Yes, you read that correctly. The long-standing environmental group has been latching onto a study that claims there is a strong correlation between “reduced agreement with the scientific consensus on climate change” and “high levels of racial resentment.”
The study, which was carried out by DePauw University’s Salil D. Benegal, used public opinion data from surveys like the American National Election Studies (ANES) and Pew to imply that racial prejudices and identification were correlated with climate change opinions during Obama’s presidency.
Specifically, Benegal said that Republicans who had high “racial resentment scores” were 84 percent likely to dispute the notion of manmade climate change. Moreover, Republicans with higher scores for racial resentment were found to be three times as likely to disagree with the sentiment that climate change was real than those white Republicans who scored lower on the racism scale.
Just how is “racial resentment” assessed? ANES has been interviewing national samples of voters both before and after every presidential election in the country since the 1960s. To determine racial resentment against African Americans, it asks people how much they agree or disagree, on a scale from one to five, with a series of statements like, “If Blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites,” or “Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.”
Backlash against climate change related to anti-Obama sentiment?
The Sierra Club sent out a provocative tweet saying, “The percentage of white Americans who said that they believed climate change is a very serious problem declined during the Obama administration. Why?”
Somehow, Benegal has decided that Obama’s skin color drove people’s skepticism of climate change. Of course, the rising doubt would have nothing to do with the growing body of evidence against the idea that global warming is caused by human activity, right? That’s far less sensational and requires them to admit that the science isn’t really backing their idea. When all else fails, the left can always just accuse people of being racist!
After all, it’s an approach that worked for Al Gore, as the Daily Caller points out. He has compared the global warming crusade to the civil rights and abolitionist movements, drawing sharp criticism from many groups.
Conservative Black Leadership’s Horace Cooper said at the time: “When Al Gore, Jr. associates these moral movements of history with one grounded in questionable data, he gives climate change activists unearned moral credibility they haven’t earned and don’t deserve.”
The facts are the real reason people doubt climate change
In recent years, research has shown that climate change predictions were completely exaggerated, overestimating the impact to the tune of as much as 45 percent. It has also come to light that “climate scientists” have been faking their data, altering recorded surface temperatures to make it look like warming occurred when it didn’t. They’ve also been “adjusting” tidal gauge data to support the climate change narrative. If people have been moving away from the idea that human activity is causing global warming, it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the growing body of evidence that it’s little more than a hoax.
See Climate.news for more news coverage of real climate science.
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