Note: These are notes for remarks that I gave recently at the Tucson Festival of Books, where I was asked to talk about my new book The Republican Brain on a panel entitled "Will the Planet Survive the Age of Humans?"
So the question before us on this panel is, "Will the Planet Survive the Age of Humans?" And I want to focus on one particular aspect of humans that makes them very problematic in a planetary sense -- namely, their brains.
What I've spent the last year or more trying to understand is what it is about our brains that makes facts such odd and threatening things; why we sometimes double down on false beliefs when they're refuted; and maybe, even, why some of us do it more than others.
And of course, the new book homes in on the brains -- really, the psychologies -- of politically conservative homo sapiens in particular. You know, Stephen Colbert once said that "reality has a well-known liberal bias." And essentially what I'm arguing is that, not only is that a funny statement, it's factually true, and perhaps even part of the nature of things.
Colbert also talked about the phenomenon of "truthiness," and as it turns out, we can actually give a scientific explanation of truthiness -- which is what I'm going to sketch in the next ten minutes, with respect to global warming in particular.
I almost called the book The Science of Truthiness -- but The Republican Brain turns out to be a better title.
The Facts About Global Warming
So first off, let's start with the facts about climate change -- facts that you'd think (or you'd hope) any human being ought to accept.
It turns out that the case for human-caused global warming is based on simple and fundamental physics. We've known about the greenhouse effect for over one hundred years. And we've known that carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas, a greenhouse gas. Some of the key experiments on this, by the Irishman John Tyndall, actually occurred in the year 1859, which is the same year that Darwin published On the Origin of Species.
We also know that if we do nothing, seriously bad stuff starts happening. If we melt Greenland and West Antarctica, we're looking at 40 feet of sea level rise. This is, like, bye bye to key parts of Florida.
Enter the Denial
So then, the question is, why do people deny this? And why, might I add, do Republicans in particular deny this so strongly?
And if your answer to that question is, "oh, because they're stupid" -- well, you're wrong. That's what liberals want to think, but it doesn't seem be correct. In fact, it seems to be precisely the opposite -- smarter (or more educated) Republicans turn out to be worse science deniers on this topic.
This is a phenomenon that I like to call the "smart idiot" effect, and I just wrote about it for AlterNet and Salon.com.
Let me tell you how I stumbled upon this effect -- which is really what set the book in motion. I think the key moment came in the year 2008 when I came upon Pew data showing:
This is actually a consistent finding now across the social science literature on the resistance to climate change. So, for that matter, is the finding that the denial is the worst among conservative white males -- so it has a gender aspect to it -- and among the Tea Party.
So seriously: What's going on here? More education leading to worse denial, but only among Republicans? How can you explain that?
A Three-Level Explanation
Well, I think we need to understand three points in order to understand why conservatives act this way. And I will list them here, before going into them in more detail:
So let's go into more detail:
1: Conservatism is a Defensive Ideology, and Appeals to People Who Want Certainty and Resist Change.
There's now a staggering amount of research on the psychological and even the physiological traits of people who opt for conservative ideologies. And on average, you see people who are more wedded to certainty, and to having fixed beliefs. You also see people who are more sensitive to fear and threat -- in a way that can be measured in their bodily responses to certain types of stimuli.
At the extreme of these traits, you see a group called authoritarians -- those who are characterized by cognitive rigidity, seeing things in black and white ways -- "in group/out group," my way or the highway.
So in this case, if someone high on such traits latches on to a particular belief -- in this case, "global warming is a hoax" -- then more knowledge about it is not necessarily going to open their minds. More knowledge is just going to be used to argue what they already think.
And we see this in the Tea Party, where we have both the highest levels of global warming denial, but also this incredibly strong confidence that they know all they need to know about the issue, and they don't want any more information, thank you very much.
2. Conservative "Morality" Impels Climate Denial -- in particular, Conservative Individualism.
But, you might say, "well, Tea Party conservatives don't deny every aspect of reality." And it's true. Presumably, they still will accept a factual correction if they have, say, the date of Mother's Day wrong. Presumably they're still open minded about that... we hope.
So why deny this particular thing? Why deny that global warming is caused by humans? And here, I think you've got to look at deep seated moral intuitions that differs from left to right. And it's important to note at the outset that whatever your moral intuitions are, they push you emotionally to reason in a particular direction long before you are actually consciously thinking about it.
So, conservatives tend to be "individualists"-- meaning, essentially, that they prize a system in which government leaves you alone -- and "hierarchs," meaning, they are supportive of various types of inequality.
The individualist is threatened by global warming, deeply threatened, because it means that markets have failed and governments -- including global governments -- have to step in to fix the problem. And some individualists are so threatened by this reality that they even spin out conspiracy theories, arguing that all the world's scientists are in a cabal with, like, the UN, to make up phony science so they can crash economies.
So now let's look at what these individualist assumptions do to the denial of science. In one study by Yale's Dan Kahan and colleagues:
In another study, meanwhile, Kahan showed that if you frame the science of global warming as supporting nuclear power, then conservatives are more open to accepting it, presumably because it does not insult their values any longer.
