Do the facts matter?

Chris Mooney has an interesting piece on whether the climate change “consensus” is a useful policy approach. Is it changing the minds of people that formerly didn’t “believe in” climate change? And more broadly whether facts ever change minds.

As two top researchers studying the science of science communication—a hot new field that combines public opinion research with psychological studies—Dan Kahan and Stephan Lewandowsky tend to agree about most things. There’s just one problem. The little thing that they disagree on—whether it actually works to tell people that there’s a “scientific consensus” on climate change—is a matter of huge practical significance. After all, many scientists, advocates, and bloggers are doing this all the time. Heck, Barack Obama and Al Gore are out there doing it. And the central message that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sought to convey with its latest report, that scientists are now 95 percent certain that humans are driving global warming, is a message about scientific consensus. from here

  Read the full piece here