Strong Climate Change Opinions Are Self-Reinforcing

An anonymous reader writes "A study recently published in Nature (abstract) looked at how personal beliefs altered a person's perception of climate change. Surveying a sample of people in 2008 and then the same people again in 2011, the study looked for 'motivated reasoning,' where 'high belief certainty influenced perceptions of personal experience,' and 'experiential learning,' where 'perceived personal experience of global warming led to increased belief certainty.' According to the article, 'When you categorize individuals by engagement — essentially how confident and knowledgeable they feel about the facts of the issue — differences are revealed. For the highly-engaged groups (on both sides), opinions about whether climate is warming appeared to drive reports of personal experience. That is, motivated reasoning was prevalent. On the other hand, experience really did change opinions for the less-engaged group, and motivated reasoning took a back seat.None of that is truly surprising, but it leads to a couple interesting points. First, the concrete here-and-now communication strategy is probably a good one for those whose opinions aren't firmly set — fully 75 percent of Americans, according to the polling. But second, that tack is unlikely to get anywhere with the 8 percent or so of highly-engaged Americans who reject the idea of a warming planet, and are highly motivated to disregard anything that says otherwise.'"

Comments

Re:Look At What They Propose

[Sique]

If someone argues nuclear would be the only technology to fight AGW, then it is more likely that they believe in AGW only as a vehicle to further their nuclear agenda. See? Works in the other direction too.

Re:Communications Strategy?

[BlueStrat]

You could just stop listening to the political sides and listen to climate scientists instead.
Problem solved.

Wrong, because the scientists have politicized themselves and the science.

If a scientist advocates for some political action to be taken or not taken or policy to be enacted or not enacted then he has politicized himself, and his opinion is political, not scientific.

Ergo, any scientist that comes out in favor of AGW or against AGW is not acting as a scientist, but as a partisan political/ideological advocate.

Scientists do studies, perform experiments, and publish papers on purely scientific topics. They don't engage in political/ideological advocacy. Those advocating one side or the other are not scientists, at least while they are advocating.

So, no scientists have advocated one side over another, as the very act of advocacy disqualifies them as performing "science" and therefor their opions are not "scientific", but political.

Strat