Slashdot Mirror
How Human Psychology Holds Back Climate Change Action
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Cass R. Sunstein writes at Bloomberg that an understanding of human psychology — specifically, what human beings fear and what they do not — helps to explain why nations haven't insisted on more significant emissions reductions even as scientists warn that if the world continues on its current course, we will face exceedingly serious losses and threats including a significant rise in sea levels by century's end. First, people tend to be especially focused on risks or hazards that have an identifiable perpetrator, and for that reason produce outrage. 'Warmer temperatures are a product not of any particular human being or group, but the interaction between nature and countless decisions by countless people. There are no obvious devils or demons — no individuals who intend to create the harms associated with climate change.' The second obstacle is that people tend to evaluate risks by way of 'the availability heuristic,' which leads them to assess the probability of harm by asking whether a readily available example comes to mind. For example, an act of terrorism is likely to be both available and salient, and hence makes people fear that another such event will occur. A recent crime or accident can activate attention and significantly inflate people's assessment of risk. Finally, human beings are far more attentive to immediate threats than to long-term ones. They may neglect the future, seeing it as a kind of foreign country, one they may not ever visit. For this reason, they might fail to save for retirement, or they might engage in risk-taking behavior such as smoking or unhealthy eating that will harm their future selves. 'All the obstacles are daunting skepticism about the science, economic self-interest, and the difficulties of designing cost-effective approaches and obtaining an international agreement,' concludes Sunstein, 'But the world is unlikely to make much progress on climate change until the barrier of human psychology is squarely addressed.'"
This is the same guy that thinks animals should have a right to sue people:
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/cass-sunstein-proposes-that-animals-should-have-legal-right-to-sue
Nothing this guy says should be taken seriously.
helped me get laid. In the 90s I saved the rainforest and it helped me get laid. Now I am out to save the planet. So please get angry about the Chinese polluting the environment beacuse it will have a big impact on their behavior.
Because there must be something psychologically invalid about the people who do not 'believe' as you do...it could not be, I don't know, that you have not made a strong argument for the position you are taking.
I am John Hurt.
You know what holds ME back?
I work hard. I worry about retirement, about having kids. I can't AFFORD to spend "extra" to go green. I will do what is cheapest. If, in the long run, a 30 mpg car helps my pocketbook over a 50 mpg car, I'll get it. I make no apologies.
Until it's actually CHEAPER to go green, why the hell would people, who are generally underpaid and overworked by Multi-Corp Corporatoin, go green. They can't AFFORD to. If it was cheaper for me to buy a Prius (without contemplating how green the batteries are but purely looking at it from a MPG view), I would. When you see the people in North America driving around with their inefficient pickups in this day and age of impending doom, you realize that we as a species are generally screwed anyways. You want small business to go green? It has to be in their best financial interest.
Westerners want cheap goods. They simply DO NOT CARE about the environmental footprint involved in making those goods in third world countries. They might even SAY they would pay more to get them made Green... but they're generally full of shit. Me going green doesn't make one shit tonne of difference to the world, especially when I see the absolute insane amount of waste of people around me. I could write a whole post about the shit I see on a daily basis that just makes me shake my head. What's holding people back, you ask? They don't care. Try telling some third world person shitting in a river trying to make ends meet on a daily basis that he has to go green.
We are at the top of the population graph, or will be very soon.... and it's all downhill from there. I have absolutely no faith that we can come through this, unless we get somebody who makes the decisions who isn't paid by Multi-Corp Corporation.
...people are smart enough to look at a graph of temperatures over the last 100 years and see that things aren't that clear. And however many statistical methods are applied to that same data, perhaps people conclude that a lot still isn't known. Perhaps people's psychologies view taking 'significant' action against carbon emissions in a similar way to taking 'significant' action against Syria. In other words, we doubt whether the 'experts' know what the hell they are talking about.
Or maybe a lot of people realize that any fast, dramatic climate change is largely nonsense.
Why should I stop driving my big SUV when everyone else still gets to go out and have fun in their SUVs?
Or, why should I give a rat's ass about the piddling amount of pollution that comes from my one tailpipe, when megalithic corporations pay off the government to look the other way, as they dump orders of magnitude more shit into the environment in a week than little ol' me could produce in a lifetime?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
...the burning of witches in the modern world; ...basing economic activity on astrological predictions; ...basing economic activity on predictions of apocalypse.
Maybe the problem isn't with human psychology...
