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.
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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”.
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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.
A proctologist examining these people who publish these “studies” might find out where their brains are located and how they are able to pull studies like this from their nether regions. That goes for those that produce this nonsense and the people from the journals who actually publish the so call climate studies.
Here is an example of how dishonest our public servants are in reality whatever facts others in positions of influence may tell us are true.
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/14/cdc-admits-it-falsely-claimed-it-was-monitoring-vaccine-safety-but-still-wont-release-the-full-data/
Given the many similar instances of mistrust from public servants revealed to us it should not surprise our influencers, leaders, politicians, scientists etc. that we wish our arguments to be addressed and discussed before considering their validity and whether they are believable or not. It is much healthier for society for each of us to study further if we can to help everybody towards what the truth really is. That is taking responsibility for our own actions and not simply joining in and telling lies for lies sake.
Just because a human being says another human being is wrong does not make it true. The truth may be elusive but we all have the god given right to make our own minds up and not be suckered into believing in lies and propaganda just because someone tells or even commands us to.
From the article: “So how do we begin to change minds?”
Well, you could start by providing some evidence that CO2 is doing what you claim it is doing. So far, all we get from alarmists are unsubstantiated assumptions, and assertions, but no real evidence for anything they claim.
Providing evidence ought to be easy to do, if you have any evidence. But you don’t. That’s your real problem with skeptics. You don’t have the evidence, and skeptics know it.
From the article:”Unlike sociodemographic characteristics, these thought processes may more open to targeted public messaging.”
These authors are aiming to perfect their climate change propaganda techniques.
It’s not going to work. What you need is what you don’t have: Evidence that CO2 is causing Earth’s weather to change.
From the article: “Climate change is upon us, and scepticism is rapidly becoming a topic for historians, not futurists.”
That sounds like wishful thinking to me. What’s the psychological description for that? Denial?
There is no science like Woke Science, no science I know…
As usual following the science is a convenience for agendas, otherwise the science is ignored.
It appears to simply be desperation, another attempt to keep Bernie propped up for another weekend.
The publication clearly needs a name change. Monologue would be more apropos since a conversation generally requires more than one voice.
The Conversation has publicly announced that they may remove reader comments that they feel are false or not sufficiently reverential towards the author(s).
Whereas:
Reflexivity is defined as climate catastrophism is a great opportunity to show how socialism can really work this time around at fixing the weather as well as the trains running on time.
Locus of control is the same old Fearless Leader show trials and gulags for skeptics.
Is skepticism fading away. or is cancel culture becoming more successful?
Skepticism and denialism are two different things. The greenmunist goal is to denigrate skeptics into irrelevancy by declaring them to be “deniers” to circumvent the rationalism and pragmatisn that are part of skepticism. Seems like these UniSC folks are on point with the program.
they’ve been very successful at erasing the past , not least thru the internet , if you don’t know the past or have a very warped picture of it , every weather event is unprecedented
Letting these folks opine on topics of science is like letting the inmates of a forensic psychiatric facility do all the care giving and prescribing while the keepers are locked up in the cells.
They display the mean to 1/100th of a year, or about +/- 2 days uncertainty, when they probably asked the participants their ages as the number of birthdays they have celebrated. That is, one customarily truncates their age rather than rounding to the nearest year. Therefore, the mean isn’t even accurate, let alone as precise as they imply; it is almost certainly larger. These are innumerate ‘researchers’ who just plug numbers into an equation without giving any thought to whether what they are doing is correct. What are the chances that they are equally sloppy with the rest of their statistics and thinking?
It was published in The Conversation; one need not say more. The Conversation is where academics go when they can’t get published anywhere else.
Reality bites – right just ask Germans
So I agree that there is Climate Change… In the past 12,000 years I believe that the levels of the ocean has moved as much as 127 feet below current day and as much as 7 to 9 feet above.
That is a great deal of change in a very limited amount of time. It means the ocean ( on average ) changed 3.4 mm a year – with of course some times being FAR more than that.
I can ONLY assume those changes were due to ‘climate change’
Also how can the land and cultivation usage of land NOT change and impact the climate around us? The UHI is real.
So when people ask me is there climate change – of course there is. But is it DUE to the increase of CO2? Sure – a little – just like all the other issues – which could be considered additive.
However it is inconvenient to brain wash people with complex systems that would potentially create conflict and questions. So…
You, then, are (at a minimum) definitely subject to:
“locus of control; information processing style; and anti-reflexivity” issues.
The PDO and the AMO heading “south” coupled with severe natural gas supplies spells “A winter(s) of discontent”. Buckle up Europe.
Follow the data. Model outputs ARE NOT DATA.
“So how do we begin to change minds?”
They would actually need to apply the complete opposite of many of their current tactics based on reasons stated below………which would require the change to come from that source but here are some good suggestions(some are a bit repetitive)
Many of us make it a top priority to be good stewards of the planet while protecting life on it. Mischaracterizing us to elevate yourselves to a moral high ground, especially by prominent activist hypocrites that gobble up 20 times more natural resources than the people they lecture to is offensive.
“Our findings suggest some people reject consensus science.” There’s no such thing as ‘consensus’ in the scientific model. What they are referring to is consensus opinion.
They forget that historically, one brave guy did research that blew apart the prevailing consensus many times. Think planetary epicycles, phlogiston, luminiferous aether, sepsis in hospitals, etc, etc.
I am skeptical of their measures, because “external locus of control” implies that the “climate skeptics” they found do not believe that their actions control their world. This is a personality characteristic and I would suggest that the work that climate skeptics do suggests they do believe their actions can have effects – certainly true of Antony Watts.
Instead, their “external locus of control” seems to be a view of the weather as not controlled by human factors.
Bells are ringing!
Soft pseudo science pretenders fantasizing that they have a smidgen of validity by demonizing sceptics that understand real science and demand real science.
A Senior Lecturer in Psychology and a Professor of Geography…
I get the feeling that the geographer doesn’t understand the geology that underlies geography nor the people and their cultures inhabiting geography.
What I don’t get is every time some organization, commentator or whoever comes up with a gripe claiming they can’t understand the mind of those who disagree with them, is why they refuse to see the very plain as day reason as to why. Well, maybe not the only reason, but surely a huge elephant in the room that gets overlooked in favor of “big oil” and other apparently nefarious groups.
Perhaps if they actually bothered to do surveys and ask everyday people – and not just ask them their notions about climate change. But ask them if they are OK to do without 24/7 inexpensive electricity, are OK to be told what kind of vehicle they may purchase, where they can live, how they can (and cannot) heat their homes, what they can (and can’t) eat, etc, etc….
My guess is there would be a flat out NO from nearly 100% of respondents. Well, maybe not quite that high if asked of people in a very blue city, but still most people would not want this kind of control.
That would be like if someone went to their doctor for warts on their feet, and the doctor recommends immediate amputation of the foot. And then, upon observing this, someone wonders what’s wrong in the patient’s mind because he refused the doctor’s urgent recommendation!
Same thing with the average person and “doing something” about climate change….no one’s going to allow their foot to be amputated for warts and no one wants to give up major control over their life for a measly couple of degrees of warming over the last century or so! A drastic “cure” for something that is harmless!
There is the answer they don’t want to see as to what is in a skeptic’s brain.
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”.
Well, since WG1 IPCC report finds no evidence of increases in droughts or floods, these highly qualified scientists must rate the IPCC as skeptics or deniers.
Climate change has to be real – we have invested our super funds into renewables – thats why power prices must never go down..