The study, which proves that people who deny climate change also tend to believe in conspiracy theories, has sparked new conspiracy charges on blogs.
The study, which will be published in the next issue of the journal Psychological Science, is based on a survey of more than a thousand blog readers about their views on global warming. The survey found that people with a tendency to adhere to various conspiracy theories are most likely to reject the scientific consensus about climate change on Earth.
University of Western Australia psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky came to this conclusion after analyzing responses to an online survey posted on eight science blogs. According to the article, Lewandowski also reached out to blogs defending climate skepticism and asked them to post a link to his poll, but none of the bloggers agreed.
In response, climate skeptics are pushing a new conspiracy theory on blogs - that the researchers did not specifically contact them, and then lied in their article.
"For some reason, Dr. Lewandowski refuses to disclose who exactly he asked for the link," wrote Anthony Watts, creator of the popular climate blog Watts Up With That?
The global warming conspiracy
While about 97% of active scientists agree that the available evidence points to a warming trend driven by human activity, public opinion on climate change is split in line with party sympathies. Democrats are more likely to "believe" in global warming than Republicans, according to a 2011 report by the Karsi Institute at New Hampshire University. Most often, deniers and skeptics who are deeply confident in their views on climate change declare their disbelief.
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Believing that warming is not happening or not related to humans requires believing that thousands of climate scientists around the world are outright lying, Lewandowski and his colleagues write in a new article. Conspiracy theories are often combined with each other - a person who believes that NASA faked the moon landing is more likely to agree with the theory that 9/11 was the work of the Americans themselves. Therefore, Lewandowski and his co-authors created an online survey and asked for links to it on eight blogs, mainly on the science side, and on five blogs that are skeptical. As the researchers note, this approach meant self-selection of respondents, and at the same time - their high interest in the problems of climatology.
Answers came from only eight blogs in the first group, the researchers say. After analyzing 1,145 usable test results, the researchers found that climate change denial was linked to support for the free market and government laissez-faire. In addition, a link has been seen between denial of global warming and adherence to other conspiracy theories. Finally, deniers more often than other respondents stated that other environmental problems had already been resolved and showed negative attitudes towards green ideas.
Climatic psychological scandal
Unsurprisingly, skeptical bloggers didn't like these findings. Now some of them accuse Lewandowski of not trying to contact them. In an email to Lucia Liljegren, author of The Blackboard blog, Lewandowski declined to name the bloggers he wrote, citing the need to keep personal information out of the public eye.
In response, Liljegren wrote: "I think those who contacted Lewandowski will demonstrate whether he was trying to conduct a balanced study." She also called on other bloggers to publicly allow Lewandowski to reveal their names. The researcher told DeSmogBlog that he has approached the university's ethics committee asking if he can do it.
Meanwhile, Simon James, author of the Australian Climate Madness blog, has requested the University of Western Australia to publish research correspondence under the Freedom of Information Act. And renowned climate skeptic Steve McIntyre urged his readers to complain to the university about the violation of academic norms.
MacIntyre later admitted that he had found a letter in his mail from one of Lewandowski's colleagues.
“To our knowledge, our results are the first example of empirical evidence of a correlation between a general tendency towards conspiracy theories in general and a tendency to reject well-founded scientific views,” conclude Lewandowski and his coauthors. Psychological research has found that conspiracy thinking is difficult to overcome, however, it may make sense to debunk it simultaneously in several directions.
Original publication: Climate Change Denial & Conspiracy Theories: New Research Provokes Even More Irrationality
