Appendix 2. An analysis of Poll results:
Strong polarizations as shown in the data at DK1 are usually indicative of cultural influence at work, of alignment to worldviews as Dan himself notes. If we were truly objective when trying to identify the source of this influence, we wouldn’t start by assuming that one culture was ‘right’ and the other not. And yet this is effectively what Dan has done within his analysis. But what if neither are right? Or the truth lies somewhere between the two poles? Plus Dan has started with a field of only two cultural players, of which he assumes one (Democrat) is not significantly biased by their worldview because they have a good grasp of an ‘absolute truth’ from climate science, despite this is an infant and highly contested field engaged upon a wicked problem. To make matters worse all the individuals that cultures might recruit, including all the scientists from whom Dan believes the truth emanates, are embedded within a highly malleable society that has for decades been soaked in emotive messaging regarding climate change. And scientists are no more immune to bias than anyone else. In such circumstances the received truth, climate orthodoxy if you will, should at least be regarded as suspicious. If this assumption produces a better psychological explanation that is more fitted to the various survey data, one can then draw the conclusion that climate orthodoxy is likely contaminated with misinformation. The differential shifts of emphasis from Appendix 1 regarding people’s beliefs plus resolve on the issue of global warming, are a very big clue as to who is influenced by which culture. (Cultures are notorious for propagating narratives that serve the culture and not veracity, which among other methods can be detected via gaps between stated belief and action, or will for action, within the constraint of real-world issues). Yet even before exploring a hot lead like this, one should really attempt to establish who the likely players are.
Dan has essentially defined that there are just two (opposed) main cultural (political) players, arranged around an absolute scientific truth. Yet if we assume per above that the received truth could well be contaminated, plus we search the social topography a little bit more thoroughly, we instead ought to be considering a field with at least three players arranged around a disputed truth. And furthermore, one of the cultural players is not a traditional political party. To keep this article from mushrooming I have to take a shortcut here: the above-mentioned posts AW1 to AW3 at Watts Up With That demonstrate that the climate Consensus is pretty much saturated with psychological effects, and as a consequence it is bulging with bias too. This is the critical take-away from these posts (rather than the additional conclusion of Lewandowsky’s personal bias). And not only can this be shown using standard literature reporting mainstream effects within various populations, for theoretical support the posts AW1 to AW3 stick to papers on cognitive bias exclusively from Lewandowsky and associated authors. These authors are all avid CAGW advocates; hence there can’t be any realistic possibility of counter (climate skeptic) bias from their papers. (And no minority psychological oddities like Dan’s ‘duality’ are required within this explanation either). The level of Consensus bias, mainly from misinformation about the certainty of catastrophe, is high enough and coherent enough (a tight consensus is after all bound to be coherent!), and its effects influential enough, that the climate Consensus can be considered a culture in its own right. A culture that has gradually come to dominate environmentalism and also to have a major impact on government and society in general. A culture that at the very least should be a candidate player within our investigation, which may allow the interpretations of survey data to fall out better than they did for Dan.
So, our main players are the long established Democrat and Republican political cultures (leanings to which as Dan notes are somewhat fuzzy proxies for identity), and the nascent yet burgeoning (hence still more fuzzy) CAGW culture. Core adherents of the latter can self-identify as ‘above’ politics, yet all cultures are in the pragmatic game of social cross-coalitions, and necessarily therefore oppositions too. Enabled by this wider vision and stoking our innate skepticism to protect us from leaning towards any concept of an ‘absolute truth’ as output from socially processed speculative science, we can revisit Dan’s data to see whether there’s a more fitted psychological explanation than his final DK1 theory of ‘duality’ regarding the Rep/Cons.
The main device that Dan uses to separate identity from knowledge in DK2 / DK4 is very simple. Rather than asking folks directly what they believe, he asks them what they think ‘climate scientists believe’. As noted in the main body of the post, it seems that a similarly large majority from both political camps think that climate scientists believe all sorts of scary things about carbon dioxide and human caused global warming, even though some theories on his list are (deliberately inserted) baloney. While Dan is pained about the state of civic knowledge on the science, he interprets this data as showing that folks across the political spectrum have ‘a widespread apprehension of danger’, because ‘the mistakes are all in the same direction’, i.e. favoring all the scary stories. He proposes that this is an indication of ‘a latent (unobserved) disposition to attribute to climate scientists the position “we are screwed if we don’t do something”.’ By which I believe he means that: the public might be ignorant of the details, but they believe it deep down (including the Rep/Cons) when the climate scientists say we’re screwed.
