As Weather Extremes Get Worse, 37% Of Republicans Surveyed Deny Warming Exists - Up From 27% In 2017

[hatrack]

EDIT

The shift Leiserowitz and his colleagues detected was driven in large part by moderate and right-leaning Democrats. In 2017, less than one-third of those voters included preventing extreme weather among their top three reasons for desiring action, but by this year, half of moderate and conservative Democrats ranked it that highly. The opinions of moderate and left-leaning Republicans, however, stayed mostly unchanged, with just under 30 percent of those voters citing extreme weather as a top three reason to reduce global warming. Perhaps surprisingly, extreme weather even increased in relevance among conservative Republicans, with 21 percent listing it as a leading reason compared to just 16 percent in 2017.

But even as extreme weather became increasingly salient among the most conservative voters, far more of them selected the survey option “global warming isn’t happening.” In 2024, a full 37 percent of conservative Republicans denied the reality of climate change, compared to 27 percent just seven years earlier.

“People’s beliefs about climate change are driven predominantly by political factors,” said Peter Howe, an environmental social scientist at Utah State University who has worked with Leiserowitz in the past but was uninvolved in this analysis. The political and social circles a person occupies and the beliefs they hold not only mediate one’s overall opinions about climate change, Howe pointed out, but they influence how that person experiences extreme weather.

When Howe collected and reviewed studies analyzing the connections between extreme weather and personal opinions about climate change, he found that although those already concerned about the crisis often had their anxieties heightened by a natural disaster, those who were dismissive before the event often remained so, ignoring any potential connection to global warming. When Constant Tra, an environmental economist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and his colleagues published a similar study in May, he found that disasters don’t shove people toward concern and alarm in the way he expected. At best, “it kind of nudges people,” he said, but rarely moves someone from an entrenched position of categorical denial, especially when those around them aren’t concerned.

EDIT

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/09/extreme-weather-has-had-a-surprising-impact-on-voters-attitudes-about-climate-change/

[jfz9580m]

1. Interesting stuff

There is a website called Faunalytics that researches public attitudes towards farm and other animal welfare. I think it is a worthwhile pursuit to research societal attitudes on these issues especially if they can be translated to very real action downstream.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. The problem is that they're being manipulated upstream

In the intervening years, “Climate Science” has only become more definitive, and examples of its real world effects more dramatic, so, why have these people decided that it is bunk?

(For the same reason that they don’t trust their local election officials, because they have been lied to repeatedly and consistently.)

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Sadly, it's not because the topics are complex

Last edited Thu Sep 26, 2024, 02:30 PM - Edit history (1)

Take, for a notorious example, the fact that the Earth is (roughly) spherical. We joke about “flat earthers,” but they exist, and they will go to great lengths to support their beliefs.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/flat-earthers-what-they-believe-and-why/

Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumference of the Earth and the tilt of its axis quite accurately more than 2,000 years ago without a rocket ship to carry him into orbit. (No, Columbus did not come up with the idea that the Earth was round.) — It’s not a terribly complex concept.

Donald Trump works on the assumption that if he just tells people something, they will believe him — and he’s not wrong, he’s been doing this his entire life. It does not matter if he lost dozens of cases which were heard by judges, he can simply say that they were dismissed because the judges falsely claimed he had "no standing” and people will believe him.

It’s not some really complex issue, or some unknowable truth which has been lost in history. You can look it up. Or, you can read all about them in an analysis by serious conservatives.

He can claim that the rains held off for his inaugural address (they didn’t) or that his crowds were the largest ever (they weren’t) these are not complex issues.

The problem is “confirmation bias.”

🎵All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest🎶

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. American Psychological Association: Why we believe alternative facts

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/05/alternative-facts

Why we believe alternative facts
How motivation, identity and ideology combine to undermine human judgment
By Kirsten Weir
May 2017, Vol 48, No. 5
Print version: page 24
9 min read

Fact or opinion?
It's a distinction we learn as kids. But it turns out judging facts isn't nearly as black-and-white as your third-grade teacher might have had you believe.

In reality, we rely on a biased set of cognitive processes to arrive at a given conclusion or belief. This natural tendency to cherry pick and twist the facts to fit with our existing beliefs is known as motivated reasoning—and we all do it.

"Motivated reasoning is a pervasive tendency of human cognition," says Peter Ditto, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how motivation, emotion and intuition influence judgment. "People are capable of being thoughtful and rational, but our wishes, hopes, fears and motivations often tip the scales to make us more likely to accept something as true if it supports what we want to believe.”

In today's era of polarized politics—and when facts themselves are under attack—understanding this inclination (and finding ways to sidestep it) has taken on new urgency, psychologists say.

…

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. I wonder if this is an indicator of the GOP's loss of people who identify as Republicans?

Those remaining in this Party will eventually increase their % as saner people exit the GOP.

[Zambero]

3. Trump had his Roy Cohn

And MAGA has its Jim Jones equivalent, eager and willing to ascribe to whatever preposterous pronouncement that the Dear Leader utters. Up is down, wet is dry, dark is light. It would seem that George Orwell saw it coming.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. USC: How a climate science believer could become a skeptic

https://today.usc.edu/how-a-climate-science-believer-could-become-a-skeptic/

How a climate science believer could become a skeptic
In a recent study, USC and Australian researchers found that the strength of people’s convictions in climate science can weaken when they are exposed repeatedly to statements or claims that contradict their beliefs.

September 23, 2024
By Emily Gersema

A study of mostly climate science believers shows just how easily information — and misinformation — can blur people’s sense of the truth. All it takes is repetition.

In recent research published in the journal PLOS ONE, USC and Australian researchers explored the powerful effect of repetition on people’s beliefs.

In two rounds studies, they found that even the strongest believers in climate science — those categorized as “alarmed” believers — felt that the skeptical and pro-climate beliefs seemed more true when they encountered them a second time.

“It could take as little as a single repetition to make someone feel as though a claim were true,” said Norbert Schwarz, a study co-author and Provost Professor of psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the USC Marshall School of Business. “It’s certainly concerning, especially when you consider how many people are exposed to both truthful and false claims and either spread them or are persuaded by them to make decisions that might affect the planet.”

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307294

(See also “gaslighting.”)

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. "driven predominantly by political factors"

For Republicans It sure as Phoenix isn't being driven by objective reality.