It appears that trying to promote concern over ‘global warming’ is a risky strategy that can backfire badly (‘Efforts to Boost Climate Change Concern may have Opposite Effect, Risk Analysis Study Shows ’, E-Wire, February 27):

“Mass media efforts to raise American public concern about climate change - such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the ‘scientific consensus’ media drumbeat - ironically may be having just the opposite effect, according to a new study appearing in the scientific journal Risk Analysis.”

The paper in question is Paul Kellstedt, Sammy Zahran, & Arnold Vedlitz 2008: ‘Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA.’ Risk Analysis 28(1), February 2008 [published by the McLean-based Society for Risk Analysis ].

The aim of the research was to examine the underlying assumption that providing information about global warming - in effect, taking the so-called ‘scientific consensus’ and popularizing it - would lead to increased public concern about the risks of global warming.

The authors report precisely the opposite, namely that the “... more informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming” and that “confidence in scientists has unexpected effects: respondents with high confidence in scientists feel less responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.”  Read the rest...

Write comment
Name:
Email:
Subject:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."