However, this form of removing identity defense has likely also removed identification with respondents genuine thoughts. It is much more likely that respondents have very literally answered the question asked; i.e. their answers reflect only what they think the scientists believe, but not what they believe themselves. In a healthy moment of doubt, Dan considers this very possibility: ‘Someone could say, reasonably, that asking people what they think “climate scientists believe” is different from measuring whether those people themselves believe what they [sic] climate scientists have concluded.’
However he immediately rules this out because of the ‘discrepancy’ between the bi-partisan consensus regarding these questions, and the strong polarization regarding the more direct questioning of belief in global warming, per DK1. I think his distilled logic is this: Regarding the strong polarization, especially of the science aware, the clear assumption is that the Dem/Libs are ‘right’, therefore it is the Rep/Cons who must be culturally steered to the opposite pole. Hence, when he believes he’s removed identity issues using the pre-amble of ‘climate scientists believe’, he concludes that the Rep/Cons, who are now able to let their guard down and respond more personally, must essentially be agreeing that we’re in deep trouble just as the scientists state (even if supporters from both political camps appear to be very poor indeed at distinguishing the scientific wheat from the chaff regarding the details). Hence also, the puzzle of how the more polarized science-aware Rep/Cons, can apparently both believe and disbelieve simultaneously.
However, there’s a more plausible explanation. We start into this by assuming that Dan’s moment of doubt was a moment of insight. So the respondents in DK2 are telling us only what they think scientists believe, but for most folks in both political camps this is not what they believe themselves (not even as some kind of ‘latent’ or ‘unobserved’ apprehension). After decades of being emotively battered by almost every alarmist scare imaginable, no matter how tenuously linked to Global Warming aka Climate Change, plus constant urgings to act regarding ever-elapsing deadlines of X years or months or days, this is hardly a surprise. And despite eliciting an unintended kind of answer, Dan’s plan to separate knowledge from identity has nevertheless still worked. Yet it is not the Rep/Cons who’ve let their guard down, it is the Dem/Libs. No longer constrained to defend their party in a direct challenge of identity, many of them too admit that climate scientists come out with all sorts of scare stories which are not particularly believable. This also helps to explain some of the terrible lack of discrimination regarding the scientific red herrings; confidence in the credibility of climate scientists is so low in the opinion of both political camps, that they can each well believe that scientists actually do put out such stories as serious findings. For the bulk of Rep/Cons, this is more or less their normal public position regarding the state of climate science. Their response is consistent. Yet for many of the Dem/Libs this represents a significant shift from the party line of complete belief in the output of that favored discipline; in other words a weakening of their belief and a loss of resolve, because they are not directly challenged here to defend their party and associated identity.
Next page for more…
We Are Narrative 
I do find Kahan interesting, though having observed him over several years getting no closer to understanding sceptics I have my doubts he has the mental tools to do so. He’s not alone. There are a small group of consensus supporters who persevere in trying to understand the lack of support for CAGW but even when people explain exactly how they feel, the questioners reject those concepts. Part of me wonders if that rejection is due to a motivated blindness but mostly I think it’s deeper than that.
I think it has something to do with narrow focus people versus broad focus. For a climate sceptic, their view of the science is a plethora of inputs that range from the purest science, through the solutions and politics and on to trust and personalities. To the narrow focus person each of those issues seems to be compartmentalised. To the narrow focus person the science is either right or wrong, to the wide focus person the evidence has to increase the higher the stakes. Thus I can accept the science of Higgs Bosun, because it costs me nothing to do so but if I was wagered £1000 on the question 1+1=? I might think very hard about the answer or even refuse the bet.
As a theory I think it explains why people become more polarised the more they examine the issue of AGW and why engineers are often pitched against specialists. The narrow focused person (the scientist) often only considers the research at hand whereas the broad focus person (the engineer) has to often juggle a great many disparate issues including the vagaries of human behaviour and cost.
Unfortunately for consensus supporters, acting on AGW requires broad focus appeal because it’s not enough to convince people of AGW, they also have to sell people on the solutions. Narrow focus people are quite capable of accepting the catastrophe meme but reject the solutions (eg go nuclear, stop flying, cut personal CO2) because for them, acting on AGW is a new subject. For the broad focus person, as proof of AGW increases then less favourable solutions become more viable but for the narrow focus person the unacceptable solutions will always be unacceptable.
You have an interesting perspective here. I have long recognized the engineer/scientist split but never thought of your reasoning. I used to figure it happened because engineers are required to make things actually work, and (to use my example) once you take Transport Phenomena it’s from then on impossible to think a climate model has predictive usefulness.
