Inside the Climate Skeptic Mind
Via Desmogblog, I see there is an emerging anthropological investigation of a curious (some say hydra-headed) creature that is mostly haunting the American political landscape and the dreams of many in the climate concerned community.
Mooney has broken out the main findings over there, so no reason for me to duplicate. But if you skeptic creatures want to know why you are being studied, here’s the explanation provided in the paper Mooney references:
Some may argue that the climate skeptic movement is small and thus irrelevant to the debate on what to do about climate change, but as social scientists, we cannot endorse such flippant dismissal. If, as we suspect, skeptics invoke climate frames that resemble abortion politics, this has serious policy implications. As long as members of the skeptic movement are included in the policy debate and sway the opinions of some lawmakers, their discourse is critically relevant. The social sciences can help us understand the form of this debate as well as the outcomes that result from it.
I might have dismissed this rationale two years ago, before the rise of the Tea Party and its dismissal of climate science spread like a contagion throughout the GOP. Now I’m inclined to think that another form of culture war is underway that is definitely not healthy for a constructive dialogue on climate change. I do hope that the reasonable climate skeptics that visit Collide-a-Scape understand this.
What about AGW proponents who accept all claims uncritically? Invoking some kind of pathology for people who do not accept AGW is very unhelpful. These are human tendencies that are found across the political spectrum.
This is a culture war that is not limited to a pathology on the side of “skeptics”. Hulme showed that at least two years ago. This is what Peilke Junior talks about in his descriptions of politicized science. Can we just discuss this as a fact of political discourse and not just have the implication that one side or the other is a bunch of pathological zealots. We need less talk about “fraud!” and “denier!” and more acceptance that people can see the same thing differently.
Tom,
If that discourse only took place in the media and blogs, then I might agree with you. But sorry, just look at how strident the current Republican party has become on climate science, and how that is now influencing the political dialogue.
To understand the impact of this, just look at the turnabout of leading Republicans who just a few years ago agreed that climate change was a major concern and needed to be addressed. It’s pretty astonishing the about face.
The radical left and radical right feed each other.
Always has been, always will be.
Skilled politicians and mediators start in any conflict resolution from the point that both sides believe in the righteousness of their claims.
Dismissing them out of hand just drives the belief further.
A British ‘Sir’ once gave me a good piece of advice, ‘never back someone into a corner, as that leaves them only one means of escape, through you’.
Nancy Pelosi ran the house of representatives like her personal kingdom completely marginalizing those members of congress that represented ‘right leaning’ districts.
She created the Tea Party. Not Sarah Palin.
I’m from the UK, so I look on much of the USA’s sceptical/pro AGW politics with bemusement.
One interesting factor int eh paper was he discussion of “peer review” and how many “skeptics” have come to regard this as “pal review”. This is not juat a problem discovered by “skeptics”. it is widely acknowledged in the academic community that one (only one) issue with peer review. I have attendend conferences and been astonished to hear speakers presenting some trivial and obvious material. Everyone knows how this matetial was accepted or teh conference. if one is a member of the in-crowd tehn one gets to publish what othr people cannot.
Actually .. I’ll throw this in.
When Piers Corbyn was in America – Heartland i think..
(Piers would be considered very much not on the political right) an ancedote he told me (I met him again at the Spectator debate) was that the UK sceptics attending were a bit bemused by it all.
ie, some American stood up pronouncing, ‘lets have some republican science’ Piers just said to him. NO Lets’s have some ‘objective science’
Given that the political right (conservatives)in the UK, are TOTALLY enamoured with AGW, the whole right/left context seems bizarre in a UK context.
Now we have studies, to prove skeptics insane, stupid, or a little of both. Who’s funding this crap? There reallly is a simple solution, come up with answers that aren’t repressive. So far, the only thing the neo-primatives have, is either lowering the average persons standard of living, or costing them more to keep the standard. You don’t need a study to realize that’s a tough sell (evidently to conservatives only).
OK, I’ve read the paper, and it gives me the creeps. Do we humans really want to be socially engineered? I personally am going to resist with every fiber in my body. This elitist bunk makes me sick.
I think harry has it right in (3). The current behavior of Republicans is sort of a knee-jerk reaction in reaction to the Democratic push for cap-and-trade and generally never stopping tide of alarmist propaganda in the media.
The funny thing is how many ways alarmists find to blame everything and everybody but never consider the really simple explanation: the case for action on climate is weak.
People have an extraordinary ability to rationalize.
