Week 3 - climate change denialist

Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap’s “Cool Dudes: The Denialist of Climate Change Among Conservative White Males in the United States” and the authors of “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy” explains the average climate-change denialist, and why there is a gap between scientific consensus and the public opinion. In the “Cool Dudes” article the authors did a study to see if most climate change denialist are actually white conservatives. The study found that “conservative white makes are more likely than other adults to espouse climate change denial.” They set out to argue that most white conservative males are more likely to influence climate change denialism and this study proves it. They also found that white conservative males are more likely to spread their beliefs via media, radio, newspapers, and etc. “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy” explains how a big reason that this gap exist is because of internet blogs that deny climate change. The authors use the pilot bears as example. The scientific evidence clearly points to the polar bear’s habitat lost and death being due to polar ice caps melting from global warming. However these blogs ignore these facts inorder to “cast doubt on other established ecological consequences of AGW aggravating the  consensus gap.” A huge reason for this gap is due to public doubt; doubt cause by these blogs ignoring the facts about climate change.

These two don’t really surprise me much. For years and even know white conservative males have been the main power source in the US. They have always been the majority in power and always been afraid of change. They have taken their methods of controlling us through fear to controlling our minds through media. However I am surprise to know that their was such a broad gap between scientific consensus and the public opinion on climate change. Growing up my mom, school, and peers were always very educated on climate change. However some people don’t have that access to education; therefore these blogs easily Persuay them. In the end I feel it becomes our job to educate those, who don’t know, about how real climate change is and what we can do to stop it.


Vocab:
Espouse - “Adopt or support(a cause, belief, or way of life)
Consensus - “A general Agreement”
AGW - “Anthropogenic Global Warming”