But my own subjective experience of the policy debate is exactly what you describe. How are we going to provide electricity to the country is an entirely separate question from cause and effect of CO2 on the atmosphere. Concerns about the second should logically be taken into account when thinking about the first, but so should a host of other considerations.
And then the other typical engineer thing is to say “alright, we need to X, how do we do that most efficiently?” Which then leads to utter confusion when the great and the good so concerned about climate change have not spent the last 30 years advocating for nuclear power. It seems like it should be completely obvious.
Thanks for dropping by Tiny,
I can see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think the abilities regarding narrow / broad focus are a principal driver here, though may play their part. And I think Dan Kahan has the mental tools as you put it, to understand. Looking over his blog he seems to be highly intelligent and deeply knowledgeable. Unfortunately these things don’t save one from cultural bias (and in some circumstances my make one *more* vulnerable to it – but that’s a different story).
He is blind to climate culture, therefore blind to any inference that climate orthodoxy is anything other than scientific truth. To him therefore, skepticism, whether gut feel skepticism from the science unaware or the refined version from the science aware, is ‘disbelief’, which can only in his mind be due to cultural factors and worldview defense. He probably can’t get past the fact that such a massive ‘scientific’ movement could actually be significantly in error, yet this has happened before in the past and will happen again.
However, it could be that folks who are more narrow focused as you put it, may be more amenable to being sucked into cultural orthodoxy in the first place. And folks with a broader perspective may have more defenses for resisting a cultural takeover. There is a natural form of resistance to misinformation and cultural hi-jacking, an ‘innate skepticism’, which Lewandowsky (yes HIM, his cognitive bias stuff prior to jumping off the deep end in climate is both reasonable and mainstream) terms ‘the key to accuracy’. It may be triggered by features of the invading narrative (i.e. its too emotive, too coherent, too forceful, too authoritative etc), but maybe broader minded folks have more of this natural defense anyhow 🙂
“Looking over his blog he seems to be highly intelligent and deeply knowledgeable.”
I agree and I think it’s the intelligence that holds him back. He’s looking too deeply for answers. I’ve seen him ask a question and be given multiple similar answers but couched in individual terms and he just doesn’t comprehend or believe them. I suspect part of that is due to an idea that people don’t grasp their inner motivations, which may be true but you can’t dismiss people’s conscious motivations just because they don’t fit with what you expected.
I’ve built the impression he’s not really interested in the facts of climate change or its bandwagon. When quizzed on his stance over AGW, he basically wrote “because the scientists say so”. If you don’t at least know what the sceptic arguments are, how can you understand sceptic reactions and objections? If sceptics grumble about NOAA and GISS’s hottest year ever 2014 claim, how is an observer able to judge the reaction if he or she doesn’t know where that statement fits in the real science? How would an outsider know if the grumbles are denial of a warming future or a protest against spin and dodgy science or that the miniscule warming is at least some ammunition to start questioning the models.
A question that is asked in polls over and over is “do you believe in climate change?” It’s a very useless question. Some polls try to determine whether that position is connected to something else like politics but rarely strive to go deeper into why people believe what they do or even find out what they believe. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the more people know about the science the more polarised they become… or do they? If researchers into opinion don’t recognise that there are people on both sides of the debate who have very similar beliefs, how can they tell how polarised people are? The lukewarmer is invisible in the data. They may fall one side or the other in a survey, simply because the survey creator doesn’t understand the complexity of climate change, let alone our reactions to it.
If I wanted to research climate scepticism and belief, I’d want to ask loads of questions about how people arrived at their position. What really annoys or just niggles? Which things are credible about the issue to people and which things are not? What is most alarming? The questions would range way beyond the science. My guess would be that those who believe but are not knowledgeable, would be most influenced by bad weather they erroneously see as a definite sign of climate change. How good would the advice of psychologists be if they decided the authorities should use weather as the core of their climate change message? It’s a mistake they might make if they didn’t know that the ‘consensus’ hadn’t yet made the link, despite the outpourings of a few outlier scientists.
It maybe that Dan Kahan thinks that knowing more about climate issues is unnecessary or might even muddy his thinking but personally I’m not sure how you can glean useful conclusions about behaviour without understanding the drivers. I’m not even sure you would know what questions to ask.
Psychologists are right to think we are in denial. More right than they know because almost everyone is denying something on the issue, even if it’s the human right to choose. I see few consensus supporters living the life they espouse. But is it useful to dwell on the inner conflict when there are plenty of outer ones going un-addressed?
