https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/08/29/news/fact-checking-isnt-enough-change-beliefs-about-climate-change-mitigation-report
[There are also numbers of people who believe the Earth is flat, Elvis
Presley is still alive, and that the Moon landings are all a hoax. To
me the key issue in the climate change debate is that there is still a
debate, which is fostered primarily by supporters of the fossil fuel
industry who also have the financial resources to drive corporate
mass-media content and slant. So, along with many others, I'll keep on
trying to provide a base for rational discussion and debunk the idea
that we can't make the necessary changes.]
More than a quarter of Canadians don't believe climate change is real
and human-caused, and fact-checking is unlikely to change their minds
about what needs to be done to combat it.
The findings come from a new report released Thursday by the Digital
Democracy Project, a joint initiative led by the Ottawa-based Public
Policy Forum and the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill
University. The report also found a sharp partisan divide in support for
climate science — nearly half (45 per cent) of Conservative supporters
were classified as climate skeptics, compared to 22 per cent of Liberal
supporters and 16 per cent of NDP supporters.
"People bring to any kind of information that is being presented to them
by supposedly objective experts — whether it's journalists or professors
doing a survey — any number, any amount, of doubts and an ability to
rehearse arguments against their side or in favour of their side," said
Peter Loewen, a political science professor at the University of Toronto
who led the study’s survey analysis team.
"So it's possible what we are seeing here is people are not accepting an
update on the first case, which gives us a sense as researchers of how
much work needs to be done and may give journalists a sense of how much
work needs to be done on facts."
The report, released Wednesday, is the second in a series examining the
media ecosystem and its relationship with factors such as partisanship,
political knowledge and concern over policy issues.
The findings are based on three data sources: an online survey of 1,554
Canadian citizens 18 and older conducted between Aug. 17 and Aug. 23,
more than 2 million tweets collected from June 1 to Aug. 23 and nearly
39,000 news stories pertaining to Canadian politics and policy-related
issues.
The report notes that Twitter isn't a good source for gauging public
opinion, as only about 23 per cent of Canadians use it. However, the
social network is a popular tool for journalists and political leaders,
so comparing it with public opinion polls allows the researchers to see
how the conversation among Twitter users is different from the general
public.
The Digital Democracy Project's first report from earlier this month
found that the environment is a top issue for voters ahead of this
fall's federal election. Thursday's report found the environment remains
high priority — despite the fact that more than one in four Canadians
were classified as "climate skeptics," meaning they either donʼt believe
thereʼs evidence that the Earth is getting warmer at all, or they
believe itʼs just part of the planet's natural course.
The environment was the most important political issue for 17 per cent
of survey respondents in Wednesday's report. It was tied with health
care and came second only to the economy, ranked a top issue by 20 per
cent of respondents.
The "unprecedented" attention on environmental issues and climate change
has been sustained for at least three months, said Aengus Bridgman, lead
political analyst from the Digital Democracy Project's online data team
and a PhD candidate in political science at McGill University.
The authors found most Canadians believe the climate is changing, but a
significant proportion don't agree with the scientific consensus on
what's causing it.
When asked to choose a statement about Earthʼs temperature “that comes
closest to your view,” 73 per cent of respondents agreed with the
statement that aligns with the scientific consensus on climate change:
“The Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as
burning fossil fuels.”
However, more than a quarter of respondents, 27 per cent, said there's
either "no solid evidence that the Earth is getting warmer," or that the
planet is warming "mostly because of natural patterns in the Earth's
environment." Those findings mirror the results of a November 2018
survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute.
“A large majority of Canadians accept the scientific consensus on
climate change, but there appear to be partisan and ideological
differences that mirror public opinion dynamics in the United States,”
the report notes.
The report also shows clear partisan divides on questions related to
environmental and climate change mitigation policies, suggesting that
"partisans of left- and right-leaning parties may be talking past each
other on the environment to some degree, stressing different aspects of
environmental policy as political and electoral issues," the report said.
Building on the first report, which found that increased media
consumption was associated with a greater likelihood of giving incorrect
responses to policy questions, the new study examined whether giving
people correct information would improve their policy-related knowledge.
To do that, the researchers told half of survey respondents that Canada
isn't on track to meet its Paris Climate Accord targets. Those who were
given the factual information were more likely to correctly answer a
related question, regardless of partisan affiliation, than those who didn't.
However, the study also found that having correct information about
climate change didn't influence support for different types of climate
mitigation policy. For example, support for the carbon tax was nearly
the same among participants who received the correct information (35 per
cent) than among those who didn’t (36 per cent).
“What this suggests, at the very least, is that correct information
about facts and related policies plays a limited role in determining
one’s support or opposition to those policies,” the report concludes.
This finding is consistent with previous research, which indicates that
improving scientific literacy about specific issues is not a sufficient
strategy for changing deeply-held beliefs about those issues. This
research has shown that people don't usually form opinions and beliefs
based only on facts — so facts alone are rarely enough to change our minds.
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