Stop calling everyone a climate denier
It's pejorative and probably wrong
Writer
published this note in which he claims “about 22% of Americans stubbornly deny global warming”:There’s only one problem — that survey is not about whether respondents believe climate change is real. Rather, it gauges, through four questions, their concern and anxiety towards climate change. Have a look for yourself:
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/sassy/
The four questions are:
How important is the issue of global warming to you personally?
How worried are you about global warming?
How much do you think global warming will harm you personally?
How much do you think global warming will harm future generations of people?
Someone who thinks climate change is real and caused by human beings but is not overly worried by it would be categorized as “dismissive” or “doubtful” and labeled by Noah Smith as a “denier”, which is absurd.
So please stop calling people “climate deniers” and have a look at what surveys actually measure. You might learn something.
Thank you for pointing out these inaccuracies and exaggerations. It is indeed important to know what **exactly** we are talking about. Noah Smith likes to go overboard and one gets lost easily in his unsystematic arguing.
He often cites Hannah Ritchie. He should also look at her writing: sober, factual, systematic and unemotional. That’s how you make an impact.
I just took the survey after you had posted it on Notes, I came here to tell you exactly what you had written in the piece above.
Dismissing anyone who isn’t panicked about climate change as a ‘climate denier’ - a term that in itself is too definitionally broad - is extremely unproductive at best.
It’s a shame that institutions like Yale are comfortable making wild extrapolations from four vague questions.