Why Conservative White Males Are More Likely to Be Climate Skeptics

w1z4rd

w1z4rd

Karmic Sangoma
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When it comes to climate change denial, not all human beings are created equal. As a recent study shows, conservative white males are less likely to believe in climate change.

"It's not surprising," said Aaron McCright, sociology professor at Michigan State University, who is a white male himself. But anecdotal evidence is not scientific, he said. "You really don't know what's going on until you crunch the numbers and find out."

Besides the trend amongst skeptics, the study also found that conservative white men who self-report a high understanding of global warming -- dubbed "confident" conservative males -- are even more likely to express climate change denial.

McCright's study, "Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States," was published online in July and printed in the October 2011 issue of Global Environmental Change, which ranks first out of 77 journals on environmental studies.

The study has created somewhat of a buzz, said Riley Dunlap, co-author and professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University. The paper was well received in academic circles, but he admitted he was concerned about a backlash from the conservative movement. While there have not been any major outcries, the study appears to have raised a few temperatures in Chicago.

"This paper is a transparent effort to take the focus off the actual scientific debate and instead engage in race baiting, class baiting and other sociological devices to win a science argument," said James Taylor, senior fellow for environment policy at the Chicago-based Heartland Institute.

But from McCright's perspective it was important to find out to what extent the sharp debate over climate change at the elite level had trickled down into the general public in recent decades. "Within the ranks of elites, climate change denialists are overwhelmingly conservative white males," reads the report, pointing to figures like talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Marshall Institute CEO, William O'Keefe. "Does a similar pattern exist in the American public?"

'Cool Dudes,' a bloc that stands out in the crowd

McCright and Dunlap's analysis used polling data on climate change denial from 10 Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 72.4 percent of the American population reported as white in 2010, and 77.1 percent in the year 2000. This majority made it difficult to draw conclusions about the relationship between other races and climate change, said McCright, because the Gallup survey sample size was so small.

To test for the trend amongst conservative white males, the researchers compared the demographic to "all other adults." Results showed, for instance, that 29.6 percent of conservative white males believe the effects of global warming will never happen, versus 7.4 percent of other adults. In holding for "confident" conservative white males, the study showed 48.4 percent believe global warming won't happen, versus 8.6 percent of other adults.

As a point of comparison, McCright also tested the beliefs of conservative white females. He found 14.9 percent believe the effects of global warming will never happen to 29.6 percent of their male counterparts. McCright said the finding is due more to the women's political stance than their gender or race. The data on conservative white females was not published in the "Cool dudes" study.

To understand why there is a trend amongst conservative white males, the Gallup data was cross-examined with research about the "white male effect" -- the idea that white males were either more accepting of risk or less risk averse than the rest of the public.

The white male effect could stem from the notion that, historically, white males have faced fewer obstacles in life, said McCright. But another school of thought sees the adoption of risk tied to personal values. "It has to do with their identity as an in-group," he said. "Something that would challenge the status quo is something [conservative white males] want to shun."

Climate change, a challenge to identity?

According to the literature on "identity protective cognition," people believe messages coming from the people they identify with most and ignore messages that are contrarian, Dunlap said. While all groups have a tendency to do this, he said, in the case the climate change, conservative white males are especially likely to exhibit this self-protecting characteristic.

McCright says, up to 40 percent of all white males in the study sample believe in hierarchy, are more trusting of authority and are more conservative. Conservative white males' motivation to ignore a certain risk -- the risk of climate change in this case -- therefore, has to do with defending the status of their identity tied to the white male establishment.

This result is bolstered by the Yale University "Global Warming's Six Americas" report for May. The study found that none of the "dismissive" group -- those who don't think the climate is changing or want legislation -- believe global warming will harm the United States in 50 years. The dismissive group also skews male and conservative, said "Six Americas" co-author, Edward Maibach, director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

But for Donald Braman, associate professor of law at George Washington University, who works on risk perception studies, the focus on white males and climate change could be somewhat misleading. "My worry is that [McCright's paper] might suggest to people that there is something distinctive about the way conservatives and officially, conservative white men, deal with new information," he said. "The truth is that those same cognitive mechanisms push all of our buttons."
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Read more (not the whole article): http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/1...males-are-more-likely-11613.html?pagewanted=2

Do you guys think this is accurate?
 
