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.'"

Comments

An English translation, for us non-sociologists

[crazyjj]

I'm pretty well educated, and all that jargon gave even me a fucking headache. Here is a much better summary, FTFA:

A US government-funded survey has found that Americans with higher levels of scientific and mathematical knowledge are more sceptical regarding the dangers of climate change than their more poorly educated fellow citizens. . . .

According to the [authors], this is not because the idea of imminent carbon-driven catastrophe is perhaps a bit scientifically suspect. Rather it is because people classed as "egalitarian communitarians" (roughly speaking, left-wingers) are always highly concerned about climate change, and become slightly more so as they acquire more science and numeracy. Unfortunately, however, "hierarchical individualists" (basically, right-wingers) are quite concerned about climate change when they're ignorant: but if they have any scientific, mathematic or technical education this causes them to become strongly sceptical.

And here's a news-flash for whoever wrote that summary: Terms like "Culturally congruent risk perception" have no obvious meaning for the general reader. Field-specific jargon is just annoying to everyone who doesn't happen to be in your field (i.e., almost everyone else on the planet).

And could you say "culturally" a few more dozen times in your next summary? It really makes you sound smart, and not full of shit at all.

Re:An English translation, for us non-sociologists

[MyLongNickName]

Here's the translation: "People are more apt to be influenced by their peers than by science". This is not new; it has been known for decades. The best way to influence someone is to use those around them. This is why you see change.org petitions. The petitions themselves are crap, but if five of your friends send you a petition, you are more likely to think about the subject the same way as your friends.

Re:An English translation, for us non-sociologists

[Chris Mattern]

Not quite. They were confirming that point, but that's already been shown. 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.

Re:Pollution not a valid argument for the left

[oiron]

If I may be permitted to make an analogy:

There's a certain chemical, (6aR,9R)- N,N- diethyl- 7-methyl- 4,6,6a,7,8,9- hexahydroindolo- [4,3-fg] quinoline- 9-carboxamide, which some claim produces hallucinations and other related physical and psychological effects in large mammals.

Others claim that the amount of this toxin ingested - a few micrograms - is insufficient to make any difference to such large mammals that usually weigh upto 100 kilos and beyond.

Think of EVERY SINGLE medicine or drug in the world! Your dosage is usually in exactly the same ratio to your body mass as CO2 in the atmosphere - that is to say, it's in parts per million. Yet, they produce powerful, often fast-acting effects in the body.

The climate system is similarly complex. A "small" change in one of its components can produce powerful, fast-acting feedbacks. I think that should be fairly obvious!

The point is that a change in composition of 0.01% is actually quite high for CO2. What you should be looking at is the amount of forcing it introduces into the system per unit of change, not how big or small the change is. Take a look here. Your intuition is irrelevant. Model and actual results matter.