Cool dudes, un-keul

[Trakar]

David Horsey Cartoons and Commentary | Seattle's Pulitzer-winning cartoonist David Horsey's latest cartoons and commentary on politics and current events - seattlepi.com

"Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States" - ScienceDirect - Global Environmental Change : Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States

Abstract
We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the U.S. general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives. We utilize public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010, focusing specifically on five indicators of climate change denial. We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate logistic regression models reveal that the conservative white male effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender as well as the effects of nine control variables. We thus conclude that the unique views of conservative white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate change denial in the United States...

And this should not be viewed as a "one off" attempt at scurrilous politics sheathed in science, it is supported and boistered by a plethora of recent studies and similar considerations:

"Fixing the communications failure" - Access : Fixing the communications failure : Nature

...Many experts attribute political controversy over risk issues to the complexity of the underlying science, or the imperfect dissemination of information. If that were the problem, we would expect beliefs about issues such as environmental risk, public health and crime control to be distributed randomly or according to levels of education, not by moral outlook. Various cognitive biases excessive attention to vivid dangers, for example, or self-reinforcing patterns of social interaction distort people's perception of risk, but they, too, do not explain why people who subscribe to competing moral outlooks react differently to scientific data...people find it disconcerting to believe that behaviour that they find noble is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behaviour that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it...Cultural cognition also causes people to interpret new evidence in a biased way that reinforces their predispositions. As a result, groups with opposing values often become more polarized, not less, when exposed to scientifically sound information...most people aren't in a position to evaluate technical data for themselves, they tend to follow the lead of credible experts. But cultural cognition operates here too: the experts whom laypersons see as credible, we have found, are ones whom they perceive to share their values...
(rest of paper at above link - looks like there's a pay wall, but if anyone is interested I will be happy to email them a copy of the article for review)

And then we have leading Conservatives noting the same problems amongst their ranks.
"Epistemic Closure’? Those Are Fighting Words - ‘Epistemic Closure?’ Those Are Fighting Words for Conservatives - NYTimes.com

It is hard to believe that a phrase as dry as “epistemic closure” could get anyone excited, but the term has sparked a heated argument among conservatives in recent weeks about their movement’s intellectual health.

The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history. First used in this context by Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute, the phrase “epistemic closure” has been ricocheting among conservative publications and blogs as a high-toned abbreviation for ideological intolerance and misinformation.

Conservative media, Mr. Sanchez wrote at juliansanchez.com — referring to outlets like Fox News and National Review and to talk-show stars like Rush Limbaugh, Mark R. Levin and Glenn Beck — have “become worryingly untethered from reality as the impetus to satisfy the demand for red meat overtakes any motivation to report accurately.” (Mr. Sanchez said he probably fished “epistemic closure” out of his subconscious from an undergraduate course in philosophy, where it has a technical meaning in the realm of logic.)

As a result, he complained, many conservatives have developed a distorted sense of priorities and a tendency to engage in fantasy, like the belief that President Obama was not born in the United States or that the health care bill proposed establishing “death panels.”

Soon conservatives across the board jumped into the debate. Jim Manzi, a contributing editor at National Review, wrote that Mr. Levin’s best seller, “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto” (Threshold Editions) was “awful,” and called the section on global warming a case for “willful ignorance,” and “an almost perfect example of epistemic closure.” Megan McArdle, an editor at The Atlantic, conceded that “conservatives are often voluntarily putting themselves in the same cocoon.”

Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush’s administrations, wrote that in the last few years, “epistemic closure” had become much worse among “the intelligentsia of the conservative movement.” He later added that the cream of the conservative research institutes, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, had gone from presenting informed policy analyses to pumping out propaganda...
(rest at link)

 

[Dot Com]

For the extreme conservative white male, "profit" is their god. Thats what Club for Growth, Koch industries, AEI, and Heritage tell them. Short-term gain= long-term pain. Basically telling future generations to F- off.

 

[Oddball]

Been practicing for your strawman building class, have ya?

 

[California Girl]

Soon, we will have enough for one of these!

