Why Do Some Americans Accept Facts Presented By Science While Others Scoff?

Before getting deeper into this topic, let me get this off my chest. If we are going to dismiss climate scientists, as well as other scientists, as merely in it for the money (in their cases, gummit grant money), let's not overlook the vast sums given by various industry groups to the legions of climate change deniers in American media.

Now, on to the topic at hand...

Why are people still sceptical about climate change?
Why are some people still scep­tical about the reality and ser­i­ous­ness of cli­mate change when the sci­entific evid­ence is so overwhelming?

This is the ques­tion that motiv­ates a great deal of cli­mate change com­mu­nic­a­tion. How can cli­mate scep­ti­cism be countered?

Understanding that cli­mate change scep­ti­cism will not be over­come by a more forceful present­a­tion of the sci­ence is a crit­ical first step. A lot of valu­able com­mu­nic­a­tion time will con­tinue to be wasted on explaining the sci­ence of cli­mate change over and over again to a group of people who have already heard everything they need to hear. Of course people need to know about the sci­ence of cli­mate change – but once they know about it and choose to reject it, explaining it to them louder is unlikely to do much good.

Instead, com­mu­nic­ators need to bring the real cause of dis­agree­ment out into the open, sep­arate the sci­ence from the politics (Hulme, 2009), and make clear that although the sci­ence tells us that cli­mate change is hap­pening, and what is causing it, the sci­ence doesn’t tell us which way to respond.

Society could do nothing. Society could build new tech­no­lo­gies. Society could raise taxes. Society could change its beha­viour. Society could reg­u­late industry. But these are decisions to make as cit­izens – and so they should be the sub­ject of debate. Providing oppor­tun­ities for people to delib­erate with each other about cli­mate change allows the reasons for dis­agree­ment to come to the fore. If these reasons are based on values, cul­tural world-views or ideo­logy, then it makes sense to get these dis­agree­ments out into the open rather than obscuring them by fighting polit­ical battles using the lan­guage of science.

Source, and the entire article here.

Additional studies and discussions of the phenomenon of climate denial:

Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in

the United States

Aaron M. McCright, Lyman Briggs College, Department of Sociology, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, E-185 Holmes Hall, East Lansing, MI 48825-1107, USA

Riley E. Dunlap, Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, 006 Classroom Building, Stillwater, OK 74078-4062, USA

"Bounded rationality": the Grigori Rasputin of explanations for public perceptions of climate change risk

Climate Science Communication and the Measurement Problem
Dan M. Kahan
Yale University - Law School; Harvard University - Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
June 25, 2014
"...there is in fact little disagreement among culturally diverse citizens on what science knows about climate change. The source of the climate- change controversy and like disputes is the contamination of education and politics with forms of cultural status competition that make it impossible for diverse citizens to express their reason as both collective-knowledge acquirers and cultural-identity protectors at the same time."

Downloadable pdf.

Book Review...  Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction, and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University: Press, 432 pp

David Demeritt, Diana Liverman and Mike Hulme