality control demonstrates clearly that climate scientists are academics with hopelessly inadequate practical skills in knowing the limitation of the data quality. Clearly they cannot see it is not good for anywhere near the sort of accuracy needed to make the pronouncements they have claimed to be beyond question. No engineer would expect to use data from uncertified instruments or data derived from inferred behaviour of other subjects as valid for sub degree accuracy measurement as climate scientists do.
Secondly the use of world averages ceased to be valid the moment it was no longer claimed to be global warming and regional changes claimed as being man made acknowledged as existing.
As for racism Obama is as great if not worse a racist pig as any White National front member I have come across but from the opposite perspective. He also has relatives with a chip on their shoulders that is more a log than a chip with their Kenyan rebellion connections, from some who knew the family at the time even if they are exaggerating considerably.
I was part of a DNA study on hereditary diseases so there is no racial group I cannot insult with the accusation of racism being readily trashed. Guess the racists at school were more correct than they knew when they called me mongrel.
Doesn’t this article present and detail a prime example of “backasswards reasoning?”
The article is an interesting example of lack of appreciation of other, more plausible, hypotheses. Republicans changing views on health care reform as a result of President Obama introducing Obamacare (health care reform) and changing views on climate change after his talking about taking action on Climate Change in his State of the Union Address, are hypothesized as due to racism. Because a black President pursued the policies, people turned against it.
There is an alternative, more banal, hypothesis. People think that free or subsidized healthcare is a good idea. But when many American’s saw the actual policies, and how it would impact on existing healthcare provision, they became opposed. Similarly, many people go along with the waffle of “taking action on climate change to save the planet for future generations”, but when that means closing a local coal mine, or power stations, or preventing economic regeneration through shale gas in declining industrial areas, then maybe it ain’t such a good idea.
In a similar vein, Brexit is being driven through by a female Prime Minister, and the opposition to Brexit comes mostly from men both in Britain and the EU. Is denial of the referendum result being driven by closet misogynists?
I can understand people voting for Obama in 2008. It’s the ones sporting the 2012 Obama bumper stickers who I don’t get. After 4 years it was obvious he was incapable of accomplishing anything. Which is being made painfully obvious to Democrats today, as Trump erases all of those so-called accomplishments, none of which was grounded in statue. Guess Obama failed to realize how that thing on the other end of a pencil works.