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Skeptical Debunker

Belief In Climate Change Hinges On Worldview : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...story.php

social science individuals communitarians climate change disagreement

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10 - Cached
  • "People tend to conform their factual beliefs to ones that are consistent with their cultural outlook, their world view," Braman says. The Cultural Cognition Project has conducted several experiments to back that up. Participants in these experiments are asked to describe their cultural beliefs. Some embrace new technology, authority and free enterprise. They are labeled the "individualistic" group. Others are suspicious of authority or of commerce and industry. Braman calls them "communitarians." In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.
  • "Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work. "If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way," he says. And if the information doesn't, you tend to reject it. In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, "they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem."And for the communitarians, climate danger seemed less serious if the only solution was more nuclear power.
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  • Then there's the "messenger" effect. In an experiment dealing with the dangers versus benefits of a vaccine, the scientific information came from several people. They ranged from a rumpled and bearded expert to a crisply business-like one. The participants tended to believe the message that came from the person they considered to be more like them. In relation to the climate change debate, this suggests that some people may not listen to those whom they view as hard-core environmentalists. "If you have people who are skeptical of the data on climate change," Braman says, "you can bet that Al Gore is not going to convince them at this point." So, should climate scientists hire, say, Newt Gingrich as their spokesman? Kahan says no. "The goal can't be to create a kind of psychological house of mirrors so that people end up seeing exactly what you want," he argues. "The goal has to be to create an environment that allows them to be open-minded."And Kahan says you can't do that just by publishing more scientific data.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 25 Feb 10
     
    "It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy
Skeptical Debunker

Midwest U.S. may face increased flooding - UPI.com - 0 views

www.upi.com/...UPI-54761266854343

precipitation warming midwest USA

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 23 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Cherkauer said he ran simulation models that show Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan could see as much as 28 percent more precipitation by the year 2070, with much of that coming during the winter and spring months. His projections also show drier summer and fall seasons. "This was already a difficult spring to plant because of how wet it was. If you were to add another inch or so of rain to that, it would be a problem," Cherkauer said. "It could make it difficult to get into fields. There's also a potential for more flooding." He calculated that winters in the four states could be 2.7 degrees to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by 2077 than today. Summers could be 3.6 degrees to 10.8 degrees warmer. The NASA-funded study appears in the early online edition of the Journal of Great Lakes Research.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 23 Feb 10
     
    A Purdue University study suggests some Midwestern states might experience increased winter and spring flooding if average temperature rises continue.
Skeptical Debunker

Mini-cyclone, record floods hit Australia - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...liaweatherflood_20100307063616

rain flooding storms Australia

shared by Skeptical Debunker on 07 Mar 10 - Cached
  • In the city centre the National Gallery of Victoria suffered flooding, while the Docklands Stadium was among those buildings damaged during the violent storm, which washed out horse races. Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Wasyl Drosdowsky said the hail that hit in one suburban area was up to 10 centimetres (four inches) in diameter. "(It was) tennis ball size roughly," he said. "As far as we can tell, that's close to the biggest hail we've seen in Melbourne." As the city readied for further violent storms Sunday, once-in-a-century floods were peaking in the state of Queensland in the country's northeast, parts of which have been in drought for almost a decade. Townships in the state's cotton-growing south were cut off by rising flood waters and in St George the Balonne River reached 13.5 metres (44 feet), its highest level since records began in 1890. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the cost of the flooding would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, as there had been major damage to highways and rail lines had been washed away. "This is a massive water event which has smashed all the records known here in the southwest," she told reporters Sunday as she toured St George.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 07 Mar 10
     
    Melbourne was bracing itself Sunday for further storms after a mini-cyclone ripped through Australia's second largest city, bringing with it hail stones the size of tennis balls. The storm dumped heavy rain across the southern state of Victoria, and smashed into the regional capital with winds of up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour, cutting power to 100,000 homes. Some 26 millimetres (one inch) of rain fell on Melbourne within an hour while other areas recorded up to 70 millimetres during the Saturday storm.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 07 Mar 10
     
    Droughts, fires, severe rains - extreme weather in wild swings with records on all ends is a primary prediction of global warming.
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