So, study after study confirms an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. But what does the average person think about the consensus? A Yale survey of Americans found that on average, people think that 67 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. That already sounds disturbingly low, but it’s even worse when you consider that only 12 percent of Americans are aware that the consensus is over 90 percent. There is a gaping chasm between public perception of consensus and the actual 97 percent consensus.
How do we explain this “consensus gap”? One contributor is misinformation. An analysis of opinion pieces about climate change by conservative columnists found that their most common argument was “there is no scientific consensus” (Elsasser and Dunlap 2012). Long before social scientists had identified perceived consensus as a gateway belief, opponents of climate action had pinpointed consensus as a key target of attack. A 2002 memo by Frank Luntz recommended that Republican politicians cast doubt on the scientific consensus in order to win the public debate on climate change.
Politicians follow this advice to this day. Former presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz argues that there is no consensus on climate change, claiming that the 97 percent consensus is based on “one bogus study.” He ignores, of course, that the 97 percent consensus is in fact based on a multitude of independent studies.
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- Yeah, in a Minute... is the personal dumping grounds of Paul Landry:
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- Yeah, in a Minute... is the personal dumping grounds of Paul Landry:
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News Gathering vs. Confirmation Bias
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[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996) at p.32.
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[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
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