3. Fox News is the Key "Feedback Mechanism" -- whereby people who want to believe false things get all the license they need.
So clearly, there are some deeply rooted attributes that predispose conservatives towards the denial of global warming.
But there are also "environmental" factors -- things that have come to exist in our world that did not exist before, that interact with these things about conservatives, and make all this much worse.
And here, Fox News is undeniably at the top of the list. There are now a host of studies (video here) showing that Fox News viewers are more misinformed about various aspects of reality, including two such studies about global warming.
So if you've got Fox News, you've got a place to go to reaffirm your beliefs. And that serves this psychological need for certainty and security. So conservatives opt in, they get the misinformation, their beliefs are reaffirmed, and they're set to argue, argue, argue about why they're right and all the scientists of the world are wrong.
Conclusion
So in sum, we need a nature-nurture, or a combined psychological and environmental account of the conservative denial of global warming. And only then do we see why they are so doggedly espousing a set of beliefs that are so wildly dangerous to the planet.
(Crossposted from DeSmogBlog.)
Follow Chris Mooney on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChrisMooney_
Dude, a little too much name calling ad hominem-esque talk of "them". (Not doing anyone any favors by demonizing one side.)
But you MISSED THE REAL REASON they deny climate science entirely. And here it is:
First realize they are not "latching on to a particular belief" at random. They are judging climate change by something ELSE that it is attached to that they already like or dislike. (If they were suddenly convinced that higher global temperatures caused, say, an increase in abortions or somehow raised taxes, you better believe they'd switch sides!)
So here's why they are against accepting science on this (yet have no problem with science on say, quantum mechanics) : It's MONEY.
It's going to cost money to stop our reverse AGW. They don't want to spend money. Ergo, they have a financial incentive to disbelieve AGW. Argue long enough with a conservative and sooner or later they will say something like "I'm not letting my tax dollars sunk into something that is debatable at best!"
They aren't picking the topics they deny at random.(Ask them about something else, like whether P=NP or the Riemann hypothesis and the answer is: Whatever the experts say is probably right.)
They are against climate science because of money.
They are against evolution because of religion.
They are not picking these topics at random.
The reason the right considers climate change a liberal issue is because a huge communal issue every person on the planet is affected by requires a communal response. This goes against their fantasies about the rugged individual. The right-wing base lives in a nostalgic fantasy world that actually brought about the current mess.
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I’ve recently been involved with other scientists and scholars in Utah trying to stop the spread of outright lies, half-truths, abuses of data, and distortions about climate change...
I'm a Republican myself, and it galls me that my own party has locally fallen for a bunch of conspiracy theories and scientifically incompetent trash. In my opinion, something has to be done to save the party from disaster in the long run...
Democracy depends on accurate information being readily available to the public, and I see people who propagate such disinformation campaigns as enemies of Democracy.
http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/about-this-blog/
So far, not so much luck, but he raises interesting points.
Global warming isn't dangerous to the planet. In the worst case, the icecaps melt, deserts expand, human civilization collapses, half the species go extinct. This is only bad from a human perspective, the planet doesn't care. Who are we to say that the new environment is better or worse than the one we have now? Extinction, catastrophe, climate change are part of natural condition - they are necessary for new species to arise. Humanity may turn out to be just another (minor) catastrophe in a long list.
The 'save the planet' people need to come up with a new, more accurate slogan.
Yeah man - who cares if human civlization collapses and the world as humans have ever known it ceases to exist?
Indeed, why care about anything? We're all going to die and humans will eventually go extinct anyway, why bother to protect anything, including our children, the security of our nation, and the ecosystem that sustains us? The earth as a planet will still exist, even if humans and most life as we know it goes extinct. So forget about the world that we leave for our children and grandchildren, and instead party like there's no tomorrow.
/sarcasm
If it's all the same to you, I prefer that humanity survives.
The slogan 'save the planet' is simply arrogant, it implies that if the environment can't support human civilization, it has been destroyed. This is not true.
I am a High School Environmental Science teacher and I have a large number of students every year that are hard-line climate change deniers at the tender of age of 15 or 16. I'm pretty sure it's learned at home, but I'd like to find a way to help them see reality in a way that they might also influence their parents. Anyone have ideas?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-douglas/republican-climate-change_b_1374900.html?ref=climate-change
If your students come from GOP households, which is likely, this would be a useful article to point them to that shows its possible to believe in global warming without becoming a green God-less communist.
For those with specific claims regarding the climate (that may have been drummed into them at home), the website http://www.skepticalscience.com/ offers some very clear and concise debunking arguments to the major skeptic 'myths'. Most of these arguments come in more than one level of expertise (basic, intermediate, and advanced), and references are all given and most are linked to, so your students can use the site as a jumping off point into whatever deep exploration they want to make of this fascinating subject. Then, of course, there's RealClimate.org, which is run by real climate scientists, so tends to be more technical from the very start (and thus a bit hard for high schoolers to comprehend). Good luck!
