Study: climate skeptics are winning the public opinion war

wattsupwiththat.com ^ | Dec. 2, 2015 | Anthony Watts

[PROCON]

From MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY:

Climate-change foes winning public opinion war

EAST LANSING, Mich. — As world leaders meet this week and next at a historic climate change summit in Paris, a new study by Michigan State University environmental scientists suggests opponents of climate change appear to be winning the war of words.

"It's extremely difficult to change people's minds on climate change, in part because they are entrenched in their views," says Aaron M. McCright, a Michigan State University environmental scientist. “It’s extremely difficult to change people’s minds on climate change, in part because they are entrenched in their views,” says Aaron M. McCright, a Michigan State University environmental scientist.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, finds that climate-change advocates are largely failing to influence public opinion. Climate-change foes, on the other hand, are successfully changing people’s minds — Republicans and Democrats alike — with messages denying the existence of global warming.

“This is the first experiment of its kind to examine the influence of the denial messages on American adults,” said Aaron M. McCright, a sociologist and lead investigator on the study. “Until now, most people just assumed climate change deniers were having an influence on public opinion. Our experiment confirms this.”

The findings come as leaders from 150 nations attempt to forge a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During a speech Monday at the Paris summit, President Barack Obama said the “growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other.”

Nearly 1,600 U.S. adults took part in the MSU study. Participants read fabricated news articles about climate change and then completed a survey gauging their beliefs on the issue. The articles contained either positive or negative real-world messages about climate change, or both.

The positive messages framed the topic of climate change around one of four major issues: economic opportunity, national security, Christian stewardship and public health. According to the article addressing public health, for example:

“Medical experts argue that dealing with climate change will improve our public health by reducing the likelihood of extreme weather events, reducing air quality and allergen problems, and limiting the spread of pests that carry infectious diseases.”

In half of the articles, participants were presented a negative message that read, in part: “However, most conservative leaders and Republican politicians believe that so-called climate change is vastly exaggerated by environmentalists, liberal scientists seeking government funding for their research and Democratic politicians who want to regulate business.”

Surprisingly, none of the four major positive messages changed participants’ core beliefs about climate change. Further, when the negative messages were presented, people were more apt to doubt the existence of climate change – and this was true of both conservatives and liberals.

“That’s the power of the denial message,” said McCright, associate professor in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and Department of Sociology. “It’s extremely difficult to change people’s minds on climate change, in part because they are entrenched in their views.”

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The study appears online in the journal Topics in Cognitive Science. McCright’s co-authors are fellow MSU researchers Meghan Charters, Katherine Dentzman and Thomas Dietz.

[PROCON]

Liberal: Well, your data doesn't prove anything, it's just right-wing propaganda.

[TigersEye]

LOL

You can’t use reason to change a view that wasn’t arrived
at through reason. (or something like that)

[Wiser now]

I am 70 years old and have lived in the same county for those 70 years and I know nothing has changed.
Sure some years the summer is warmer than it was
the previous year; the next summer is likely to be a little cooler. That’s how we get averages!
I look back now on a winter when we got no snow at all, and I realize that must have been an El Nino year, but in 1969 nobody had ever heard of El Nino, and nobody screamed that man was killing the planet.
These days I read the stories from both sides of this issue and it is clear to me it is being used to scare people into giving up their cars and property rights. Why is the only cure for this a Marxist agenda?

[smartyaz]

[smartyaz]

[ForYourChildren]

This is a lot of the reason why. When you have a Nobel Peace Prize winner on Global Warming get it so wrong, then people become skeptical.

[PROCON]

Why is the only cure for this a Marxist agenda?

The Soviet Union may have fallen, but not Communism.

They're up to their old tricks but in another form.

It's good for all freedom lovers everywhere that more people are catching on to the lie.

[notdownwidems]

I guess it couldn’t just be because ‘global warming’ is bullstuff?

[Vigilanteman]

You are 10 years older than I am, so I take it you missed the first earth day where they told us we would all freeze to death in a new ice age due to greenhouse gasses being able to get into the atmosphere, but not being able to escape.

Guess what their prescription was for global cooling? If you said to give them the same power and control as demanded for global warming, then go to the head of the class.

[Rebelbase]

When someone brings up climate change in a casual conversation I reply, *climate change is a fraud and scam. Follow the money and you will see those who mouth off the loudest about it are making millions from scaring you*.

It shuts them up every time.

[PROCON]

[Da Coyote]

Change “climate sceptics” to “those who actually got
good grades in physics” and all will be well.

[FiddlePig]

AGAIN YESTERDAY!!! The true burning question is... how can we stop Global Warming (Climate Change when cold outside) from gaining such easy access to assault rifles and bombs? #STOP THE MADNESS!!!

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

Yep! Converting people to your own religion is TOUGH!!!

[fr_freak]

It’s not the skeptics. It’s that people have been hearing about Global Warming but aren’t SEEING Global warming.

What's more, is that there are instances where the weather, overall, in some areas, has gotten noticeably cooler. For example, whenever I would hear people in my neck of the woods in NorCal talk about global warming as if it were fact, I would say, hey, remember back in the 90s and early 00s when every summer we would get at least several days of 110-112 degrees, and mid-May would be in the 90s already? And they'd always say "oh, yeah!" and swap heat stories, and then I'd say, when is the last time we've seen a day over 105? A few years? Several? And did you notice we didn't hit over 90 degrees until almost June? Then you see a cloud of confusion come over their faces.

[QT3.14]

[QT3.14]

[MrEdd]

Green isn’t new for the reds.
The Khmer rouge Rouge and their illustrious leader Pol Pot were laser focused on creating an agrarian paradise.

[sauropod]

look up journal