The Facts About Canada’s Oil Sands and Climate Change

This week I was reading an article from the Associated Press called Some fracking critics use bad science. The gist of the article is that Gasland director Josh Fox used false information in his new film, The Sky is Pink. Among other things, he claimed that cancer rates were higher in Texas where fracking is taking place. Three different cancer researchers in the area contradicted him on this claim.
But then the article went on to say something that I thought was very relevant to debates on just about any controversial energy topic — fossil fuel subsidies, climate change, hydraulic fracturing:

One expert said there’s an actual psychological process at work that sometimes blinds people to science, on the fracking debate and many others. “You can literally put facts in front of people, and they will just ignore them,” said Mark Lubell, the director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior at the University of California, Davis.
Lubell said the situation, which happens on both sides of a debate, is called “motivated reasoning.” Rational people insist on believing things that aren’t true, in part because of feedback from other people who share their views, he said.

As a result, misinformation is hard to stamp out, because it tends to be repeated — confirming the views people already hold. That brings me to the topic of today’s column: Climate change claims around the Keystone XL pipeline.

Read more: http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/07/26/the-facts-about-canadas-oil-sands-and-climate-change/