Yes Tiny, I think Kahan’s cultural bias prevents him from seeing the obvious, so I guess he is indeed engaged in assembling a string of more complex / obscure explanations in an attempt to solve the puzzles that arise through not acknowledging a climate culture. For science that *hasn’t* gotten caught up in an enormous cultural movement, maybe one doesn’t need to know it too deeply in order to successfully analyze public attitudes with reasonable objectivity. Perhaps for instance GM food fits into this category. But for a massive cultural entity like CAGW, which is not only capable of manipulating science but of seismically shifting our very values and morals, one needs to set out an investigatory path in a completely different way. And yes in my book exploring skeptic arguments in detail would be one essential. But for someone who doesn’t even acknowledge a climate culture at all, and yet who is caught up in this culture too, the sheer scale of the impact is probably not going to be believable.
I think to be fair Kahan applies a varied range of questions and, within the scope of climate orthodoxy, does attempt to reasonably apply such techniques as might find out what folks really think, as separate to ‘who are they’. But with the tools framed in orthodoxy and hence lacking acknowledgement of the true scientific uncertainties (which is where most of the complex arguments arise), then the responses are always going to be misaligned with reality. I suspect very many of the ‘innately skeptical’ general public (i.e. those whose natural defenses against misinformation and cultural takeover, are aroused), have stumbled on threads regarding genuine scientific uncertainty by now. And even for those that haven’t they *know* simply from the narrative form of CAGW, that something is wrong.
As for dwelling on the ‘inner conflict’; far more of the huge CAGW phenomenon is about sociology and psychology than is about science and whatever is actually happening in the climate. If we don’t attempt to understand the psychology, and don’t attempt to challenge the messages by which the professional psychologists are amplifying and policing this climate culture they’re so immersed in, the CAGW culture will continue to dominate, and do damage in the name of a science that does not support the certainty of catastrophe upon which the culture itself is based.
Hi, Andy.
Thanks for this extended & thoughtful reply.
There are lots of points; and I’m a plodder, so it takes me a while to digest & ruminate etc.
But one thing that might be intersting is for you to try to make sense of the Pakistani Dr’s friend, the Kentucky Farmer. http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2015/1/7/so-you-want-to-meet-the-pakistani-dr-just-pay-a-visit-to-the.html
This is related to my exchanges w/ Paul Mathews & some others.
I don’t see myself as trying to explain *you* — by which I mean a segment of intensely interested, highly science literate (in many case professional scientis) critics of the various forms of evidence that are featured in, say, IPCC & like.
I am trying to explain public opinion, which includes much larger group of people of varying degrees of science comprehension who are generally *unengaged* w/ the evidence.
Actually, some of them are quite high in science comprehension & they are indeed an interesting subset. But they still aren’t even close to you & those you converse w/ in their engagement with & attention to the specific claims that are being advanced.
That’s why I tend to discount the explanation, “Oh, the high science comprehension, high-scoring OCSI subjects who reject ‘mainly caused by human’ option are rejecting b/c they disagree with evidence.” I think you are overstating their degree of engagement w/ specifics.
In any case, that explanation would not cover why their egalitarian, communtarian (or left-leaning, however you want to put it) counterparts *aren’t* reaching the same conclusion but are in fact reaching diametrically opposed ones as they become more proficient in any measure of science comprehension, general or specific to climate …
But back to the Kentucky Farmer … He says he “doesn’t believe” human activity is causing climate change. Yet he also is changing his farming practices, buying crop failure insurance, prediting contraction of his industry, cheering Montsanto’s development of GM seeds to withstand drought — all based on his assessment that human-caused climate change will be affecting his life…. You can’t explain him by saying “he knows what climate scientists say but doesn’t believe it ….”
Something else is going on…. what?
Hi Dan, thanks for dropping in, appreciated.
It’s okay I’m definitely a plodder too, I have to get down to absolute fundamentals before anything will go in (not to mention that the day job sucks up most time so I sometimes have to catch up at weekends only). Plus I’ve only eyeballed a fraction of your vast works at CCP blog, and it will take me time to assimilate any required new lumps.
I got it that you’re not primarily trying to explain high science comprehension folks. Yet I nevertheless point out that the test of a truly robust explanation for what’s going on, should be whether that explanation encompasses these folks *as well as* the generally unengaged public. And indeed any folks in-between too (still high scoring but ‘not as engaged’, in your terminology above). Ideally this being accomplished by simply sliding a parameter somewhere within the candidate theory.
