Why Do White Men and Scientists Tend to Downplay the Risks of Technology?

I'm part of the suspected demographic, but I also find much of this article lacking in advancing the thesis.

It is true that many of us fear the unknown, but it is also true that we can be cavalier about routine risks.

This may be true, but why is it that white men would be more likely to have routine interactions with the risks of technology than any other group? At a population level, it seems likely that at least white women would be equally likely to have routine interactions with nuclear power or genetically modified foods, two of the examples in the article.

Scientists also make a mistake when they assume that public concerns are wholly or even mostly about safety.

This may be true, but "risks" are usually understood as indicating some danger, otherwise I would strongly suggest using a different word. Perhaps negative preferences? IDK I didn't write the article.

Pope Francis, for example, rejects genetic modification of organisms in part because he views it as an inappropriate interference in God's domain; this is a theological position that cannot be refuted by scientific data.

Ok, but then the "risk" is simply that one religion believes it offends their god. There's thousands of religions and atheists. At least some of them would reject this as any sort of "risk" because they simply don't believe it in - if we're talking on a global scale.

Some people object to GM crops such as Roundup Ready corn and soy because they facilitate the increased use of pesticides.

But surely this isn't just because we don't like pesticides right? Presumably it's because there is some "risk" involved in health or environment or something. If this wasn't the case, at least in the US I'd be hard pressed to see how we would justify regulating what private companies and individuals decide to do with their own property if there aren't externalties. And if there are externatilites - this "argument" doesn't express what they are or why white men downplay those risks, or actually even show that they do. This is more "I disagree with some experts I read once". "Some people"... well, what people - and where are the hordes of white men claiming the opposite?

Others have a problem with the social impacts that switching to GM organisms can have on traditional farming communities

Sounds vaguely like a protectionist argument to support more people starving if you want to be glib like this article is.

or with the political implications of leaving a large share of the food supply in the hands of a few corporations.

This surely isn't an issue with the technology at all though - this is just a political argument, and plenty of white men don't like the corporatism in various places.

Some concerns about geoengineering—not just among laypeople but among scientists as well—have more to do with regulation and oversight than with safety.

Again, politics and explicitly not about safety, so is this about "risk" of the technology, or far more about the huge risks in our problematic political and governmental systems? The argument seems to be white men (who they use interchangeably with scientists and experts - a pretty difficult to defend position IMHO) when asked about technology risks tend to look at the direct first order risks of the technology. This could very simply just be "how you ask the question" - ask about second order risks or the like and you might get a lot more about that - they do call scientists here agreeing with them.

Who will decide whether this is a good way to deal with climate change?

Presumably the people doing it. Maybe governments, but I'm not so sure anymore. We've spent a very long time chasing "consensus" and doing about nothing. While a lot of that is people who weren't arguing in good faith - continuing to do nothing because we can't have a global vote doesn't seem prudent either. But no discussion of halting anything being a risk in itself. They never seem to weigh the obvious alternatives in this article.

If we undertake the project of setting the global temperature by controlling how much sunlight reaches Earth's surface, who will be included in that “we,” and by what process will the “right” global temperature be chosen?

I think this is likely a pipe dream that we even could do this, but I would bet if you asked scientists and experts, or even white men as a whole, you might get the "pre modern" temperature that we're comparing all this climate change data against?