Official: the more scientifically illiterate you are, the more you believe in 'climate change'
By James Delingpole
The Telegraph (UK)
Last updated: May 31st, 2012
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100161868/official-the-more-scientifically-illiterate-you-are-the-more-you-believe-in-climate-change/
Before I head off for my well-earned rest after my last well-earned rest, I can't resist drawing your attention to this delicious story by Lewis Page in the Register.
Turns out that a stunt arranged by the US climate alarmist establishment to discredit sceptics has backfired horribly:
A US government-funded survey has found that Americans with higher levels of scientific and mathematical knowledge are more sceptical regarding the dangers of climate change than their more poorly educated fellow citizens.
The results of the survey are especially remarkable as it was plainly not intended to show any such thing: Rather, the researchers and trick-cyclists who carried it out were doing so from the position that the "scientific consensus" (carbon-driven global warming is ongoing and extremely dangerous) is a settled fact, and the priority is now to find some way of getting US voters to believe in the need for urgent, immediate and massive action to reduce CO2 emissions.
Needless to say, the authors of the report fail to draw the logical conclusion from all this. Rather than see it as further proof that Anthropogenic Global Warming theory has about as much in the way of legs as the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they instead ascribe it – a bit like Steve Jones did in his embarrassing and discredited report for the BBC Trust on the BBC's lamentable science reporting – on false consciousness.
What's needed, the authors of the report appear to believe, is not better science – but more PR and spin.
Page reports:
Given that the profs had assumed from the start that scepticism is wrong, this forced them to the conclusion that simply teaching people more science and giving them more facts and numbers is not a good idea as it will lead them into bad (sceptical) decisions. They write:
This form of reasoning can have a highly negative impact on collective decision making … it is very harmful to collective welfare for individuals in aggregate to form beliefs this way.
[AH HA ... here you have it all in a nutshell ... this is what the "Man-Made Global Warming" fraud is truly all about - COLLECTIVE DECISION MAKING! - just like we've been saying all along! "Collective" ... as in the Communist "Collective," don'tcha know! These man-made global warming snake oil salesmen are in a dither because thoughtful people are rejecting their lies and that endangers their insidious plans to make and enforce their tyrannical decisions on everybody else. Man-made global warming is a pathetic hoax peddled by Marxist fraudsters. 
B.]
One aim of science communication, we submit, should be to dispel this tragedy … A communication strategy that focuses only on transmission of sound scientific information, our results suggest, is unlikely to do that. As worthwhile as it would be, simply improving the clarity of scientific information will not dispel public conflict …
Thus it is, according to the assembled profs, that the US government should seek to fund a communication strategy on climate change which is not focused on sound scientific information.
It does not follow, however, that nothing can be done … Effective strategies include use of culturally diverse communicators, whose affinity with different communities enhances their credibility, and information-framing techniques that invest policy solutions with resonances congenial to diverse groups. Perfecting such techniques through a new science of science communication is a public good of singular importance.
These people really have no shame, do they?
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