Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Dana Nuccitelli, climate “denial” will end when the current generation of “deniers” die off. But Nuccitelli glosses over why older people are so skeptical of climate claims.
A generation gap, when it comes to climate change?
By Dana Nuccitelli, March 15, 2019(Editor’s Note: Judging from recent letters to the editor, there seem to be a lot of young people who will be skipping class today to go on strike against climate change. And a lot of older people who are accusing them of just wanting an excuse to walk out of school on a Friday. It seems that there is a climate change generation gap going on. So we thought this would be a good time to re-print this 2016 article by climate scientist Dana Nuccitelli, about this little-acknowledged angle to the climate change discussion.)
A record number of Americans now view global warming as a serious threatand blame human activities as the cause. But there is apparently a generation gap out there when it comes to accepting the scientific evidence. And an ethnic gap, a gender gap, and a gap in political leaning—along with whether one can be considered one of society’s “haves” or “have nots.” So, who are these climate deniers? What is their profile?
A June 2014 Washington Post-ABC News poll asked a nationally representative sample of American respondents several questions about their support for climate policies. Specifically, those surveyed were asked whether they would be in favor of government greenhouse gas regulations that increased their monthly energy expenses by $20 per month. Overall, 63 percent of respondents expressed support for the proposed policy, including 51 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats.
Interestingly, there was a significant age gap among the responses. For Democrats under age 40, support for the policy proposal was 78 percent, as compared to 62 percent over age 65. Among Republicans, 61 percent under age 50 supported the proposed regulations, as compared to 44 percent over age 50. According to a Pew Research Center survey, younger Americans are also more likely to correctly answer that the planet is warming and that this warming is primarily due to human activities.
The climate acceptance age gap. Unfortunately, there’s been little research that investigates the causes of this age gap. It is tempting to speculate that perhaps younger minds are more open to new ideas—such as the potential for humans to alter something as large and complex as the Earth’s climate, ushering in a new “Anthropocene” geological epoch. Perhaps our educational system is succeeding in teaching these concepts to younger generations.
…
Climate denial caters to a small and dwindling population of old, white, conservative, American men. As with global temperatures, American acceptance of and concern about human-caused climate change is currently at record levels, and is certain to keep rising in the long-term.
Read more: https://thebulletin.org/2019/03/a-generation-gap-when-it-comes-to-climate-change/
The cutoff at age 40 seems to be quite sharp – a 17% difference for Republicans, 16% for Democrats. Although Democrat belief in climate alarm is stronger, the difference is almost as pronounced amongst Democrats as it is amongst Republicans.
One possible explanation for the skepticism amongst older people is the 1970s global cooling scare.
In 1978, Leonard Nimoy‘s iconic documentary “In Search of – The Coming Ice Age” aired on TVs across the world. I clearly remember seeing it on TV in Australia, my parents were worried about global cooling, everyone was talking about it.
Nimoy’s “In Search Of” series was wildly popular at the time, the Ice Age episode was arguably the most talked about episode of the entire series.
1978 was just over 40 years ago.
Older people are more skeptical because we’ve heard this nonsense before – but with the plot reversed, with human induced global cooling the villain, rather than global warming.
Nuccitelli wonders why there has been “little research that investigates the causes of this gap”, why older people’s lack of acceptance of climate messages hasn’t received more attention – though Dana leaps to the conclusion that the the skeptic demographic is ageing, despite not understanding the reasons for their skepticism.
It seems implausible that the gap has received so little attention, given the strong political motivation to increase acceptance of the need for more taxes to save the planet. More likely researchers know what the problem is, and don’t want to draw attention to it.
What does this mean for the future? Given climate scientists’ track record of disappointment with their defective predictions, I suspect the younger generation’s “In Search of” moment is rapidly approaching, at least for the older members of that demographic. Years of watching corrupt politicians trouser political donations from friends who are recipients of government climate subsidies and loan guarantees, and failed scientific prediction after failed prediction, can wear at even the most accepting minds.
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OR . . . . People who have experience thinking for themselves and who are used to demanding actual proof of assertions tend to be more discriminating and less lemming like in their thinking.
“Climate denial caters to a small and dwindling population of old, white, conservative, American men.”
