In a post-fact world, are there really any pursuable climate skeptics?
Is it really possible—or even safe—to try to convince climate change deniers that they are wrong?
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For much of my life, I believed that people are generally rational and that truth—or at least consensus—ultimately wins the day. I became a journalist precisely because I thought there was a value to approaching life with a certain degree of neutrality—to investigating and reporting the facts without fear or favor, as the New York Times would put it. Show a fellow citizen the demonstrable, provable who, what, where, when and why and you have a citizen who is capable of making a well-informed decision on things that matter. That is the entire basis of the system of trial by jury of our peers.
I don’t believe that anymore. The large and loud angry hoards of pandemic-denying anti-vaxxers are evidence enough but the stake through the heart of common sense for me came in a survey last week in which almost 25 percent of Republicans, fellow Americans, confirmed that they believed the central premise of the Qanon conspiracy—that the country was being ruled by an evil cabal of Satanist-worshiping child-flesh-eating pedophiles that started out of the basement of a pizza joint in Washington, DC that doesn’t have a basement.
In an age of “alternative facts” in which willfully ignorant mobsters attack the Capitol Building waving American flags or casually knock out the teeth of flight attendants who ask them to wear a mask on a plane, is it really possible—or safe—to try to convince climate change skeptics that they are wrong? The scientific literature is mixed.
Grant McDermott, an assistant professor in the University of Oregon Department of Economics, began his quantitative modeling survey published in the journal Climate Change last week with a central question: "How much evidence would it take to convince skeptics that they are wrong?" The study modeled two types of hypothetical skeptics—those who were less extreme and believed the change in temperature was slight, as well as more extreme skeptics who believed the change was nonexistent—and exposed them to climate data recorded between 1866 and 2005, as well as future projections until the end of the century.
The results were both sad and hopeful. Strong skeptics are unlikely to change their beliefs, even in the face of mounting evidence. Moderate skeptics on the other hand were “highly likely” to change their beliefs once given more evidence of recorded temperature change, (which probably means they weren’t that skeptical or emotionally invested in the answer, to begin with).
"If a climate skeptic is unpersuaded by the evidence that is already available to them today, my model implies that they will likely remain a skeptic for many years into future. Why? Because it suggests their prior beliefs are so strong that even decades of continued warming may not be enough to convince them."
"One implication of that is that if you're trying to think about who to target with messaging to persuade people that climate change is a real and observable phenomenon, you should just accept that some people you're just not going to convince, even with more years' worth of evidence."
McDermott's study doesn’t attempt to identify root causes but is a framework for combining prior beliefs with new information and seeing how beliefs are updated.
"The actions of others may often seem irrational to us, and vice versa, but it's important to recognize that a person's actions are, more than likely, perfectly congruent with their internal belief system. Acknowledging that is an important first step towards crafting effective public policy."
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an assistant professor of earth system science at Stanford University, has studied what she calls ‘motivated’ or ‘justified’ denial that comes from a personal desire to try to protect institutions, values, and beliefs. By pretending that nothing is wrong, motivated skeptics can achieve a sense of stability and security about their involvement in systems that cause climate change or whose operations would be altered by climate action. In an interview with State of the Planet, Wong-Parodi said:
“When I work in communities where it’s clear that skepticism is going to be high, we don’t say the words ‘climate change.’ We say ‘environmental change.’ And as we talk, we identify the words that resonate with the particular audience and those that don’t.”
But, using different words to describe the effects of climate change or efforts at mitigation seems to be a persuasive strategy that has a fairly short shelf life. Frank Luntz, the GOP pollster who famously convinced the Bush administration to stop saying “global warming” and use “climate change” instead because it sounds less “threatening” now says he regrets it because “climate change” has hardened into a kind of litmus test of political purity.
So, what happens if you introduce a climate denier to a climate-related mitigation tool or concept they may not be that familiar with? A cross-disciplinary collaboration led by Jonathon Schuldt , associate professor of communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, analyzed results from a survey of 1,222 U.S. adults who reported believing in climate change at least “somewhat,” to estimate public support for soil carbon storage and how it compares to other leading carbon dioxide removal strategies.
The team solicited respondents’ perceptions of naturalness and policy support for five CO2 removal strategies: afforestation and reforestation; bioenergy plus carbon capture and storage; direct air capture; soil carbon storage; and soil carbon storage with biochar. Each respondent viewed a randomized group of three options and was asked to estimate the likelihood that they’d support that strategy. (Why, exactly, the Cornell group took on perceptions of soil carbon storage—which, let’s be honest, sounds awfully specific and esoteric—is not clear.)
Not surprisingly since “natural” and “nature” are near the top of the list of trigger words that advertisers beat in the ground to persuade people to buy things, the study found that a majority of the U.S. public is supportive of soil carbon storage as a climate change mitigation strategy, particularly when that and similar approaches are seen as “natural” strategies. They may have no idea what soil carbon storage really is but if it’s “natural” than it must be good.
In truth, there are plenty of passionate environmentalists who believe that soil carbon storage is an unproven and perhaps unworkable technology dreamed up by the fossil fuel industries to prolong their dominance in the age of ravenous energy demand. Which raises the question of how are we ever going to persuade non-believers when we can’t even agree on so many basic issues ourselves?
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Dig Deeper
Skeptic priors and climate consensus (Climate Change)
Climate skeptics not easily persuaded by available evidence, now or later (EurekaAlert)
Understanding and countering the motivated roots of climate change denial (Science Direct)
Perceptions of naturalness predict US public support for Soil Carbon Storage as a climate solution (Springer)