Peter Sinclair, who makes the excellent and informative “Climate Crock of the Week” videos, has just published one entitled “Climate Change: Meet The Scientists”. Watch it, and be informed:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZzwRwFDXw0]
Click here to view more of Sinclair’s videos on YouTube, or go to his website at Greenman studio.com.
sorry, but I don’t think demonizing these people is going to help, neither do I think it is useful to convince people that only a very narrow selection of “climate-ology” scientists are equipped to have serious opinions …
demonizing people who disagree with you dramatically cuts down & polarizes any communication – strengthens their entrenchment in fact, and leaving the serious opinions to “scientific experts” leaves out many important vectors or axes of argument, in particular spiritual and (as is more common on the secular side) aesthetic dimensions, which will be (it seems to me) very important when we get to looking for solutions that are really solutions and not just stop-gaps
an interesting statistic I picked up (on my second reading of 🙂 Hoggan’s ‘Climate Cover-up’ (page 153) is that only 19% of college-educated Republicans believe global warming is anthropogenic – what does this mean? to me it means that they have not been properly approached with whatever argument will move them to accept the facts (to Hoggan it means they are reading the wrong newspaper which is, to me, typical of his shallow thinking)
it is not at all surprising to me that college-educated people do not always accept facts, a college education is not what it’s cracked up to be, but here’s a fact for you – it’s very hard to convince anyone of anything if you start with the explicit assumption that he or she is an idiot, even if they are, and here’s another one – if this majority of these (for example) college-educated Republicans are not quickly convinced then America will do nothing … uh oh.
Hi David –
Your comments had me rewatching the video – and I don’t think “demonizing” is the word that I would use for what Sinclair is doing in this video, although you might get me to agree with you that his tone can be slightly patronizing. Is it demonizing someone to show that someone who claims publicly to be a scientist and a meteorologist isn’t either? Is showing the actual academic record of someone like who Tim Ball exaggerates and “over-estimates” his credentials in the climatology field demonizing them? Once again, David, we will have to agree to disagree!
Re: convincing people, including college-educated Republicans, of the danger we are facing, have you seen the CRED guide, “The Psychology Of Climate Change Communication”? One of the points that is made is that those who are communicating about cc need to make it personal, as people connect the dots when they hear how another person is suffering (an individual story is better than the story of a group of people suffering). Also, the guide points out that people respond better to the term “air pollution” than the less-easily-identified “climate change”. While those of us who are aware of the dangers we are facing might wish human psychology was different, it just is what it is. The CRED guide can be accessed at: http://www.cred.columbia.edu/guide/.
Cheers!