How to change the minds of climate deniers
Recent polls have found the number of people who believe
climate change is real has jumped. What convinced them?
Kate Yoder for Grist
Sun 3 Feb 2019 10.00 GMT
For some people, the awakening comes in science class.
In the Reddit thread titled “Former climate change deniers,
what changed your mind?” the most popular comment comes from chucklesthe2nd
(probably not his real name). Chuck, as we’ll call him, essentially inherited
his dad’s views on climate change.
“I grew up actively and obnoxiously denying climate change
because my dad told me it wasn’t real,” Chuck wrote last year. Then, during a
high school science course, he learned about feedback loops: “It suddenly hit
me. As the atmosphere heats up, more CO2 is released, which heats up the
atmosphere, which releases more CO2, which heats up the atmosphere, which
releases more CO2, which heats up the atmosphere, which releases more
CO2……etc.”
It looks like Chuck is at the forefront of an encouraging
trend. A recent Monmouth poll found that 78% of Americans believe climate
change is real and leading to sea-level rise and more extreme weather. That’s
up from 70% three years ago. The headline-grabbing takeaway: a majority of
Republicans – 64% – are now believers, a 15-point jump from 2015.
To learn more about these converts, researchers at Yale and
George Mason crunched the numbers from a blend of responses to surveys
conducted between 2011 and 2015. They found that 8% of Americans said they had
recently changed their opinion on the matter, according to a new analysis from
Yale University and George Mason University. Nearly all of the recent converts
said global warming had become a bigger concern for them.
But who are these people, anyway, and what’s their deal?
Let’s take a closer look.
“All kinds of people
are changing their minds” and accepting the science, regardless of age,
education level, or political affiliation, said Jennifer Marlon, a research
scientist at Yale and an author of the new analysis. “I was surprised to see
how consistent it is.”
There are some clear trends. One interesting tidbit: 11% of
adults 65 or older reported that they’d recently shifted their views, more than
any other age group.
So do retirees just have more time to read the news or what?
It might have something to do with having been around for longer. With age
comes wisdom, as the saying goes, or at least perspective. “You have a longer
baseline,” Marlon said. “I’m noticing that myself – I remember what the winters
were like when I was growing up, and there was really more snow.”
There also appears to be a gender dynamic: women were 4%
more likely than men to say they had recently shifted their opinion. (The hard
part about changing your mind is, of course, admitting that you were wrong.)
To try to explain this gender gap, Marlon pointed to a Yale
analysis from 2018 that showed American women tend to be a bit more worried
about global warming than men. Women also report having less certainty about
the science behind it. The less sure we are about our opinions, the more easily
we can be swayed by evidence.
Reality bites
Researchers combed through open-ended survey responses and
identified three main reasons why Americans were shifting their perspectives on
climate change. They’d either personally experienced the effects of global
warming, like extreme weather and warmer seasons, or realized how serious the
problem was, or simply become more informed (hey, that’s Reddit Chuck!).
“We seem to have more major storms,” one responder said.
Another noted, “We don’t get as much snow.” Others said they wanted their
grandchildren to be able to see glaciers, or that they’d seen more about global
warming on TV.
It’s in line with other research that shows extreme weather
is turning into the latest symbol of climate change. Over the past decade, the
number of free associations people made linking climate change with the weather
has quadrupled, according to analysis from Yale and the University of
Westminster, London.
Want to convince a climate skeptic?
A word of warning: people don’t change their minds easily
about controversial issues.
Marlon recommends helping people make the connection
themselves. People overwhelmingly report in surveys that they want to learn
more about climate change, she said. They just might not have the time or
initiative to look up that information.
Keep in mind that it’s not exactly easy to admit that you’re
wrong. If a friend shares fake news about climate change, it’s probably more
effective to reach out to them in private than to attack them in front of their
friends and family on Facebook. “To some extent, changing your mind can appear
to be losing face,” Hugo Mercier, coauthor of The Enigma of Reason, told WBUR’s
Here & Now. “It may be easier for them to change their mind if they do it
less publicly,” he said.
You might have to prepare yourself for some thorny
conversations. Note that climate change isn’t just about facts – it’s also
about politics. While a majority of Republicans already believe climate change
is happening, caused by human activity, and worth addressing, many
conservatives are skeptical about climate policy because it’s seen as liberals’
pet issue. “This tribalism leads to political fights over differences between
the parties that either do not exist or are vastly exaggerated,” wrote the
psychology professors Leaf Van Boven and David Sherman in the New York Times.
Hundreds of other studies have shown that the best way to
get people to stop demonizing each other is to introduce them to the actual
human beings they disagree with, as I wrote last month. So if you’re trying to
get someone to open their mind, you might consider the idea of a having tough,
nuanced conversation … and actually hearing them out.
Good, old-fashioned, respectful debate? I’d take that over a
rage fest or shout-a-thon any day.
This story originally appeared in Grist
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