September 08, 2019

Charming Chalmers

Despite its quite Anglo name, Chalmers University of Technology is in Sweden.  It has a Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism -- the point of which appears to be an attempt to show that climate skeptics are nuts in some way. I reproduce their blurb below. They have really drunk the Kool-Aid. And you've guessed it: Climate skeptics are RACISTS.

I am greatly looking forward to seeing their research reports.  Survey research into personality characteristics is my long suit (See my list of published academic papers here) and I have every confidence that I will be able to drive a Mack truck through whatever they produce. Leftist psychologists have been trying to prove that conservatives are nuts since 1950 so I know how sloppy their research is and how easy it is to debunk.

They do list some recent publications that they think support their beliefs but they are a hoot.  Get a load of the Abstract below.  They don't even seem to know what an abtract does.  It is just a blurb with virtually no details of the research they are supposedly abstracting.  There are no details of the sampling, no reference for the measuring instrument and no details of its reliability and validity, and no tests of statistical significance.

It must be the most incompetent abstract I have ever seen.  An abstract should be full of hard data.  This one is full of waffle. On that precedent what we can expect to come out from the Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism will be fairly brain-damaged.

Cool dudes in Norway: climate change denial among conservative Norwegian men

Olve Krange et al.

ABSTRACT

In their article ‘Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States’ the authors state: ‘Clearly the extent to which the conservative white male effect on climate change denial exists outside the US is a topic deserving investigation.’ Following this recommendation, we report results from a study in Norway. McCright and Dunlap argue that climate change denial can be understood as an expression of protecting group identity and justifying a societal system that provides desired benefits. Our findings resemble those in the US study. A total of 63 per cent of conservative males in Norway do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to 36 per cent among the rest of the population who deny climate change and global warming. Expanding on the US study, we investigate whether conservative males more often hold what we term xenosceptic views, and if that adds to the ‘cool dude-effect’.1 Multivariate logistic regression models reveal strong effects from a variable measuring ‘xenosceptic cool dudes’. Interpreting xenoscepticism as a rough proxy for right leaning views, climate change denial in Norway seems to merge with broader patterns of right-wing nationalism.

SOURCE  ​

The blurb:

With Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, as a hub, the world’s first global research network looking into climate change denial has now been established.

Scientific and political awareness of the greenhouse effect and human influence on the climate has existed for over three decades. During the 1980s, there was a strong environmental movement and a political consensus on the issue, but in recent years, climate change denial – denying that changes to the climate are due to human influence on the environment – has increased which makes the case for understanding why this is so. 

The comprehensive project: “Why don’t we take climate change seriously? A study of climate change denial”, is now collecting the world’s foremost researchers in this area. In the project, the network will examine the ideas and interests behind climate change denial, with a particular focus on right-wing nationalism, extractive industries, and conservative think tanks. The goal is to increase understanding of climate change denial, and its influence on political decision-making, but also to raise awareness among the general public, those in power, research institutes, and industry.

Right-wing nationalism’s links to climate change denial are a relatively unresearched topic, but Environmental Sociology recently published an article where Hultman and his research colleagues show the connections between conservatism, xenophobia, and climate change denial, through a study in Norway.

Through the new research project, a unique international collaborative platform for research into climate change denial, Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism (CEFORCED), will be established, which will connect around 40 of the world’s foremost scientific experts in the area and pave the way for international comparisons. The platform builds upon the world’s first conference in the subject, which Hultman and Professor Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University organized in 2016.

An important foundation of the project will be a broad, interdisciplinary view of climate change denial, linking together different disciplines such as geopolitics, environmental psychology, technological history, environmental sociology, gender research, environmental history, energy policy, environmental humanism and technology and science studies.

“We do not dismiss climate change denial as something limited to, for example, powerful, older men with strong connections to the fossil-fuels industry – even if such organized groups do play important roles. Knowledge of climate change and its causes has been around for a long time, so firstly, we also need to understand the type of reactions and everyday denials that explain why we don’t take the greenhouse effect seriously – even when we see the consequences in front of our eyes.”

SOURCE




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