Curmudgeon, "The author has every right to point to the odd papers that come out of the psychological sciences on this issue. I, myself, have noted attempts to exaplain away scepticism on the basis of psychological theory which are obvious nonsense."

I wonder what do you mean by 'odd' papers? Perhaps you mean odd as in strange and unusual or perhaps you mean there are few papers about the issue. Either way you are totally wrong.

You say you 'have noted attempts to explain away..'. I can assure you that research is not done to explain 'away' anything, least of all something as significant as climate change scepticism.

Apart from being worried about the future of lack of because of the way it will affect their personal lives, researchers in the area of psychological science, are excited about having this behaviour to study. The broad term being used to explain the way you manage to be so blithely postmodern about one particular area of science without understanding that this what you are doing, is 'motivated reasoning'.

This quote is from Yale University, one institution that is investigating motivated cognition or reasoning:

"The Cultural Cognition Project is a group of scholars interested in studying how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs. Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about disputed matters of fact (e.g., whether global warming is a serious threat; whether the death penalty deters murder; whether gun control makes society more safe or less) to values that define their cultural identities.

Project members are using the methods of various disciplines -- including social psychology, anthropology, communications, and political science -- to chart the impact of this phenomenon and to identify the mechanisms through which it operates. The Project also has an explicit normative objective: to identify processes of democratic decisionmaking by which society can resolve culturally grounded differences in belief in a manner that is both congenial to persons of diverse cultural outlooks and consistent with sound public policymaking."

http://www.culturalcognition.net/

Jeremy, "Why are we supposed to be interested in what some ignoramus "presumes"?"

Exactly, we developed science to tell us what is true or not, rather than rely on ignorance and yet here we are, when science has brought us such awesome lives and choices we have people, not only feeling free to have an ignorant unscientific opinion but, I think, actually misleading readers about 'facts'.

As you say the quality of this articles is 'way dodgy'. In the same way as Fox News ensures that their viewers are more ignorant and misinformed than people who don't watch any current events, publishing articles like this actually makes people 'stupid'.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd think 'the right' are deliberately misinforming people because, according to an article in the Boston Review, the more facts and information people have about policies, the more likely they are to vote for the Democrats, rather than for the Republicans. Shows why Fox News exists and why it does what it does.

Anyway here is the link to the article

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.4/fowler_margolis_voter_knowledge_political_preference_democratic_party.php

Mollydukes,

"If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd think "the right" are deliberately misinforming people..."

In that case, you'll probably be interested in this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/01/rightwing-insurrection-usurps-democracy