American Psychological Association Wants To Manipulate You To Believe In Anthropogenic Global Warming

Pictured above is Franz Joseff Goebbels, the Minister of Nazi Propaganda under Hitler. His job was to insure that the Nazi Party line was the sole information provided to the German people by the German MSM. That, in fact, is how all autocratic governments have worked throughout history. They attempt to control the flow of information to the public through all media outlets to insure that no arguments are heard that would undercut the party line.

By contrast, for a democracy to work, people need to be exposed to all arguments, thus having an opportunity to evaluate them and vote accordingly. Indeed, that is a big reason why the very first Amendment in our Bill of Rights contains the Freedom of Speech clause.

Enter the American Psychological Association who are concerned with insuring that Americans embrace the theory of anthropogenic global warming. But, surprise, they have found that this is difficult in a democracy because people are being exposed to countervailing arguments and, thus, have an opportunity to make up their own minds on the issue. The APA's answer - get rid of the countervailing arguments in the media. Goebbels would have recognized his kindered in spirit immediately.
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This from the USA Today:

Those who make human behavior their business aim to make living "green" your business.

Armed with new research into what makes some people environmentally conscious and others less so, the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet.

"We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do," says Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, association president. "We know what messages will work and what will not."

During a four-day meeting that begins today in Boston, an expected 16,000 attendees will hear presentations, including studies that explore how people experience the environment, their attitudes about climate change and what social barriers prevent conservation of resources.

. . . News stories that provided a balanced view of climate change reduced people's beliefs that humans are at fault and also reduced the number of people who thought climate change would be bad, according to research by Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick.

His presentation will detail a decade of American attitudes about climate change. His new experiment, conducted in May, illustrates what he says is a public misperception about global warming. He says there is scientific consensus among experts that climate change is occurring, but the nationwide online poll of 2,600 adults asked whether they believe scientists agree or disagree about it.

By editing CNN and PBS news stories so that some saw a skeptic included in the report, others saw a story in which the skeptic was edited out and another group saw no video, Krosnick found that adding 45 seconds of a skeptic to one news story caused 11% of Americans to shift their opinions about the scientific consensus. Rather than 58% believing a perceived scientific agreement, inclusion of the skeptic caused the perceived amount of agreement to drop to 47%.

American Psychological Association leaders say they want to launch a national initiative specifically targeting behavior changes, including developing media messages that will help people reduce their carbon footprint and pay more attention to ways they can conserve. They want to work with other organizations and enlist congressional support to help fund the effort. . . .

Read the entire story.

The left is in near total control of academia and the MSM and they are now but a step away from complete control of the reigns of power in Washington. They are pushing the Fairness Doctrine to eliminate conservative opinion from the radio waves. As I blogged the other day, they are planning to criminalize policy differences, dreaming of show trials for the Bush Administration. And now they wish to insure that the U.S. no longer hears both sides of an argument. What has gone wrong in America? And what is wrong with these psychologists that they are so convinced of the truth of their position that they cannot see beyond that and even recognize the ramifications of what they are suggesting? What does it mean when they see their job as being the cynical manipulation of opinion?

If this is not a wakeup call to those who honor democracy and freedom of speech - regardless of political persuasion - that we need to act, then nothing is. I do not know how we turn academia from K through PhD away from post modernism and back to classical liberalism, and I do not know how we turn the MSM towards some degree of objectivity and away from their over the top bias, but we fail to make an attempt at our own peril. We really are a nation at a crossroads.