How come more conservatives are climate deniers?

I think the reason conservatives are more likely to deny the existance of human-caused climate change is because the solutions to this problem tend to have a negative impact on business. Conservatives in the US tend to oppose anything that appears to hinder the free market or require it’s regulation.

@stump This is true, but there’s also been a larger trend of science denial on the right in the U.S. for a while now, including attacks on the teaching of evolution, for example.

@Snarp
But that attack religion and I’m guessing more religious people were republican. Meh
Now they’re probably sceptic of this thing that has given them all this technology.

@Snarp Yeah, that is true. I don’t understand why people let their religion stop them from thinking. I am very religious, but I reallize there is a difference between physical truth and spiritual truth.

I think the two are related, in that when you hear people you trust telling you that science can’t be trusted, and then you hear other people you trust saying this science can’t be trusted, the messages reinforce one another. It’s sort of a vicious cycle or a positive feedback loop.

Because they tend to be pro-big business including the oil industry.

There are two overlapping currents in American conservatism: the religious conservatives and the free market conservatives. These have different motivations, but form common cause in opposition to science on this issue.

The free-market conservatives reflexively oppose anything that, as @stump says, will put them at a market disadvantage or lead to more regulation; if it’s bad for their bottom line, they’re against it.

The religious conservatives’ main beef with the scientific establishment is about evolution. Climate is not a religious issue. But they are constantly on the watch for vulnerabilities in the scientific establishment because they’re anxious to discredit evolutionary science. They want to be able to point to other areas where “science got it wrong” as a way of weakening the scientific case that they actually do care about. They’re finding it hard to assail evolution on the facts, so they discredit the entire institution.

Free-market conservatism has already assimilated most religious fundamentalists into their political fold by adopting a pro-life, anti-gay stance. When the free-marketers began assailing the science behind climate change, the fundamentalists just saw an opportunity to get in a few whacks of their own against their old enemy.

i’ve been wondering this for along time too. I heard a billy cunningham show last nite I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! hrrrrrrr scary

I am not a conservative or a liberal. I am going by pure logic when I say that us mere humans do not have the ability to change the climate if we tried.

Let me preface my answer by saying that I am not and have never been a “climate denier”. There is a by-god climate outside (hey, there’s one inside, too!) every day of the year, and I’d be a rank fool to deny something so dad-blamed obvious as “climate”.

Which brings me to the simplistic nature of your question.

Of course, what you’re asking is if people are “climate change deniers”. And more specifically than that, are they ”anthropogenic [human-caused] climate change deniers” and almost no one can realistically deny that. After all, even termites, trees and grasses can affect climate, so certainly humans create “some effect”.

So to word your question even better you should be asking “Are you an anthropogenic climate change alarmist?” And that question I would answer with a resounding, “No. Hell no.”

But no one asks that question.

@beancrisp, does your “logic” recognize the existence of agriculture or the ozone hole?

Because the Democrats/liberals founded the issue, and in todays politics you’re have to hate what the other guy likes.

Sad but true.