According to University of Sunshine Coast academics, it might be possible to persuade skeptics, but “Climate Change is upon us”, so skepticism is fading away anyway.
Inside the mind of a sceptic: the ‘mental gymnastics’ of climate change denial
Published: September 13, 2022 3.32pm AEST
The numbers of climate sceptics are dwindling. But they remain a noisy and at times powerful minority that continues to have political influence. This group is unmoved by the near-universal agreement among scientists on the reality and impact of climate change.
…
Our latest study of Australian sceptics focused on potentially more malleable factors – including the thought processes of people who reject climate science messaging. Our findings suggest some people reject consensus science and generate other explanations due to mistrust in climate science and uncritical faith in “alternative science”.
…
So how do we begin to change minds?
In all, our results suggest climate change scepticism may be influenced by:
- favoured explanations of pseudoscience and/or belief that events happen by chance
- a belief that the problem is too large, complex and costly for individuals to deal with alone.
Unlike sociodemographic characteristics, these thought processes may more open to targeted public messaging.
In the end, reality bites. Multi-year droughts and successive never-before-seen floods will struggle to fit a sceptic narrative of yet another “one-in-100-year event”. Even the attitudes of Australian farmers, including some of the most entrenched sceptics, are shifting.
Climate change is upon us, and scepticism is rapidly becoming a topic for historians, not futurists.
The abstract of the study;
Associations of locus of control, information processing style and anti-reflexivity with climate change scepticism in an Australian sample
Breanna C. Fraser https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6660-2934,
Rachael Sharman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3630-1046 rsharman@usc.edu.au,
and Patrick D. Nunn https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9295-5741Abstract
A proportion of the Australian public remains sceptical about the reality of climate change, its causes, impacts and the need for mitigatory action. To date, scepticism research largely focuses on factors highly resistant to change, particularly socio-demographic and value factors. This mixed-methods study investigated whether more malleable psychological factors: locus of control; information processing style; and anti-reflexivity, predicted climate change scepticism above and beyond socio-demographic and value factors. A sample of 390 participants (Mean age = 41.31, standard deviation = 18.72; 230 male) completed an electronic survey. Using hierarchical regression, trust in forces of anti-reflexivity and external locus of control predicted impact scepticism. Decreased trust in forces of reflexivity also predicted attribution and impact scepticism. Finally, external locus of control predicted response scepticism. Key qualitative themes identified were, trust in alternative science; mistrust of climate science; belief in natural cycles; predictions not becoming reality; and ulterior motives of interested parties.
Read more: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09636625221116502
Anti-reflexivity is defined by one of the referenced studies as “… a collective force defending the industrial capitalist system against claims that the system causes serious problems …” – in other words, people who believe capitalism is working.
Alternative science is less clearly defined, but the authors appear to use alternative science, distrust in climate science and pseudoscience interchangeably in their Conversation article, so I think we get the idea.
There has been a recent uptick of climate concern in Australia – but there is no evidence this is anything other than one of our regular cyclical shifts. Australia appears to follow a similar pattern to other Western nations – a rise in climate concern, the election of a left wing government, economically damaging green policies like carbon pricing, a recession, and finally a return to the starting point, as economic hardship refocuses voters’ attention on real problems.
Frankly in my opinion this conversation article is a very poor effort. I was expecting to see some revelation, an attempt to say something new. Instead the authors of this drivel appear to be repeating the same tired anti-capitalist prejudice we see time after time from Australian academia, combined with an intolerance for deviation from the author’s favoured narratives, all thinly dressed up with a few jargon terms.
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Typical leftist playbook, don’t debate and just claim victory.
Been correct doesn’t matter, political power is the goal.
Another poster put it eloquently under a previous WUWT article about a “The Conversation” article (about Bjorn Lomborg that time, direct link).
NB : I agree with both of you on this aspect.
I think Peak Academic Lunacy is a bit like Peak Oil – just when you think we must surely be approaching it, further vast reservoirs are discovered.
At the University of Sunshine Coast.
that U of Sunshine Coast has to be a misnomer because there ain’t no sunshine where they got their heads
That’s because they have a contest going. Prizes to whomever comes up with the silliest outrageous leftocrat crap each week. Kinda like the ministry of silly walks.
Winner!
“Instead the authors of this drivel appear to be repeating the same tired anti-capitalist prejudice we see time after time from Australian academia, combined with an intolerance for deviation from the author’s favoured narratives, all thinly dressed up with a few jargon terms.”
It’s also a bold faced attempt to grab some of that climate cash grant money that their colleagues in the physical sciences have been enjoying for decades.
Those in psychology and sociology were getting jealous.
