End Times vs Climate Change

More than one-third of Americans believe the recent crappy weather and natural disasters are a sign of the "end times."  Not to be outdone, two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants think so. 

This from a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute of 1,018 U.S. adults, including a segment by cell phone.  There's a CNN version of the story here.

The good news, if there can be any good news?  Six-in-10 Americans think the recent weather is a function of climate change.  Some people, it seems, took science class.

It's a rather long breakdown of results, so take your time to work your way through them.  There's also a pdf of the results.  A few high points:

• Three-fourths of respondents think "there is solid evidence" the world is warming.

• Six-in-10 link such global warming to human activity.

• But 39 percent also agree "natural disasters are a sign from God."

Luckily only 2 percent think we're all going to die later this month when the Mayan calendar thing happens.  Take comfort where you can.

And the next question really gets at the crux of differences between religious beliefs and the environment.  People were asked which statement they agree with more, whether God gave us complete rights to use animals and nature to benefit humans first, or whether God wants us to "live responsibly" with animals, plants and resources not necessarily just for human benefit.  Thirty-eight percent believe nature is there for our benefit, 55 percent think it's there for us to nurture and maintain.  The difference, of course, comes down to whether you accept a literal interpretation of the Bible.  In fact, much of the results above can be traced to that.

Climate ChangeHalf of Americans get an F

I missed this survey released by some Yale folks last week that examines what people know (or think they know) about climate change.

Half of Americans get an F.  Only 8 percent nail it with an A or B grade. Sounds like my writing class.
 
Check out the site and the accompanying pdf with more details.  Given I have to be in class soon, let me just shamelessly lift a section and hope you'll take the time to read the rest.  Or, if time allows, I'll post more.

Overall, we found that 63 percent of Americans believe that global warming is happening, but many do not understand why. In this assessment, only 8 percent of Americans have knowledge equivalent to an A or B, 40 percent would receive a C or D, and 52 percent would get an F. The study also found important gaps in knowledge and common misconceptions about climate change and the earth system. These misconceptions lead some people to doubt that global warming is happening or that human activities are a major contributor, to misunderstand the causes and therefore the solutions, and to be unaware of the risks. Thus many Americans lack some of the knowledge needed for informed decision-making in a democratic society. For example, only: 

• 57% know that the greenhouse effect refers to gases in the atmosphere that trap heat;
• 50% of Americans understand that global warming is caused mostly by human activities;
• 45% understand that carbon dioxide traps heat from the Earth’s surface;
• 25% have ever heard of coral bleaching or ocean acidification.

What People Think They Know

As interesting as actual knowledge can be as a topic of research (or a blog), even more interesting are perceptions of knowledge -- not only what people know, but what people think they know.  In this case, let's talk global warming/climate change.

The fine folks at Gallup have asked: "Next, thinking about the issue of global warming, how well do you feel you understand this issue -- would you say very well, fairly well, not very well, or not at all?"  The bold face emphasis is mine.  How much do they think they know.  The results?

From 2006 to 2010, the numbers remain largely unchanged, but there is a tick upward in 2010 compared to previous years in what people think they know. See below:

              Understand

              Very Well

2006            21%

2007            22%

2008            21%

2010            26%

Now you might find this bump heartening, but I suggest it's actually a bad thing.  Let me explain.  We've seen a drop in the proportion of people with a clue about science and who doubt global climate change -- sometimes for good reasons, sometimes because for silly partisan ones.  But I suspect this has bumped up the perception that people are knowledgeable when, more likely, they confuse strong feelings about a topic with knowledge about that topic.

I know of what I speak. I've done many studies looking at actual knowledge and how it compares with perceived knowledge.  The two are correlated, but imperfectly.  And often emotion gets in the way and makes people feel informed when, instead, they only think of themselves as informed.  While I don't have data here to explore this further, my educated hunch is this bump in 2010 of perceived knowledge about global climate change masks the role of ideological silliness, partisan pettiness, and a sense of being informed through emotion than really being informed. 

It'd be a fascinating topic.  Hmmmm.  Maybe time to go there.  Off to search for good, solid data.