Maybe Cass can use the same explanation to explain our $16 Trillion debt.
The same explanation does hold in both cases. The main difference is that climate is a real physical phenomenon, whereas money is purely psychological. It's a measure of intention that people try to keep track of using rewriteable magnetic patterns on spinning disks.
I concluded long ago that due to human nature, nothing will be done about climate change until the resulting unfolding disasters force people to make desperate feats of geoengineering to attempt to reverse the damage. The cost of those efforts is probably going to make $16T look like a drop in the bucket.
Never attribute to an availability heuristic that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
"I'm gonna get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames."
-Jim Morrison
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In other words: "People aren't sufficiently scared, so we'll have to do what Stephen Schneider told us to do."
Fear. The tool of every dictatorial tyrant. Sigh.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Well this human being has a fear of Cass Sunstein in any sort of authoritative position, that's for sure.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
That number keeps cropping up. I'm pretty sure all those studies didn't refer to 'accelerating' climate change.
The reason for the inaction is more simple than anything else. Lack of accountability. Everybody tries to deny things, because they say someone else will profit/benefit and/or exploit from it. It has become a crutch now to the point where it leans towards the ridiculous. Now, here's the thing. Common sense. Let's go with that. Obviously maybe not all of our actions are related to climate change, but surely, being responsible for our pollutants, reducing our carbon footprint, cleaning up our waters, taking care of wildlife, I mean, c'mon.. does it have to be for a reason? can't we think of our Earth as an extension of our home and ourselves? But in the name of profit, people will skew issues, whether its right or wrong. People don't like change and right now, those with money would have to change their ways, which would cost them and well, that's not good for business. See the logic and think about it.
It's money.
There's simply no immediate financial incentive to preventing disastrous climate change and rather large financial implications to actively trying to do something about it for the organizations with the ability to do so... such as, say, creating a firm ban on the internal combustion engine, and legislating that absolutely *NO* new vehicles made after this year can use gasoline. The economic implications of such a regulation would be enormous, probably cause total financial ruin for no small number of people, and it's not the least bit surprising that measures such as that, which might actually make some kind of difference are not being taken.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
We already figured out it wasn't because people were being smart and rational.
People in general seem to be motivated. They're sufficiently obsessed with driving a car that gets 31 mpg instead of 29, or weatherizing their homes to cut a few pennies off their electric bill. The real problem is that people don't understand how irrelevant all of that is. We can only fix the problem if we drastically change our transportation and energy infrastructure. It's a lack of intelligence rather than a lack of motivation.
1.) What is the societal cost of cutting energy usage. How much does this cost in comparison to warming.
2.) Explain how using less carbonaceous fuel here will prevent it from being burned there.
Please invent some psychobabble to explain common sense.
love is just extroverted narcissism
A better reason why there has been little "action" on climate change is that it is all based on bad science with no reliable predictions and constant falsification.
What about fear as a motivator for denial? On an emotional level I WANT the deniers to be right. I think many people deny it because it is such a huge problem and it is easy to feel powerless about it.
There's the issue of what to do. At the moment, there seems to be a lot of division and non-answers on that. If climate models are correct, a leveling off or small reduction in emissions won't do anything to help. Even massive cuts might not do the trick. Ok well going back to the pre-industrial era isn't an option, though some green groups do like the idea. That would entail a massive loss of life and loss of quality of life. So no go there.
Likewise carbon credits, carbon exchanges, that kind of shit won't do anything. Playing money games and shuffling things around on spreadsheets does not enact any kind of real change. While economic incentives can help move things in certain directions, this won't really do that much and mostly will serve to enrich those that play the exchanges (see Wall Street).
Ok so, we'll need something else. Some geoengineering to change what is happening, or we'll need to do R&D on solutions not to change what is happening, but to survive and adapt to the changes that are going to happen. So what are those then? What are the proposals, what do they cost, what are the risks, the benefits, etc, etc? Also where are the green groups pushing for them, advocating for it?
Right now, it seems to be not just that there are people who do not believe that climate change is real, or is a problem (or a big enough problem to warrant large scale action), but there seems to be little in the way of solutions from those that do believe. "Just cut emissions," does not seem to be a solution that will be useful. "Cap and trade," seems to just maintain the status quo, while funneling money around to poorer countries. None of the popular solution with the climate change advocates seem to be one that would actually deal with the issue.
Is it such a surprise then that politicians don't seem to want to act on it?
