The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks

[FarCenter]

Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled1. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk2. We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1547.html

[Uncle Joe]

1. This study seems to promote a Borg way of thinking.

Thanks for the thread, FarCenter.

[FarCenter]

2. I was thinking of soccer fans and horse racing fans

Soccer fans don't tolerate anything less than complete loyalty to their team.

Horse racing fans can discuss the merits of the entrants and support their favorites without coming to blows.

[Uncle Joe]

3. But I don't believe this study makes a distinction.

For the ordinary individual, the most consequential effect of his beliefs about climate change is likely to be on his relations with his peers18. A hierarchical individualist who expresses anxiety about climate change might well be shunned by his co-workers at an oil refinery in Oklahoma City. A similar fate will probably befall the egalitarian communitarian English professor who reveals to colleagues in Boston that she thinks the scientific consensus on climate change is a hoax. At the same time, neither the beliefs an ordinary person forms about scientific evidence nor any actions he takes—as a consumer, say, or democratic voter—will by itself aggravate or mitigate the dangers of climate change. On his own, he is just not consequential enough to matter19. Given how much the ordinary individual depends on peers for support—material and emotional—and how little impact his beliefs have on the physical environment, he would probably be best off if he formed risk perceptions that minimized any danger of estrangement from his community.

[RobertEarl]

4. Conflict of Interest Wins

No matter how educated some people just want more, more, more.

They don't want to give up their Mcmansion, their SUV, their mass consumptive lifestyles.

Therefore they do not want to even listen to any idea that claims they must sacrifice anything.

But if we are to limit climate change, sacrifices must be made.

Keeping nukes is in the same league of conflict. We know we will destroy the world with nukes, yet support for nukes persists.