A few weeks ago, I discussed another of Andrew Hoffmann’s paper on climate skeptics that I think is more interesting than the one Mooney references:
Talking past each other: cultural framing of the skeptical and convinced logics in the climate change debate.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/03/11/talking-past-each-other/
I submit that somebody who is a “Professor of Sustainable Enterprise” probably has their own ingrained ideological biases that could be examined if social sciences weren’t dominated by an insular group of politically like-minded academics.
I don’t know how literally we are supposed to take the “spread like a contagion” from the Tea Party angle but that link didn’t show it as a fact. If climate is a political football it takes two to kick it back and forth, and from what I know about US politics there have already been some very sharp manoeuvres from the Democrats getting climate legislation through which has had Republicans spitting. Now this is happening in reverse, yet this time we get treated to a pathological explanation for this situation. We see a veneer of “science” (social in this case) on the critique; it therefore imbues it as something loftier and more worthwhile. We all just *know* republicans are anti-science so it is win-win there 😉 God, I’m not a Conservative, but I feel some sympathy for them when I see this smarmy posturing.
Hoffmans paper clearly positions itself as being written from the climate action stance, which is fair enough, but leaves a big hole where his politics lies which can only be divined by inference, so take a couple of excerpts:
“For decades, social movement theorists have been criticized ““ and have criticized themselves ““ for not attending enough to politically conservative movements, although this has begun to change”¦”
“Although a few sociologists have started examining the US conservative movement’s success in promoting doubts about climate science (McCright and Dunlap, 2003, 2010), we are not yet able to evaluate which frames invoked by climate skeptics resonate with the general public.”
Fully implicit there is that Liberal (Democrat or whatever) mentality is fully understood by sociologists and seen to be nicely in tune with normality. I would say all this paper is, is a special plea from a sector, namely Social Science, talking to a specific political class, with the aim of getting grants in the climate market of psychologising your political opponents 😉
Keith:
I noticed that his three categories didn’t include doubt of the actual science – based on science itself.
For example, the trend for sea level rise is decelerating, not accelerating – which doesn’t make scientific sense given the .74C rise in temperature.
Where is the missing ocean heat? That also doesn’t make sense, given the .74C rise in temperature.
The climate models all appear to be over-estimating temperature increases, sea level rise, etc. as compared to actual observational evidence.
So, as a “reasonable climate skeptic” I would like to suggest that Mooney is wrong – and that a great deal of skepticism is science based.
Sashka (9):
That’s a fundamental misread of politics. Some of the Repubs I’m referring to, such as most of the presumed Republican Presidential contenders, were on board with AGW a few years ago. Nothing’s changed since then (even including climategate). It’s just that the contemporary GOP is being remade in the Tea Party’s image. Great for Obama in 2012, but bad for rational discourse on climate change.
The trend I’m talking about is encapsulated in this article, which a reader just sent me.
From the paper:
“For example, how do we as scholars engage a community that openly dismisses the scientific method upon which our work is based?”
This is exactly the kind of stupid stereotyping that would be would be heavily criticized if it were about any other group.
Some might argue that the skeptic movement is small…
Judging by todays senate vote, small would be 50:50. If we judged by a house vote, I suspect the skeptic movement would be less small.
One difficulty I have understanding the paper is the use of skeptic. Unfortunately, the term gets used to include a huge range of people. Do you think his use of skeptic coincides only with his use of “those in the dismissive category” on page 2, or does it include people who believe in climate change? I think he means the former, but I can’t be sure.
Another question: I scanned to try to identify the 2010 skeptic conference he attended. I couldn’t find anything more than “a 2010 climate skeptic conference”. Speakers are similarly unnamed. I know he’d have gotten different answers to questions from SteveMc, vs. Monckton vs. any number of other speakers at the 2010 Heartland conference in Chicago. Some of his quotes sound like Monckton. He’s a colorful speaker and lots of people were entertained. I’m not entirely sure he speaks the views of all American skeptics– not even if we limit the term “skeptic” to those in the dismissive category.
Nothings changed since then…
Except that those republicans are no longer on board, popular support for action on climate is diminshing, and the trend is broader than the US. I’m thinking this matters.
As regards the tea party, Keith: I think you are confusing cause and effect.
What Dr Curry said in #11
What we have here is a failure to communicate, quite neatly demonstrated in the quotes Mooney focused on. He quotes
“one presenter “went so far as to suggest that a binding international agreement on climate change would end with individuals being required to carry “˜carbon ration cards’ on their person.”
and says “So if you’re one of those people who asks yourself, “how can they believe this stuff?” Well, that’s how”
In the UK, it’s easy because carbon rationing has been suggested by various lobby groups and think tanks for some years, as discussed here-
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/carbon-rationing-preparing-the-public-for-plan-b/
““Rationing was introduced in September 1939, to help win the Second World War. Now the Government may need to think about rationing carbon if we are to win the fight against climate change.”
