Here's an attempt at explaining these dynamics. First, I suspect that the subset of people who call themselves Republicans has changed over the past sixteen months. In January 2007, self-identified Republicans probably included some people inclined toward moderation and willing to believe that the planet is warming. By now, some of these people have probably ceased to think of themselves as Republicans and call themselves independents, leaving as "Republicans" only the true die-hards who are dogmatically opposed to the notion of human-caused climate change.

The second puzzle is tougher. I'm wondering if perhaps it has something to do with the information people get: college-educated Democrats are likely to be quite informed about the mounting evidence for human-caused global warming, while college-educated Republicans are probably tuned in to the network of people who deny that people are responsible. People without a college education may tend to lack connections to all this information, which means that they hew more closely to what they pick up from the zeitgeist (which seems to be consolidating around the idea that climate change is real and that human activity is behind it). In other words, education and information make people's positions more extreme.

These are exaggerated descriptions of relationships that are only probabilistic, but they might be contributing to these confusing patterns.

Alternately people with college educations are probably familiar with the scientific method and the central role of skepticism therein.

Educated people would also know enough history to realize the millenarian tendencies of the greens, how, every generation they have some new end-of-the-world scare. They, of all people, would be attuned to the cries of wolf.

Hey ms,

Or maybe people are beginning to realize that this is a bunch of CRAP...!!!
Already more and more people are thinking that this is the biggest CON job of the last 50 yrs.
If you ask any real expert, they will tell you privately that, the earth is heading to an ICE age..!!!
The increase in temperature in the last 100yrs was 2 deg... In that last 2 yrs the earth has gotten back 1.85 deg...? How is that possible...?
Because the dumb-ass gullible lib's do not understand how the earth fluctuates..!!! You people will believe ANYTHING al gore tells you...... HAHAHAHAHA

Bill

Possibly. But this reasoning would predict that college-educated people are more skeptical of human-caused climate change than people without college degrees, regardless of partisan affiliation. This isn't what the data say, and it's not clear to me why any skepticism-inducing effect of education would be limited to Republicans.

Also, if one looks at the actual figures produced by Pew, the declining belief in human-caused climate change is limited almost entirely to Republicans. There was only a 2-point decline in the percentage of Democrats believing in human-caused climate change, and only a 3-point decline in the percentage of independents believing this. This could well be sampling error, which again makes the real question why any increasing skepticism is limited to Republicans.

I believe it's two things.

First, green fatigue is setting in...which leads to disillusionment and a not caring. Especially when there's no clear, single solution presented. Green is everywhere, with conflicting messages. Our (the green) community hasn't found a common voice...think renewable fuels. Compare that the "other" side...they've maintained a solid, if somewhat idiotic, voice on this.

Second, it's difficult to point to any discrete events as caused by global warming. And I don't think we're doing a great job of explaining how and what sort of consequences we're already witnessing that are influenced by global warming.

It's about simplifying a complex narrative, in a more concise, clear way that includes simple, solid steps...outside of the innumerable relatively complicated sources that do that already.

I agree with JS about the difficulty in educating people. Trying to explain how global warming affects a specific natural processes, one often has to rely on stochastic explanations like, to pull one out of my rear end, "the probability of our being hit directly by a class 4 hurricane here in Maryland over the next 5 years is increased by a certain percentage [with confidence intervals] given the current trend in surface water temperatures due to both global warming and natural multidecadal oscillations." These explanations are pretty hard to digest (and maybe even sound somewhat mumbo-jumbo-ish) for someone who doesn't have much experience with probabilities and complex systems.

I feel like MS's zeitgeist explanation for the less educated Republicans seems reasonable. With educated Republicans, I really do think the echo-chamber effect (right wing blogs and radio) and the hyper-polarized enviro-political stance of the bulk of the GOP (which they seem to be more keyed into) is what's driving much of this. Still, the discrepancy is pretty darn large.

Half of the population are atheist(don't believe in the new religion of Al Gore). Most Republicans are atheists and most Deamoncrats are the true believer Bible(Al Gore's book) thumpers.

Possibly MS' first comment suggestion is accurate, but I would add a little twist to the process.

The general opinions without college education are understandable; the increase in climate change understanding for Dems after college is understandable; but why do Repub college grads score so low? My theory is that this is a weeding-out process. If you go to college and you're still a Republican at the end of it, you're more likely to be a true believer, climate change denial included; others have fled from the dogma. The weeded-out proportion is about 15% - not too hard to believe.

I think all of this talk about how highly educated people are because they go to college, is bullshit. What are they learning in college these days besides, how do do drugs, have an orgy, be white collar criminals, fleece the taxpayers of their diposable income,and dismantle the constitution. Oh and one other thing they seem to have in common, turn our country over to our enemies.

Global warming is cyclical, that is a given, You don't have to be a scientist to look at the weather almanacs and see where some of the record temperatures occured back in the 1800's. So obviously global temperatures fluctuate. With the cost of gasoline going out of site, I would be happy to see a fleet of hydrogen powered cars and trucks. But until the car makers get out of bed with big oil we are going to continue to burn fossil fuel.

People we have got to send a message to the car makers and big oil. We have got to stop using so damned much oil. I challenge each and every one of you to act like we are in a world conflict and luxury is not in your vocabulary. If you can't cut your fuel consumption in half then there is going to be no change in tailpipe emissions, or the design of our automobiles. At least the impact we are having on the planet will be lessened for future generations.

These stats prove the failures of American education and science. While our education system was being politicized to death our scientific community was profiting from the oil economy instead of fighting like hell for humanity.

Whether global warming is real or not, we are still polluting our air, waterways and lands to a point that is causing cancer at mind numbing rates and a multitude of other illnesses in humans and animals.

If we don't want to clean up our earth for global warming, let's clean it up for ourselves and our children and grandchildren.

Dagny McKinley
www.onnotextiles.com
organic apparel

Faux Bill Nigh, there's a reason that climatologists look at long term trends rather than day by day, month by month, or even year by year details, as one very hot or very cold would otherwise skew the results. No one in the climatology community is either surprised or shocked by a short term trend.

College educated republicans tend to go to business school and so are more inclined to believe their corporate masters.Its that simple.

More than 31,000 scientists across the U.S. – including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties – have signed a petition(Petition Project.Org) rejecting "global warming," the assumption that the human production of greenhouse gases is damaging Earth's climate.

Not by fire, but by ice.

Iceman, it's time that those "9,000 Ph.D.s" started producing and implementing solutions rather than more useless arguments that waste more time placing humanity and our environment in greater jeopardy while they do nothing useful, collecting their academic and scientific welfare checks accomplishing nothing.

Anthony, it is settled. Not by fire, but by Ice.

I always believe the solid evience.The envirment is becoming bad! That also has something with my job, working in a manufacture which produce the digital prodcut! The quality is the solid evidence!
chinablueangel

BLueangel, try using spell check next time. It will give more credence to your views.