Canada Journal – News of the World Articles and videos to bring you the biggest Canadian news stories from across the country every day
For a long time, people have been using words like “polarizing” and “partisan” to describe the debate over climate change. Last week, I added “brutal and dysfunctional” to the descriptive pile.
But according to new research just out in Nature Climate Change, it may be even worse than that. The new study, by a group of Australian psychologists and social scientists, examines the clash between climate adherents and so-called “skeptics” as an “intergroup conflict” (a psychological buzzword) driven, in significant part, by anger at those on the other side.
Although there is a growing belief in the general public that climate change is real, there is a sharp division in beliefs about its causes with many sceptical of human-induced change.
Of the climate science papers which take a position on the issue, 97% agree that climate change is caused by humans but less than half of the US population shares this belief.
Ana-Maria Bliuc of Monash University and colleagues conducted an online survey of 120 climate change sceptics and 328 believers living in the US.
They found that the contrasting opinions of believers and sceptics about the causes of climate change provide the basis of social identities which define who they are, what they stand for and who they stand with (and against).
Part of the group consciousness of each group is anger at the opposing side.
This suggests that antagonising sceptics and increasing their anger towards their opponents is likely to polarise them further, making them more committed to taking contrary action.
The authors suggest that encouraging believers and discouraging sceptics about the likely outcome of their groups’ efforts is a more effective way to achieve consensus.
Agencies/Canadajournal
The author of this brief article misses the point entirely, whether deliberately or not is hard to say. No one claims that climate isn’t and doesn’t change, the dispute is about what portion of the changes are caused by our consumption of carbon based fuels and the resulting emission of CO2. The “97%” figure is based on a survey that asked if human emissions of CO2 might be having some effect on climate, a question that virtually all thinking people would say “yes” to, though most of that same 97% would say that the impact of mankind’s emissions have little to an insignificant effect on climate, particularly those who have a good understanding of the science associated with this. CO2’s ability to screen IR is quite limited which both sides agree (DOUBLING the amount in the atmosphere can only by itself increase Earth’s temp by 1.1 deg C), the dispute relates to the purported feedback and amplification of water vapor with the alarmist side claiming it amplifies the effect by more than 3 times, whereas the doubters say it will minimize the effect by about 1/2. The models trumpeted by the UN to drive the alarm are all based on the former, whereas the satellite measurements seem to be showing the latter. The desperate claims of “warmest on record” based on hundredths of a degree surely aren’t enhancing the case for alarm.
The 97% represents climatology-related papers, not the survey. The 97% has also become something of a AGW meme. Actually parsing papers for climatology content, and then parsing those that pass that rather spongy filter for AGW agreement is flat-out voodoo science. One may as well measure the position, and momentum, of an individual electron simultaneously.
The percentage of scientists at large who agree with AGW is substantially lower.
“…but less than half of the US population shares this belief.”
87% of scientists agree with human-influenced global warming (Pew survey)
That means that 13% of scientists either do not or are agnostic. What that means is that general population skeptics are not in a ‘flat-earth’ position, and should not be labeled as such. They are in agreement with a substantial body of people who are scientifically literate and informed on a masters, doctoral, or post-doctoral level and even up to tenured professorial.
Furthermore, the 13% figure only relates to an existential position re AGW. That will certainly not be the highest percentage of those scientists who do not regard full or partial AGW as something for public hysteria. As someone who took climate or related courses in university, I’m appalled by the advocacy mentality that has crept into the arguments from academia, and for which the IPCC was rebuked by its own blue-ribbon review committee a few years ago.
The media are also to be blamed. Bad news sells, and if GW can be found to be bad, on even the most trivial of axes, the ‘journalists’ will smell out a ‘story’. Any positive or neutral effects of CO2 or thermal rise is brutally boring, does not get web-traffic, does not pay the bills and bring home the groceries.