The Republican Brain (4) - Record-Searchlight (blog)

Now if you are a good lawyer, and let us imagine you are, you aren't ready to quit. I mean if you have more evidence, why not use it? For you would surely want to show the ladies and gentlemen of the jury this graphic clearly showing that only 3 out of 100 climate scientists disagree with the consensus that humans are responsible for global climate change.

For this study, researchers surveyed 1,372 climate scientists who are actively conducting scientific investigations in the field and found 97-98% of them "support the tenets of ACC (anthropogenic climate change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," and furthermore, they found the climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers who were not convinced of ACC were "substantially below that of the convinced researchers."

In other words, there was a positive correlation between expertise and prominence and agreement with the consensus. Lower expertise correlated with denialism. The more you knew and understood and published the more likely you accepted the consensus. The less you knew and understood and published, the more likely you would fall into the very tiny and kind of lonely denier camp.

You could also mention to your jury Naomi Oreskes' famous study in which she looked at nearly 1000 studies on global climate change and failed to find a single one that disagreed with the consensus that humans are warming the planet.

You could also tell the jury that nearly 500 members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University were randomly selected.

"The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that "currently available scientific evidence" substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; and 84% believe global climate change poses a moderate to very great danger."

And then you might present the jury with the rather interesting Bray and von Storch survey of 2058 climate scientists from 34 different countries. Getting a 10 percent response from such a survey is about the norm and they did a little better at 18.2% or a total of 373 responses. The survey was composed of 76 questions all related to climate science. Less than 2 percent of respondents disagreed with the view that humans are responsible for climate change.

Doran and Zimmerman's survey at University of Illinois at Chicago polled over 10,000 Earth scientists and "received replies from 3,146." The study found "76 out of 79 climatologists who 'listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change' believed that mean global temperatures had risen compared to pre-1800s levels." Also, "Seventy-five of 77 believed that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures."

"Among all respondents, 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature."

Now here is the interesting part. It turns out meteorologists and economic geologists "were among the biggest doubters," with only 64 and 47 percent, respectively, "believing in significant human involvement." The authors concluded by stating: "It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes."

You could go on but this should be enough to convince any jury in the world, unless your particular jury was composed of climate change deniers, conservative ideologues, or science-denying Republicans. According to research uncovered by Mooney, this particular group has a specific brain that is highly prone to something called "motivated reasoning--the psychological phenomenon of preferring only evidence that backs up your belief" system. Sound familiar?

In fact, there is a science behind why conservatives deny science and of course, we should expect them to deny this science, too. They deny the science and deny that they are science-deniers and they will deny the science that explains why they deny science. They may be deniers but they are consistent, predictable deniers. Much more to come.