I mean suppose I tell you that you have a real problem with your house, it is slowly deteriorating towards a collapse. I am able to prove this to your satisfaction, and I am able to show you that the reason is related to water use. Any time you run water though your pipes, it moves things further along. Also, as best as I can tell, even if you stopped running water entirely, you are already past the point where you can save it, it WILL collapse, all you can do is slow it.
However as solutions, I propose you just try and use less water. Maybe crap in a bucket and dump it outside instead of using your toilet. I also propose you "cap and trade" your usage, you don't actually have to decrease the amount you use, but you just pay your neighbours when you use over a certain amount. None of my solutions involve fixing the problem, or rebuilding, or reinforcing, just trying to prolong things and/or shuffling funds around.
Are you going to do what I suggest? Or are you going to ignore me?
That's one of the real problems I see is that the solutions climate change advocates seem to put forward aren't useful solutions by their own models. If we are already past a tipping point where even drastic emissions cuts won't help, well then we need to stop worrying about emissions and start worrying about either how to geoengineer a change, or how to simply deal with the changes that are coming.
Maybe Cass can use the same explanation to explain our $16 Trillion debt.
Actually the inaction on the debt and on climate change are problem closely related. Both are huge problems that are going to take people to change their habits now. Both won't have payoffs until sometime in the future. In both, most of us today will be long gone before any of the proposed solutions have a chance of making any real change.
So, why no change on the debt or climate? It's simple there is no immediate payoff for us today. To make the necessary changes, we need people to suffer (meaning change our habits) now for some hope for payoff well beyond our lifetime. Simply put, we are to selfish to give up something today for our children's children tomorrow, let alone if they are somebody else's kids that we don't even know in low lying areas in South East Asia.
It's not psychology per say, it's all about what makes us happy now, not tomorrow.
I’m always stunned by the hostility and ignorance displayed on /. in regard to climate change. The preponderance of scientific data indicates that human activity is accelerating global climate change. That shouldn’t be a debate within an educated community like this.
The question is, of course, what to do about it? I agree that only systemic change and a dose of directed technology can address the issue; reducing one’s individual footprint, though admirable, is inconsequential. Sadly it has far more impact on one’s ego than the environment. That being said, I’m baffled by the ‘ahhh f*#$ it’ attitude. I’m especially baffled by the hostile FI attitude. I have my theories, but that’s not important.
What is important is that public attitudes change significantly enough that governments and corporations (perhaps forced by governments) begin to change. The FI attitude maintains the status quo. Sure, China and India are huge problems, but saying ‘FI, we aren’t even going to try here until they start trying there’ is simply entering into a suicide pact with those nations. If we change the way our governments, corporations and consumers act, we might have a chance to exert pressure, on multiple fronts, on other nations. It’s the only way to get the ball rolling.
About one half of our country is listening to the corporate line; fed to them through a filter of spurious skepticism of a stance about as close to absolute certainty as you see in the scientific community.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Homer: That's future Homer's problem. Man, I sure don't envy that guy!
So that $20 note that I am holding is just a figment of my imagination?
The value of that note is a figment of the collective imaginations of a group of people. If most of that group changes their mind about its value, it can easily become worth no more than the nice paper stock it's printed on. This has happened to currencies at many times throughout history.
Even gold has value only because of social convention. That material actually has few practical uses of significant value.
The paper is real, but its value as currency is only due to a collective agreement to value it as such.
Uh, yes. Well, the value behind it at least. That $20USD is in a fiat currency. It's not worth anything other than what other's will trade for it. It has no intrinsic value. You value it as $20 because everyone else values it at $20.
Otherwise it's just a slip of paper.
I live in a country that will greatly benefit from global warming in terms of agricultural output, tourism, and available land. Additionally, I have no children and want no children and hence don't see any value in making efforts to change a world in which I'm burried.
I also believe that these kinds of struggles are good to have -- pushing civilization into space exploration.
I also believe that first-world countries should explore the true depth of a problem (by growing that problem), in order to encourage and eventually force solutions before the much larger third-world countries encounter the problem. Reducing whatever by 10% in north america means nothing when India gradually adds a billion people to the problem.
You live your way. I won't stop you. But I probably have zero interest in your ways. I don't intend to follow them. Most call this democracy.
Take DDT for example. It's basically harmless to humans, and it's broad application eliminates insect-born illnesses like malaria. Yet the adverse effects it has on birds made it the catalyst for the formation of the EPA, the Endangered Species Act, Environmental Protection Act, and pretty much all modern environmental law.
