Posted on 03/27/2008 10:55:13 AM PDT by decimon
COLLEGE STATION – The more you know the less you care – at least that seems to be the case with global warming. A telephone survey of 1,093 Americans by two Texas A&M University political scientists and a former colleague indicates that trend, as explained in their recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Risk Analysis.
“More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming,” states the article, titled “Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA.”
The study showed high levels of confidence in scientists among Americans led to a decreased sense of responsibility for global warming.
The diminished concern and sense of responsibility flies in the face of awareness campaigns about climate change, such as in the movies An Inconvenient Truth and Ice Age: The Meltdown and in the mainstream media’s escalating emphasis on the trend.
The research was conducted by Paul M. Kellstedt, a political science associate professor at Texas A&M; Arnold Vedlitz, Bob Bullock Chair in Government and Public Policy at Texas A&M’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service; and Sammy Zahran, formerly of Texas A&M and now an assistant professor of sociology at Colorado State University.
Kellstedt says the findings were a bit unexpected. The focus of the study, he says, was not to measure how informed or how uninformed Americans are about global warming, but to understand why some individuals who are more or less informed about it showed more or less concern.
“In that sense, we didn't really have expectations about how aware or unaware people were of global warming,” he says.
But, he adds, “The findings that the more informed respondents were less concerned about global warming, and that they felt less personally responsible for it, did surprise us. We expected just the opposite.
“The findings, while rather modest in magnitude – there are other variables we measured which had much larger effects on concern for global warming – were statistically quite robust, which is to say that they continued to appear regardless of how we modeled the data.”
Measuring knowledge about global warming is a tricky business, Kellstedt adds.
“That’s true of many other things we would like to measure in surveys, of course, especially things that might embarrass people (like ignorance) or that they might feel social pressure to avoid revealing (like prejudice),” he says.
“There are no industry standards, so to speak, for measuring knowledge about global warming. We opted for this straightforward measure and realize that other measures might produce different results.”
Now, for better or worse, scientists have to deal with the public’s abundant confidence in them. “But it cannot be comforting to the researchers in the scientific community that the more trust people have in them as scientists, the less concerned they are about their findings,” the researchers conclude in their study.
Anyone care to repost this article at DU?
Agree 100%
“More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming,”
The the more you know the less you want government involved in the hoax. Thats a good thing. Too bad we have so many uninformed voters.
As a child I was less concerned with the bogeyman once I discovered he didn’t exist.
“As a child I was less concerned with the bogeyman once I discovered he didn’t exist.”
Exactly...like finding out the tooth fairy or Easter bunny isn’t real.
“More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming,”
I’m so informed that the only concerns I have about global warming are what the alarmists want us to “do about it”. I only fear the fear mongers.
Nice to see my alma mater has gone from a school that was mandated to have practical application of the sciences to.... bullsh#t public policy "professors" yapping about something that is fictional.
just frickin great
“More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming,”
I’d like to consider myself influential, but controlling solar output is a bit of a stretch.
Man, I must know all there is about GW then.
So, the study concluded that those who understood it less believed it more? Did ALGORE realize he was talking to a pollster and not a reporter?
The Easter Bunny isn’t real? Waaaaahhhhhh.
That’s because the more you know, the more you realize that climate change is a natural process that we have very little or no effect over. Also, the more you know, the more you realize that all this hoohah is just another way for radical environmentalist watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) to get control of our economy and our lives.
}:-)4
Idoubt there’s anyone here, who isn’t allready banned from posting at that fascist DemoSocialist frothing & lying echo chamber. :o)
Besides..reading that website is risking a dose of mental disease.
I learned from my liberal friends years ago that I'm not responsible for anything, Bush did it. Is this a sign that America is becoming more liberal?
“The Easter Bunny isn’t real? Waaaaahhhhhh.”
If it’s any consolation, the Easter bunny is more real than the global warming hoax.
“Measuring knowledge about global warming is a tricky business, Kellstedt adds.”
Why? Cause it’s getting harder to slip in the bullsh#t when people are startin’ to wise up? And your being watched and fact-checked? Hmmmm?
this is gobledy gook if I've ever seen it . How do guys know what is being said?
He doesn't?? Whoa, what a load off! Thanks!
