Which one wears the blinkers?
Hang on a minute – we all know that it’s the Right that are the ideological climate “deniers”? Stephan Lewandowsky has made an entire career out of claiming that free marketeers are more likely to be conspiracy theorists, correct?*
Well hold on to your hats, folks, because guess what, a study in the US has found precisely the opposite, namely that Democrats and liberals (i.e. the Left) are the blinkered ones. Who’d’a thunk it?
While politics affects both parties’ prescriptions for energy and the environment, a look at the data suggests that Democrats and liberals are far more likely to have their ideological blinders on. In our poll of 1,000 Californians, Democrats and liberals were more likely to give incorrect, highly unlikely, or intensely ideological responses to a set of basic questions about energy and environmental policy than were independents, conservatives, and Republicans.
Such a result should not be entirely surprising. The Democratic party’s electoral majority is currently sustained by low-information voters and people who are unlikely to be persuaded by data that contradicts their own political narrative. In the Golden State Poll, which had both internal and external question reviewers to minimize bias, several interesting results emerged that reinforced the idea of a liberal information gap.
…
Taken as a whole, the Golden State poll suggests that many liberals have a deeply ideological view of energy and climate and policy, one in which certain “truths” must be accepted to show one’s moral virtue while genuinely inconvenient truths are ignored. Conservatives, always appropriately skeptical of liberal utopianism, have reacted against that by redoubling their skepticism. While the media and liberal politicians attack them, conservatives know that it is hard to have a rational argument with a fanatic about the subject of his fanaticism.
On energy and climate, the Democrats’ political and policy ignorance needs to be exposed for what it is: self-contradictory, incoherent, and yes, unscientific.
Read it all. h/t Judith Curry
* Actually, check out Michael Mann’s twitter feed, and you’ll see the name Koch appear a remarkable number of times. Who’s the conspiracy theorist now, Mike?
Australian Climate Madness 
Reading this made my day. Now I wonder how George Monbiot would react to this survey and report? You may recall that about 2 years ago, he wrote a column based on the superior intellect of people of the Left. I loved this quote from the article:
“Such a result should not be entirely surprising. The Democratic party’s electoral majority is currently sustained by low-information voters and people who are unlikely to be persuaded by data that contradicts their own political narrative.”
I’d suggest that the same applies with the ALP here in Oz.
Oh this is absolutely priceless!
Don’t you just love the phrase, “low-information voters?”
What is really meant here is: ‘low intellectual wattage voters’, which is entirely consistent with those hapless ideologues that run off infrequent, variable, unreliable, low density energy sources, like hot air.
The same can be said for Australia also as conservative Prime Minister Abbott said here , “Let’s be under no illusions the carbon tax was socialism masquerading as environmentalism..”
Only ‘low-information voters’ would have trouble figuring that out!