Biased BBC’s Alan reveals a bit of a killer blow for Richard Black here…..
Below is an article from ‘Nature’ science magazine that proves that the pro CO2 abolition groups are advancing a leftwing ideology and not science….it is cultural and political…
and what’s even better is that…..
Richard Black is caught out with his long held beliefs demolished, discredited and shot so full of holes that it wouldn’t hold a large lump of melting iceberg never mind water…..
RB: I’m not surprised at the level of UK scepticism as the main impacts of CC are decades away and in other places. The problem is poor science awareness. We need to improve science education so people properly understand climate science.
DA: A short-term disaster is needed to guarantee coverage as people aren’t good at processing information about there being no ice at the poles in 30 years. Or get David Attenborough as the front man because everyone trusts him.
RB: I agree that a short term disaster would be effective in persuading people.
(These are notes taken from a discussion meeting at Oxford University on 26th February 2010
Question and answer format featuring environmental correspondents Richard Black (BBC), Fiona Harvey (FT), David Adam (Guardian) and Ben Jackson (Sun) and chaired by Fiona Fox, director of the Science Media Centre.)
DA: I used to think sceptics were bad and mad but now the bad people (lobbyists for fossil fuel industries) had gone, leaving only the mad.
Black may, will have to reconsider his unfounded views after reading this report from the pro climate change ‘Nature’ magazine.
I have plucked out the most relevant and easily digested bits that still gives the full narrative. It is worthwhile reading the whole thing, though written with scientific terms it is perfectly understandable….I did need a dictionary to look up ‘Heuristic’!
My only disagreement is with its categorization of ‘rightwingers’ as people who are only self interested without the welfare of the community as a whole being their concern. Closing down industry and commerce means no money…..no jobs, no welfare, no schools, no housing, no food, no NHS…no nothing. I would say keeping the lights on and the machine ticking over was a community concern of great importance.
Also Sceptics may actually disagree with the ‘science’ on an evidence based principle….no scientist has yet proved ‘warming’ is caused by a rise in CO2 levels…the evidence so far is that CO2 levels rise only after the temperature rises….as admitted by UEA’s Phil Jones.
What does ‘Nature’ say:
Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled.
We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it.
Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.
[The normal explanation for scepticism is…..]
As members of the public do not know what scientists know, or think the way scientists think, they predictably fail to take climate change as seriously as scientists believe they should.
The alternative explanation can be referred to as the cultural cognition thesis (CCT). CCT posits that individuals, as a result of a complex of psychological mechanisms, tend to form perceptions of societal risks that cohere with values characteristic of groups with which they identify
People who subscribe to a hierarchical, individualistic world-view—one that ties authority to conspicuous social rankings and eschews collective interference with the decisions of individuals possessing such authority—tend to be sceptical of environmental risks. Such people intuitively perceive that widespread acceptance of such risks would license restrictions on commerce and industry, forms of behaviour that hierarchical individualists value. In contrast, people who hold an egalitarian, communitarian world-view—one favouring less regimented forms of social organization and greater collective attention to individual needs—tend to be morally suspicious of commerce and industry, to which they attribute social inequity. They therefore find it congenial to believe those forms of behaviour are dangerous and worthy of restriction.
These findings were consistent, too, with previous ones showing that climate change has become highly politicized.
As the contribution that culture makes to disagreement grows as science literacy and numeracy increase, it is not plausible to view cultural cognition as a heuristic substitute for the knowledge or capacities that SCT views the public as lacking.
Our findings could be viewed as evidence of how remarkably well-equipped ordinary individuals are to discern which stances towards scientific information secure their personal interests.
For the ordinary individual, the most consequential effect of his beliefs about climate change is likely to be on his relations with his peers.
Given how much the ordinary individual depends on peers for support—material and emotional—and how little impact his beliefs have on the physical environment, he would probably be best off if he formed risk perceptions that minimized any danger of estrangement from his community.’
The below though is the possibly sinister and scary conclusion that ‘Nature’ comes to…..never mind trying to educate the public use friendly , trusted, respected members of the ‘community’ to advance the propaganda…..remember this:
‘Get David Attenborough as the front man because everyone trusts him.’
‘One aim of science communication, we submit, should be to dispel this tragedy of the risk-perception commons. A communication strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information, our results suggest, is unlikely to do that. As worthwhile as it would be, simply improving the clarity of scientific information will not dispel public conflict so long as the climate-change debate continues to feature cultural meanings that divide citizens of opposing world-views.
It does not follow, however, that nothing can be done to promote constructive and informed public deliberations. As citizens understandably tend to conform their beliefs about societal risk to beliefs that predominate among their peers, communicators should endeavor to create a deliberative climate in which accepting the best available science does not threaten any group’s values. Effective strategies include use of culturally diverse communicators, whose affinity with different communities enhances their credibility, and information-framing techniques that invest policy solutions with resonances congenial to diverse groups. Perfecting such techniques through a new science of science communication is a public good of singular importance.’
In other words PR, spin, propaganda, call it what you will but they are advocating altering people’s beliefs by manipulation and ‘faith’ in the person or mechanism used to deliver the message alone…never mind the Truth.”