{"id":2596,"date":"2008-05-12T09:54:57","date_gmt":"2008-05-12T09:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/12\/college-poisoning-young-minds\/"},"modified":"2008-05-12T09:54:57","modified_gmt":"2008-05-12T09:54:57","slug":"college-poisoning-young-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/12\/college-poisoning-young-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"College: Poisoning Young Minds Since Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Nisbet points to<\/a> a new Pew Survey about global warming<\/a> showing very little change in public opinion on the subject in recent years. It seems that An Inconvenient Truth<\/cite> didn’t really cause a radical change in public opinion, after all.<\/p>\n

(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…)<\/p>\n

The really interesting thing about this, as usual, is a tidbit near the end of the summary (and shown in the graphic Matt posted:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, while going to college increases Democrats’ belief that humans are responsible for global warming (from 52% to 75%) , it decreases<\/strong> Republicans’ belief that humans are responsible for global warming.<\/p>\n

I can imagine two possible explanations for this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Additional possible explanations are welcome in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Continue reading College: Poisoning Young Minds Since Forever<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}