Matt Nisbet points to a new Pew Survey about global warming showing very little change in public opinion on the subject in recent years. It seems that An Inconvenient Truth didn’t really cause a radical change in public opinion, after all.
(Of course, it does appear to have brought climate change to the attention of media elites, which is probably more important than general public opinion, in the end…)
The really interesting thing about this, as usual, is a tidbit near the end of the summary (and shown in the graphic Matt posted:
Among Republicans, similar percentages of college graduates and those with less education say there is solid evidence of global warming (46% and 51%, respectively). Yet for Republicans, unlike Democrats, higher education is associated with greater skepticism that human activity is causing global warming. Only 19% of Republican college graduates say that there is solid evidence that the earth is warming and it is caused by human activity, while 31% of Republicans with less education say the same.
So, while going to college increases Democrats’ belief that humans are responsible for global warming (from 52% to 75%) , it decreases Republicans’ belief that humans are responsible for global warming.
I can imagine two possible explanations for this:
1) Students who lean Republican congregate with other Republicans in college, where they are more likely to be exposed to the extensive propaganda operations of right-wing groups trying to sow doubt about human effects on climate. Put that together with the natural tendency of college graduates to think they know everything based on information gleaned from unreliable sources, and, well, you get a decreased belief in human-caused global warming.
2) Students who lean Republican go to college, and are subject to a constant barrage of lectures and protests and petitions about global warming from student environmental activists, who are so freakin’ annoying that the young Republicans begin to profess a belief that humans are not responsible for global warming, just to spite them.
Additional possible explanations are welcome in the comments.
I think you might be confusing correlation and causation here. (The way to check this would be to survey graduating high school seniors and divide into college-bound vs. non-college-bound.) People who go to college are more likely to pay attention to the news, and those with Republican leanings are particularly likely to go for sources such as the WSJ editorial page, which is against the idea of anthropogenic global warming. Hanging out with like-minded students in college may reinforce this preference, but I suspect the preference is there even before they go to college.
I agree that ” the natural tendency of college graduates to think they know everything based on information gleaned from unreliable sources” is a factor, but again, lots of high school students think they know everything, too.
I think that it is the genetic inability of the Republican mind to comprehend complex issues no matter what the level of intelligence……combined with an inbred hatred of “liberals” and anything that “liberals” espouse. Since reality most often tends to back liberal thought, they use what intelligence they have to avoid thinking like a “liberal” at all costs. This results in their worship of the unreal and the unscientific. If they’d just stop for a minute and take a real look at “liberals”, they might note that “liberals” have their own problems with reality (lotsa liberal woo out there) and might feel more comfortable accepting the results of science vs. their Republican overlords.
Here’s some anecdotal evidence that might be relevant. In Composition & Rhetoric I and II, students are explicitly taught to read sources critically, to recognize common logical fallacies, and to analyze common persuasive appeals (e.g., appeals to emotion, to the author’s credibility, etc.).
Let’s leave aside the fact that many only partially succeed in learning this stuff. The important thing is, they’re exposed to it and they learn some of it.
They apply this training selectively, thinking critically about arguments and positions that they were already biased against while giving a free pass to arguments and positions they already identify with.
In this manner, their beliefs are confirmed. Not only that, but they’re also able to talk about why.
I’ve seen this sort of thing happen over and over again. I’m not sure how to get around it. Or if it’s possible, really, to get around it.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that students sometimes write about these very issues in rhetoric and composition classes, and instructors (like me) may not have the relevant expertise to debunk all the anti-science nonsense. Nor do we have credibility to speak authoritatively on science. (And often, we shouldn’t have: many of us don’t understand the science well enough as it is.)
In my experience, the answer is almost certainly #1. The second is used as a ploy to avoid having to defend the indefensible, i.e. ‘I was only kidding’.
I think this is a general feature of education and skepticism, not anything particular to Republicans.
If you aren’t educated that much, you are more inclined to just trust experts. If you’re very educated, then you tend to know the nuances of the problem and why the experts believe what they believe. But if you’re somewhat educated (say, a college degree but no advanced training in science), you think you know as much as or better than the experts, but you don’t actually know very much.
