A larger chunk of people in Woodward County, 42%, are estimated to say maybe climate change is happening but we aren't causing it.
Those views, of course, aren't supported by science. Climate change is real, and we're contributing to it by burning gas for our cars and coal and other fossil fuels to generate electricity. Saying otherwise flies in the face of reality.
But out here, where July temperatures hit 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) and the often-gusting wind feels like a hair dryer aimed squarely at your face, climate change is seen by some as nonexistent -- a farce, a conspiracy, something that just plain doesn't make sense. Others who might be more inclined to acknowledge climate change aren't eager to talk about it. The subject is controversial to the point of being taboo. Several people told me they'd never had a conversation about climate change until I came around asking.
Others, like Yellow Hat, had anti-climate-science arguments locked and loaded.
"It's propaganda," she told me.
Like ... whose propaganda?
"The presstitutes," among others, she said, probably not forgetting she was speaking to a member of the international press, red CNN hat on head.
"They're bought and paid for."
I'll keep an eye out for the check.
In Woodward, I'd learn about the art of "rollin' coal," which means altering and then revving up a diesel engine so it emits thicker puffs of smoke, mostly for the visual effect; I'd go mountain biking with a guy who believes elements of "The Flintstones" are historically accurate; I'd hear incorrect theories, like that hair spray, and other aerosols, cause climate change, or that wind farms pollute more than oil. And, clearly most important, a cowboy would ask me why I was wearing stretch pants to a cattle auction. (They were Levi's 511s.)
Part of me wants to write off the skeptics in Woodward County -- to think that these views, especially the pants critique, are so out of sync with the modern world, and so detrimental to efforts to cut carbon emissions enough to stop the world from warming 2 degrees Celsius, which is regarded as the threshold for dangerous climate change, that we should ignore them. That would be the easier thing to do, and it's the approach some academics recommended to me, fearing reporting on climate skeptics would pump oxygen onto the fire of misinformation.
"It is a hopeless task to try to talk to them and change their minds," said Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychology professor at the University of Bristol.
But I don't want to ignore this place -- and don't think you should, either.
Partly that's because so many readers of CNN's Two° series on climate change asked me to look into climate skepticism in the United States. You wanted to know why such skepticism persists here, what's really behind the sentiment -- and how skeptics, hopefully, can become part of solutions to climate change.
