It’s like I have been saying: Only this time, the warning against GWH is in Science. But the authors still miss the bigger point. From “Apocalypse Soon? Dire Messages Reduce Belief in Global Warming by Contradicting Just World Beliefs:”
Though scientific evidence for the existence of global warming continues to mount, in the U.S. and other countries belief in global warming has stagnated or even decreased in recent years. One possible explanation for this pattern is that information about the potentially dire consequences of global warming threatens deeply held beliefs that the world is just, orderly, and stable. Individuals overcome this threat by denying ordiscounting the existence of global warming, ultimately resulting in decreased willingness to counteract climate change. Two experiments provide support for this explanation of the dynamics of belief in global warming, suggesting that less dire messaging could be more effective for promoting public understanding of climate change research.
This is just snobbery. We irrational peons can’t shake our belief in a just world so we ignore the evidence.
Baloney. The reason hysteria makes people less likely to believe in warming is because it jumps the shark. Rather than engage in reasonable discourse, we are told that we have never faced such a calamitous threat in human history—extinction, even!—and the like. People know that they are being panicked into embracing radical and unwise policies intended to undermine national sovereignty, depress economies, and redistribute wealth. Moreover, they are acutely aware of the pronounced politicization of the field, they know that heterodox views have been treated with too much disdain, and don’t cotton to leaders declaring an ongoing debate “over”—particularly when they also understand that so much of it is based on computer projections, some of which have already proved wrong—about a system as complex as climate and its impact on weather.
But the authors are right: Global warming hysteria reduces the trust of the people in warming science. A more sober discourse would serve the interests of those who seek to persuade us that the problem really is a matter of urgent public concern.
