Legal eagles and political sciences lead the way!
Posted on 07/16/2011 12:47:20 AM PDT by neverdem
A new study suggests that your values, not science, determine your views about climate change.
The more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax, according to a new study [PDF] from the Yale Cultural Cognition Project.
Many science writers and policy wonks nurse the fond hope that fierce disagreement about issues like climate change is simply the result of a scientifically illiterate American public. If this “public irrationality thesis” were correct, the authors of the Yale study write, “then skepticism about climate change could be traced to poor public comprehension about science” and the solution would be more science education. In fact, their findings suggest more education is unlikely to help build consensus; it may even intensify the debate.
Led by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan, the Cultural Cognition Project has been researching how cultural and ideological commitments shape science policy discourse in the United States. To probe the public’s views on climate change, the Yale researchers conducted a survey of 1,500 Americans in which they asked questions designed to uncover their cultural values, their level of scientific literacy, and what they thought about the risks of climate change.
The group uses a theory of cultural commitments devised by University of California, Berkeley, political scientist Aaron Wildavsky that “holds that individuals can be expected to form perceptions of risk that reflect and reinforce values that they share with others.” The Wildavskyan schema situates Americans’ cultural values on two scales, one that ranges from Individualist to Communitarian and another that goes from Hierarchy to Egalitarian. In general, Hierarchical folks prefer a social order where people have clearly defined roles and lines of authority...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
That’s exactly what you would expect when you get SMART PEOPLE looking at this GLOBULL WARMING HOAX! There’s no way within current capabilities to get the pulse of a climatic system as chaotic, massive, and complex as we’ve got on this planet. Attempting to predict it is like attempting to predict the weather on your birthday next year.
I'm going with hoax.
Only because I'm merely literate.
they leave out one part of the equation, they don’t count those that have lived through it before
YEs, and NOAA converting sun-specks to sunspots in order to increase the “count” of sunspots is the latest data manipulation:
http://www.iceagenow.com/NOAA_inflating_sunspot_counts.htm
[excerpt from deep inside it]
The Yale study implicitly accepts the “consensus” that climate change poses substantial dangers to humanity. But what about the cultural values held by climate scientists themselves? Could they be subject to confirmation bias too? A study [PDF] published in 2009 in the journal Climatic Change sheds some light on the policy views of climate scientists. Although the cultural cognition typology is more subtle, the Climatic Change study survey of over 400 climate scientists found that 67 percent identified as liberal, 20 percent moderate, and 13 percent conservative. Around 90 percent agreed that man-made global warming is now happening and that immediate policy decisions need to be made to address it.
According to the survey 96 percent support market incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; 85 percent favor a tax on industry to discourage practices that contribute to global warming; 89 percent favor higher prices for energy supplies and consumer goods that are not environmentally friendly; 99 percent favor developing no-carbon renewable energy supplies like hydro and solar; and 81 percent want to increase the price of fossil fuels. The few conservative climate scientists surveyed were somewhat less eager to adopt these policies except for the ambiguous “use market incentives” policy, which 96 percent favored. However, only 61 percent of politically conservative climate scientists favor a tax on industry; 65 percent support higher energy and consumer products prices; 92 percent back developing renewable fuels; and only 41 percent want to increase the price of fossil fuels. Could it be that Egalitarian/Communitarian biases against industry and commerce are informing the policy prescriptions of climate scientists? (No Shi'te, Little Beaver!)
The Pew Research Center conducted a 2009 survey comparing the political ideologies of scientists and the general public. Only 9 percent of scientists identified as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 52 percent as liberal, with 14 percent claiming to be very liberal. In contrast, the general public identifies as 37 percent conservative, 38 percent moderate, and 20 percent liberal, and 5 percent very liberal. Slicing the data another way, the survey finds that 81 percent of scientists lean Democrat whereas 52 percent of the general public does. Another telling division between the beliefs of the general public versus scientists is their responses to this statement: "When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful." Fifty-eight percent of scientists disagreed, whereas 57 percent of the public agreed with it.
Excellent article.
Confirmation bias is absolutely universal. Freepers are just as prone to it as anybody else.
The whole point of the scientific method is to provide a method whereby confirmation bias can be bypassed and the truth be constantly approximated more closely.
I agree. More science education isn’t likely to help.
There’s always disagreement in science when new ideas come along. It’s not surprising there is genuine scientific disagreement here.
The difference, vis-a-vis climate change, is that libs, if they even bother to try to eschew a life of burger flipping in the first place, tend to avoid the hard sciences in college and end up in psychology, journalism, poly sci, etc., where rarely an equation strains their limited brain power, while conservatives flock to the math-centric courses, if for no other reason than to get away from all the jokers (professors and students alike) in less rigorous courses.
Whether they admit it or not, Communitarians are most definitely communistic Hierarchists of the worst type.
Man’s capacity of doing tests on putative climate change causes is laughably inadequate.
Bump!
I would challenge the premise that the more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax. It is more likely that the more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that human caused climate change is a hoax.
The writers probably did not account for bias among the scientifically literate, especially those being paid to support human caused climate change, a multi-billion dollar industry.
The Yale Cultural Cognition Project needs to go back to the "drawing board" and redo their study, IMO. It also may be worthwhile to check into the source of funding for the study.
Unless, of course, the "scientific method" has been buggered by bastardizing the peer review process, which is the case with "anthropogenic climate change".
I believe that the big yellow hot ball of gases that rises in the east and sets in the west everyday has everything to do with our climate and whether it gets hotter or colder. Saying that humans are affecting climate changes, to me, is a hoax perpetrated on humanity by men who think they can scare the masses for profit and political power.
Sounds about right - normal folks with a rational thought process understand the flawed "science".
However, the "scientists" that espouse this crap are more emotionally oriented and less silence-literate than the average 9th grader...
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