Denying climate change isn't scepticism – it's 'motivated reasoning'

[kristopher]

Denying climate change isn't scepticism – it's 'motivated reasoning'
True sceptics test a hypothesis against the evidence, but climate sceptics refuse to accept anything that contradicts their beliefs
David Robert Grimes of Oxford University

theguardian.com, Wednesday 5 February 2014


Burying your head in the sand about climate change does not qualify as scientific scepticism. Photograph: Daniel Karmann/DPA/Corbis

The grim findings of the IPCC last year reiterated what climatologists have long been telling us: the climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, and we're to blame. Despite the clear scientific consensus, a veritable brigade of self-proclaimed, underinformed armchair experts lurk on comment threads the world over, eager to pour scorn on climate science. Barrages of ad hominem attacks all too often await both the scientists working in climate research and journalists who communicate the research findings.

The nay-sayers insist loudly that they're "climate sceptics", but this is a calculated misnomer – scientific scepticism is the method of investigating whether a particular hypothesis is supported by the evidence. Climate sceptics, by contrast, persist in ignoring empirical evidence that renders their position untenable. This isn't scepticism, it's unadulterated denialism, the very antithesis of critical thought.

...

So given the evidence is so strong against them, then why do these beliefs garner such passionate, vocal support? It's tempting to say the problem is a simple misunderstanding, because increasing average global temperature can have paradoxical and counterintuitive repercussions, such as causing extreme cold snaps. The obvious response to this misunderstanding is to elucidate the scientific details more clearly and more often.

The problem is that the well-meaning and considered approach hinges on the presupposition that the intended audience is always rational, willing to base or change its position on the balance of evidence. However, recent investigations suggests this might be a supposition too far. A study in 2011 found that conservative white males in the US were far more likely than other Americans to deny climate change. Another study found denialism in the UK was more common among politically conservative individuals with traditional values. A series of investigations published last year by Prof Stephan Lewandowsky and his colleagues – including one with the fantastic title, Nasa Faked the Moon Landing – Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science – found that while subjects subscribing to conspiracist thought tended to reject all scientific propositions they encountered, those with strong traits of conservatism or pronounced free-market world views only tended to reject scientific findings with regulatory implications.

It should be no surprise that ...

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/05/denying-climate-change-scepticism-motivated-reasoning

[dipsydoodle]

1. For most I think you'd find it not so much whether or not its real :

its whether or not it matters. Those who don't think it matters have nothing to deny.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. "A study in 2011 found that conservative white males in the US were far more likely than...

... other Americans to deny climate change."

I found that quote interesting. I think it goes right along with other studies where there's a predominance of white males, such as this one:


Eighteen percent of Americans identify as Tea Party supporters. The vast majority of them -- 89 percent -- are white. Just one percent is black.They tend to skew older: Three in four are 45 years old or older, including 29 percent who are 65 plus. They are also more likely to be men (59 percent) than women (41 percent).

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/tea-party-supporters-who-they-are-and-what-they-believe/