The other climate science gap – May 16, 2013 New York Times

In a previous blog post I’ve explored the topic of climate wars.

A May 16, 2013 New York Times article by Andrew C. Revkin – from which the image (on left) is downloaded – entitled “The other climate science gap” – addresses an interesting topic concerned with perception.

The article concerns “the gap between what the public thinks about the consensus among climate scientists over the human factor in global warming and the actual level of consensus.”

I found the article – what I’ve read of it to date – of particular interest as it refers, as the article notes, to what Dan Kahan, a Yale law professor, has described as the cultural filters that influence how people perceive and react to information.

As the title for an article accessible from the second link in the previous sentence notes: “Belief in climate change hinges on worldview.”

One’s frame of reference, that is – how a topic is framed – is a central feature of how we view history, historiography, and every other aspect of reality.

This interesting topic is related among other things to Erving Goffman’s work on how situations in our everyday lives are defined.

This is a fascinating and highly relevant topic, for so many reasons.