And the wartime spirit was recently re-evoked in a manifesto from our Green Party. Actual implementation of “Carbon Cards” in the UK may have been hampered by the cancellation of our planned ID Cards.
Mooney goes on to say:
“Renewable energy is distrusted because it needs to be subsidized. Huh””what do they think of fossil fuel subsidies, then?”
Hoffman may like them as fossil fuel helped fund his IGSE. Then again, Hoggan also works for ‘big oil’. So fossil fuel subsidies can lead to public good if the money ends up funding research. Less sure about PR. But that’s digressing somewhat.
I distrust renewables because of the amount of subsidy and the impacts on energy poverty and policy. And that most current renewables just aren’t fit for purpose, ie in the UK, replacing the large amount of baseload generating capacity. Wind, wave, solar or tidal just can’t do this. Here in the UK we’ve just had this report-
http://www.jmt.org/news.asp?s=2&nid=JMT-N10561
looking at wind turbine performance and it’s worse than wind industry supporters have claimed. Sceptics have known this for years.
Mooney’s last point is something I agree with more:
“3. Distrust of Peer Review. To me, this was the most intriguing finding.”
where again there may be good reasons to distrust the current process following on from Climategate. Hoffman thinks those involved were vindicated and “multiple investigations have cleared
the scientists.” yet those investigations (at least in the UK) weren’t very thorough, detailed or balanced.
However, some journals do seem to have noticed the fuss and are asking for more data to support papers. So rather than sceptics ignoring the scientific method, we may have made it easier for scientists to follow it and have the data required to verify or validate work. Scientists are supposed to be sceptical after all.
But that’s back to the real problem, the failure to communicate. Some people believe everything they’re told about AGW and CAGW, others do not, ask for more evidence or better explanations and are branded as sceptics. This is why I like Dr Curry’s bridge building, and attempts to find ways to better communicate science and especially uncertainty. If that can be solved, the science/policy/public interface is simplified, scepticism reduced and who knows, sceptics may even become advocates.
What doesn’t generally work is something Mooney’s commentors don’t understand, appeals to emotion when sceptics are often appealing for data and evidence. Drowning polar bears or exploding children are PR tricks best left to the other side.
From the paper: … the counter-movements that resist the dominant logic … The Pew Research Center found that the number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that climate change is happening dropped from 71 percent in 2008 to 57 percent in 2009. The Six Americas survey from the Yale Project on Climate Change found the biggest shifts occurred among the most alarmed and most skeptical from 2008 to 2010 The percentage of respondents claiming to be alarmed by climate change dropped from 18 to 10 percent and those in the dismissive category increased from 7 to 16 percent.
Kinda like Ed Markey stuck in the greenie camp, skeptics have Jim Inhofe. Both are true deniers of science.
“Reports that unit 2 had suffered a core melt completely through the reactor vessel have been quashed. A CNN report quotes US Congressman Ed Markey as claiming he was told of the fact by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The regulator has since told the Nuclear Energy Institute that it has no detailed knowledge of such a change at unit 2, which has been known to be damaged for some time already.”
Quite simply, ALL politicians lie. Party lines is where the corruption occurs and the science ends.
Goldman has 3 billion in clean energy investments? They raised 10 billion for clean energy clients? WTF? So Keith…you see a problem with Goldman disclosing to the people who invested 10 billion dollars, what the risk is for those investments? Seems like the Tea Party group is trying to intervene on behalf of the people, before Goldman and their clean energy clients, Madoffs with their money.
I comment at length on this subject today.
Tobis,
From your picture, you look like the perfect redneck. Get-ir-Done boy.
Keith, thank-you for a very illuminating thread.
@Keith,
“another form of culture war is underway that is definitely not healthy for a constructive dialogue on climate change. I do hope that the reasonable climate skeptics that visit Collide-a-Scape understand this.”
Can you explain this, please?
Keith:
“But if you skeptic creatures want to know why you are being studied, …”
Before I infer anything I shall ask what you imply by the addition of “creature” to “you sceptics”.
I believe that you do not use words idly, yet your readership are all creatures, so your usage is at that level otiose. So what is your implication?
Alex
The Mooney piece is the standard personal-worldview-wrapped-in-academic-jargon stuff.