No. Climate Realism is a trait of those willing and able to think independently and rationally, while Climate Belief is a trait of the weak-minded, and those susceptible to brainwashing and group-think. Nuttysilly is a prime example of the latter.
The hypothetical carbon dioxide back radiation, surface warming effect, has been absent across the southern hemisphere for thirty years in the month of January. Carbon dioxide is well mixed, and it’s supposed effects should manifest across and around the entire globe in every month of the year. It doesn’t go on holiday for Christmas.
In the world of science, a single exception invalidates a hypothesis.
Here is the data for the southern hemisphere. In January, the average temperature by the decade:
1979-88 was 17.71°C,
1989-98 was 17.42°C,
1999-2008 was 17.5°C
2009-18 was 17.69°C
Source of data: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries.pl?ntype=1&var=Air+Temperature&level=1000&lat1=0&lat2=-90&lon1=0&lon2=360&iseas=0&mon1=0&mon2=11&iarea=1&typeout=1&Submit=Create+Timeseries
This realization should kill the AGW hypothesis.
“Invalidation of a hypothesis”, testing a hypothesis, observational proofs, developing a hypothesis into a theory, are, unfortunately, concepts of which 99% of the population are unaware. All the validation in their lives comes from gazing into their iphone screen as they amble through life. The counter-argument to AGW does not have a stage to which they have access and is even being no platformed by such as the BBC. It is now a propaganda war, Distasteful as that is, unequipped as genuine science is, that is now the only way forward.
Erl! My man! Where you been??
So that leaves… what? Progressive metrosexuals like Nuccitelli – how soon does the human race go extinct after that?
At age 64 I have seen so many of the Chicken Little predictions fail to come true that I am very skeptical of these type of predictions. Not only did I survive the climate cooling scare, but also peak oil, the population bomb, the coming great famine, the horrors of GMO food, Three Mile Island, and the dangers of the ozone hole. Even with climate warming, I have lived past, and even enjoyed, the warming that we were told was going to be irreversible in 10, no 15, no 20 years time.
My advise to the children and grandchildren is to enjoy the warmth. No one moves to North Dakota for retirement. It is not the warming that mankind has to fear, but the cooling.
According to Dana Nuccitelli, climate “denial” will end when the current generation of “deniers” die off.
He says that because the younger generation is being brain washed in public schools at tax payers expense. The next generation may not be as gullible as he thinks. Then if he is around he will be looking at the next generation after for support.
I figure I’ve got maybe 30 years left, I really don’t care what they do after that.
The reason way older people are more sceptical about Global Warming is the we have more time to evaluate and understand the basis of their very dubious claims. The younger generations are too busy working or playing on Facebook/Twitter to have the time to investigate the basis for these claims so just go along with the mainstream/the crowd.
Notice that the survey is only of Americans and that the supposed cause of the increased concern was a warm winters in the U.S. Now that we have had record breaking cold winters, one can expect that the final claim (that fewer skeptics as tme goes on) will be reversed. Amazingly, most of the points used to convicnce people about global warming are not associated with global warming in the least : floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, or have changed (sea level rising rates) . There is plenty of doubt about the association of CO2 levels with warming but there is no doubt about the fact that extreme weather events have no connection with global warming.
These people were too frightened to do so, but I believe that Blacks are less likely to believe in global warming. Fear of global warming seems to be concentrated in white, liberal, younger and science-ignorant types who have very little knowledge of any details concerning global warming.
Amazing that anybody with an IQ above 80 wouldn’t realize that kids, who are in school in order to learn, are not as wise or informed as the old white guy what has put 30 years in the workforce.
Where can I find a 14 year old to do that dental surgery I need? Where is that 10 year old that can manage that lawsuit over the property I just bought? Where is that 17 year old that can install the hot tub? Where is the 15 year old that can do my accounting?
But kids can stop sea level from rising and heal the globe (Like Obama)? I think not.
That’s why Progressives are trying to lower the voting age to 16.
That’s about it: all but an infinitesimally small % of people this girl’s age are literally “low information” voters.
They haven’t lived long enough, read enough, learned enough or even accidentally understood enough to make decisions about ANYTHING.
That’s why there are protected by law in all advanced societies.
