Increased Knowledge About Global Warming Leads to Indifference

Increased knowledge about global warming leads to lethargy and a decreased sense of concern among people about the issue says a new study.

A new study has shown that increased knowledge about global warming leads to apathy and a decreased sense of responsibility among people about the issue.

The study, by two Texas A and M University political scientists, was carried out through a telephone survey of 1,093 Americans.

According to the study, more informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for the issue.

The diminished concern and sense of responsibility flies in the face of awareness campaigns about climate change.

Paul M. Kellstedt, a political science associate professor at Texas A and M, said that the findings were a bit unexpected.

The focus of the study, according to him, was not to measure how informed or how uninformed Americans are about global warming, but to understand why some individuals who are more or less informed about it showed more or less concern.

"In that sense, we didn't really have expectations about how aware or unaware people were of global warming," said Kellstedt.

"But, the findings that the more informed respondents were less concerned about global warming, and that they felt less personally responsible for it, did surprise us. We expected just the opposite," he added.

Now, scientists will have to deal with the public's abundant confidence in them.

"But it cannot be comforting to the researchers in the scientific community that the more trust people have in them as scientists, the less concerned they are about their findings," the researchers concluded in their study.

Source-ANI
SPH/M