YOU MUST SUBMIT TO CARING ABOUT GW NOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!
It seems like Al Gore, Der Kommisar of the Republic of Environmania, is actually pretty ignorant about GW. At least that is what the study says. BWahaahaha!
If he knew about it why he wouldn’t act like a preacher man.
Sorry, we're running out of darkness and have been since last December. All you're doing here is increasing your darkness footprint. Algore's website will be happy to sell you some darkness credits, though...
As a late inlaw would have said, “You ain’t even lying.”
The more you know the less you think it is caused by humans.
Not only that...does anyone see a problem with the fact that the survey was conducted by a Poli-Sci Prof? After all...isn’t this a scientific matter?
The more informed you are about global warming, the more you realize that the sky isn’t falling and that Al Gore and others like him are just a bunch of crazy self serving liars.
Wouldn’t that be a more appropriate way to characterize it?
Though the article refused to make this conclusion I will: The more people know about gorebal warming the more people understand that it is hype and that there is no “man-made” gorebal warming. It’s a con game. Any warming is a result of the sun. The earth is continually going in and out of cooling/warming periods. Period.
People are starting to realize that it won’t be free.
Politicians in my state are talking about CO2 taxes and additional fees. Not very popular these days.
The press, politicians, and so called scientists haven’t mentioned how much it is going to cost in $. Except of course, that we are all going to die and we need to do something, now!
Not really. A Poli-sci prof would probably do some good statistics.
As to how he determined whether someone was knowledgeable about GW, he probably just asked them and they said that they were.
The headline should have read “Increased knowledge about global warming shows it is a man-made hoax” or “Increased knowledge about global warming decreases Al Gores bank account”
I’ve found the same correlations. The friends that I have that actually can solve an equation and have degrees in some sort of science are complete sceptics. It appears that those who get their info from the MSM/Lib arts faculties/any public school are the believers. Hmmm, could one suspect an inverse correlation between scientific knowledge and contact with the MSM/etc?
Me too. The more I learn about “climate change” the more I know that globull warming is complete BS.
The questions about “global warming” have been posed in such a way that it seems unlikely that anything we may do personally or collectively would make any difference anyway.
NO positive steps are offered whereby SOME difference may be made, except to elect the side proclaiming all this future and imminent grief, and abolish capitalism, by taxation or expropriation.
This is OK, because the world is filled with honorable liberals and principled moderates.
We are so scrude.
This is because anyone with a 5th grade level of science knowledge can see that Anthropogenic Global Warming is BS.
For instance recently I caught a program called: Six Degrees Could Change the World on the National Geographic Channel.
So lets just start with the title of the program: Six Degrees Could Change the World
Notice the word in red: "Could" not Will but "Could".
The program was narrated by none other than Libtard Alec Baldwin and every other statement he made seemed to have the qualifier "Could" in it.
Alec would state in ominous tones, phrases such as:
Sea levels "Could" rise as much as 3 feet.
Weather patterns "Could" change enough to cause fertile lands to become deserts.
Heat waves "Could" cause massive fatalities in Children and the Elderly.
I watched the program 3 times (Luv TIVO) and Not once did they state anything that was conclusive, every prediction was clear supposition.
Anyone with any basic understanding of the English language could discern the whole program was nothing more than vague predictions, but they did their best to make it sound like we were all going to die in some massive global warming holocaust.
So this is not surprising to me that people learning more about the message realize no one has anything remotely concrete on temperatures 100 years from now.
I ran into Risk Analysis social scientists working on Yucca Mountain stuff. They can be quite dangerous because they push-poll.
Is it possible that as you get better informed, you find out that man made GW is a hoax? We need a Captain Obvious graphic, here.
“All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air...”
:o)
So let it be written. So let it be done:
Sorry, but I can't trust a group of collective PHD dumbasses who tell me what will happen with the weather in 15 years, when they can't even tell me what the weather will be like next Tuesday!
Now, if only I can come up with an obvious, taxpayer funded study of my own..... hmmmm....
You can open the article and send an email to Texas A&M.
This is a good one ping!
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
The Great Global Warming Swindle Video - back on the net!! (click here)
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
Need to call these guys tomorrow.
Please ping me if you find anything out.
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