Posted on 10/06/2011 8:06:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When it comes to climate change denial, not all human beings are created equal. As a recent study shows, conservative white males are less likely to believe in climate change.
"It's not surprising," said Aaron McCright, sociology professor at Michigan State University, who is a white male himself. But anecdotal evidence is not scientific, he said. "You really don't know what's going on until you crunch the numbers and find out."
Besides the trend amongst skeptics, the study also found that conservative white men who self-report a high understanding of global warming -- dubbed "confident" conservative males -- are even more likely to express climate change denial.
McCright's study, "Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States," was published online in July and printed in the October 2011 issue of Global Environmental Change, which ranks first out of 77 journals on environmental studies.
The study has created somewhat of a buzz, said Riley Dunlap, co-author and professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University. The paper was well received in academic circles, but he admitted he was concerned about a backlash from the conservative movement. While there have not been any major outcries, the study appears to have raised a few temperatures in Chicago.
"This paper is a transparent effort to take the focus off the actual scientific debate and instead engage in race baiting, class baiting and other sociological devices to win a science argument," said James Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at the Chicago-based Heartland Institute.
But from McCright's perspective it was important to find out to what extent the sharp debate over climate change at the elite level had trickled down into the general public in recent decades. "Within the ranks of elites, climate change denialists are overwhelmingly conservative white males," reads the report, pointing to figures like talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Marshall Institute CEO, William O'Keefe. "Does a similar pattern exist in the American public?"
'Cool Dudes,' a bloc that stands out in the crowd McCright and Dunlap's analysis used polling data on climate change denial from 10 Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 72.4 percent of the American population reported as white in 2010, and 77.1 percent in the year 2000. This majority made it difficult to draw conclusions about the relationship between other races and climate change, said McCright, because the Gallup survey sample size was so small.
To test for the trend amongst conservative white males, the researchers compared the demographic to "all other adults." Results showed, for instance, that 29.6 percent of conservative white males believe the effects of global warming will never happen, versus 7.4 percent of other adults. In holding for "confident" conservative white males, the study showed 48.4 percent believe global warming won't happen, versus 8.6 percent of other adults.
As a point of comparison, McCright also tested the beliefs of conservative white females. He found 14.9 percent believe the effects of global warming will never happen to 29.6 percent of their male counterparts. McCright said the finding is due more to the women's political stance than their gender or race. The data on conservative white females was not published in the "Cool dudes" study.
To understand why there is a trend amongst conservative white males, the Gallup data was cross-examined with research about the "white male effect" -- the idea that white males were either more accepting of risk or less risk averse than the rest of the public.
The white male effect could stem from the notion that, historically, white males have faced fewer obstacles in life, said McCright. But another school of thought sees the adoption of risk tied to personal values. "It has to do with their identity as an in-group," he said. "Something that would challenge the status quo is something [conservative white males] want to shun."
According to the literature on "identity protective cognition," people believe messages coming from the people they identify with most and ignore messages that are contrarian, Dunlap said. While all groups have a tendency to do this, he said, in the case the climate change, conservative white males are especially likely to exhibit this self-protecting characteristic.
McCright says, up to 40 percent of all white males in the study sample believe in hierarchy, are more trusting of authority and are more conservative. Conservative white males' motivation to ignore a certain risk -- the risk of climate change in this case -- therefore, has to do with defending the status of their identity tied to the white male establishment.
This result is bolstered by the Yale University "Global Warming's Six Americas" report for May. The study found that none of the "dismissive" group -- those who don't think the climate is changing or want legislation -- believe global warming will harm the United States in 50 years. The dismissive group also skews male and conservative, said "Six Americas" co-author, Edward Maibach, director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.
But for Donald Braman, associate professor of law at George Washington University, who works on risk perception studies, the focus on white males and climate change could be somewhat misleading. "My worry is that [McCright's paper] might suggest to people that there is something distinctive about the way conservatives and officially, conservative white men, deal with new information," he said. "The truth is that those same cognitive mechanisms push all of our buttons."
Braman says a similar effect reveals itself amongst progressives when it comes to concerns about nuclear power, for instance. In the Yale Law School "Second National Risk & Culture Study" researchers found that despite expert opinions espousing the relative safety of certain forms of nuclear energy, progressives are still concerned about it, Braman said.
Values shape factual beliefs across an array of phenomenon, he said. "If it's conservative white males on global warming, pick a different issue and you'll find another group that has trouble thinking in a way that agrees with experts."
'A very receptive audience' The political divide on climate change was concentrated in the run-up to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, McCright said. At that time most global warming skepticism came from public figures, he said. But in 2000, climate change beliefs held predominantly by conservative white elites started to spread.
"Conservative think tanks, conservative media, corporations, and industry associations (especially for the fossil fuels industry) -- domains dominated by conservative white males -- have spearheaded the attacks on climate science and policy from the late 1980s to the present," McCright and Dunlap concluded in their study. "The results presented here show that conservative white males in the general public have become a very receptive audience for these efforts."
