[Vision2020] "Cultural Cognition", not Stupidity

[Paul Rumelhart]

Reading about the climate change debate is like looking through some 
sort of stained glass window.  I guarantee you that they wanted to show 
that AGW skeptics are less scientifically literate than the AGW 
proponents.  When that failed, they blamed it on their politics.  They 
are more scientifically literate, but their cultural cognition is 
causing them to latch on to only those facts that fit their beliefs.  It 
couldn't possibly be that the AGW proponents are doing the same thing, 
it has to be only the skeptics that are throwing away valid scientific 
arguments to meet their world view.  It couldn't be that skeptics have 
valid scientific criticisms, because they are going against the 
consensus and the consensus *has* to be right. If the skeptics show 
their skepticism even after "97 of 100 climate scientists agree that man 
is causing climate change", then they are simply denying what everyone 
knows is true despite their greater scientific literacy.  Especially if 
they mouth off about how unscientific polls of climate scientists 
actually are.

The idea that man is causing the majority of the warming has become the 
new story of the Garden of Eden.  Mankind used to live in a blissful 
state, at one with nature, until we threw away our purity in the name of 
corporate greed and burned all the oil.  Only repenting that sin will 
lead back to a state of grace. It certainly can't be that this narrative 
is in any way shaping the political climate (no pun intended) of this 
debate, which in turn is shaping what gets funded and what gets 
studied.  Potential natural climate cause?  Oh, we'll get to that when 
we're done trying to wrestle tree ring data into showing that it's 
warmer now than it's ever been, or trying to figure out how to classify 
climate change skepticism as a disease.

Paul

On 05/29/2012 01:29 PM, Ron Force wrote:
>
>
>     May 29, 2012
>
>
>       Study rules out stupidity as a cause of disbelief in climate science
>
>     And the Yale research published today reveals that if Americans
>     knew more basic science and were more proficient in technical
>     reasoning it would still result in a gap between public and
>     scientific consensus.
>     Indeed, as members of the public become more science literate and
>     numerate, the study found, individuals belonging to opposing
>     cultural groups become even more divided on the risks that climate
>     change poses.
>     Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study was conducted
>     by researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at
>     Yale Law School and involved a nationally representative sample of
>     1500 U.S. adults.
>     "The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses," said Dan Kahan,
>     Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology
>     at Yale Law School and a member of the study team. "The first
>     attributes political controversy over climate change to the
>     public's limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to
>     opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the
>     second hypothesis and not the first," he said.
>     "Cultural cognition" is the term used to describe the process by
>     which individuals' group values shape their perceptions of
>     societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to
>     fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to
>     which they belong.
>     The results of the study were consistent with previous studies
>     that show that individuals with more egalitarian values disagree
>     sharply with individuals who have more individualistic ones on the
>     risks associated with nuclear power, gun possession, and the HPV
>     vaccine for school girls.
>
> via www.enn.com <http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/44455>
>
>
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