I am curious to know if there is a correlation. Please answer as honestly as possible. Also, I would be interested in hearing your reasons for why you voted the way you did.
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Church of Jaminology 
Hey Peter. Interesting thoughts, but I see things a different way.
Climate change is real. It always has been, since the earth began. There have been ice ages, hot periods – for many different reasons. And I call it climate change because I believe that it’s a more accurate term than global warming.
The questions you must ask yourself are these:
Do human beings affect the environment?
How much impact do we have?
Does it matter how much impact we really have, or should we try to minimise our impact because we are sentient beings who understand that we can destroy things much easier than we can save them?
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Actually, I think very few people are aware of the science behind climate change or the moon landings. The vast majority of people base their opinions in their level of trust/mistrust in their governments and media to tell them the truth about what scientists are saying.
A suspect that moon landing deniers would be more prone to denying climate change also based on an observed correlation in people I know, though it certainly doesn’t apply to everyone. I personally do not know anybody who openly denies the moon landing but affirms climate change. Something about the appeal of “secret knowledge” I have been told.
So Peter, accepting that global warming is imperfectly understood, do you consider yourself to believe that it is a hoax because you understand the science better than the climatologists who say it is happening? Or are you actually unsure of whether or not it is happening and simply choose to deny climate change because you don’t like being yelled at?
Now, just to vastly oversimplify the issue for a moment. Let’s pretend that the options are merely that man made climate change is either happening or it isn’t, and that we as a global community will either respond sufficiently to prevent the Armageddon scenario or we will not. Assuming that we know what we would need to do in order to prevent the destruction of all life on the surface of the earth, what level of sacrifice would be acceptable to make in the face of a possible impending apocalypse to prevent it?
Handing over the sovereignty of a nation?
Car pooling?
Exponentially increasing tax on environmentally dangerous activities?
Choosing tap water over bottled if you live in a nation with clean water on tap?
Carbon rationing?
Nationally enforced vegetarianism?
Purchasing carbon offsets?
Requiring companies to include the cost of carbon offsets in the price of all goods?
Buying local produce?
What degree of sacrifice is acceptable if we are not sure if our actions will save all life on earth or merely improve our air quality? Who should make the decision?
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Your question is subtly biased, Jamin. The implied message is that you think people who deny climate change must be scientifically illiterate (or why would they deny the obvious), and so it’s likely that these people will also not understand climate change and will therefore deny that too. As a true believer, you of course believe that if a lot of scientists say something is true, it must therefore be True; you believe that implicitly, by faith.
How about this: the moon landing happened because it was witnessed, filmed, broadcast to over 1 billion people around the world, and it involved tens of thousands of publicly identified scientists and engineers. The science and engineering involved are well known and well established.
Global warming is imperfectly understood because it hasn’t been investigated fully enough yet, there are competing scientific views about it and computer models are clearly inadequate at present to predict the weather for next week, let alone in 100 years time. Add to that the political nonsense that goes on with people with a clear political agenda and no scientific training telling us to trust their pronouncements on science, and you’ve got a problem.
So, I believe in the moon landings. Only crazy conspiracy theorists with little sense believe anything else. But global warming? Please! The science is not settled, and shouting at me does not convince me that you must be right.
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Climate Change – my view is that it’s happening. How much it’s happening, and to what end effect – I don’t know. But that it’s happening I think is clear from the literature.
Moon landing – my view is that to fake it effectively as they did, and have the hoax not be uncovered as yet, would have been harder to do than to just go to the moon in the first place. I’ve not seen any “evidence that it’s a hoax” that is in any way convincing to me. (the debunking of the it’s-a-hoax-evidence has always been more compelling and clear to me)
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