Last year when a similar group of teens were being held up as being models for lowering the voting age due their stance on gun control, I asked: does that mean you would also lower the age of consent for sex? How about criminal responsibility?
I mean, here in Canada if this nonsense gains traction a 16 will be able to vote, yet could murder someone and have their identity hidden for the rest of their life.
People are skeptical of the efficacy and prophesy of anthropogenic CO2 to force Global Warming and Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, respectively. People are also skeptical of the proposal that intermittent, nonrenewable, environmentally unfriendly GND (Gray New Deal) to mitigate the risk of the aforementioned. Not one endangered bird, bat, or butterfly in the air, and lizard, coyote, nor mouse on the ground, and diverse plant life, should be aborted or otherwise suffer injury to service the Green Blight, right?
The problem that the Climate Change Evangelists have is that who does or does not believe in their religion, has absolutely no effect on the climate.
Not religion or moral philosophy, although that is purportedly their motive. The problem is a conflation of logical domains, and far exceeding the near space and time of the scientific domain where observation, replication, and deductive reasoning occurs.
Old people die, young people become old people, so old people won’t go away, unless we go with Logan’s Run.
Do NOT give them any ideas. You know they don’t have any of their own!
However, as a meme points out: “You’re going to start a revolution? You couldn’t start a lawn mower”.
He’s going to be terribly disappointed by my 5 kids who I have taught to question everything until it makes sense instead of just accepting what is fed to them via the media and schools that only expect regurgitation of their “facts” . I’m fine with whatever conclusions they reach themselves as long as they do their homework and question the “experts”. If they can defend their conclusions so be it.
Hi Dana,
I hate to blow your stereotype to hell, but I’m anything but conservative. Okay, I’m white, I’m male, and I’m not that young anymore. But let me tell you how I spent some of my youth.
I started out as a math major in college, and I saw some pretty God-awful excuses for teachers, which sort of drove me out of that arena to a different university, where I studied forestry for a while, but, again, lots of academic bullshit, especially from students who were so wealthy and immature as to make me sick, shifted my focus into another direction (actually universe, by comparison).
It was a bold, bold, anything-BUT-conservative move for a YOUNG, … WHITE, …, yes even STRAIGHT … MALE, from a not-that-affluent background, deciding to exit a forestry program at an acclaimed state forestry-agricultural-and-engineering school (farm-type boys and builder-types, you know) … to do what?
… to take a break from academia for a while and start learning to teach, say what??, ballroom dance.
Still straight. Still white. Still male. Still young.
And from there, I went on to study dance formally, and then, in later years, I took up visual art, and during some of those years, I heeded the warnings about “global warming”. I tuned into the cause of “saving nature and the environment”. For about three or four years, I wrote yearly, small checks to Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and a few others.
As I got older, I started to see some things that I could not see when I was younger. Age has an advantage this way, which explains why, many times, older people are not so captivated by the anthropogenic-climate-change-justice movement. I tuned into the minds of some very smart people, who opened my eyes to truths that were concealed from me during my earliest years.
And so here I am at WUWT, a former environmental warrior, a former dancer, once young (but now older), still white, still male, still straight, and I’m calling you out as an intellectual pathogen for your part in perpetuating the socially acceptable mental illness heaped upon modern civilization by disgraceful disregard for proper science, which, by the way, I DID learn a thing or two about during my young, white, straight, male, one-time-environmental-juistice-warrior days.
Yours truly,
… and I DO mean TRULY
Nice letter, Robert.
Us old folks have been lied to too often. Just like we were told in the 70s that we would run out of oil by now. I don’t believe the global warming BS.
OLD = Lived long enough to acquire considerable world experience and the wisdom that comes with it; used the time to get a formal education. When I was in high school, the Russians launched Sputnik and everyone was concerned about the Space Race gap and tightened up the curriculum. My college experience was when the introductory courses were still treated as “washout courses” for engineers and physicists, and before grade inflation and liberals took over academia.
WHITE = Fortunate to have had so-called “White Privilege” and get a decent education and be raised in a family with moral values. That education led me to be inquisitive and question unsupported claims.
CONSERVATIVE = I started out as a rebel, but eventually saw the wisdom of the evolved cultural values to make it easier for people to get along. I also observed all the mistakes made by Progressives promoting untested, unsupported ideas for how to make things better, which they rarely did. The US homicide rate was at its lowest level in the 1950s, when campy, family-oriented TV programs were the norm.