And per your proposition starting ‘in any case’, I don’t agree that deep engagement being an explanation for skeptics disagreeing with the evidence, is mutually exclusive with also explaining why the deeply engaged left-leaning counterparts reach a diametrically opposed conclusion. Quite the contrary. There *is* a model that explains why the more deeply engaged two sides get, the more polarized they become (I’ll discuss what they are two ‘sides’ *of* later). Not only that, but this model has been well-researched for decades, the characteristics and behaviors it implies are well described in mainstream literature, you yourself employ knowledge of these characteristics regularly, as do all other social psychologists plus other disciplines too. It’s called a culture, and this appears to be the missing piece that explains your puzzles at CCP regarding global warming / climate change.
One has to unhook from one’s mind from the assumption that there is an absolute truth anywhere in this (if you have trouble with that, try asking atmospheric scientist and IPCC contributor Judith Curry). Let the truth ‘float’ on a scale of zero to full. Like for instance the truth of whether a deity exists or not. In the West where religion is no longer dominant, the more learned disbelievers are, the more emphatically they tend to disbelieve. Less agnostic, more atheist. They know about evolution and the big bang and stuff. Dawkins is perhaps an ultimate example. (And there is a belief scale, formal religious belief is only the top; there can be casual belief, various forms of spiritualism and lately even alien substitutes for a deity, then agnostic and full atheist). But the more learned the spiritual / religious folks are, the more emphatically they tend to *believe*, and more in the formal top-of-scale brand too. They know about the scriptures and religious history and the tenets of faith and so on (theologian priests are perhaps an ultimate example, Oxbridge degrees and super intelligent etc). It is a culture that causes this. Cultures can create a consensus (and indeed a huge canon of detailed orthodox knowledge, e.g. saints / sinners / the father, son and Holy Ghost and all the other rules), about the unknowable. To some extent one can argue from an evolutionary development point of view, this is one of their prime purposes (super social cohesion is an advantage). They are certainly extremely good at it. Disbelievers are resisting religious culture and consensus.
‘CAGW’, Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, is a culture. It is even a self admitted culture (see Mike Hulme’s work and the quotes of many other climate change notables). No matter what is actually happening in the climate, and whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, the cultural effects have impacted the science and policy for many years now, to the extent that culture dominates. So, the IPCC summary for policy makers is the orthodox canon. The climate consensus on the certainty of dangerous warming due to man, is a culturally enforced consensus, *not* a scientific truth. Like agnostics / atheists, the ‘innately skeptical’ public mentally resist this culture, and do so much more as they become more (science) learned. An ultimate example is say Lindzen. Like the spiritual / religious, the believers in climate orthodoxy are more emphatic in their belief as they become more (science) learned. (‘Innate skepticism’ refers to natural resistance to misinformation and cultural takeover [think of population variable biological resistance to diseases]; Lewandowsky came across this in his studies and named it ‘the key to accuracy’).
The situation is not at all symmetrical. A culture is a highly integrated entity of co-developed narratives with typically much infra-structure support (in this case, massive: Governments, NGOs, etc). Skepticism has indeed some narratives that may be very unaligned to scientific truth too, but it is scattered, not co-developed, not a culture; skeptics resort to science in order not to be crushed out of existence. Yet even so there is and always will be an enormous body of skeptical public, the innately skeptical, while CAGW continues as a culture and not as a science subject (or, unless the climate culture lasts for generations and so squeezes out all resistance – all cultures have developmental trajectories over time). So the ‘two sides’ I mentioned above are NOT left-wing and right-wing. They are ‘climate culture’ and ‘not climate culture’.
Left-wing and right-wing only come into this because cultures are famous (or notorious) for cross-coalitions. And true to form CAGW has these; which *in the US* happen to be far stronger with the left than the right, but *not exclusive* to the left. So per the survey results in the post here plus your data, a majority of Dem / Libs are *allied* to climate culture, but when their political identity is not challenged, they don’t believe in dangerous GW either.
This model encompasses the general public, and on a sliding scale the more engaged and the fully engaged. One can dial in the different strengths of political alliance to different parties within each country, but same model works. If you pin climate orthodoxy to ‘absolute truth’ (which I feel you are doing), it will be near impossible to countenance a (science aware) Rep/Con disagreement with the evidence, and hence you are bound to end up feeling that this position must be entirely culturally steered (despite the resulting ‘dualism’ paradox, which seems wholly unsatisfactory as a condition of many millions of varied US citizens). A culturally enforced orthodoxy may contain much ‘truth’, and it may not; who knows? What matters is that it is a cultural construct and not a scientific one.