 

[Dot Com]

If you little people didn't notice, it was conservatives calling-out their own for their ideological lock-step aversion to facts:

The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history.

They will, no doubt, get thrown under the bus as heretics LOL

 

[Oddball]

Neocons and squish jobs like Frum aren't old-school conservatives.

Nonetheless, it wasn't any of them who proffered, not one but two, entirely preposterous space alien theories in the same week.

Talk about your aversion to facts.

 

[Trakar]

Neocons and squish jobs like Frum aren't old-school conservatives...

Sounds like a ‘No True Scotsman’ Fallacy
Logical Fallacies» ‘No True Scotsman’ Fallacy

How about:

Bruce Bartlett - Bruce Bartlett is a former senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis of Dallas, Texas. Before joining the NCPA, he was deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, where he served from September 1988 to January 1993. In 1987 and 1988, Bartlett was a senior policy analyst in the Office of Policy Development at the White House. (Reagan - Bush adminsitrations)

Julian Sanchez - Currently a research fellow at the Cato Institute, In 2003, Sanchez was hired as an assistant editor at Reason magazine, where he is now a contributing editor.

Is there a guide book or program of who is, and is not, a "real" conservative?

 

[Oddball]

Please....What's fallacious is debasing the language to the point that "conservative" means anyone who isn't a far leftist wackaloon, which pretty much describes the entire DNC.

Neocon chumps like Chimpy McShrub and David Frum would've been run out of Robert Taft's GOP, on a rail.

 

[Old Rocks]

Soon, we will have enough for one of these!

Already this years bill from climate disasters exceeds 35 billion dollars, and hundreds dead.

Associated Press

 

[Dot Com]

I don't suspect this trend will change in the next year ESPECIALLY if conservative- basers keep watching that one TeeVee channel.

It is hard to believe that a phrase as dry as “epistemic closure” could get anyone excited, but the term has sparked a heated argument among conservatives in recent weeks about their movement’s intellectual health.

The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history. First used in this context by Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute, the phrase “epistemic closure” has been ricocheting among conservative publications and blogs as a high-toned abbreviation for ideological intolerance and misinformation.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Is there a guide book or program of who is, and is not, a "real" conservative?

The problem of course is the movement was polluted some 40 years ago by the so-called social conservatives and religious fundamentalists.

 

[editec]

Is there a guide book or program of who is, and is not, a "real" conservative?

19Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

 

[Dot Com]

Is there a guide book or program of who is, and is not, a "real" conservative?

The problem of course is the movement was polluted some 40 years ago by the so-called social conservatives and religious fundamentalists.

Hence the revulsion of independents to book-hatin', candidates like Perry , Bachmann , & Palin

 

[Trakar]

Is there a guide book or program of who is, and is not, a "real" conservative?

19Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

I tend to use that good book myself, quite a bit, though I don't see many conservatives in it portrayed in a very good light.

 

[flacaltenn]

Trakar:

Conservative white males are more likely than other Americans to report climate change denial.

The whole abstract is meaningless without reading the study results. And I'm not gonna pay $10 for every study that politicizes science that some USMB lefty hasn't read either..

For instance -- ""Conservative white males are more likely than other Americans to report climate change denial."" DEFINE "climate change denial" for me Trakar and then go buy the article and see how THEY define it..

OLE ROCKS::

You are far more of a toady than I ever suspected. Shame on you for

Already this years bill from climate disasters exceeds 35 billion dollars, and hundreds dead.

That's a much clearer example of "epistemic closure" than ANYTHING i can see in the lead OP article.

Which is why CATO is high on my list of orgs that I actively support..

First used in this context by Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute, the phrase “epistemic closure” has been ricocheting among conservative publications and blogs as a high-toned abbreviation for ideological intolerance and misinformation.

We --- want to SMACK both sides up the side of head for stupid tricks like the one you just pulled.

TRakar:

The CARTOON however is EXTREMELY funny..

 

[Dot Com]

It was also said that Bush II lacked intellectual curiosity. That extends to a majority of the Repub/T-Party Base.