However, whilst there appears to be much heat and noise generated by CWMs their overall impact is limited. In a survey by Griffith University researchers found that
Less than 6 per cent of survey respondents could be reasonably classified as true climate change sceptics..
..78 per cent of Australian respondents agreed that, “If nothing is done to reduce climate change in the future, it will be a ‘very serious’ or ‘somewhat serious’ problem for Australia”.Which is a sad indictment on the credibility and relevance of CWMs.
Abstract
We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the U.S. general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives. We utilize public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010, focusing specifically on five indicators of climate change denial. We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate logistic regression models reveal that the conservative white male effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender as well as the effects of nine control variables. We thus conclude that the unique views of conservative white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate change denial in the United States.
