Just saw this @ Raw Story
In a survey of more than 1,000 readers of websites related to climate change, people who agreed with free market economic principles and endorsed conspiracy theories were more likely to dispute that human-caused climate change was a reality.
In the past several months I have been moderately preoccupied with the sidebar ads I see around the net. You know the ones: "try this one weird trick to [whatever]" or "doctors hate her for [alleged homebased cosmetic or medical remedy costing fractions of what it takes a person with a science education to do].
It's like there has been an uptick in marketing directly to people who are going to respond to anti-scientific themes - tricks and old wives tales versus peer-reviewed scientific literature - for everything from bellyfat to teeth-whitening to making money to cutting car insurance costs.
What they found was remarkable. People who endorsed conspiracy theories such as “9/11 was an inside job” and “the moon landings were faked”, were also more likely to reject established scientific facts about climate change, such as “I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years has increased atmospheric temperatures to an appreciable degree.”
I was surprised by this little study- only a thousand people - because is seems to be confirming what I have already surmised: there is a real anti-science, anti-education subculture in this country and climate-change denial is just a large, vocal part of it.
The study goes further, though:
The findings provide yet more evidence that a rejection of climate science has more to with ideological views than scientific literacy, bolstering the well-supported finding that climate change scepticism is more likely to be found on the right, than on the left of politics. But they go a step further, adding an important layer of detail to the crude characterisation of climate change scepticism as a “conservative” issue.
The link between endorsing conspiracy theories and rejecting climate science facts suggests that it is the libertarian instinct to stick two fingers up at the mainstream – whatever the issue – that is important. Because a radical libertarian streak is the hallmark of free-market economics, and because free market views are popular on the political right, this is where climate change scepticism is most likely to be found.
I imagine many already figured this was the case, but here's a tidbit of scienciness to back it up.
Resistance to Climate Change is ideologically-based.
And a substantial sub-culture in America meets the criteria for a shared paranoid delusion.