The six Americas of climate change - Democratic Underground

tinrobot

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Tue Jan-26-10 10:54 AM
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The six Americas of climate change

Source : Grist

Researchers at George Mason University and Yale broke down U.S. public opinion into six different categories , based on people’s belief in, and concern about, global warming.

For the nickel version, see the graphic below:

Of course, I’m sure there are more than six ways of slicing this pie. It seems likely to me that public opinion lies in a continuum, rather than in six discrete groups.

Still, the authors’ analysis yields some interesting findings. My favorite is this: folks who are convinced that global warming is a hoax—the “Dismissives”—admit they haven’t thought all that much about the issue (see Figure 6 on page 14 of the pdf) yet rank themselves as extremely knowledgeable and well informed (see Figure 7).

That should tell us something: for many climate skeptics, facts don’t matter much. They’ve only given the subject a bit of thought, but are still convinced that they know the answers. I don’t mean to be snarky, but to me this suggests that some “Dismissives” may suffer from some version of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the idea that people are very poor judges of their own incompetence. That probably makes many “Dismissives” unreachable: when facts confront their biases, the facts bounce off and the biases stand firm. (I’m sure that’s true of us all, to some degree or another.)

more : http://www.grist.org/article/the-six-americas-of-climate-change/

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Tesha

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Tue Jan-26-10 11:16 AM
Response to Original message

1. No matter what you poll for, there's about 30% of our country that's some combination of...

Edited on Tue Jan-26-10 11:21 AM by Tesha

...dumb-as-rocks stupid or completely swayed by
Right-wing propaganda.

Over the years, I've become they're unreachable by
any means. And the fact that the media routinely
presents these idiots as holding an "equally valid
opinion" is one of the reasons why we're in the various
messes that we're in.

Tesha

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Nihil

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Wed Jan-27-10 04:37 AM
Response to Reply #1

4. Curiously enough, that figure is matched on DU ... (n/t)

:think:

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kristopher

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Tue Jan-26-10 11:20 AM
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2. It isn't about science to them - it is a political "debate"

AS such they are no more subject to suasion on this topic than they would be on the concept of "socialism".

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Tesha

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Tue Jan-26-10 11:23 AM
Response to Reply #2

3. And pi should equal 3.00000..., dammit! None of this pointy-headed...

3.14159... shit!

Tesha

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