Chris Mooney | “A Little Knowledge”: Why The Biggest Problem With Climate “Skeptics” May Be Their Confidence
Last week, an intriguing study emerged from Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale and elsewhere--finding that knowing more about science, and being better at mathematical reasoning, was related to more climate science skepticism and denial--rather than less.
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The surprise—for some out there, anyway—lay in how the ingredients of this stew mix together. For citizens as a whole, more literacy and numeracy were correlated with somewhat more, rather than somewhat less, dismissal of the risk of global warming. When you drilled down into the cultural groups, meanwhile, it turned out that among the hierarchical-individualists (aka, conservatives), the relationship between greater math and science knowledge and dismissal of climate risks was even stronger. (The opposite relationship occurred among egalitarian communitarians—aka liberals).
This is bad, bad news for anyone who thinks that better math and science education will help us solve our problems on climate change. But it’s also something else. To me, it provides a kind of uber-explanation for climate skeptic and denier behavior in the public arena, and especially on the blogs.
In my experience, climate skeptics are nothing if not confident in their ability to challenge the science of climate change--and even to competently recalculate (and scientifically and mathematically refute) various published results. It’s funny how this high-level intellectual firepower is always used in service of debunking—rather than affirming or improving—mainstream science. But the fact is, if you go to blogs like WattsUpWithThat or Climate Audit, you certainly don’t find scientific and mathematical illiterates doubting climate change. Rather, you find scientific and mathematical sophisticates itching to blow holes in each new study.
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7 comments:
The reason for the "skeptics" increased knowledge and skill as you investigate further, is their unwillingness to to "just accept" what is fed to them.
I build IT systems, mainly databases, for a living. Havind left school at 14 and with no formal training, I've learnt that most problems aren't really the problem. People are the problem. People "just accept" what they're told from authority they'd "like believe in".
I don't have any exceptional mathematical or scientific ability or knowledge. Just the ability to identify the cause and a solution to a problem.
From the simple base I break everyhting down to, Co2 is not the problem. Our problems are still caused by people and their complete lack of critical and questioning thought.
One argument I have is... If one ordinary bloke, with an un-exceptional IQ, (145) can figure out this, how stupid are a lot of people that are in charge of some serious decision making.
That's the worry, and it'll be the cause of our demise.
It is ludicrous that an otherwise intelligent liberal would "lament" that the study is "bad news".
Will these guys never consider that perhaps they are wrong?
Chris Mooney writes "It’s funny how this high-level intellectual firepower is always used in service of debunking—rather than affirming or improving—mainstream science." Chris, this is how science works and how theories are either supported or falsified. The falsification of CAGW ersatz science is real science!
The corollary is the less your ability to reason, the more you support AGW theory:)
The issue is this: the hypothesis of catastrophic Global Warming is a scientific conclusion. Rational people come down on both sides of the fence depending on their judgement of a controversial issue and their accessment of acceptable risk and what is reasonable to spend avoiding that risk. People who feel that they do not have the ability to judge the evidence trust the "experts", which in the media, are overwhelmingly alarmist.
My concern is that the attribution of warming to CO2 is exceptionally weak, and the warming to negative consequences little better. I have found that people with real world modeling experience have a very dim view of the "trust the models" line from the IPCC. We can't even model a fluidized bed reactor. How can we expect to model the atmosphere, a system that we don't even know all the inputs to, with any reliability?
The technical community isn't trying to debunk or blow holes in anything. They are just checking the answers to see if they are correct. That kind of validation should be welcomed by climate scientists publishing results.
I believed in global warming because I believed the experts. This article makes it clear that these people are not "experts" at all - smarter people are the skeptics. I think i will listen to the smarter people. So now I am a skeptic too. Thank you.
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