If indeed Climate Change is real, what can be do e without having to first wreak the Economy.
As the Greens are against Nuclear generation, how about renewables.
We need a working g test run of Renewaes, is it workable.
At lat we do have one.
Type in ” King Island,Tasmania Hydro.”.
Select from the text & up will come a switchboard showing in real time what is happening.
Now King Island is situated between the Island of Tasmania & the mainland State of Victoria.
Thhis is the Roaring 40 tees of the days of saving ships.
It has a mostly steady wind, from West to East.
Also a reasonable amount of Sunlight.
The arrangement was set up by Hydro Tasmania & the Fedetal Government to see if renewables are a practical method of reducing the use of fossel fuel.
Bring it up, & you be the judge.
Michael VK5ELL
Wouldn’t it be nice if they included some charting more than just a real time snapshot. Looking at it now (~4:30pm EST), it’s about 50/50 wind and diesel…. ;-/
From their spiel:
“When conditions are suitable our hybrid power system delivers 100% of island’s power from renewable sources,”
When conditions are suitable indeed.
” The system has, on average, more than 20% per annum of ‘diesel-off’ or 100% renewable operation, including periods of several continuous days with no use of diesel generation, a world record for a grid of this scale.”
So, 20% of the time… and if you scaled it up by 5 times, you’d have adequate power about 20% of the time, because the wind doesn’t blow when the wind doesn’t blow.
Math is hard.
https://euanmearns.com/a-first-look-at-the-king-island-tasmania-renewable-energy-integration-project/
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
The climate activists don’t want to save the planet, or even help the poor (another thing they claim to do), they just hate Capitalism. If they go through with their plans, as is happening in places like Sri Lanka, they will create utter environmental devastation, there will scarcely be a tree or animal left after massive populations are driven to starvation. They will cut down forests to cook and heat homes and eat everything that can be caught, including their seed corn.
A cynical view of this is that the neo-Marxists saw that classical Marxism didn’t take hold in industrialized societies because the people were too comfortable. So, in order to bring on the revolution, to lead to the supposed utopia, they must first destroy the existing society such that the people are sufficiently deprived that they will accept Communism.
Of course, this will not work, and will probably be worse than all of the failures of Communism of the 20th century combined. They have failed Karl Poppers’ paradox of tolerance, in that they are incapable of participating in rational discourse with those who they disagree with. They are intolerant of tolerance, nothing but total acceptance of their beliefs and belief systems will do. We’re heading into dangerous waters.
Roger Scruton identified another and more plausible motive. These are minor academics, who normally no one listens to. Marxism empowers them and gives them attention and justifies their grab for power, morally.
How fast does that ‘seed corn’ run… I’m elderly, but I figure I can catch some..
Anti-capitalism seems to be a feature of academia world wide. Not just in Australia.
I suspect it comes from the left wing conceit that they are always the smartest people in the room. Therefor the rest of us should just shut up, sit down and do as we are told.
That conceit comes from suffering from the Dunning-Kreuger effect, which is also described as premeditated stupidity.
Comes from never having had to produce in a real job…
Yes, Climate Change is upon us – I agree. I was born 1935. Generally speaking, our climate is warmer here in the temperate zones these days – than when I was young.
But, so what! Is that any reason to panic? Over all, since the climatic maximum about 7000 years ago, when eustatic sea level was about 2 meters higher than now, average global temperatures have been falling (as more and more ice piled up in both northern and southern hemispheres) – with discernible ups and downs every 1000 years or so (for example, it was warmer in Greenland 1000 years ago).
One must presume (??) that we are heading towards our next 100,000 years long ice age (which has been the normal state of affairs these latest 2.5 million years).
On the other hand, here in the US, it’s still cooler than it was in the 1930’s.
summers in the 30’s were amazingly hot , but i think some of the winters were also very cold . one of the peculiarities of measuring average yearly global temps . you can have record warm summers and record cold winters and you end up just having an average year .
Looks like this will be our year on Canadian West Coast (again)
This is the key point. This is why the article is fundamentally flawed.
The columnist assumes that “Climate Sceptics” think the climate doesn’t change. Thus they assume that a changing climate refutes scepticism.
But actually “Climate Sceptics” think the climate does change, it has always changed and that there’s no evidence that man’s influence is changing anything much relative to what happens anyway.
The premise is flawed. “Climate Sceptics” never thought that.
My fellow Courtney: CliScis thrive on flawed premises. They continue to be driven to find propaganda that works, and never look back at the foundation.
I believe there is some debate as to it being warmer now than the 1930’s although I do agree we are, thankfully, moving in a general warming direction since the bottom of the Little Ice Age.
