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Scientific Literacy vs. Concern Over Climate Change
New submitter gmfeier writes "An interesting study reported in Nature Climate Change indicates that concern over climate change did not correlate with scientific literacy nearly as much as with cultural polarization. Quoting: 'For ordinary citizens, the reward for acquiring greater scientific knowledge and more reliable technical-reasoning capacities is a greater facility to discover and use—or explain away—evidence relating to their groups’ positions. Even if cultural cognition serves the personal interests of individuals, this form of reasoning can have a highly negative impact on collective decision making. What guides individual risk perception, on this account, is not the truth of those beliefs but rather their congruence with individuals’ cultural commitments. As a result, if beliefs about a societal risk such as climate change come to bear meanings congenial to some cultural outlooks but hostile to others, individuals motivated to adopt culturally congruent risk perceptions will fail to converge, or at least fail to converge as rapidly as they should, on scientific information essential to their common interests in health and prosperity. Although it is effectively costless for any individual to form a perception of climate-change risk that is wrong but culturally congenial, it is very harmful to collective welfare for individuals in aggregate to form beliefs this way.'"
"Concern" over the environment is a ridiculous notion on par with "good intentions". The only things important are the proposed "solutions", their costs, and the inevitable unintended consequences. Liberals are always expressing more "concern" towards problems... but their solutions often make things worse. It is not hard to understand why "right wingers" (also known as "taxpayers") are apt to be skeptical of a massive government program to fix myriad climate disasters predicted in the last 30 years that have not happened (including an impending ice age, global warming, massive hurricanes, rising sea levels, polar bears extinction, polar ice melting, etc. ).
What they showed is that *people with higher levels of education are *more* influenced by their poitical leanings* because they use their additional knowledge to justify those leanings.
You're almost there. They basically showed what you said is true in regards to right-wingers. They also looked at the use of nuclear power (which is traditionally regarded by left-wingers as bad). The more education the left-winger had, the less concerned about nuclear power use she was. Her opinion became more closely aligned with that of the scientific evidence. So, when a right winger becomes more educated, he becomes more entrenched in his beliefs. When a left-winger becomes more educated, she more closely aligns her belief with that of the scientists.
Inflammatory I know, but it's there in the study.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
So the increase is 0.01% of atmosphereic C02
What a crock of shit. You should go work for a presidential campaign! An increase from 280 ppm to 382 ppm is a 36% increase. As the article says, you're deliberately turning off the parts of your brain that are computing results you don't like.