I urge you to apply all that you know about cultures and cultural influence (which is probably much more than me), to CAGW. I think explanations rooted in the commonplace are much more likely, don’t you? Culture in humans, culture that enforces consensus on the unknowable, is much more common than the common cold, ubiquitous in fact. With or without man’s influence, understanding climate is a wicked problem, it is not currently knowable, projected scenarios are not even probabalistic but possibilistic (see Climate Etc posts).
Regarding your farmers, it’ll take me a while to absorb the paper properly. But at a glance I’d say nothing unusual is going on at all. Off to work right now, but I’ll try and jot down a first impression tomorrow.
“Cultures can create a consensus (and indeed a huge canon of detailed orthodox knowledge, e.g. saints / sinners / the father, son and Holy Ghost and all the other rules), about the unknowable.”
I do not subscribe to the “unknowable” part but almost the same thing; few know a thing and from that is spawned a huge culture co-opting that little bit of knowledge for its own purposes, and like a living thing, the culture itself has a “will to live”, reproduce, assimilate neighbors and protect itself from enemies and challenge.
I can think of no cultural phenomenon that has NO members that experienced something relevant to the culture. What’s important is the ratio of experiencers to believers, and that ratio is probably related to how desirable is the belief. Believing in eternal life (a good one that is) is highly desirable making it possible for exceptionally few experiencers to motivate belief in millions of other people.
Moon landing was experienced by only a few, but witnessed real-time on television by millions (including me); it also has a “priesthood” of persons that didn’t personally experience the moon landing but were very closely involved in it, such as Mission Control in Houston. The odds of all of that being a hoax is incalculable (effectively zero).
But in another 50 years when everyone alive at the time is dead, all that will remain will be claims and this “priesthood” of then-current NASA employees whatever is left of it, and the belief could start to drift.
I see a religion already forming around Martin Luther King, with streets in every major U.S. city named after him, politicians standing on his memory saying that MLK would say this or that. Instead of WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) it is now WWMLKD (What would Martin Luther King do). In 2,000 years there will likely not be a shred of the real MLK left but possibly a vast priesthood built up on a mythology.
But none of that proves the non-existence of a moon landing, or MLK, or Dog. Such things are known only to the people that know them.
Hi Michael2,
The existence of God is neither provable nor disprovable, so in this formal sense is unknowable, despite what some people claim to have experienced (which I believe is simply a interactive effect of the personal and the wider cultural drive). However, we have got to the stage of knowing that inanimate objects or forces, like the sun, the moon, the weather, are not deities, which disproves most religions that have ever been.
I very much agree though that strong cultures have an ‘agenda’ of their own, which despite being neither sentient or agential (instead enacted across swift generations of mutually supportive narrative forms), does straddle the characteristics of life. In similar ways for instance in biology, to how the ‘agenda’ of a disease caused by prions also straddles our definitions of life.
But cultures have fairly well identifiable characteristics, or at least without certain traits and features it is hard to call something a full culture in its own right, as opposed to just a sub-narrative within a culture. While moon landings and MLK may spawn mythic dimensions within an overall culture, especially MLK acquiring a little of a religious or saintly aura, I don’t think his legacy is ever going to blossom into a full culture in its own right. And given the factual evidence about the moon landings, this is much less likely still for that topic (despite a few conspiracy theorists who in the end exist for practically every topic), unless civilization should so decline that the facts are lost. In short, these things *are* known and also recorded on media in modern times, and that severely hampers the blossoming to a full culture.
Yet to follow your speculation, yes there’s a very very outside chance that a millennia hence MLK might indeed be perceived as something equivalent to a saint, but given the current decline in (true as opposed to secular) religions, that seems unlikely. Not to mention that he will have so much competition, who can say who wins anyway if conditions swing to arbitrary deification? He might get beaten out by Mother Theresa or even Al Gore, or maybe Kylie Minogue! Or more probably 100 times more Indian or Chinese candidates. If he did win, it’s what the people of the time *don’t* know about him that would allow a cultural consensus on his ‘saintly’ works to prosper, the facts having been lost.
In the here and now, the existence or not of God is still unknowable, plenty of room for a culturally enforced consensus established long ago still to survive. In fact several of them in competition 🙂 Likewise, the climate is currently unknowable. We have nowhere near enough information yet. Hence, plenty of room for a cultural consensus to spring up here too. And one has indeed sprung up, one that appears to espouse the certainty of catastrophe, which is effectively misinformation.
