hpeer wrote:
Jeff wrote:
hpeer wrote:

Something else interesting is a recent Yale/George Mason report on
American attitudes towards climate change. It seems that the deniers
fall into a fairly well defined demographic:
Well paid
Home owners
Older
Well educated
White
Men

research.yale.edu/environment/uploads/CCAmericanMind.pdf

You might ask yourself if your opinion is because of your reasoned
and enlightened thoughts - or because of the group you belong to.


Fascinating report; it will take some time to go through, it but I
think you're mis-reading it. The only demographics I saw were with
regard to ALL respondents, not just the deniers.

Ah,my mistake. Similar report by Yale. The attached URL should take
you to the one with the demographics. They are in the back end. What I
found most interesting was the comparisons of TRUST. These guys don't
trust anyone excepting, perhaps, family and friends.

environment.yale.edu/uploads/6Americas2009.pdf

If fact, the report seems to be saying the the overwhelming majority
believe that Global Climate Change is real and something should be
done about it, while the deniers are a small minority, under 10% in
most of the categories.

Correct, however almost no one IS doing anything about it. This comes
out in the new report.

Since almost any national survey will have about 15% supporting any
outlandish claim (we faked the moon landings, Area 51 aliens, etc.)
its a little hard to prove anything by looking at the demographics of
a small group of deniers.

Agree. I was not trying to PROVE anything other than to ask the
gentlemen to question the source of their beliefs. Are they considered
opinions or because that is what their cohort things - peer pressure.



Ah! This is also an interesting study. But I'm not sure I buy the
"peer pressure" theory unless you include geography. For instance, the
education level for "alarmed" is not very different from "dismissive"
and income level could be explained by the gender difference, etc. Much
more significant factors are living in the "red state" areas.

I was struck by the "I do not need more information" response: 73% for
dismissive, much lower for everyone else. Its clear that the deniers
have made up their mind and are not interested in any "facts." And they
don't pay attention to energy conservation information, either.

The "trust" questions really tell it all: its clear that for deniers
this is based more on politics than reality. And of course, Fox News is
"often" more than twice the national average; Rush is 7 times the
average! This is in line with not wanting real information.