But Taylor of the Heartland Institute said it should not come as a surprise that the subject of human induced global warming would become more contested as it moved out of the realm of pure science into the realm of policy. The proposed solutions to climate change will "in very substantial ways rearrange our economy and the structure of our society. Of course this is going to capture the attention of interested citizens beyond the mere elites," said Taylor.
Taylor also argues that the paper's claim that "the most prominent denialists are conservative white males," overlooks the other side of the political equation. "Here's a news flash: The most prominent alarmists are liberal white males. So clearly race and gender has nothing to do with prominent alarmism or skepticism," he said.
Know thy enemy
McCright actually agrees that the study reveals more about politics than any other personal attributes. "It's not a biological or gender thing," he said. "It's a political thing." Liberal white males are more accepting of government regulations and challenges to the status quo because it fits in their political ideology, he said.
"When you start talking about climate change and the need for major changes, carbon taxes and lifestyle changes, [conservatives] see this as a threat to capitalism and future prosperity," said McCright. "So conservatives tend to be very negative towards climate change."
So what does McCright and Dunlap's research mean for climate regulation? Climate change denial has increased across all sectors of the American general public over the last decade, write the authors. And as they conclude in another recent study on the politicization of climate change published earlier this year in the journal Sociology Quarterly, "we expect that the political divide within the general public may further inhibit the creation of effective climate policy."
Perhaps, like the trend of denial among conservative white males, there is nothing too surprising about that conclusion. But for Maibach of George Mason University, McCright and Dunlap's findings do bring something new to the bargaining table.
"If you are advocating for climate legislation is helps to understand your opponents. Or if you have opponents, it's good to understand them to effectively engage with them," he said. "One [approach] is more combative, the other is more about conflict resolution. In either case it helps to know who you're dealing with."
-- Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net
I don’t know one conservative white male who doesn’t understand that climate changes. This moron, who thinks it is a “belief” system, rather than science just doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand that. I know lots of conservative white males with good heads on their shoulders who have looked at the science and decided that very small amounts of CO2 releases in the atmosphere by anthropogenic sources, and absent any research demonstrating positive feedbacks, is not worth abandoning their current lives to return to living in trees and teepees.
“Research” must be code word for utter BS.
Who would have ever thought that the Scientific American, a rag within itself, would throw the race card.... =.=
Not at all. I do in fact, agree that there is climate change. But only because there has always BEEN climate change and there always WILL be climate change, up until the destruction of the Earth in the far-flung future.
Liberals seem to have this view that they've taken this snapshot of the planet and it should never waver and vary from their preconceived notions, when in fact change is the rule, not the exception. The Earth's atmosphere is a fabulously complicated system that is extremely dynamic; IT'S SUPPOSED TO CHANGE!
I'm a skeptic for 3 reasons:
1) I firmly believe that this is nothing but a cynical power grab by equally cynical liberal elites, just like HillaryCare and ObamaCare are, ie. scare the shit out of em and we get power and money.
2) I'm 57 years old now and I haven't watched or believed the liberal owned Main Stream Networks since I was 17 years old. They're noting but a collusion of liberal interest groups whose main goal is to brainwash the American people. And everytime I hear the MSN talking about "climate change" (can't help hear it since it's EVERYWHERE) my lip curls into a sneer by reflex nowadays.
3) I laugh uproariously every time I see these lefty nutcases going to the north pole to prove how warm it's getting, only to come back dying of frostbite, or having to cancel their brainwashing symposiums because there's too big a blizzard.
Follow the money: It'll lead directly to a $250 trillion swindle that can't be uncovered until 50-100years in the future. Mighty convenient for the liberal backers of "climate change!"
Everyone remember when it was called global warming??
Do you perchance remember why it's now called 'climate change?'
Because when those two lefty nutcases went to the Arctic to prove how warm it's getting and one came back as a SEVERE case of frostbite, liberals got to thinking, ummmm, what happens if we're wrong and it's not warming. We need a new name, and a couple weeks later, 'climate change' was born. This way they win either way, whether it's warming or cooling, it's a win-win for liberals.
Am I a conservative white male "climate change" skeptic? Color me red, white and blue and I don't want a DIME of taxpayer dollars spent on this peculiar brand of nuttiness. Everything that these babykilling tree-huggers touches turns straight to sh!! and I don't want the govt touching it, since everything the govt touches turns straight to sh!! as well.
This report is nothing but a class-warfare gambit in the finest liberal tradition. Rule #1 label em. Rule #2 demonize em. Rule #3 destroy em.
Not for me and mine, thanks.
Godspeed
Why Conservative White Males Are More Likely To Be Climate Skeptics
We’re better educated in hard science, that’s why, we smell a rat a mile away
This educated, conservative white male isn’t dazzled by bull sh!t.
