A truly bizarre study by psychologists from the University of Geneva in Switzerland is looking at ways to “inoculate” the public against what they call “climate disinformation.” The study — “Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries” — was published on November 30 in Nature Human Behaviour.
The authors look to diagnose what is causing what they term “(anti)science belief formation,” and present strategies to combat the disbelief of the supposed “settled” science of climate change induced by mankind.
The study’s abstract makes dubious claims about the climate change debate.
“Decades after the scientific debate about the anthropogenic causes of climate change was settled, climate disinformation still challenges the scientific evidence in public discourse,” the study declares.
Perhaps it’s because the “settled” science that the authors refer to is questioned by so many reputable scientists, including Nobel Prize-winner John Clauser, Princeton physicist Will Happer, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and dozens of others.
The study’s authors purport to have “experimentally investigated” psychological factors across 12 nations looking for reasons why some have rejected the notion of anthropogenic climate change and the alleged “scientific consensus” that the Earth is doomed by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.
“For instance, these messages can take the form of an unfounded questioning of the scientific consensus or an overestimation of the socio-financial burden of climate policies,” said Tobia Spampatti, a PhD student and research assistant in the Consumer Decision and Sustainable Behavior Lab and one of the study’s authors.
The study’s authors believe that, instead of simply trusting the words of climate-zealot scientists, people tend to trust their own intuition when looking at the doom-and-gloom climate change claims.
“As individuals, we do not process scientific messages as neutral receivers of information, but by weighing them up against our prior beliefs, desired outcomes, emotional ties and socio-cultural and ideological backgrounds. Depending on the configuration of these psychological factors, anti-scientific beliefs can be amplified and become resistant to correction,” Spampatti said.
Not surprisingly, the study’s authors cite the United Nations and their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the ultimate authority on the issue of climate change.
“The sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) unequivocally declared that climate change is real and that humans are driving it,” the study reports. “Whereas 97–99 percent of climate scientists agree about the human causation of climate change, one third of the global population doubts or denies its anthropogenic roots.”
According to the study’s authors, repeated “disinformation” on climate change is supposedly a main driver of this problem of unbelief.
“We found that the protective effect of our strategies is small and disappears after the second exposure to disinformation. Climate disinformation used in this study has a negative influence on people’s belief in climate change and their sustainable behaviour,” said co-author of the study Tobias Brosch. “Disinformation is therefore extremely persuasive, seemingly more so than scientific information. Only the ‘accuracy’ group, who were asked to think in depth about the accuracy of the information they encountered online, showed a slight advantage.”
Among the study’s “inoculation” strategies are to explain “that among climate scientists there is virtually no disagreement that humans are causing climate change”; to make “salient the trustworthiness of IPCC scientists in terms of climate change science and mitigation actions”; and to create “a stronger link between climate mitigation actions and the diversity of moral convictions.”
So, continue to parrot the lie that 97 percent of scientists agree about the UN’s version of climate change, attempt to instill a trust of the corrupt UN, and make climate action moral in the minds of those who may doubt its veracity.
Needless to say, the study has some problems. Despite its pretensions, it has a feel of desperation to it.
“It is clearly written by ‘social science’ ‘researchers’ whose knowledge of the underlying subject matter is on a level of grade school indoctrination,” wrote Charles Rotter at Watts Up With That?
Other climate realists suggest that the study’s authors may have been disappointed in its conclusions.
“I suspect this result was dismaying to the study’s authors,” Dr. H. Sterling Burnett, a climate scientist with the Heartland Institute, told The New American. “In the end, contrary to what the authors would have one believe, key facts about climate change are in dispute, and the costs of proposed climate actions in terms of economic growth and human freedom are large. The general public, as represented by those tested, seems to recognize this and are resistant to climate bullying and false claims made by alarmists.”
It’s gratifying to note that, as this study shows, the public at large is not reacting to climate change with the overarching panic that these researchers and other climate zealots would like to see. Despite what the media tells us, pushing back against rampant climate alarmism is having an effect on the ongoing climate debate.
“In survey after survey where, despite politicians’ insistence that climate change is a top issue, the general public consistently ranks it last or near the bottom of issues of importance that must be dealt with now,” Burnett said. “These scholars tried a series of ‘inoculation’ strategies to generate more concern among participants and conformity with the so-called consensus view that humans are causing dangerous climate change and must end fossil fuel use to prevent disaster. These inoculations largely failed to move people’s opinions, which gives me hope for society.”