AMERICAN MEN = I had role models like John Wayne to provide guidance on how to interact with others, Albert Einstein (who became an American citizen) on what to aspire to for accomplishments in life, and war heroes like Eisenhower and JFK to teach what it meant to “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
When we are gone, the country and the world will be poorer for our passing!
Old white conservative men…..AKA as reasonable mature rational critical minded responsible citizens.
You’d think these very dumb hater-kids would grasp that people who’ve lived 4 or 5 times longer than them can tell if something has changed or not in their life time.
Apparently old people don’t know even that much, these ignorant kids know the past way better-er than old people. You have to be less than 16 to know absolutely everything there is to know.
Getting tired of listening to silly children beat like ignorant sheep. But the real haters fanning this are their deceitful dishonest teachers, and those who’ve enable the teachers to act like such rampant bigots.
There seem to be a lot of young people who will be skipping class today to go on strike against climate change.
It’s just because George Harrison isn’t around any more to have “Walks for Bangladesh”.
Why are the young so immature, so misinformed ? .. CLIMATE CHANGE
Children are, ironically, green.
One must wonder about the IQ of people who spew the same rediculous, unrelated, idiotic responses over and over again. These are some of the stupidest people I have ever read. Dana makes a 3 year old look really smart.
Politically-enabled stupidity is the latest fad in stupid.
I suppose such stupidity has occurred throughout history, but I’m wondering whether today’s onslaught of it is just a fashion statement.
We live in an era of body piercings, vivid-colored hair, tattoos, stretch pants pasted on gross obesity, glum, isolated youth, disillusioned and alone, except for fake friendships and cyber interactions substituting for really living in the immediate physical world.
I guess the mindset matches the physicality. You are not fashionable, unless you are fashionably stupid too.
There are two waves, potentially massive ones approaching the big CA cities. When they meet, there will be a reinforcement and all hell will break loose. Part A : A couple of those cities massive homeless populations have an ongoing rat flea spread typhus outbreak. Part B : CDC reports 29 cases of XDR (Extremely Drug Resistant) Typhus brought into the US since 2016 by travelers/visitors from Pakistan where along with Myanmar, and India the XDR Typhus variant has become established. The waves? Somewhere a chance encounter could establish the extremely antibiotic resistant variant typhus in the homeless population, where population density is high, many are “immune compromised”, and hygiene standards are sub-medieval. Like a welding yard sharing space with a LNG storage facility.
I’m amused that the two front runners for the Democrat candidate for the Presidency, who also happen to be male, are even older and whiter than the current president. I wonder what Mr Nuccitelli thinks of them? He is after all a leftist, as are all of his Skeptical Science colleagues.
Skeptical Science: “[W]e’re all a bunch of leftists” (2012)
I especially love Dana’s comment in response to the survey results!
Global warming did not become a thing until the late 80’s and it started to be taught in the schools around then. Kids are the easiest subjects to brainwash.
In addition, starting from the late 80’s neurodevelopment problems began exploding among the youth. These are lifelong diseases that no doubt affect the cognitive ability of those affected. The reason for the explosion is unknown but thought to be environmental and affects as many as 25% of kids today placing an incredible strain on special education departments and school budgets
Given that the Chinese are the largest emitters of CO2, they don’t appear to believe in global warming and don’t really fit the white meme. Why is it that the nutters never address China or India increasing their emissions?
Well Dana Nuccitelli older people are more sceptical because of numerous reasons, but you should have already known this instead of making up rubbish for your agenda.
1) The older, the more wiser people become.
2) The less gullible they become.
3) Understand the true meaning of scientific method especially scientists, but you fail this one.
4) Have seen it all before, where the young are experiencing for almost the first time.
5) Continuous failed predictions.
6) Continuous data changes to reflect what models show should happen, not what had actually happened.
7) The young are more vulnerable to propaganda and brainwashing in media and schools.
8) Children often believe adults are telling them the truth, so why should they question it?
It’s not until you get older until people realise what a load of rubbish you were told when you were younger. Things are never simple as they seem and advancing in science exposes these greatly.
Politics and science don’t mix well and become a cocktail of pseudoscience.