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Thursday, February 15th, 2024

Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, study finds

Author:     Aliya Uteuova
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Wed 14 Feb 2024 | 13.47 EST
 Link: Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, study finds
Stephan:  

The problem with the Republican Party is Republican voters. Here, in this report on who does and does not believe in climate change, you can see why I say this. Our problem as a country is we have a large percentage of the population who are poorly educated barely literate racists. I think what this is telling us is that as a country we need better education, and higher literacy, because Republicans, as a party, are more poorly educated, and less literate than Democrats. That is not, although it may sound like it is, a partisan statement. It is simply based on objectively verifiable facts.

Wilted palm trees line a destroyed property in Lahaina, Hawaii, on 8 December 2023, amid recovery efforts following the August wildfire. Credit: Lindsey Wasson / AP

Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study out of the University of Michigan reveals – shedding light on the highly polarized attitude toward global warming.

Additionally, denialism is highest in the central and southern US, with Republican voters found less likely to believe in climate science.

Using artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed over 7.4m tweets posted by roughly 1.3 million people on the social media platform X (previously Twitter) between 2017 and 2019. The social media posts were geocoded, and classified as “for” or “against” climate change using a large language model, a type of artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI.

“Over half of the tweets we looked at simply denied that climate change was real, that it was a hoax,” said Joshua Newell, co-author of the study and professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. “It wasn’t surprising but it was disappointing, I would hope that more and […]

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1 Comment

  1. David Axtell on Saturday, February 17, 2024 at 9:54 am

    They are not all uneducated! I have a friend who is a retired economics professor who does not believe in climate change.