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
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
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.
"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.