Knowing When It's Warm, or Not

The Pew Center tries to tease out why there has been a significant drop in the sense of danger people feel about climate change.  In the report, one graph stands out:

Why do fewer Americans believe the earth is warming? No single factor emerges from Pew Research Center surveys, but rather a range of possible explanations, including a sour economy and, perhaps, a cooler than normal summer in parts of the United States.

Makes sense.  People know based in a large part on personal experience, so a cooler-than-normal summer means you'd have more doubts about global warming, at least enough of a doubt to say so in a survey.

And people engage in interesting mental calculus.  If the economy sucks, and global warming is going to cost us more to fix, then we can put off global warming until the economy improves.  Do the math and you're less concerned about global warming.  Bingo!

The table below includes the "intriguing finding" that maybe weather played a factor.  Decide for yourself, but there seems to be some small association here.  You'd have to track this over time to really tap into it.  An interesting idea.

Knowledge about Global Warming

Rather than measure and examine plain old knowledge, some scholars take that extra step.  This study published this year in Science Communication of what people know about global warming is one example, where the authors constructed a "knowledge complexity" dependent variable as well as that old standard -- accuracy -- and then, and this is kinda neat, an interaction term of the two (complexity x accuracy).

Okay, so what's knowledge complexity?   Here's a bit from the methods section:

That is, a schema may be considered complex if it contains a variety of domain-specific elements that share conceptual linkages; thus, a measurement of cognitive complexity should seek to measure the number of elements and the degree to which they are associated.

 There are a lot of results.  Go through them yourself if you want specifics, but a bunch of variables in the multiple regression significantly predict knowledge complexity.  Education, obviously.  A variable called Understanding (how much you understood info about it).  Information seeking styles, yes, the effort one puts into it, no surprise, and a variable called media sources (the number of sources used).  All those, significant.  Not significant?  Individual media exposure items like newspapers, TV, and the web.  Not sure why they are significant but not the overall measure of number of sources, except perhaps for some multicollinearity issues.


In a final table the authors break down the complexity variable into parts (elements and connections). You don't learn an awful lot from this, but helpful nonetheless if one wants to explore this approach to knowledge. 

It is interesting to see media sources is a positive predictor of the "elements" dependent variable but not the "connections" dv.  In other words, the more sources you use, the more "things" you remember about global warming but you don't see any more connections than someone with fewer sources.  That's interesting and deserves deeper thought.

What Global Warming?

Fewer people see "global warming" as a serious problem, according to a new Pew study, down from 44 percent last year to 35 percent this year.

To me, part of the problem is the lousy label "global warming" versus "climate change."  Come winter you get all these comedians who, on a cold day, wonder "where's all the global warming, yuk yuk," misunderstanding that it's more about how warming in some parts of the world screw up the climates elsewhere. 

Plus given the economy, I suspect what qualifies as a "serious problem" has changed in the minds of many.

And it's not so much a partisan thing when tapping what people know about science.  The graph to the right shows that regardless of partisan attachment, seeing "global warming" as a serious problem has decreased.  Heck, even those tree-hugging Dems have gone down from 2006 to 2009.  Do they lose their membership card to the Democratic Party?

I always look to the Independents.  They don't see it as important either.  That suggests the trend is less political and more (1) a response to real-world problems of war and economic disaster or (2) a complete misunderstanding of the science.

Global Weather Change

Yes, the Earth is warming -- or rather, the weather is becoming wildly unpredictable but at key points it is warming, melting the polar icecap, and wrecking eventual havoc on coastal cities and whole nations that happen to lie just above sea level. And recent scientific studies that examine ice samples from thousands of years ago confirm that this event is unique, not cyclical, and can only be explained by gases we've created.

In an example of what people don't know -- I give you science.

A new study by Pew finds that somehow Christian evangelicals skipped science class. Thirty-one percent don't think the Earth is warming, despite what nearly every reputable scientist in the field says. I know Republicans hate science, and the stupid evolution debate has long proved that Christian conservatives hate science, but now you have to wonder if they also hate the Earth as well.

Dumb. Plain dumb. Inexplicably dumb. On a lot of topics I can present balance, but as a practicing Christian who attends church every Sunday I draw the line here with, well, the truly dumb, dumber, and dumbest. The graph shows who they are.