Key Insight
I now realize that a lot of people think that Hameed’s Pakistani Dr—who without apparent self-contradiction “disbelieves” in evolution “at home” but “believes” in it at work—is a mystery the solution to which must have something to do with his living in Pakistan (or at least having grown up and gone to school there before moving to the US to ... Read more
I now realize that a lot of people think that Hameed’s Pakistani Dr—who without apparent self-contradiction “disbelieves” in evolution “at home” but “believes” in it at work— is a mystery the solution to which must have something to do with his living in Pakistan (or at least having grown up and gone to school there before moving to the US to practice medicine (Everhart & Hameed (2013)).
Indeed, in my view it gets things exactly backwards: what makes the Pakistani Dr so intriguing, & important, is that he is the solution to mysteries about the psychology of a lot of people born & bred right here in the U.S. of A!
One place where you can find a lot of Pakistani Drs, e.g., is in the South & Midwest, where their occupation of choice is farming .
Public opinion studies consistently find that farmers are deeply skeptical of climate change (e.g., Prokopy et al. 2014).
Which is to say, when you ask them if they believe human fossil-fuel burning is heating up the planet, they say, “Heck no! Don’t give me that Al Gore bull shit!”
But that’s what happens, you see, if you ask them about what they believe “at home.”
If you ask them what they believe “at work,” where they must make practical decisions based on the best available evidence, then you are likely to get a completely different answer!
Or so a group of researchers recently reported in an amazingly cool study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics (Rejesus, Hensley, Mithcell, Coble & Knight 2013).
Analyzing the results of an N = 1380 USDA-conducted survey of farmers in Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin, RHMCK reported that less than 50% in each state agreed with the statement, “I believe human activities are causing changes in the earth climate.”
Indeed, only a minority—around a quarter of the respondents in Mississippi, Texas, and Wisconsin; a bit over a third in North Carolina—indicated that they “believe climate change has been scientifically proven” at all.
But when these same respondents answered questions relating to how climate change would affect farmers , only a small minority expressed any doubt whatsoever that the impact would be considerable .
nearly 60% of producers in Mississippi and Texas, states where scientific proof of climate change is typically not agreed to, believe there will be some change in crop mix resulting from climate change.
nearly 60% of producers in Mississippi and Texas, states where scientific proof of climate change is typically not agreed to, believe there will be some change in crop mix resulting from climate change.
Majorities in Mississippi (55%) and North Carolina (56%) also indicated that it was likely that, in response to climate change , farmers in their state would be buying more crop insurance to protect them from the increased variability in yields associated with a higher incidence of extreme weather events.
Of course, you can insure yourself from risks only if the benefits exceed the expected costs of enduring them. A lot of farmers think that farming won’t be profitable be in the future– thanks to climate change .
In North Carolina (57%) and Texas (51%), a majority of the respondents indicated that they thought it was either “likely” or “extremely likely” that climate change would force some farmers out of business.
In none of the states did anything even close to a majority indicate that they thought it was either “unlikely” or “extremely unlikely” that farmers would resort to greater crop rotation, increased insurance coverage, or simply quitting the business altogether in response to climate change.
Obviously, some fraction of the positive responses to these questions came from the minority of farmers in these states who indicated that they do believe climate change is “scientifically proven.”
But it turns out the views of “believers” and “disbelievers” on these matters didn’t vary by much.
These self-report data, moreover, match up quite well with behavioral data, which show that climate-skeptical farmers are already adopting practices (like no-till planting, new patterns of crop rotation, adjustments in growing season projections) in anticipation of climate impacts.