Mass media efforts to raise American public concern about climate change, such as Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and the “scientific consensus” media drumbeat, ironically may be having just the opposite effect, according to a new study appearing in the scientific journal Risk Analysis.
The above is taken from here.
Study Excerpt:
Paul Kellstedt, Sammy Zahran and Arnold Vedlitz examined results from an original and representative sample of Americans and found that “more informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.” The researchers also found that “confidence in scientists has unexpected effects: respondents with high confidence in scientists feel less responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.” […] “Perhaps ironically, and certainly contrary to… the marketing of movies like “Ice Age” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” the effects of information on both concern for global warming and responsibility for it are exactly the opposite of what were expected. Directly, the more information a person has about global warming, the less responsible he or she feels for it; and indirectly, the more information a person has about global warming, the less concerned he or she is for it.”
The abstract from the paper is below:
Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes Toward GlobalWarming and Climate Change in the United States
Paul M. Kellstedt,1∗ Sammy Zahran,2 and Arnold Vedlitz2
Despite the growing scientific consensus about the risks of global warming and climate change,
the mass media frequently portray the subject as one of great scientific controversy and debate.
Andyet previous studies of the mass public’s subjective assessments of the risks of global warming
and climate change have not sufficiently examined public informedness, public confidence
in climate scientists, and the role of personal efficacy in affecting global warming outcomes. By
examining the results of a survey on an original and representative sample of Americans, we
find that these three forces—informedness, confidence in scientists, and personal efficacy—are
related in interesting and unexpected ways, and exert significant influence on risk assessments
of global warming and climate change. In particular, more informed respondents both feel
less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.
We also find that confidence in scientists has unexpected effects: respondents with high
confidence in scientists feel less responsible for global warming, and also show less concern
for global warming. These results have substantial implications for the interaction between
scientists and the public in general, and for the public discussion of global warming and climate
change in particular.
Risk Analysis, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2008 DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01010.x
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
So I was playing with the HadCrut3 monthly temp data last night. I found that I could run a linear regression trend line from Sept 1997 through Jan. 2008 that was absolutely flat. No increase in 10 years.
Awww nuts. My American education caused me to regress into an unfeeling capitalist oink, what a waste.
“So I was playing with the HadCrut3 monthly temp data last night. I found that I could run a linear regression trend line from Sept 1997 through Jan. 2008 that was absolutely flat. No increase in 10 years.”
And the cherry pick of the thread award goes tooo….
The growing consensus among scientists is that the more they learn about anthropogenic global warming, the less there is to worry about.
Now we discover that the more consumers learn about AGW, the less there is to worry about.
Looks to me that all sorts of informed people are agreeing that AGW isn’t a big deal.
This just points out the central weakness of propaganda: it doesn’t work well on informed people who know better.
“And the cherry pick of the thread award goes tooo….”
Of course it’s cherry picked. But so what? It nevertheless shows that there is a ten year period, ending now, for which there was no temperature increase.
“Looks to me that all sorts of informed people are agreeing that AGW isn’t a big deal. ”
And it’s apparently not just the Americans. The Brits voted with their cars and their power switches on their Energy Saving Day by simply ignoring it.
I don’t know how it can be a cherry pick when it falsifies the hypothesis. Or isn’t AGW falsifiable? many it is just a religion after all.
Over a period when humans are pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the temperatures should increase. What possible factors would cause a temperature series not to show an increase?
Beyond cherry-picking, I think we should be able to make a reasonable assessment of IPPC projections by means of OLS or ordinary least square as suggested by Lucia here:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/what-weather-would-falsify-the-current-consensus-on-climate-change/#comments
Three more years to go.
“I don’t know how it can be a cherry pick when it falsifies the hypothesis. Or isn’t AGW falsifiable? many it is just a religion after all.”
No, I admit to cherry picking the data will. But the fact remains, that by picking a certain starting point, you can get 10 years of no warming ending now. What is not a cherry pick is that we are currently cooling and have been for at least 6 years. The alarmists will claim that it’s noise, but they are unable to explain how you can get a 6 year down trend when you claim that CO2 climate sensitivity will overwhelm all other factors. And of course there is no such thing as real noise in a climate system. Everything happens for a reason.
You are right about the falsifiability angle. For alarmists everything constitutes evidence for AGW, including weather. But anything that goes against predictions is called “noise”.
“Three more years to go.”
Actually, because we are so far below the trend line now, if we simply hold the temperature anomoly that we have currently for three or four month, then we will have a negative linear regression trend line for HadCru GISS UAH and RSS for the past ten years – starting any month of 1998 that you please.
Correction. I did the charts. If we hold the current anomoly for 4 more months we will have a negative trend for the past ten years for HadCru UAH and RSS. GISS would still have a positive trend. My expectation, however, is that we will get some temperature rise as La Nina dies out. The big question then, becomes the effect of the sun. We are at a solar minimum and there will probably be very little increase in TSI or sun spot activity over the next year. This means that we are going to be able to witness a wonderful experiment where we see if CO2 sensitivity or solar variation is more important. Should be fun.
