It might be surprising to a lot of folks but global warming, and the science surrounding it, used to be a fairly non-political topic. In fact Dr. Keeling, the scientist who did the pioneering work to measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was a registered republican.

The science behind global warming, and in fact all science, doesn’t care what political party you are from. If you measure the atomic weight of carbon, you wont get a different answer if you are a Whig or a Federalist. So why is it almost universally one political party (the Republicans) who seem to be alone in challenging the science behind global warming?

This is not as simple as you might think. If you are a liberal you might be tempted to say “its because big oil has purchased the republicans” and to a very large extent you would be right. Big carbon have disproportionately contributed large sums of money to the Republican party.

There are two things wrong with this reasoning however. One, big carbon gives large sums of money to the Democrats as well. And two, the Republican party is not just the people in Washington. Why is it that you can go to anyplace America and find a republican who vehemently denies the science behind global warming, even though there is no good reason to do so? Surly Exxon hasn’t been handing check out to every registered republican.

Some think that these views come from the top. The chief decides how the tribe thinks and the tribal members all get in line. Abortion, global warming, taxes, gay rights, foreign policy, separation of church and state, and many more issues divide and define the political tribes of our time. We get behind things because our leaders tell us to, we have to defend our tribes views from the other tribes views! Or do we?

I am starting to come around to a different point of view. I think we decide who we want to be, and then present to the world, that “ideal self”. Then we find facts and join tribes that reinforce that ideal self image. We are not rational operators who carefully consider all available data and then make a choice.

If “republican” is our ideal self, we act like republicans, and adopt ideas that “republicans” would adopt, and surround ourselves with “republican” friendly people. Basically we crowd our lives with things that reinforce and strengthen this imaginary ideal republican in our heads.

The same is true for other political ideologies. Tax cuts, or not, gay rights or not, public health care, or not. All of these have been co-opted into the “ideal” of one or the other major political “ideal”. People who think of themselves as liberal would project different things than people who think of themselves as conservative. The problem is that the “ideal” republican, doesn’t accept the science of global warming. A very dangerous thing to do. You might think gay people should be allowed to marry each other, but if you are wrong the earth doesn’t become uninhabitable for humanity.

Because people value these ideal selves so much, any threat to them causes a rush of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is the bad feeling you get when you try to hold two opposing ideas at the same time.

For instance imagine if we had a right wing, Fox watching, Rush listening, green liberal bullshit hating, republican. (and yes I know that’s a caricature, and you could do the same thing for liberals, just play along) He drives his pickup truck, thinks regulations on pollution are killing jobs, thinks global warming gas reduction is taking away our freedom, etc etc.

I think he holds these views, not because Rush told him it was true, or because he carefully researched all the data, but because he thinks of himself as that kind of person(pdf). If he were to accept global warming it would create cognitive dissonance. The kind of person he wants to present to the world doesn’t believe in global warming. The ideal “republican” doesn’t accept global warming, so neither does he.

So how do we get a guy like that to accept global warming? People used to think it was as simple as presenting the data. They assumed that the overwhelming flood of information would eventually get this person to change his mind. That hasn’t worked. The evidence for global warming is astronomically one sided, its real, its our fault, its going to be bad if we don’t do something about it. Yet conservatives continue to deny the science of global warming.

I think we have to change the way they act and this will change how they think, exactly opposite to the way we have been going about the problem.

We need them to do science on their own, we could even tell them its their chance to disprove the liberals. They will see what CO2 does to sea water (it makes it more acidic), they will see how it affects the air (it traps heat), and they will see what is produced from burning fossil fuels (co2 etc). Perhaps they could join studies already in progress about the timing of the first birds arriving back from winter, or the first blooming of certain plants. I think only be making scientists of all of them, are we ever going ton convince them the science is valid.