In my opinion, this is the same reason why you see so many physics crackpots, creationists, etc. who are retired engineers. They have some scientific training but often not enough to actually know what they’re talking about. If you add that to a political, religious, or psychological predisposition to be skeptical toward a specific position, and you get someone who is very committed to their skepticism but with little grounding for it.
I think Eric has a point too regarding the media. I see a lot of climate skeptics go straight to skeptic news sources and blogs for all their information about climate. They never study any of the opposing arguments (or, god forbid, read the primary research literature). As Eric says, college educated skeptics are more likely to follow these news sources.
I think it is a mix of #1 and #2. I’m interested in what Ambitwistor said:
I’ve always been of the opinion that if all students in college were able to at least understand the process of science, we would have fewer crackpots out there. Is there any actual research that would support or refute this idea?
“The most active sunspot maximum in recorded history” hasn’t shown any sunspots more than a year into its cycle.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/
25 April 2008
Quiet sun has intense correlation with cold Earth. Massive global agricultural failures: Maunder Minimum, Jamestown with -40 degree winters; late 1950s cooling. Famine, pestilence, war, death.
Ripples of political jaundice and corruption propagate. An uncaring great wave of Global Cooling will crush both the Green Revolution and “sustainable” fuels. Billions will die. Only the Carbon Tax on Everything can Officially save us. Double it.
I was looking at other parts of the Pew survey data, where it is abundantly clear that there is a huge difference between R and D about whether the problem is a serious one. (Look for the subhead “A Serious Problem”.) If you don’t think it’s serious, you might not care who or what causes it. That would bring the observations in comment #3 into play as well.
I was really intrigued that R’s were less likely to think that major sacrifices are needed to solve the problem.
“When the wingnut feels threatened, it excretes a foul substance which forms a protective layer of disingenuous stupidity designed to deflect dissonant facts and beliefs which could damage the wingnut’s tender underbelly of pure stupid.”
Can I agree with RForest and offer a third possibility here?
3) College does an excellent job of preparing people to rationalize beliefs, but not as good a job of forcing people to look at evidence. Students who go into college believing that global warming is a hoax will mostly come out better able to support that position, while students who come into college believing that global warming is real will come out better able to support that position.
I would suggest two ways to gather more evidence related to this hypothesis: First, compare answers from specific individuals before and after attending college to see if ideas changed or became more entrenched. Second, if that’s not possible, compare students who have to confront the evidence (science students in a climate/Earth Science-related field) vs. students in other majors.
Hi Chad,
From previous research in the area of political communication and how citizens use the news media, here’s how the research would explain the finding:
Education correlates strongly with news attention, while partisanship leads to selective acceptance of like-minded arguments and opinions. In a fragmented media system, college-educated Republicans are heavier consumers of media outlets and messages that are likely to reflect and reinforce their existing views about global warming. As additional heuristics, they are also more likely to hew closely to the signals given off by party leaders, notably President Bush. The same is true for college-educated Dems who pay close attention to news outlets that fit with their partisan orientation while relying on the messages and opinions of party leaders such as former VP Al Gore.
Non-college educated Republicans and Dems on the other hand pay far less attention to the news, and are far less in tune with the positions of their party leaders. As a result, they hold weaker opinions on the issue, and might be more susceptible to “cross-pressures” or counter-arguments emanating from the other side in the global warming debate.
Maybe the Republicans that went to college and understood global warming became Democrats. I’m not an American, so I’m not sure how likely this is.
Or maybe the Republicans went to a bible college and learned that it’s just god’s way of telling us that the end is nigh.
Perhaps conservatives learn to think in college and liberals learn to follow.
“Perhaps liberals learn to think in college and conservatives learn to follow.”
There, fixed that for ya.
:^)
First sunspot of new cycle – Jan 2008
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080104_sunspot.html
May 14 images from Soho show two prominent sunspots on the limb, to the naked eye at least.
Andrew Gelman, a Columbia statistician and political scientist who studies political polarization, has weighed in. He attributes the result to the phenomenon of more educated citizens being more politically polarized in general. The posts by Eric, RForest, and Matthew provide hypotheses why this phenomenon exists.