Hi Dan, part 2…
So I skimmed through the Kentucky farmer post and the JAEE paper it references. While I can’t claim to have fully digested this, the paper does not appear to raise any difficult issues about ‘what is going on?’. It seems to confirm similar (cultural) effects as are described in the head post here. I don’t know what your farmer is called, so I’ll name him Ethan. Later I’ll introduce you to his cousin, Jacob, who also farms just down the road from Ethan’s place.
Firstly, I really don’t think you’ve allowed the true context of the JAEE paper to come out in your post, so a great place to start is by doing that. Similarly to your surveys I linked to, we expect the 4 direct questions on belief in human caused or natural climate change in the first half of the paper, to invoke some cultural identity bias in the respondents. Later on, in the questions that are essentially about farming practice, we’d expect cultural identity issues to be less prominent; asking what a farmer’s crop diversification plans are should hardly invoke cultural allegiance.
The most definitive question for belief / disbelief is the one actually using the phrase ‘human activities are causing change’ (it seems some folks agreeing with this nevertheless don’t think there’s scientific proof, so the proof question is more fuzzy). Hence I’ll focus on the corellations with the yes / no respondents for this ‘human caused’ question as the most typical / defined case.
So, on to what farmers think climate change (natural or human caused) will do to their crops. Well of those who agree / strongly agree that climate change is not human caused, about 80% think yields will stay about same as a result of climate change, with the remainder split about equally between a prediction of decreased yields or increased yields. This means about 90% think crops yields will be about the same, or better. The overall distribution is identical for yield variability as a result of climate change; about 90% think variability will be about the same, or better (less variability = better).
SO… whatever follow-on questions are asked about farming practice in the light of extreme weather due to climate change (which also does not appear to be specified as ‘man made’ climate change, therefore encompasses natural cycle causation too), ~90% of ‘disbelievers’ do not think there is any significant crop problem due to climate change that needs addressing with these practices in the first place. Hence whatever practices they do or don’t envisage in later responses, these cannot be substantive regarding the main purpose of their operation – continuing to produce crops at the same or better output.
Interestingly, for ‘believers’ that climate change is human caused (per that same question), these same figures are 59 + 15 = 74% who think that yields will be the same or better. Yield variability figures don’t seem to be listed separately for ‘believers’, but would have to be about the same to match the averages in the results table 3. So of the folks who claimed to believe in human caused climate change (hence including all its attendant narrative about dangerous warming of the entire planet and increased extreme weather events and potential environmental catastrophes to which we must divert untold trillions, the same narrative relayed frequently by the president himself who urges immediate action in the strongest terms for this ultimate problem), folks whose entire business exists in the environmental domain exposed to climate change, 74% of them think that their crop farming output will be about the same or better in future years, despite all this apparent danger.
THIS is the same effect we saw in the surveys linked in the head post here. When cultural identity issues were at stake, all these folks claimed they were ‘believers’. When the heat is off regarding cultural identity, a huge majority of these ‘believers’ show that they were in fact only in alliance with CAGW (perhaps as Democrat voters who must show party allegiance). They no more believe, truly, all the scary stories than the ‘disbelievers’. They bail out, not really expecting any problem with their farm yields at all. Only the remainder, just 26%, may truly believe, are likely full CAGW cultural adherents.
Meanwhile the ‘disbelievers’ are far more consistent whether the cultural identity pressure is on or off. Only 10% of them bail from their assertion of disbelief in human caused climate change, to an expectation of worsened farm output (and even some of these may be bailing because of expectations of natural climate change problems, e.g. from decadal cycles, as the questions on yield don’t specify the type of climate change causation).
So what we see here is again an effect of a cultural alliance. An alliance of most of the ‘believer’ respondents with CAGW culture. An alliance that folds when cultural identity is not at stake and real world issues take precedence. This is consistent with expectation, is the same as what is discussed in the head post here, does not raise any dilemma.
Despite some text clearly phrased from the perspective of climate orthodoxy (e.g. on communicating ‘the problem’) the conclusions at the end of the paper do at least acknowledge the above, in an overall fashion. ‘Our data suggest that not only is there relatively little acceptance of the existence of climate change, but also little belief that climate change will have negative effects on crop yields‘. Although, the authors don’t emphasis that the lack of belief in negative yields is held by the big majority of climate change (so called) ‘believers’ too.
The high score of ‘no opinion’ in all categories is also unusual and indicates rather a lack of interest; a mild surprise. Maybe climate change issues have reached the turn-off point in peoples’ minds after saturation coverage. The high skepticism from farmers is expected from an area that has dealt with natural cycles forever, and is shared with meteorologists who are also familiar with these cycles.
