Comedy | September 14, 2011 | 7 comments

Ignorance quantified

source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/american-public-opinion-and-climate-change

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ampersand
Researchers at Yale University have been tracking American opinion on climate change for some years now and showing how it differs according to political allegiance. It has not previously looked at the opinions of respondents who identify with the Tea Party.

Tea Partiers, unsurprisingly, tend not to believe in the phenomenon (the 53% who don't believe in global warming just outnumber the 52% who don't believe humans evolved from other animals) and are the most strongly opposed to all sorts of government action on the issue (yet quite keen, like majorities in all sorts of polling, on research into new energy sources).
They also distinguish themselves in their assessment of their knowledgeability, with 30% considering themselves very well informed on the issue and a majority happy that it needs no more information on the subject.
Where this certainty comes from the poll does not really reveal; when asked about possible sources of information on the subject, from television weathermen to scientists to the government, Tea Partiers were much more likely to react with strong distrust than any other group. However, they were not asked about blogs, and it is interesting that they were far more likely to say they knew about "Climategate", a massive release of e-mails by climate scientists that has been a staple of the blogosphere, than any other group.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/american-public-opinion-and-cl...
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    Community,   Culture,   Comedy,   Opinion,   4 more
  2. tags:
    tea party,  Creationism,  climate change denial
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7 comments // Ignorance quantified

  • maasanova
    • 0
      maasanova  

    • It's got nothing to do with Tea Parties. Plenty of intelligence people don't buy into global warming fearmongering

      Climategate was simply the final nail in what many climate skeptics suspected all along; that global warming promoting scientists had been lying and falsify their climate claims in order to arrive at a predetermined conclusion on climate.

      It's rather amusing to see Al Gore bumbling around, launching into profanity-laced rants, calling people racists for not believing in global warming, asking for controls of people's Facebook and Twitter accounts for his televangelism efforts to get people to believe again.

      The guy is completely off his rocker. You guys should have listened to the alt-media when we advised that you abandon the climate change Hindenburg two years ago. Good lucka warmistas, you're going to need it!

    • 9 months ago
  • ampersand
    • +1
      ampersand  
    • maasanova:

      Hmmm.."plenty of intelligence people"? Then, an ad hominem attack on Al Gore.
      Sounds like we have a winners, folks!
      (Please file this under the undiscovered joys of trolling for trolls.)

    • 9 months ago
  • maasanova
  • ampersand
  • kennymotown
  • ampersand
  • ampersand
    • +1
      ampersand  

    • I guess it's not surprising that 52% of self-identified Tea Partiers don't believe in evolution;--a statistic only slightly outdone by the number of Tea Partiers who don't believe in science that supports climate change (53%).

      They are, according to this poll, also perfectly happy in their constructed bubble of ignorance; describing themselves in their own views as, "well-informed."

      Trying to educate the willfully ignorant, or attempting to "reason" with them when that's not a language they speak, is a fool's errand.
      As Steve Miller so succinctly said:
      "Don't try to teach a pig to sing--it wastes your time, and annoys the pig."

    • 9 months ago
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