Correction: Republicans Who Know Still Care Less About Climate

You might remember the perplexing study out of Texas A&M that found the more Americans know about global warming the more apathetic and less individually responsible they feel. Stranger even than normal middle-America strange. Well Jon Krosnick of Stanford University suspected the story might be more complicated than that and re-analyzed the polling data. He and colleague Ariel Malka found some intriguing differences, as reported in New Scientist. Concern about global warming was greater among people who said they knew more about the subject, and was most marked among those who identified themselves as Democrats, as well as among those who said they trusted scientists to provide reliable information on environmental issues. Republicans, as well as those who had little trust in scientists—yet still claimed to be knowledgeable—did not have any great concern:

This may reflect the different ways people get information about global warming. If your sources are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, Krosnick suggests, the relationship between knowledge and concern is likely to be different than if your main sources are skeptical advocacy groups such as the Heartland Institute, and the conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

In other words, all knowledge is not equal, particularly the ignorance-based kind.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

Comments

It must be strange to espouse political opinions which require willful ignorance.

Posted by: Mike on 05/23/08 at 11:32 PM Respond

Republicans are the blight of America...the personification of the plague.

Posted by: Kev on 05/24/08 at 3:21 AM Respond

Why the hate Kev. Who taught you to hate? Did you learn it from your parents or the schools?
It is your attitude that turns people off of your Global Warming religion. Hate is not very attractive when you are trying to get converts.

Around the mountains of Los Angeles we got close to a foot of snow. Where is the global warming that your prophets promise? No wonder people think that they are false prophets.

Posted by: Sarah on 05/24/08 at 8:42 AM Respond

It seems that when scientists deliver information that the right doesn't want to hear, they work to discredit science. When a state supreme court issues a ruling that leans toward the left, the right calls the competency of judges into question. And, of course, when anyone disagrees with US policy in Iraq, their patriotism is attacked.
Is there a there a page in the conservative rule book that requires ad hominem assaults against all dissenting voices?
Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear discussions about ideas and issues? Remember those?

Posted by: Laurence LoVerde on 05/24/08 at 9:31 AM Respond

Sarah, meet kettle. Kettle, meet Sarah.

maybe your boneheaded, deliberate misunderstanding of global warming (local weather is not the same as climate change) deserves to me mocked? and what on earth would "convert" somebody like yourself? waiting for limbaugh to hand you your marching orders?

Posted by: nmc on 05/24/08 at 2:57 PM Respond

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.

Posted by: The Iceman on 05/24/08 at 4:48 PM Respond

Sarah, hell yeah! What do smart people know anyway right? Scientists-geesh- just because they make it their lives work don't mean they're so qualified.

Oh wait!- no really, check that. You really are dumb.

Posted by: cboas on 05/26/08 at 2:08 PM Respond