Just imagine if a real academic – like a biologist say – studied 2 species of fish starting off with the idea that species A was saintly and species B was evil. Sorry, I forgot that we live in post-normal times:-)
“For skeptics, climate change is inextricably tied to a belief that climate science and climate policy is a covert way for liberal environmentalists and the government to interfere in the market and diminish citizens’ personal freedom. ”
Holy Smokes I am not a sceptic I am a freaking paranoid. I would see a doctor but according tothe author my form of Paranoia
“openly dismisses the scientific method upon which our
work is based”
Keith Kloor Says:
April 6th, 2011 at 6:19 pm
<i>That’s a fundamental misread of politics. Some of the Repubs I’m referring to, such as most of the presumed Republican Presidential contenders, were on board with AGW a few years ago.Nothing’s changed since then (even including climategate).</i>
The composition of the House of Representatives has changed. Any ‘Climate Change’ legislation that was going to come out of Nancy Pelosi’s house was going to be a pork fest.
Moderate’s on both sides of the aisle know how to make lemonade.
Public tolerance for pork barrel spending is at a low.
The relationship between the price of natural gas and the price of coal East of the Mississippi has changed.
The delivered price of coal on the US Eastern Seaboard has changed. The US price of coal trended down from 1979-2000.It has been trending up for 10 years now.
One could be a true AGW believer and still conclude that normal market economics will transition the US Eastern Seaboard away from coal without government intervention.
The Major Utilities in the US Southeast have already indicated that they plan on transitioning away from coal in an orderly fashion as their existing coal fired facilities come to retirement age.
Interesting”¦..personal freedom, free markets etc. Makes me think of the discussion we once had on this blog about the Nolan Chart and The World’s Smallest Political Quiz (http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz) and how it would correlate to people’s views on climate change and vaccination.
Keith Grub, you got there before I did re the picture :o) but it is a very thought provoking piece MT has written. When we talk about communicating successfully how much is down to who is doing the communicating rather than what is being said? Like Barry Woods I live in the UK and I am also slightly bemused by the whole USA’s sceptical/pro AGW politics but then as a Dane I am slightly bemused by the whole English class thing which seems to matter so much in British politics. In a way it is the same thing. I think MT is right in thinking that people, often, find it difficult to separate the message from the messenger and the messenger from the messenger’s background in terms of money, family and education. Rightly or wrongly it is difficult to convince people that people from another “tribe” has their best interest at heart. This is of course one of the reasons why the whole “Monbiot-Nukes” thing is so unsettling for Guardian readers and why they seem to have turned on him with a vengeance. He is one of “theirs” and yet there he is saying stuff that they would expect from a Tory (!) :o)
Consider people (as a glump). They act like a good old fashioned Bell Curve. (Well, if a Bell Curve could ‘act’ 😉 .) There are the Extremeists on each side and the Mighty Middle in between. The Extremeists try to convince the Middle to go with them, be it about issue “X”, “Y”, or “Z”. It’s that simple. The matter tends to take on a serious note when the Middle becomes rather more and more “divided”. The more divided the “glump”, the more likely you are to see big demonstrations, riots, car bombings, building burnings, and eventually, Civil War. After the war, people kind’a conveniently forget what all the killing was about and move on to the next big issue.
Every “issue” has its advocates and detractors. Fortunately, not many issues become so divisive that the glump gets intimately involved.
Politicians taking “positions” for and against “something” is an indicator of temperature. The higher the temperature gets the more likely it is that something or someone is going to get burned. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. It doesn’t matter who is right or wrong. In the end the winner buries the dead and writes the history books.
All of us need to be worried about extremeist idiots throwing gas on any fire. (Especially if it is near our house, our town, our kids, our job, etc., etc..) “Taxes”? “States Rights”? “Slavery”? “Global Warming”? “Raw Materials”? Who cares what the issue is! It doesn’t matter! The more devisive the issue, the more likely it is that everyone is going to go up in smoke one Sunday morning.
If I were King, I’d exile the extremeists on both sides to a Leper’s Island and send someone to see how they were doing every 10 years or so. Oh well! So much for age and wisdom. Kids are going to be kids and there will always be a war somewhere; “civil” or not.
I find it interesting that NAS would consider it ‘settled fact’ that ‘much’ of the warming is ‘very likely’ caused by humans. How much is much. How likely is very likely. It is, frankly, befuddling, that the supreme court of science would attach weasle words like ‘much’ and ‘likely’ to ‘settled fact’.
The statement is just silly (the cynical side of me thinks it a weasly appeal for continuing/increased government funding).
Objecting to this makes me ‘a rejecter of science in wholesale’? Please.
