Are Americans who are skeptical about global warming "misinformed"? If we gave them more information -- and if the media did a better job -- would it have much impact?
Here I make the case that the "misinformation" paradigm misunderstands the public opinion challenge -- and the human mind itself. Worse, the paradigm gets in the way of creating a more effective politics, for one need not be motivated centrally by global warming at all to support policy action on clean energy and energy independence.
This diary is written as a letter to Arthur Smith.
Dear Arthur,
Are the 30 percent of Americans who do not believe global warming is happening "misinformed"? Are the 30 percent who believe it's happening but not due to humans "misinformed"?
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "misinformed."
In one sense, yes, they are misinformed. Global warming is happening, and it's almost certainly because of human emissions. That's the overwhelming consensus of scientists worldwide. And I have seen no good reason to believe this consensus is wrong.
But in another sense, the word "misinformed" doesn't really explain much. Misinformed implies that if the 30 percent of Americans who deny the reality of global warming to pollsters simply had received the right information (with lots and lots of repetition, you add) they would change their mind.
"Misinformed" makes it sound like there were a group of ten people, and seven of them were handed the blue document at random (by truthful scientists), which explained the reality of global warming, and three of them were handed the red document (by Exxon-funded deniers) that "misled" them.
Of course, this is silly. We know that three people clutching to their red document also have received the blue document. They just don't believe it. In fact, when the blue document people argue with the red document people, the red document people become even more certain that the blue document people are wrong (and vice versa).
People who don't believe the scientific consensus on global warming have been exposed to a huge amount of information about global warming since the late 1980s. Clearly, there's something going on more than not getting the right information. There's something motivating the red document people to deny the reality of global warming. What is it?
Lots of different things. Part of seems to be fear that something really, really scary might indeed be happening that is too much to deal with. Better to believe it's not happening. This is the classic psychological explanation of belief in the afterlife. People are scared of death – of utter extinction – and so they make up a fantasy that makes them feel better. I find this explanation of global warming denying plausible.
However, it's not a total explanation. I know someone who is a very educated scientist who actually works in the business of energy efficiency and who believes global warming is a natural cycle. The guy is very smart, very sane, and not neurotic. He just thinks emissions and warming show correlation, not causation. Why would he believe this?
I'd probably put him in the same camp as Michael Crichton: he identifies with the contrarian view on this. Is he misinformed? Hardly. He's actually quite informed. He just rejects the IPCC and embraces the (very small) minority view. Will more information change his mind? Maybe or maybe not. The track record isn't good.
My point is that to reduce his view to being "misinformation" is misunderstand the more profound question of motivation.
Are people who believe in the afterlife "misinformed"? Well, I guess so. I personally don't see any persuasive evidence in the afterlife. I acknowledge that there is evidence of an afterlife – ghosts, conversations with the dead, etc – I just don't find much of it very persuasive. But many people do. Can I "inform" them that they're wrong? I could try, but it doesn't have much impact.
Same thing with climate. Can I "inform" people that they're wrong about global warming? Enviros have certainly tried. But from 1989 to 2007, the percentage of Americans who tell Gallup that global warming is happening has gone unchanged (63 to 65 percent – margin of error difference).
Oh, but wait! 20 years of news media attention isn't very much, you say. We need more repetition. More information. Sorry to say, I don't buy it. Global warming has been huge news for the last two years, and opinion hasn't much changed. In the seven months after the release of Gore's movie, which generated huge attention, the percentage of Americans who named global warming a top concern actually declined. How does "misinformation" explain this?
Now, don't get me wrong. Motivation is tricky. Motivation implies a depth model. The word "motivation" implies that there's something "behind" an opinion. Something deeper or more primordial.
What we find in good survey research are correlations between things like global warming denial and other factors. These correlations are revealing. That's what we're looking at right now with our values research. These correlations aren't the final word, by any means, but they reveal something important.
There is evidence that strong support for military action against Iran is strongly correlated with neuroticism, fear of death, racial prejudice, and the propensity to watch Fox News. It's an interesting case, because those who view the opinions of those who they disagree with as a problem of being "misinformed" will conclude, "Fox news misinformed them!" In fact, it's more likely that people with a particular worldview and values sought out Fox news. They were motivated, in other words, to get their information from Fox. It's not like they just randomly got handed the red document by Fox.
You asked how I know that global warming denial is "motivated." I know that because all cognition is motivated. Yes, that's right: all of it. You're never in an emotion-free state of mind. There's no cognition that is emotion-free, context-free, or paradigm-free. Descartes's fantasy was that we were rational, calculating, "thinking things" -- it's amazing anyone still believes this. The notion of the human brain as a calculating machine is as religious as believing we were invented whole cloth in a single day by a divine Being.
The human mind – the bodily brain embedded in social and nonhuman contexts – evolved over millennia. Rationality is not transcendent – it's contingent, relative, and plural. "We" reasoned different 20, 500, one million years ago. Reasoning evolves. We reason differently from one another.
And our reason is shaped by situations. After 9/11, Bush's approval ratings went from under 50 percent to 90 percent. Were suddenly 40 percent of the American people "misinformed" by media coverage of 9/11. Well, maybe a little. But mostly they were scared and seeking the reassurance that comes from believing the president was doing a good job.
People who are scared reason differently from people who are confident. But both rationalities are equally motivated. The cognition of a global warming denier is motivated – but so is your cognition and so is mine. We flatter ourselves when we suggest that our cognition is motivated simply by the good and the true. We good ones only care about the truth! We aren't motivated by anything other than that!
We know that people who behave altruistically are motivated in at least two ways. The first is by empathy – we care about others and the world around us. But the second motivation is security, confidence, and pride. Indeed, it seems that empathy requires the feeling of security.
This might explain the power of global warming preparedness and Apollo. Both say, "We are strong, powerful, and rich – we can prepare for and prevent global warming." Contrast that "informed" viewpoint to someone who feels scared, weak, and disempowered. They are more likely to think, "There's nothing you can do about it, so it's probably not true."
Of course, there's also those powerful men like Crichton, and my person I know who are confident and smart enough to say, "The scientific consensus is wrong. Global warming's not a big threat or human-caused"
I think the love of contrarianism, at least among some skeptics, is very wild west American – very individualistic. I actually like the spirit of it – it's what makes science so interesting. If everyone just believed the scientific consensus, there would be no scientific progress!
So what's required here is an appreciation of complexity, not the pat reassurance that this is a problem of "misinformation" to be solved by some educational television ads, documentary films, and greater media coverage. Oh that there were only more media coverage of the IPCC reports! That would make all the difference in the world!
I'm not suggesting you're misinformed in your view of the human mind. You don't strike me as a misinformed person. I'm suggesting that you're motivated to believe that you believe what you believe because of your love of truth and your diligent attention to the facts. But in thinking this you profoundly misunderstand your opponents.
We've spent about 8 years with the question of what motivates cognition on global warming. We keep wrestling with it, and are getting a better and better analysis of it. But it's a puzzle we don't necessarily need to solve.
At the end of the day, we realized that "informing" the American public about global warming wasn't as important as motivating them to strongly support taking the kinds of actions that must be taken to remedy the problem. If the best arguments for investments in clean energy, regulations on carbon, and preparedness for natural disaster are national security and economic development, why would we insist that the public's motivations be global warming? Such an insistence would be irrational for anyone who is more interested in winning action on global warming than in winning an argument with global warming deniers.
You have a hard time seeing how you could justify a transformational policy agenda according to energy independence and the economy. Why? All of the opinion research shows it's the most effective way of doing so. You can deny it, but you'd do well to rally some evidence for your denial.
Michael