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Swedish Farmers Have Doubts About Climatologists and Climate Change

cold fjord (826450) writes with this excerpt from ScienceNordic: Researchers the world over almost unanimously agree that our climate is changing ... But many farmers – at least Swedish ones – have experienced mild winters and shifting weather before and are hesitant about trusting the scientists. The researcher who discovered the degree of scepticism among farmers was surprised by her findings. Therese Asplund ... was initially looking into how agricultural magazines covered climate change. Asplund found after studying ten years of issues of the two agricultural sector periodicals ATL and Land Lantbruk that they present climate change as scientifically confirmed, a real problem. But her research took an unexpected direction when she started interviewing farmers in focus groups about climate issues. Asplund had prepared a long list of questions about how the farmers live with the threat of climate change and what they plan to do to cope with the subsequent climate challenges. The conversations took a different course: "They explained that they didn't quite believe in climate changes," she says. "Or at least that these are not triggered by human activities." (Original paper here.)

3 of 567 comments (clear)

  1. Weather is NOT climate by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Repeat that after me, Mr. Fjord.

    It is expected that there will be areas of happy, mild weather in any scenario you care to imagine. It is to be expected that a bunch of locals in regions suffering from happy, mild weather might not be as concerned about the issue as someone who had their house wiped out by a tornado.

    But it the concerns and insights of either set of persons would be irrelevant to the discussion of GLOBAL climate change (hint, the word that is BOLDED is important).

    Climate in not weather. Weather is not climate.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. That proves it by gmuslera · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We can safely discard decades of satellite data and trends on global weather and climate, and the analysis of all climatologists all around the world, because a few carefully choosen farmers in sweden think that it is not happening.

  3. Re:funny by Art+Challenor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But, but, but...

    What happens if we clean up the environment and it not the cause of global warming. All we'd have then is no smog, non-polluting power and clean water.