Most "conservative white males" agree that the climate changes; 13,000 years ago or so much of North America was covered with ice. Now it isn't, so that's evidence of "climate change i.e. global warming." Of course what conservative white males object to is the phony baloney human-caused global warming effect that only liberal males and females of many races seem able to detect. If sociology is a science then the whole concept of science needs reassessment.
They are intelligent.
Indeed. It is not the “race”, it’s the culture.
“White men” are most likely to belong to the culture that doesn’t want to depend on government as their “replacement parent” like other cultures do.
Climate Change Devotee: "I personally believe that U.S. conservative white males are unable to believe because, uh, some . . . people out there in our nation don't have weather maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over HERE in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children"
NASA has sold it's soul over Global warming. something like 40% of NASA’s budget is AGW related.
One reason our space program is so screwed up is because NASA allocated astronomical resources to precise weather monitoring satellites and terrestrial sensor systems to to demonstrate and validate AGW theories and computer climate models.
This has drained resources from other space programs that have more useful and productive applications like low cost, reusable vehicle to send people and payloads into space
Unfortunately for the AGW fanatics in NASA and around the world, these sensor systems intended to “prove Globale Warming” have done the exact opposite and have basically provided high quality, hard data that directly refutes, contradicts and disproves AGW.
NASA actually manipulated the calibrations on some of these sensors to alter the data to make it more compatible with their AGW theories and analytic models. They had to back peddle the results when they got caught cheating.
The biggest hit so far is a satellite that shows that the NASA and other AGW proponents have used totally incorrect assumptions about the emissivity of the Earth and how much solar energy the earth radiates into space.
Put the new, ≈satellite measured emissivity equations and constants measured by NASA’s truly awesome satellite into NASA’s own AGW analytic models and using real experimentally measured, verified and validated energy balance numbers instead of values "estimated and assumed" by agenda driven AGW research funding hungry proponents and NASA Computer Models stop predicting AGW
I find this ironic. NASA's crown jewels in their Global Warming research programs to "prove once and for all" AGW do exactly the opposite and disprove AGW, With actual NASA measured, real world data, NASa's own computer models show no man made Global Warming
When the left doesn’t want to argue the merits of an issue, they throw the race card.
They throw the race card in pretty much every issue,
because liberalism/leftism just doesn’t sync with reality well.
It’s because white guys like snow. Snow is white like they are, unless it’s yellow. White guys don’t like yellow snow. If everything warms up and gets burnt it will be red and brown and black. White guys don’t like those colors because they are all bigots. I would like a multi-million dollar grant to study this.
Don’t discount one of THE biggest reasons that sheeperals WANT TO believe in man-caused global warming.
Sheeperals’ number one overarching goal is to feel good about themselves as “good people”. It’s a bonus when they can be “better people” than others.
With the AGW issue, they get to “care” about the erf, and are better than those “deniers” who don’t care about the erf.
It is arguable that the most damaging effect of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming crowd is the damage they have done and are doing to the reputation and public view of Science.
They were set up to measure warming or cooling - the “manmade” component is pure conjecture.
And for a long time now atmospheric measures have showed cooling, while ground based measures have showed warming (once you select which ground based measuring stations you want to continue using - i.e. those that show warming * the “trick” used to “hide the decline”).
A rather brilliant Nobel Prize winning scientists proposed in a lecture I attended over a decade ago that the ground based measure showed warming almost entirely at night rather than the day. He proposed that this was an “urban heat island” effect - which you would see keeping temperatures warm during the night - rather than a “greenhouse” effect - which would be observed during the day.
When the public sees the scientific community circling the wagons around a group that uses a “trick” to “hide the decline” on a rather speculative branch of scientific study where the scientific experimental method cannot be used (not having a “control” Earth on hand) it cannot help but to discredit science in the minds of many.
Of all the hills to chose to make a stand on - this is truly making a mountain (important and defensible) out of a molehill (inconsequential and absolutely indefensible).
Exactly. This study is just another tactic to deflect debate from the actual facts, which are increasingly illustrative that human activities have little to no impact on the Earth’s overall climate. Local climate impacts, such as urban heat islands, of course do exist. But human activities are just not capable of global climate disruptions unless we have a massive nuclear war. Of course, the anthropogenic global warming scare is just a tool to achieve the true goal, which is “social justice” (wealth, property, and energy redistribution) under a worldwide government.
I suspect that it would take a decades-long cooling trend to fully quiet the anthropogenic global warming folks. They are already running scared due to the loss of public support (people have started noticing that the warming trend stopped around 2000), and so they are pushing harder to implement “effective climate change policies” while they think they still have a chance. But even if they fail with anthropogenic global warming, they have some fallback environmental crises with which they will try to justify a worldwide government.
Voting was restricted in this country for a long time. Have things gotten better or worse since we've allowed anyone with a pulse (or not!) to cast a vote?
Critical thinking- something leftists lack and some others avoid because they fear it will lead them to uncomfortable conclusions.
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