“targeted public messaging”
Here comes the Nudge units. They used Nudge (Behavioural Psychology) units extensively throughout the COVID pandemic to “persuade” people to do things and make choices (for their own good, in their minds) against their own personal beliefs.
Nudge theory, as per my understanding of it, boils down to emotional manipulation to get people to make the “right choice”, where that choice is whatever the “expert” in charge decides. It uses fear, guilt and shame primarily to coerce people into submitting to outcomes that they would not freely choose.
Be aware of this, that is the best defense against it. If you know they are trying to manipulate you, it becomes very hard for them to successfully manipulate you. Live not by lies.
To do this one has to bury your head and abandon common sense i.e. to avoid observing closely and carefully thinking through the alarmist claims. To date every one of the thousands of predictions that the world would have ended by now has not come true – these are all false prophets.
Yet the vast majority of people do avoid thinking in any detail about the reality of the world. Not just in relation to climate, but in many fields.
They are easily manipulated by fear, guilt and shame to the point that they demand that their politicians enact policies that strip them off their rights and property. Tyrants and dictators have known this and used it for centuries. The big risk this time is that it seems to be global, there will be no one to come to the rescue and no where to run to.
well said.
They’re smoking way too much weed up there at that 2-bit ‘university’ on the Sunshine Coast. If your academic bubble excludes contrarian viewpoints then you’re not going to have much of a clue.
True, but they work so hard to maintain that bubble. Candidates for academic positions that express logical thought and avoidance of groupthink are not considered for those position. Academia has completely abandoned any pretense of diversity of thought. Even in the sciences, it is no longer possible to argue from facts. Bring up the replication crisis and you may be packing your things before the end of the workday.
The thing is that the authors of this study are not susceptible to reason. I could list page after page of rational reasons why the facts do not justify the far reaching, costly measures that climate policies dictate, point out the inconsistencies. The reality is also that ideology makes alarmists deaf and blind to these arguments. Yeah, I know, preaching to the choir here.
Yes, but it needed to be said. 🙂
Is it April 1st when they mention “consensus science”! What idiots.
I think it must April 1st every day at the University of Sunshine Coast.
I’m reminded of a saying – “it’s better that people think you’re a fool than open your mouth and prove it.”
anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about
What next.
1984 is coming quickly.
Damn near here!
The Biden Police State Purges seem to have begun. The FBI rousted the My Pillow Guy yesterday! Among many others.
The FBI alleges that he was suspected of being involved in a fight and was apprehended for assault with a pillow. They will also be examining his phone for classified documents from Trump, and if found, charged with possessing stolen government bits. 🙂
“Our findings suggest some people reject consensus science and generate other explanations due to mistrust in climate science and uncritical faith in “alternative science”.”
Consensus science is the true “alternative science”. Science by vote?
Academia has really hit an all time low.
These dim bulbs think they can baffle people with bull**** because they can’t dazzle anyone with their brilliance.
Whoever is paying them should try to get their money back.
Yeah, the world is about to go over the economic cliff with the possibility of 100 million people starving to death and these morons think sun mirrors and wind mills will feed the masses and keep a roof our heads.
‘…keep a roof our heads.’
No, keep a roof over their heads
The poloi are not entitled to roofs.
Is it gibberish or a new language designed to manipulate and control whole populations.
Academia seems to have split from reality and entered a bubble of fantasy with visions of left wing/authoritarian ideological purity.
Yes, there are a whole lot of people living in alternate realities right now. Courtesy of the lying Leftwing Media.
As they have managed to create that world on campus, I doubt they see it as a problem.
They are on a holy crusade to dispatch those tilting at windmills.
When I read something like that, it’s almost like reading something from the pen of Joseph Goebbels. To be right on a subject, you need to do two things.
First you must constantly examine your argument for flaws in your reasoning. If you find a flaw you must correct your argument.
Second, you must address arguments made by other. This doesn’t mean sticking your fingers in you ears and saying la la la. It means pointing out exactly were the problem is and accepting parts of the argument that are valid.
This paper is based on the idea that if you don’t accept their argument, you are incapable of correctly evaluating the facts. The truth is the authors of the paper either don’t accept the facts or belittle them. A failure to understand the other side is source of disagreements and until we can sit down and have an adult conversation, this nonsense will continue for a long time.
There was a time in this elder observer’s youth when every ‘hard science’ was a stirringly incomplete, dynamic approximation of a carefully exercised discipline that awaited further sequential discoveries (from perhaps newly applied apparatus) in order to continue filling in some unknown intervening landscape. With the current hubris of associated academics smugly willing to abuse their fellows for not utterly subscribing to a favored notion of the final state of things, why would anyone study climatology with the prospect of advancing fully settled knowledge? Doesn’t this aversion to critical discussion evidence a rather desperate fear of being discovered in a convenient falsehood?
