Russ Steele
AGW Warmer Chris Mooney writes about a scenario that has been playing out in Nevada County for years, as conservative and liberals debate global warming and the human contributions to that warming. Mooney references a study by Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale, and elsewhere, who found that knowing more about science, and being better at mathematical reasoning has resulted in more climate science skepticism directed at the unproven theory of anthropogenic global warming.
Chris Mooney:
"The surprise—for some out there, anyway—lay in how the ingredients of this stew mix together. For citizens as a whole, more literacy and numeracy were correlated with somewhat more, rather than somewhat less, dismissal of the risk of global warming. When you drilled down into the cultural groups, meanwhile, it turned out that among the hierarchical-individualists (aka, conservatives), the relationship between greater math and science knowledge and dismissal of climate risks was even stronger. (The opposite relationship occurred among egalitarian communitarians—aka liberals)."
This is bad, bad news for anyone who thinks that better math and science education will help us solve our problems on climate change. But it’s also something else. To me, it provides a kind of uber-explanation for climate skeptic and denier behavior in the public arena, and especially on the blogs."
It certainly has played out on our local blogs. The more science and math oriented blogs have relied on real world data for their assessments, rather than unproven computer models and blind faith in UN IPCC Reports for their assessments.
Two of my favorite science and math related blogs are Anthony Watts', What Up With That and Steve Mc Intyre's Climate Audit Mooney had this to say about both:
". . . if you go to blogs like WattsUpWithThat or Climate Audit, you certainly don’t find scientific and mathematical illiterates doubting climate change. Rather, you find scientific and mathematical sophisticates itching to blow holes in each new study."
I rather think that NC Media Watch and Rebane’s Ruminations have blown some holes in the local liberal's AGW religious fervor.
H/T to Tom Nelson
