6 ms·

Let's be realistic, while you can see denialism of science across the spectrum, there's only one side of it that denies it in the face of extinction-level event

• hkon 7y ago
  China right?
• dgzl 7y ago
  I think the American political right is in general more accepting of science than you might believe. Many of them are scientists themselves. I think the older generations, the poor uneducated families, and the bitter religious folks have more disbeliefs in science than 'the right' in general.
  • jeromegv 7y ago
    Let's rephrase: the political right that is in power. If this political right is accepting of science, they clearly not have chosen or voted for leaders in their party that promote this.
  • scarmig 7y ago
    The public position of the Republican Party is that climate change is a myth, and that if it is happening humans have nothing to do with it. If the Right wants to drop its anti-science reputation, it needs to start there.
    • Kerrick 7y ago
      I decided to delve into their public policy (https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/ https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/), and I found this: > Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. That is an admission by the Republican Party, in its public policy, that climate change is not a myth. It just means they've decided not to care about it in regards to national security. I also found this: > Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. Again, that is an admission that the climate is changing and that scientific research and data can give us information about it. So as said elsewhere in this thread, we're back to politics determining decisions about what to do about climate change; the Republican Party's official platform doesn't seem to deny that the climate is changing.
      • scarmig 7y ago
        Trump, on climate change: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." "The whole climate crisis is not only Fake News, it’s Fake Science. There is no climate crisis, there’s weather and climate all around the world, and in fact carbon dioxide is the main building block of all life." "Obama's talking about all of this with the global warming and … a lot of it's a hoax. It's a hoax. I mean, it's a money-making industry, okay? It's a hoax, a lot of it." I can do this with any given Republican who's been in a leadership position. I won't, though, because you're clearly dissembling and not engaging in good faith.
        • fwn 7y ago
          Maybe I miss something here, but: Someone replied to "The public position of the Republican Party is that climate change is a myth" with a link to their web platform stating something different. I think it's not really fair to counter that by quoting Trump and closing with the assumption of bad faith.
          • scarmig 7y ago
            All the statement says is that climate change is not an issue, and that any discussion of it must be guided by data: there is no acknowledgment of the reality of climate change. On the other hand, all of the Republican leadership cast doubt on it. And as a result the large majority of Republican voters reject the idea of anthropogenic climate change.
          • neaden 7y ago
            I assure you that what comes out of Trumps mouth represents the average Republican voter far better than some policy statement on a webpage.
      • aphextim 7y ago
        This is just my opinion but I think a lot of Republicans don't think that climate change isn't happening at all. I am guessing from their admission that they acknowledge climate is changing, but refusing to list it as a priory is that where the difference in opinion between Democrats/Republicans lie. When it comes to the root cause of the climate change, how much humans are accelerating/impacting the change and how we can reduce the impact are all topics where the different political party's opinions differ.
  • vernie 7y ago
    Right up until it's financially inconvenient.
  • sachdevap 7y ago
    This does not add up. If American political right is so accepting of science, how does the denial of climate change by their elected leaders not push the right to vote them out? I'm quite sure 40% of the US population that voted for the GOP does not fit the description you have provided.
    • sachdevap 7y ago
      Nothing says I am here for a discussion like down-voting a reasonable argument. /s
• aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  The only side that denies science is <insert political opponents here>
• notathing 7y ago
  Indeed. But we need to go further than that. There are (a few) scientists which identify with the Right, or worse, challenge some climate change facts. They should be fired, we can't have science legitimize fascists movements or throw doubt on established science facts.
  • dnissley 7y ago
    Can't tell if sarcasm or serious.
  • monksy 7y ago
    Uh. This is exactly what is wrong with scientist pairing their results and methodology with politics. > They should be fired, we can't have science legitimize fascists movements. Ok, if you want to get rid of a strong scientific community continue on with this fantasy. Propagandists making things up should be exiled. The climate change assertions should be challenged. That's apart of the scientific method. You don't publish directly to a respected journal. Also, correlation does not imply causation. Their unbiased* findings should assist in the creation of solutions which involve policymakers. It's not a scientists' job to make a decision that affects everyone. Unbiased means: As unbiased as you can get. Get it peer-reviewed. Work with others to test out effective change strategies to avoid unintended consequences, present options, accept failure. (Yes, that last one is the biggest thing)
• nostromo 7y ago
  The right's skepticism is a response to academia becoming two things: 1. monolithically leftist and 2. activist in nature. Nobody is arguing with basic research. But when a peer reviewed gender studies journal publishes a rewriting of Mein Kampf, I think it's fair to suspect that a lot of non-science masquerading as real science is indeed pouring out of Universities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affilia#Grievance_Studies_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affilia#Grievance_Studies_affa...