Why study climate science? As a famous bank robber once said: “Because that’s where the money is.”
Until the grants stop flowing, there will be a new cadre of maleducated climate dunces filling the ranks.
William Francis Sutton Jr. One who died of old age outside prison. He never killed anybody which is probably why he had a long life.
Yep.
Or perhaps it’s just that the expression of any slightly sceptical viewpoint just gets shouted down and ridiculed. People then give up saying anything and just nod at the nonsense and look around for some government handouts and subsidies.
That’s pretty much my approach these days.
Yep. The Bandar-log are getting more and more shrill every day as they see their pet hypothesis becoming less and less likely to be true.
Brother, your tail hangs down behind!
Ah.The bait and switch of typical Marxist dialetic
The climate is changing! (The climate is always changing)
What’s changed to make it different? (nothing was changed – in reality it is no different)
It must be human caused (In Marxism, humans cause everything bad via the original sin of capitalism)
The only solution is massive central repression of people – (not by each other, but by the State)!
Anyone who declares that climate change isn’t caused by humans, is silencd with the metaphysical statement of ‘prove what is causing it, then’ which cannot be done. Ergo its human caused!
Anyone who attempts to refute this is silly because they are represented as denying not that climate change is man made, but that climate itself changes, which is of course clearly wrong.
Straight out of the soviet Propaganda Playbook.
I wonder whether climate alarmism will mysteriously disappear once the Russian federation totally collapses.
And yet the Russian climate model is the one closest to gross temperature observation. (I haven’t looked to see how its components stack up: does it get the atmosphere right? Does it get the oceans right? Does it get precipitation right? etc.)
Russia has sometimes been a little schizophrenic on science questions. Maybe the Lysenko affair taught the government to back off of science as propaganda a little, but they still use an all-hands approach to advancing government policy.
They might be hands off on their own science propaganda but, they are all hands on deck on corrupting other countries’ science and political policy.
No mention of a great defeat for Climate Alarmism in Australia, the once-and-for-all end to the fear-mongering about “new-normal” persistent droughts, a grant and publicity generating campaign in recent decades. Droughts and floods have continued since records began, with little sign of any change for many decades (SW Western Australia is an exception, that region is a bit drier than it was 100 years ago).
Here is Brisbane as an example:
Dear God, these people really are delusional.
Was someone actually paid to produce this garbage?
I don’t think that The Conversation pays authors. These, mostly young, academics are looking for any way that they can pad their CVs.
In 1988 when James Hansen spoke to Congress, the average UAH temp for 1988 was -0.10C. The average UAH temp for 2022 is +0.11C. Hardly rampart global warming in 34 years.
Yes and my mercury thermometer can barely measure these insignificant figures, if at all.
I almost vomit when reading propaganda that was dreamt up at a bar and labelled as a study.
There is severe depression along with the retching when it’s a barely disguised threat of being on the wrong side of history if you actually behave like a scientist.
Was that an original from that well known publisher
ACOS
(A Crock Of S—?”
Maybe the climate scientists can create a new model. One that helps them understand the complex cognitive systems and relationships inside the mind of the sceptic.– Yep that will work.
I think the finding that people with an external locus of control support climate change scepticism to be absolutely surprising. Surely it is the other way round, people who don’t think for themselves follow the accepted line
Yes, if they thought for themselves, they would be skeptics, because there is no evidence CO2 is doing what the alarmists claim it is doing with regard to the Earth’s weather. There is no evidence CO2 is doing anything to change the Earth’s weather. That’s what someone who thought for themselves would find if they cared to look.
Group think is always the foundation for evil. And those who think for themselves are first censored, then censured, then purged.
The gall of these people to accuse us of having to do the mental gymnastics.
I don’t have to do any scientology gymnastics when they say that the oceans in 2019 were 0.075 °C above the average for 1981 to 2010, to see that their “cataclysmic climate change”™ is beyond ridiculous.
A global study of public opinion by SAP & Qualtrics for the WEF at Davos, found that trust in scientists has mainly gone down, not up.
The reality is that the public are much more skeptical than these activists would have us believe.
University of the Sunshine Coast.
https://www.usc.edu.au/study/life-at-unisc
Rolled my eyes so hard I sprained an eyeball over that one, Speed.
Yes come to the lovely LaLa land of sunshine and virtual “wish list” learning experience.
I don’t think that they mean doing field work.
When they have to tout the experience over the learning, you already know that they are going to skimp on the education.