Interesting things are happening.
With the agitation over “global warming,” consumers in temperate climates are noticing the cold more than they used to. And they’re noticing that they’re spending lots of money on heating their homes.
And they’re thinking, “who are the idiots who like it colder than this?”
And then they’re thinking, “it hasn’t been this cold around here since 1978.”
And they’re saying, “it’s all about the greenpeacers.”
Bottom line, you direct people’s attention to a problem that isn’t there, they notice there isn’t a problem.
And if you want them to pay extra money for a problem that isn’t there, they won’t like it. And they don’t.
The global sea ice anomoly is now back to zero. Must be hard maintaining the faith in such trying times.
Okay, here is what the ten year trend line will look like in four month, assuming no change to the current anomoly. Of course that’s not necessarily a good assumption, since La Nina will end in the next few month and we may get some upward movement of the temp.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/
It’s a little busy, but if you click on it, it will get bigger. Also note that the individual temp records are not baselined to the same time period. But that doesn’t effect the slope of the trend.
For all these ideas, and for the 20 million people who will not be invited to the 2020 Summit, the online community created a wiki so people across Australia could post, discuss, and vote on the best ideas for the country. It’s totally a grassroots effort. It’s free, can be anonymous, and isn’t being sponsored by any political party, corporation, union, or special interests. It’s just people who want to encourage an online national brainstorming session.
The site is at http://ozideas.wetpaint.com. There are pages for over 20 different issues and even an online petition to get the best ideas heard at the actual Summit.
So far, we’ve had over 1500 visitors, more than 10,000 page views, and over 100 ideas (each with many sub-threads), and we’ve only been up for 10 days or so.
The more people know about it, the more ideas are submitted, and the better the discussion.
For your amusement and that of the public’s, we also created a funny web “commercial” for the site – it’s of Kevin Rudd, Brendan Nelson, and Peter Garrett break dancing. Check that out at
It’s a great way for everyone to participate in the summit.
Jim
Wiki Creator
Here is an interesting abstract suggesting that climate sensitivity for a CO2 doubling is between 1.3 to 2.3 K. This is significantly lower than the IPCC estimate.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032759.shtml
A lot of your comments have missed the point – people who are becoming informed arent reducing their concerns because they’ve realised there isnt a problem – thats hardly Al Gore’s message! The first step to solving a problem is recogising one. Personally I felt better about the whole situation after watching The Inconvenient Truth just in the knowledge that so many others were watching it (many people whom previously would not have cared) and this is what we need to solve the problem.
Also, the real question is whether information, such as films like Gore’s have altered the views of society overall in favour of acting on climate change, which it most certainly has!
“I felt better about the whole situation after watching The Inconvenient Truth just in the knowledge that so many others were watching it”
Now there is a case of spining at its finest.
Anyone who feels threatened by the notion that informed people are skeptical about propaganda should feel threatened.
Well done Tilo – I’ve been looking for someone to do the 10 year regression line for the past couple of (freezing) months. It is profoundly important because it shows the first change of decadal trend for about forty years. The mass media have absolutely no basis on which to say that global warming is dangerously out of control. On the contrary it shows that all policy makers should be extremely cautious on acting on the basis of science which is now being shown to be highly speculative.
“Well done Tilo”
Thanks MAGB. But I hate to count my chickens before they hatch. Remember, that chart uses four future month of anomaly that is unchanged from today. I believe the La Nina we have had may be breaking up. So some warming may be in the cards. However, as long as we stay below the trend line we will get that 10 year cooling eventually. On the plus side, the solar minimum continues and is likely to continue for many months yet. And when we come out of the solar minimum, we will still have a weak solar cycle. But I believe that the short term strength of El Ninos and La Ninas is stronger that solar variability or CO2 sensitivity. I will update the chart once each month as the data comes in. Usually HadCru isn’t available until the third week of the following month.
Who cares? It’s a polysci paper! I live here and I can tell you most side with Gore. For good reason: most of the world’s top experts agree. Some of the masses are stupid wherever one is. The data are clear on that too. It’s human- caused.
If one reads the actual paper, as opposed to reading what other people say about the paper, one finds that the way they know that someone is better informed is by asking them how well-informed they are.
“It should be noted that the information effects reported in this article are limited to self-reported information. Objective measures of informedness about global warming and climate change might produce different effects. And indeed, there is some scholarly evidence to suggest this is the case. In their models of mass assessments of the risks of genetically modified foods, Durant Legge found that self-reported informedness and objective measures of informedness were almost entirely uncorrelated and that their effects worked in opposite directions. Clearly this is an area that is ripe for subsequent research.”
In English: we asked them if they were informed, and those who though they were more informed were less concerned … but had we measured what they know, it might have been just the opposite.
This is similar to the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect