Comments on: Study: climate views of U.S. break down into six broad categories

By: Scholars and Rogues » The Weekly Carboholic: independent statisticians reject recent global cooling claims in blind analysis

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:03:16 +0000

[...] the petition to the APS Council. That’s about 0.4% of the APS membership. According to the 2009 “Six Americas” study by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason Uni…, fully 18% of Americans are either doubtful or dismissive of climate disruption. If those numbers [...]

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:10:15 +0000

There’s a massive amount of information in the actual report and I only touched on some of the things that I found most interesting. They have a complete breakdown of each of the six groups that includes religion, ethnicity, education level, media consumption habits, and the level of consumer activism, to name a few. It even broke each group down by where the various groups live – 21% of all Alarmed live in the South Atlantic region, the same region where 21% of Disengaged and 26% of Dismissives live.

By all means read the actual thing – it’s fascinating. And unlike a lot of polls these days, it looks like they generally did the questions well (randomized order of answers, for example, to remove order biases).

By: Dawn

Dawn — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:52:31 +0000

Brian, what an interesting post. This is the first time I’ve seen religion used as a category for climate issues. I’m stunned at the dismissal of the validity of scientists… and not surprised at all about the results for the consumers of Fox.

By: Climate change denial in context « Greenfyre’s

Climate change denial in context « Greenfyre’s — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:26:36 +0000

[...] Study: climate views of U.S. break down into six broad categories [...]

By: JThompson

JThompson — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:43:59 +0000

All the groups are neutral to trusting of scientists as good sources of information about climate disruption, and all the groups are neutral to distrustful of the media as good sources of information (Figures 35 and 36 respectively).

If scientists aren’t the best source of information about a scientific subject, who the flaming hell are you supposed to listen to? A guy in a pub? An oracle spirit? Your pet rock? Ninjas?! (If you’re in the Dismissive group the answer is: “Weathermen and economists”.)

I’d probably fall into the Concerned category. The science suggests being “cautious” at the very least as the most logical response. We may not lose a hundred miles inland of the coasts in the next couple decades, but we’re probably not going to like it if we don’t do *something* within the next 30 or so years.

My main gripe with the dismissive and doubtful categories is their bastardization of the word “skeptic”. They use it to mean roughly the same thing 9/11 truthers, birthers, and anti-vaccine loons do. Eventually the definition may have to be changed to: skeptic – noun – A person who refuses to accept evidence contrary to their position, no matter how overwhelming. “Those scientists are just liberal shills for Big Green. I’m a skeptic, so I believe what my weatherman, George Will, and Glenn Beck say.”