"So what's going on? Why is this issue such a gender-divider?
You might think it's a trite question; but I would argue it's not, for the following reason.
There are two distinct views of why climate scepticism exists in the way it does today.
One - promulgated by many sceptics themselves - speaks to a rigorous, analytical deconstruction of a deeply-flawed scientific edifice that is maintained by a self-interested cabal of tax-hungry politicians and careerist scientists.
The other is that climate scepticism has psychological roots; that it stems from a deep-seated inability or unwillingness to accept the overwhelming evidence that humanity has built with coal and lubricated with oil its own handcart whose destination board reads "climate hell".
As one ex-scientist and now climate action advocate put it to me rather caustically a while back: "I've been debating the science with them for years, but recently I realised we shouldn't be talking about the science but about something unpleasant that happened in their childhood".
...
But a report from the US think-tank American Progress probed a little deeper and came up with a more nuanced view.
It split citizens into six categories depending on how they felt about man-made climate change, from "alarmed" through to "dismissive".
The genders were roughly equally represented in the middle groupings, but at the margins the divide was absolutely stark: "Almost two-thirds of the Dismissive are men (63%), the largest gender split among the six segments," the report concluded.
What else did the survey reveal about the "dismissive" group?
"More likely than average to be high income, well-educated, white men... much more likely to be very conservative Republicans... strongly endorse individualistic values, opposing any form of government intervention, anti-egalitarian, and almost universally prefer economic growth over environmental protection... have a specialized media diet, with a higher than average preference for media sources that reflect their own political point of view."
That paints a picture of the "dismissive" - and dominantly male - psychology, without however going to the roots of why men and women diverge so much on their tendency to be "dismissive".
...
If a rigorous deconstruction of flawed and politically-motivated science is at the bottom of climate scepticism, why aren't women getting it?
I'm out of ideas. What do you think it all means?"
I think I'll turn the floor over to two commenters on Richard Black's blog:
"7. At 2:53pm on 15 Dec 2009, ImranCan2 wrote:
Richard - Are you serious ? Jeez man .... this is completely desperate ! I have read some of the recent enviro-nutter blogs at the Guardian (Ben Goldacre) trying to explain away the fact that no one takes the AGW story seriously anymore. Any excuse under the sun ... except the obvious one. But this article takes the complete biscuit ! Trying to aportion scepticism to some ethnic/sexist/ageist/educational bracket.
How about "those that have actually thought about this ?"
There is only one reason there are sceptics in this world and that is because you have singularly failed to make any convincing case on virtually any aspect of the AGW theory.
You can't explain why it hasn't warmed for 10 years.
You can't explain why the current global temperatures are under the entire envelope of predictions for the IPCC TAR.
You can't explain why the Antarctic sea ice is growing - or for that matter why the summer minimum in the Arctic has grown 10% year on year since 2007.
You can't explain why there are less hurricanes now than in the 40's and 50's.
You can't explain why the Metoffice can get their seasonal predictions wrong 6 times in a row. Even a 4 year old has a 50/50 !
You can't explain why sea level rise has all but stopped even though you keep wailing about it accelerating.
You can't explain why the Maldives is supposedly going to drown when it clearly survived 130m sea level rise since the last ice age.
You can't explain why CO2 drives climate when it clearly follows temperature by ~800years when looking at ice core data over the past million years.
You can't explain why CO2 which is a trace gas supposedly has bigger impact than the sun (which if you stand in it for 10 minutes will burn you).
Yo be honest, I don't think I have ever heard a clear explanation about ANY question I have ever asked.
And so finally, at the very death of the AGW movement, you resort to the nonsense you have written above. Get with it man or you will be out of work in very short order - no one is going to want to employ a flatearther !"
"20. At 3:17pm on 15 Dec 2009, KZwert wrote:
Speaking as a scientist and as someone who knows that global warming is a fact, I find your 'question' deeply disturbing.
Do you have statistically valid evidence showing that there is a statistically significant basis for saying that more men are climate sceptics than women, or are you like most people speaking from personal (that is to say anecdotal) experience?
Secondly, if you have carried out survey research with a number of compartmentalised conditions and found statistically significant evidence to show that men are more sceptical than women, have you researched what is it about politicians, particularly male politicians, that makes them so sceptical when compared with women?
What form of selection process and therefore sample bias occurs in the political process and do you think it might affect the result? What form of sample bias is there in your personal experience?
What is it about (for example) BBC magazine writers that leads them to draw hasty conclusions in the absence of statistical data? Could it be that they are not scientists?
Most interestingly of all, what evidence can you adduce to show that people's views on climate change/global warming are shaped by childhood experiences? Would this be an unscientific Freudian view, or something more substantial that fits the current Darwinian paradigm?
This uncritical, new wave, yap-yap, men are more dangerous than women is very dangerous, ill thought out and lacking scientific data/reasoning. Your remarks leave me feeling deeply uncomfortable, not least because of their ad hominem nature, which does not predispose your targets to respond in any other way than in kind and, if you are to get this discussion off the tracks of personal comments, and on to the tracks of discussing the data, you had better drop the ad hominem sword.
You are doing nothing to help matters. It is childish, inane and counter productive.
Oh, and yes, there are serious problems with our climate, they were seeded about 11,000 ago when people started chopping down forests, the UK is over populated probably by more than 20 million people, economies under the current energy regime can only grow if we over populate the world, and both Cameron and Brown are fools for offering tax breaks to an uncritical electorate if they have children, but I nowhere see *you* dealing with these issues and, yes, I am hopping mad. This wasn't even a conversation piece, it was IMNSVHO silly and childish, containing far less science than I have put in my off the top of my head reply.
HTH."
Richard Black, another BBC journalist whose name goes into my little black book of BBC idiots.
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