Perhaps this explains why Warmists tend to have the largest “carbon footprints” and refuse to practice what they screech about
Trusting Science Leads to Complacency About Climate Change
Here at Care2, we care a great deal about climate change — and we also care a great deal about science, which provides much of the basis for our understanding of climate change. You might intuitively think that our understanding of and belief in science is part of what drives us to take individual action to halt climate change, but research from Amsterdam suggests, oddly, that just the opposite is true.
Research subjects with a high degree of faith in science were actually less likely to engage in individual actions to address global climate concerns. Shockingly, the study suggests, the best way to get people to take action on climate change may not lie in educating them about the science.
The mechanism through which this phenomenon occurs is fascinating, and, like other psychological events, it explains a great deal about human behavior. Put simply, people who put their trust in science also believe that science has the capacity to solve climate change — in which case their actions as individuals don’t matter, because researchers will figure out how to fix the problem before it crosses the final divide and can’t be resolved. Why sort your recycling when thousands of brilliant minds are being put to the task of controlling the climate before it’s too late?
Of course, the problem is that Warmists only believe certain science and scientists, and refuse to even entertain that they might be wrong.
The study has real implications in terms of how we teach climate change to students and address groups on the issue. Given the compensatory control issue, the best thing to do may be to refocus individuals and to get them thinking about personal control. Instructor Diana Liverman unconsciously enacted these changes in her classes before this research came out:
Enacting personal control still won’t get Warmists to practice what they screech. And, quite frankly, the study about complacency also misses the mark, because this is not about science, but about enacting far-left policies of control.
