Essay by Eric Worrall
According to Associate Professor Thomas Wood, the impact of climate education is so fragile, exposure to climate skeptic voices rapidly undoes progress in changing minds and attitudes.
Jun 20, 2022
Science coverage of climate change can change minds – briefly
Accurate beliefs fade quickly, especially if challenged
Jeff Grabmeier Ohio State News grabmeier.1@osu.edu
Science reporting on climate change does lead Americans to adopt more accurate beliefs and support government action on the issue – but these gains are fragile, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that these accurate beliefs fade quickly and can erode when people are exposed to coverage skeptical of climate change.
“It is not the case that the American public does not respond to scientifically informed reporting when they are exposed to it,” said Thomas Wood, associate professor of political science at The Ohio State University.
“But even factually accurate science reporting recedes from people’s frame of reference very quickly.”
The study will be published June 24, 2022, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wood conducted the study with Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and Ethan Porter of George Washington University.
Results showed that accurate science reporting didn’t persuade only Democrats – Republicans and people who initially rejected human-caused climate change also had their opinions shifted by reading accurate articles.
…
Wood said it was significant that accurate reporting had positive effects on all groups, including Republicans and those who originally rejected climate change. But it was even more encouraging that it affected attitudes.
…
But the positive effects on people’s beliefs were short-lived, results showed. These effects largely disappeared in later waves of the study.
In addition, opinion stories that were skeptical of the scientific consensus on climate change reversed the accuracy gains generated by science coverage.
…
Read more: https://news.osu.edu/science-coverage-of-climate-change-can-change-minds–briefly/
Poor climate scientists, if only all the climate skeptics were silenced, they could persuade all the Republicans to join their crusade to slay the carbon demon. Or something like that.
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I’d say the number one thing that makes people who would otherwise buy into the climate nonsense tend to dismiss it is the obvious fact that the most vocal proponents of reverting humanity back to the 18th century are often the most blatant and ostentatious offenders against the climate.
When your most visible spokespeople jet set around the world, party on megayachts, live in (several) huge mansions, park their electric vehicle in the same garage as their sports car collection and install 2500 gallon LP tanks for their mansions in anticipation of the inevitable “green” power outages to come – most “everyday joe” kind of people tend to get a little skeptical when you tell them that THEY have to give up their personal transportation, turn the A/C up to “uncomfortable”, stop traveling for vacation and grin and bear it when the lights go out in order to save the world.
In other news, celebrities sent a message by arranging their yachts to form the words “climate action now” for an aerial photo op.
This news should encourage authors here — you have a positive effect — now, apparently, scientifically proven.
Life must be tough in ‘the Ministry of Truth’ these days…poor academics, spreading propaganda and untruths is hard and thankless work these, in their quest to kill fossil fuels and save the world…sigh.
Seems to me that beliefs with solid factual grounding would not be so easy to change. What does that say about these so-called “accurate” beliefs?
Prof. wood seems to think that there is such a thing as accurate Propaganda; for that is what the Catastrophic Anthropological Global Warming (theCAGW MEME) purports to be; when in fact it is nothing more than a cleverly devised political “Construct”, designed specifically to manipulate the mind of the general population for the advancement of the Marxist and Communist Agenda.
Reaction to the propaganda in the form of sceptical comments and the putting right of the hidden falsities engenders much confusion within the communities which is part of the strategy.
The naivety of Prof. Wood is extraordinarily; but perhaps not when you read some the utter nonsense which seems to get published these days from the Academic Institutions.
IMO Academia has sold its soul to its political masters over the last 20 years or so, and now has a very disreputable reputation for valid scientific research, with, of course, notable exceptions.
Science is inherently Skeptical. If it’s settled, and no longer subject to skeptical re-analysis, it is NOT science.
“Accurate reporting” obviously means politically correct reporting and has nothing to do with scientific validation.
What happened to “prebunking”?
https://firstdraftnews.org/articles/a-guide-to-prebunking-a-promising-way-to-inoculate-against-misinformation/
So, people believe bullshit up until the moment they are provided facts.
Not sure where the story is here
Sure, I believe it, especially skeptics that are scientists.