Editor's note: As CCF 
Ah,
the weather. It's cold as hell out there. How cold is it? It's so cold
the CBC had to rush to assure all of us that global warming is still a
big, big problem. With record snow falls, record cold snaps, the return
of sea ice to the north, snow in the Middle East and a deep freeze in
China, any sensible person might begin to wonder and even have doubts
about global-warming theory and climate change. A little skepticism
might begin to creep into the public sphere and threaten to undermine
public belief in global warming.
If only the masses could understand thescience of global warming, they’d be alarmed, right? Wrong, accordingto the surprising results of a survey of Americans published in thejournal Risk Analysis by researchers at Texas A&M University.
After asking a national sample of more than 1,000 Americans how muchthey knew about global warming and how they felt about it, theresearchers report that respondents who are better-informed aboutglobal warming “both feel less personally responsible for globalwarming, and also show less concern for global warming.” Anotherunexpected result: “Respondents who showed a great deal of confidencethat scientists understand global warming and climate change showedsignificantly less concern for the risks of global warming than didthose who have lower trust in scientists.”
The researchers offer several possible explanations for thisapparent paradox. Paul Kellstedt, the lead author and a professor ofpolitical science at Texas A&M, told me that previous researchersfound that a campaign to increase public understanding of geneticallymodified foods didn’t lessen public fears, and that more widespread“scientific understanding” of research on embryos actually diminishedsupport for that research. “What those two studies show, and what oursdoes, too,” he said, “is that more information given to the mass publicdoes not automatically translate into more support for what are (in thepublic’s mind) controversial areas of scientific research. In fact,more information, in all three cases, seems to have the oppositeeffect, creating opposition to the research area in question.”
It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming"
conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold
weather.
All the presidential candidates say
they’re for energy independence. So why didn’t they do something about
it when they had the chance?
