An Australian study has outed climate change deniers as falling within one of two categories - radical free marketeers or nutjobs.
The paper, titled “NASA faked the moon landing – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”, was based on a survey of more than 1000 visitors to blogs dedicated to discussion of climate change.
“We find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science,” the paper says. “We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings.”
The paper says that a staunch belief in free markets was an overwhelmingly strong factor in the rejection of climate science and was a stronger factor than conspiratorial thinking.
3 comments:
Good catch!
Either way we're dealing with people who cannot be reasoned with, and as such, cripple necessary action on climate change.
It seems that the free-marketeers have entered into something of a Faustian pact: the embrace of an absolutist ideology in exchange for shackled minds, an irony I doubt few of them can appreciate.
You're right, Boris. Among those who cannot be reasoned with, an ideological absolutist as Lorne mentions, is our own prime minister. You cannot conceivably promote the sale and massive expansion in production of the filthiest fossil fuel, second only to brown coal, and maintain any belief in climate change.
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