{"id":327599,"date":"2017-09-25T05:44:39","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T04:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/blame-old-white-people\/"},"modified":"2017-09-25T05:44:39","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T04:44:39","slug":"blame-old-white-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/blame-old-white-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Blame Old White People"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>h\/t\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.spectator.co.uk\/2017\/09\/are-old-white-men-to-blame-for-climate-change-denial-the-guardian-thinks-so\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Spectator<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Guardian author John Gibbons has written an extraordinary piece which blames climate denial on old white people.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em><strong>Climate deniers want to protect the status quo that made them rich<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sceptics prefer to reject regulations to combat global warming and remain indifferent to the havoc it will wreak on future generations<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>From my vantage point outside the glass doors, the sea of grey hair and balding pates had the appearance of a golf society event or an active retirement group. Instead, it was the inaugural meeting of Ireland\u2019s first climate denial group, the self-styled\u00a0<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.desmog.uk\/2017\/05\/05\/new-climate-science-denial-group-launches-ireland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF)<\/a>\u00a0in Dublin in May. All media were barred from attending.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Its guest speaker was the retired physicist and noted US climate contrarian,\u00a0<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/richard-lindzen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Richard Lindzen<\/a>. His jeremiad against the \u201cnarrative of hysteria\u201d on climate change was lapped up by\u00a0<strong>an audience largely composed of male engineers and meteorologists \u2013 mostly retired<\/strong>. This demographic profile of attendees at climate denier meetings has been replicated in London, Washington and elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Short-termism and self-interest is part of the answer. A\u00a0<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nclimate\/journal\/v2\/n10\/abs\/nclimate1547.html?foxtrotcallback=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2012 study<\/a>\u00a0in Nature Climate Change presented evidence of \u201chow remarkably well-equipped ordinary individuals are to discern which stances towards scientific information secure their personal interests\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This is surely only half the explanation.\u00a0<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=995634\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A 2007 study by Kahan et al on risk perception<\/a>\u00a0identified \u201catypically high levels of technological and environmental risk acceptance among white males\u201d.\u00a0<a class=\"u-underline\" href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/j.1539-6924.1994.tb00082.x\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">An earlier paper<\/a>teased out a similar point: \u201c<strong>Perhaps white males see less risk in the world because they create, manage, control and benefit from so much of it.<\/strong>\u201d Others, who have not enjoyed such an armchair ride&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2017\/09\/no_author\/blame-the-old-white-people\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>h\/t\u00a0The Spectator\u00a0\u2013 Guardian author John Gibbons has written an extraordinary piece which blames climate denial on old white people. Climate deniers want to protect the status quo that made them rich Sceptics prefer to reject regulations to combat global warming and remain indifferent to the havoc it will wreak on future generations From my vantage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-327599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}