Scepticism, on the other hand, is cultivated.
Please enlighten us with the absurd amounts of money that scientists are making off climate change.
"many of you believers will point to this past winter as proof that global warming exists. "
No, the people who do that are the uneducated deniers who make the claims that you just did. Ive ever seen anyone with a mild education in Climate Change, ever say that. But im sure you have heard is a kabillion trillion times though.
"you are doing the same thing these climate scientists are doing. taking a particular area of the world and choosing only the data that fits their predictions. "
I'd love for you to cite your source on this gem. Please do tell about the scientists that are doing this lol science.
"he funny thing is you wont find any news about it because it doesnt fit their claim of global warming"
Yes, news stations out of everybody DOESN'T push false science every damn day. Keep living in your fantasy world champ.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/SkepticsvRealists.gif
“ ridculous article”
“ leftist internationalists “
“ Al Gore”
PLUS Incoherent babbling and Accusations of scare tactics
.
And what part of Florida is key? Ha ha ha, I crack myself up. Just like this totally ridculous article. A Republican 5th grader could write a better, ya know, like a better article/story/waste-of-time.
This is an idea that has been kicking around for decades, even back when it was about global cooling.
Resistance to it has stretched into outright denial of global warming/climate change as a possibility.
The truth is that we are going through climate change and yes humans are making it worse.
If the Climate change scientists/activists want real change they need to divorce themselves from the leftist internationalists and global government buffs who want to use climate change for their own ends. Depoliticize it.
Oh, but they have, they have.
The scientists have, in general, been pretty much neutral about what kinds of solutions we should search for. It is the propagandists on the right who have constantly, loudly smeared the scientists as "leftists". The linkage is pretty much entirely a construct of the right-wing noise machine.
Many religious fundamentalists "see" those who don't share their religious ideology as being witches too.
In both scenarios their ideology-driven tinfoil hats are bolted on a wee bit too tight.
reducing CO2 is FREE!!!
just stop living as large as you do..
and stop jetting around scaring us about burning fossil fuel..
and stop holding phony conferences in luxury resorts every year..
LEAD BY EXAMPLE.. IT"S FREE!!!
Drink!
hey FUMES..
speaking of your ongoing climate science obfuscation..
when are you going to stop denying basic science..
such as for example your repeated, patently absurd denial that downward infrared radiation exists?
Your assertion that E = 2mc is amusing too.
you'll never understand even basic climate science..
until you stop denying science!
The guy writing the article is right, and you're not.
Facts = proof and if there were proof we wouldn't be talking about the subject.
Please understand that our planet has spent the majority of time in a glaciated state, with the inter-glacials being the skinny periods in history.
when the palnet warmed in previous transitions, the CO2 content rose following the sea warmth, so why have the 11 climatologists (the one in pint) gone straight for the throat of CO2 while ignoring/excluding many of the other pertinent inputs needed in the models?
Also, ocean acidification due to CO2 is < .3% and we all know that fresh rain water is acidic, not alkaline.
Do folks understand the true state of our infant climatology science?
At its heart, climate change is about the Earth's energy balance at the top of the atmosphere. More energy entering than energy leaving? The laws of thermodynamics dictate that the average global temperature will rise. More infrared energy leaving than solar energy entering? Average global temperature falls. Right now, measurements show that the Earth has a net gain in energy (Hansen et al. 2005: http://bit.ly/GFmMlL; Trenberth et al. 2009: http://bit.ly/GH33Xf; Hansen et al. 2011: http://bit.ly/yUFAq4). Consistent with those finding, Murphy et al. (2009: http://bit.ly/gqmmh) found that the temperature of the entire climate system has consistently increased. Why don't atmospheric temperatures show a consistent increase? Simple. The atmosphere is 5% of the total climate system–and the part most susceptible to short-term events. Factor out those short-term events and the long-term temperature trend shows a consistent increase (Foster and Rahmstorf 2011: http://bit.ly/u2CIdp).
So, why the focus on CO2 as the cause? Couldn't it be water vapor or the sun getting warmer or clouds or just natural variation or the Milankovitch cycle? Satellite measurements show that increasing amounts of CO2 is trapping increasing amounts of infrared energy (Harries et al. 2001: http://bit.ly/5o7hAK; Chen et al. 2007: http://bit.ly/xF6bVv). Water vapor, while a powerful amplifying feedback, cannot start or sustain global temperature trends due to the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. The sun hasn't warmed since the 1950s and has been cooling since 1979 (Lean and Rind 2008: http://bit.ly/xWfgal). Clouds have been ruled out, as clouds have little impact on the global energy budget, and by extension, temperature trends (Dessler 2011: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2011.pdf). The global temperature trend is nearly 3x larger and, at over a century long, several decades longer than expected from natural variation (Swanson et al. 2009: http://bit.ly/wt0DCo). And the Milankovitch cycle has been in a cooling phase for the last 6,000 years (Imbrie and Imbrie 1980: http://bit.ly/GNdMcf). In short, the direct evidence shows CO2 as the cause–and the other potential drivers have been investigated and ruled out.