I found this article illuminating, not in that it has anything to do with science and/or AGW, but everything to do with political discourse:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/27percent-of-communication-by-members-of-congress-is-taunting-professor-concludes/2011/04/06/AF1no2qC_story.html?hpid=z1
When 1/4th of the words out of everyone’s mouth is an insult, do you really expect to develop a consensus? And the whole AGW story, especially in DC, is riddled with political diatribe as opposed to scientific discourse!
Even the block quote in your original post likens skeptics to those idiots who are against abortion… That in itself is insulting!
Likewise, to say that a skeptic is by definition “anti-science” is blind to the Judith Currys of the world who are labeled a skeptic and yet have real, honest scientific skepticism as to how well we understand the climate.
Dean_1230, interesting article. I wonder what the “taunting percentage” would be in the House of Commons? :o) my guess would also be that the percentage is lower in countries where coalition governments are the norm.
Keith,
All politicians are talking weathercocks. Always were, always will. It so happens that the people who ride the wave of political popularity on anti big-government sentiments are also climate skeptics or even deniers. Of course the pols whose electability depend on this base are doing about-face. The question is why the Tea Party is so “skeptical” about climate? After all it’s perfеctly possible to be anti-spending and anti-abortion and yet reasonable about climate. Yet it doesn’t work this way. Why? My answer is above. Too many people are so fed up with Pelosi, Waxman, Markey and such that they’d vote against them on anything and everything. You have a better theory?
Over at his place, Michael Tobis looks back on his sci.environment days and says:
“I was confident, truth being more or less on our side, that we would prevail.”
I was not a sci.* denizen but elsewhere on rec or talk where no such confidence seemed justifiable. Truth was never a barrier to victory.
Something truly liberating happened on Usenet and elsewhere on the internet.
We liberated TRUTH!
It was freed from its onerous ties to reality and launched into a virtual world.
Well that’s the way I remember things, a bunch of disembodied POVs, some or many that were not truthfully held but mere poses, using whatever debating tactics seemed useful to persuade or coerce another poseur or honest fool, all for the sake of entertainment. Not all the time and not by everybody but the skillsets employed today across the media seem to be those learnt there and then.
Alex
34: kdk33 Says:
“I find it interesting that NAS would consider it “˜settled fact’ that “˜much’ of the warming is “˜very likely’ caused by humans. How much is much. ”
Gee, you find it so ‘interesting’ but apparently have no interest in reading the 2010 NAS document itself for answers. Even the summary expands at length on the claims you are so ‘interested’ in. The body of the text goes into much greater detail, of course.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12782&page=17
Then again, I don’t think your tribe is seriously interested in the evidence behind what the NAS and other scientists are saying, at all.
Once you get to the point of pathologizing your opposition you pretty much have admitted that your arguments are hopeless and your science suspect.
Of course, real scientists understand that science is, in fact, suspect and it has to be verified by experiment and observation. Climate scientists are not exempt from this requirement and so long as the Team members keep arguing that badly calibrated proxies and models which lost the thread around 1995 are conclusive, they should not be surprised as fewer and few people believe them.
“Plato.. said ‘Don’t ever give power to those who wish power. Give it to those who don’t want power. Because they will do their duty and then they will relinquish the power.’ Also, don’t let those who are keen to be in the limelight be the ones who tell the public what they believe is going on.” (Harry van Loon, 2005)
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=386#comments
Perhaps it is not the skeptic mind but the skeptic nose that will not let them fall in line behind the leaders of the AGW Crusade for a Brave New World. Maybe?
How nice. Looks like the skeptics have been neatly put in their boxes again and their mental illnesses diagnosed, so we can have some sympathy for their defects.
Skeptics are treated here as a monolithic block (ever notice how few people ever say what they mean by skeptic), and somehow one of the listed reasons doesn’t include legitimate doubt on speculative science that is engaging in unvalidated predictions which the actual measurements do not support.
It must be pointed out that academia, and particularly the social sciences as shown by a recent NYT article, is dominated by liberals. So it is difficult to see this as unbiased.
I agree with an opinion that some of the difference is based on conservatives being more comfortable with risk, as business driven in a free market forces you to accept. Small business owners and entrepreneurs live with “worst case scenarios” of business failure almost continuously, and inevitably do fail. However the discovery that failure was not as bad as feared, and in many ways quite helpful for future businesses, tends to readjust your world perspective.
Been there, done that. My comfort level of AGW effects being less than feared, and in many ways helpful, is a lot different than a professor with tenure.
Regarding CO2, or in Orwelian speak Carbon, politics is irrelevant. Should I start believing in AGW hysteria, just because Democrats or Liberals believe the same?
I am a lover of truth (and science) and that is all that counts. Establishment scientists are the enemy of science, not sceptics.