Kosmik said:
In the states maybe. He mentions that the conservative is almost a more political affiliation than anything else but it's a very broad generalisation.
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yeah, but I notice because our local conservatives read a lot of American conservative news (watch Fox news and such), almost everything they believe, is what the Republicans are pushing out. They are easily lead by their American counterparts. If its an issue for an American conservative, its often an issue for a white south african conservative.
 
I don't doubt that the climate is changing. Heck, I can even tell that it has changed in my lifetime alone. What I doubt is the reasons that most people cite for the climate change.
 
Garyvdh said:
I don't doubt that the climate is changing. Heck, I can even tell that it has changed in my lifetime alone. What I doubt is the reasons that most people cite for the climate change.
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Yup as well thanx to mr pitbull :D. Could be the 11 year cycle we are in. The 10 hottest years have come during this cycle so it makes sense the sun could be causing the warming.

The cycle is due to end in 2013, nasa says it is going to be peaking in early 2012 and by 2013 the planet should get cooler if their calculations and understanding of this cycle is correct.
 
killadoob said:
Yup as well thanx to mr pitbull :D. Could be the 11 year cycle we are in. The 10 hottest years have come during this cycle so it makes sense the sun could be causing the warming.

The cycle is due to end in 2013, nasa says it is going to be peaking in early 2012 and by 2013 the planet should get cooler if their calculations and understanding of this cycle is correct.
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Pity you cherry pick information from NASA. Their opinion on climate change is very clear:

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Here is a nice graph from NASA:

evidence_CO2.jpg


This is what NASA say about the sun being the cause... not what you say they say:

Solar irradiance

It's reasonable to assume that changes in the sun's energy output would cause the climate to change, since the sun is the fundamental source of energy that drives our climate system.

Indeed, studies show that solar variability has played a role in past climate changes. For example, a decrease in solar activity is thought to have triggered the Little Ice Age between approximately 1650 and 1850, when Greenland was largely cut off by ice from 1410 to the 1720s and glaciers advanced in the Alps.

But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the sun:

Since 1750, the average amount of energy coming from the Sun either remained constant or increased slightly.
If the warming were caused by a more active sun, then scientists would expect to see warmer temperatures in all layers of the atmosphere. Instead, they have observed a cooling in the upper atmosphere, and a warming at the surface and in the lower parts of the atmosphere. That's because greenhouse gasses are trapping heat in the lower atmosphere.
Climate models that include solar irradiance changes can’t reproduce the observed temperature trend over the past century or more without including a rise in greenhouse gases.
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http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

Anyways, Im wasting my time. You will continue to misquote NASA as you see fit. /shrug
 
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the study is obviously biased - they use word denialist, like everything is a foregone conclusion. Are we in the same category as Holocaust deniers for saying that the climate is changing, but maybe, just maybe, humankind's effect on it is not as huge as our massive egos would lead us to believe?
 
NYT obsessing about race again. What's new....
 
Pitbull said:
*yawn*

Anything else in the news worth reading/debating today?
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Is SJ really dead or was he abducted by aliens?

*DISCLAIMER* this is meant as humour similar to the Elvis sightings, laugh people laugh.
 
I would honestly have thought that on the day Steve Jobs dies we'll have some nice discussions. Or at least topics that has something to them. But instead we're stuck with w1z4rd and his Global Warming religion again....
 
Pitbull said:
I would honestly have thought that on the day Steve Jobs dies we'll have some nice discussions. Or at least topics that has something to them. But instead we're stuck with w1z4rd and his Global Warming religion again....
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Sad really, oh well we cant help everyone, some just like to be sheeple. One day when he see's the real reason for all this climate change advanced/accelerated/propagated/caused by man for the BS it is, he might meet us and apologize for his misguided/misled beliefs, then again I doubt it ! Some people are just meant to be slaves to corporate dictators.
 
Isn't generalizing according to race racist?

But I suppose generalizing according to race, if white, is not racist and perfectly acceptable because its PC to do so. I wonder why?
 
Apache said:
Isn't generalizing according to race racist?

But I suppose generalizing according to race, if white, is not racist and perfectly acceptable because its PC to do so. I wonder why?
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The culture of collectivism. I wonder what the definition of conservative is.
 
Nicodeamus said:
The culture of collectivism. I wonder what the definition of conservative is.
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Def: A person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in politics.

Averse to climate change :)
 
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