  • scarmig 7y ago
    > Nobody is arguing with basic research See: basic research on climate change. Republicans don't so much argue with it as dismiss it outright.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • nostromo 7y ago
      There is indeed a lot of magical thinking going around. The political left calls GMO crops dangerous and fear mongers without a shred of scientific evidence. Or they spread fear about the pharmaceutical industry -- and how those evil drug researchers are trying to get people addicted to their drugs for profit. Then when regular people decide not to trust any drugs at all -- including vaccines -- people wonder how that could have possibly happened, after demonizing the entire field of research for decades. And on the political right we of course have wilful disinformation about climate change.
      • neaden 7y ago
        Can you name some prominent elected officials on the left who fear monger about vaccines? I assure you that I can provide quite a long list of elected republicans who've said some bananas things about climate change for instance.
  • GuiA 7y ago
    Gender studies is not science so I’m not sure how that fits into the discourse. Not to mention that it’s not even that good an example to prove anything about academia - it’s a minuscule subfield with little funding in comparison to any other academic discipline. None of the major public universities I attended even had a gender studies department - at best it was a specialty within sociology/anthropology with a dozen grad students or so. The only thing in which gender studies has a disproportionate representation is as the favorite example in the rhetoric of anti-academics. Please show how physics/biology/math/geology/climate science/etc is “monothically leftist and activist in nature”.
• tyre 7y ago
  I think pushing science as an ally of the left (or a proponent of the politics of the left) risks further alienating right wing voters. There is already a correlation between education and party support. The "coastal liberal elite" pejorative is, in part, a rallying cry against people who make them feel stupid. No one likes to feel stupid. It's similar to accusing people of racism. Very very very few people who are called racists would agree with that, and the ones who would you're not going to win over anyway. People shut down when accused and get defensive. If the goal is to make progress (in the traditional sense of "liberalism", to reduce human suffering through gradual reform) rather that "to be right", then calling someone stupid or racist or saying that all of human knowledge contradicts their claims isn't really a good way to get there. Scientists getting into politics opens them up to the attack that they are pushing an agenda out of political rather than professional beliefs or truth-seeking behaviour. See Trump's attacks on Mueller's team because many voted for democrats. His attacks are probably in bad faith but the point stands: give people something to attack other than a belief they're wrong about and they'll happily switch to that.
  • neaden 7y ago
    If your stance is that you can't risk alienating people who already have decided what you do is without value and based on lies then I don't know what to tell you because you have already lost.
    • ksdale 7y ago
      There are two ways to get people to do the right thing, however right is defined. You can convince them to do right, or you can force them. If you've decided that you don't care if you alienate them, then you've settled on forcing, and there's no reason at all to continue talking. I totally understand that feeling I believe we all get when someone acts like a jackass and you don't mind alienating them, but every liberal democracy is built on a foundation of presuming that people can be convinced rather than having to be forced. That may not be true all the time, but it seems like we should at least act as though it is true. If we're not going to act as though it's true, then we should call a spade a spade and say that it's ok to use authoritarian methods when they serve what we know to be right. Rule by strength of arms seems like a bad road to go down, though.
• roenxi 7y ago
  > There's only one side of it that denies it in the face of extinction-level events. If you're going to push forward with language like that, don't be surprised when science becomes a political issue. Climate change isn't an extinction level threat. 1) The rich countries can almost surely make it through with, worst case, major inconvenience and deaths of lots of foreigners. 2) We've had the technology to go carbon free for a long time now (in nuclear) and generally the environmentalists say that nuclear power is at least as bad if not worse than climate change. France has been basically emissions free for quite some time now. If you want to argue that climate change is a major threat, go ahead. But if it is an extinction level threat, the nature of that threat is being communicated truly terribly, to the point where I doubt anyone on the right has heard enough of it to reject it. I've heard a lot of horrible predictions, none of them are scarier than all the other things that could go wrong over the next 100 years. Even the last 100 years had WWII in them. 100 years is a long time.
• skybrian 7y ago
  That's not obviously a win. We already have many people wasting a lot of time on unproductive political discussions. If scientists spend less time doing science that only they can do and more on political stuff that anyone can do, it seems like we're worse off? There may be good ways to participate, but you need to be more specific than "lean in with everyone else". (I exclude voting from this. Increasing turnout obviously requires all hands on deck. But that doesn't take much time.)