Regarding the practices; crop diversification, irrigation, insurance, leasing arrangements or even leaving the business, the percentages for these wrt weather extremes from climate change are rather moot if pretty much no-one (even most of the ‘believers’) is expecting any loss of output. We are probably seeing the trajectory of modern farming, which must always improve buffering against climate cycles anyhow (whatever the causation) and faces more competition as food production continues to increasingly outstrip population growth and pressure margins, making once survivable weather events into a business risk. More balance and more risk elimination is required than before. Some businesses will fold in this competition; nothing to do with man-made climate change, almost all farms expect to maintain their crop output wrt climate so this reason is already eliminated, but they may not beat the market or their competitor at home or in another country, if those improve faster. If all this is the case, we’d expect to see similar responses from the two groups. Um… we do. You make a point of it 🙂 There is no cultural identity at stake here.
You list three of these percentages at your CCP post on the Kentucky farmer (now christened Ethan):
Likely that farmers will resort to crop diversification as a result of climate change:
– Believers: 51% agree
– Disbelievers: 47% agree
Likely that farmers will be driven out of business by climate change:
– Believers: 50% agree
– Nonbelievers: 47% agree
Likely that farmers will acquire greater crop insurance protection to deal with climate change:
– Believers: 56% agree
– Nonbelievers: 45%, agree
And I guess this is the kind of thing you’re basing your assumption of compartmentalized thinking upon. So Ethan represents the slightly less than half of farmers who despite disbelief in human caused climate change, are doing stuff in their business, per above, apparently to accommodate its effects. Except according to the paper, Ethan is certainly not doing this!
He and 90% of the ‘disbelievers’ do not think that their crops will be adversely impacted in the first place! And nor does it indicate anywhere in the paper that (as you say in your post above), this is ‘all based on his assessment that human-caused climate change will be affecting his life’. The type of climate change causation is not specified in the farming practice questions. Ethan is probably a natural cycles man, and he likely wants to improve his business. As for chasing Monsanto, farmers have been chasing drought resistant strains (and other advantages) for about 10,000 years, and rightly too because in addition to improving business robustness, archeological and paleo evidence in the Americas inform that Ethan or his inheritors could potentially face changes the like of which no-one has seen in the modern era, and clearly these were nothing to do with man’s effects.
However, let’s play ball and frame him that way. Yet if we’re doing that, what about cousin Jacob? He represents the slightly less than half of farmers who despite *belief* in human caused climate change, are doing nothing in their business to accommodate its effects wrt the above mitigations, which things they think are not necessary. Nor do they think farmers are going to go bust. Say what? They believe in the ultimate threat to the environment, the engine of rapidly increasing extreme weather that some in climate orthodoxy claim is already upon us, and yet they’re fine with doing nothing to face the future?
You state regarding Ethen:
You can’t explain him by saying “he knows what climate scientists say but doesn’t believe it ….”
I could equally state regarding Jacob:
You can’t explain him by saying “he believes what climate scientists say but knows it doesn’t apply to him ….”
By introducing Jacob to you, I hope to make it obvious that *both* the Ethan and Jacob paradigms are falsely framed. There are not TWO dilemmas here, one of which (Ethan) you are proposing to explain with the same ‘duality’ theory as the Pakistani Doctor. There are NO dilemmas. These are both false problems, they don’t exist. Neither Ethan or Jacob represent the data. I’ve explained above why that is the case for Ethan. In Jacob’s case, it’s because he *isn’t* really a believer either (
or 74% of him isn’t, perhaps more ifhe’s an approx 50% of that group, of whom 74% don’t think their crop output will be affected anyhow, likely a 50% who are more confident about business health generally and entirely within the 74%, hence so unworried as not to take up those mitigations). He’s only allied to CAGW culture for political purposes. When it comes down to practical action on his farm, he does not exercise true belief in dangerous man-made Global Warming or the consequent behavior that would be appropriate to that belief.The cultural model for CAGW explains the survey results you see. It holds for all science aware, unaware, or inbetweenies. It explains continued mass public disengagement that so puzzles all the climate orthodox folks. It explains why this apparently urgent problem that in the US most Democrats say they are wholly behind, is always last or near last in the priority polls. It also works in countries not politically tribal about the climate issue (i.e. unlike the US). And it requires no exotic theories or challenging ‘Kentucky farmer’ templates; only ordinary cognitive bias and utterly ubiquitous cultural behaviors. This is what is going on, it’s normal!
(minor correction: underline = replacement text for strike-out)
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