All that had to happen is someone had to write a book that explained the logical conclusion of the use of this and other harmful chemicals.
So the claim that it environmental damage needs to have a clear victim and a clear perpetrator is absurd, and actually contradicts history. No one who knows anything about this would ever agree with Sunstein's conclusion, or what you've said here.
...more to the point, intrinsic value is a construction. No one lives or dies because we decide to consider gold valuable and little green squares of paper not. At some point down this chain of currencies you encounter barter, where monetary value becomes an ethical construct ("I give you something you need in exchange for something I need equally"), but that's not materially real, either; not in the same sense that an absolute command economy enforced by locks and keys is.
For some reason no one ever takes that last critical step when we discuss economics on Slashdot, as if there's something special about atomic nuclei with 79 protons, other than the fact that they're shiny, malleable, and bad at oxidizing when in metal form.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
100 years from now will be far more different than now is from 1913. Keep technological progress in high gear. That yields far greater results than everything else put together.
They would have worried about stuff we find trivial or irrelevant. Wherefore crush the economy if in 50 years robots can move everything trivially, or giant vats of bacteria can produce fossil fuels, so to speak, pulling it out of the air, making the use neutral again?
Not only do not worry (too much) about it, the usual command and control solutions will slow this tech growth, leaving us worse off, not better. 2013 tech in 2013 is way better for quality of life than 1973 tech in 2013 -- or 1953.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If Anthropogenic Climate Change is a religion then it's an awesome religion because it's got actual physical evidence to back it up.
2 digits for Year is enough, it'll last till 1999 and I'll retired by then anyway.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Couldn't we just pick some arbitrary group to blame? Republicans or Vikings or Buddhists or whatever?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
...the fossil fuel industry.
It has been well-documented that the vast majority of the literature against the scientific consensus on global warming is directly related to conservative think tanks who get a good fraction of their funding from the fossil fuel industry. See here:
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2013/06/manufacturing-uncertainty-conservative-think-tanks-and-climate-change-denial-books/
And it's no so much that they really want climate change to occur, but that they profit greatly from doing things that cause climate change (and other forms of environmental destruction).
That means we'd be down to around 45% of current levels by 2050. That's a big reduction. Now probably doable and worth trying, but you'd want to be fairly certain that it would, indeed, fix the problem if you are going to make the tradeoffs necessary to do so. You wouldn't want to spend a bunch on a big change to make all this happen only to find out no, sorry, but that isn't in fact going to help.
This is the kind of suggestion that can only appeal to those with an entrenched position.
In reality, there are at least the following explanations:
1. Those who disagree on action find the argument wanting.
2. Those who disagree on action find the evidence wanting.
3. Those who disagree on action find the remedial policy wanting.
4. Those who disagree on action have some psychological problem.
If you are pro-action and adopt position number 4 then you're essentially acknowledging that your argument isn't compelling (which is also when people stoop to nonsense appeals to consensus, appeals to authority, and so forth). To quote Thomas Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Few vehicles that could be any good offroad were called "SUVs," most predate the term.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is that somebody will have a bright idea that we can deliberately prolong the status quo.
They then convince a bunch of idiots w/ money and power (aka politicians) that their "solution" will somehow save the planet.
Humans will do what humans do best: We will adapt.
The climate is changing. Let it change. Go with the flow.
>With respect to the science of climate change, many experts regard the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the world’s authoritative institution.
>A draft summary of its forthcoming report was leaked last week.
I have lower respect for documents made behind closed doors, by the people who twisted the graph on the WMO 1999 report, and are still unapologetic.
A trace change in a trace gas will not cause exponential changes. It never has and it never will.
Then you'll have no objection if I force you to breath a 270 ppm concentration of cyanide*. After all it's far less than the 400 ppm concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
*270 ppm of cyanide gas will kill you within minutes. Now that's what I call an exponential change.
Fun fact: During the dust bowl, our monied overlords thought it would be socialist to ship water to the victims.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, it isn't. If it were, then one would assume court, police or military action would be able able to prevent phenomena such as hyperinflation. Hyperinflation - which is essentially a breakdown of public trust - happened many times in many places, and the court, police or military were the last to be able to do anything about it.
Now can we please extend Godwin's law to absurd "communist" and "soviet" references?
Hint: psychology != psychiatry. The former studies mental functions and behaviors in general (including the perfectly normal but somewhat undesirable ones TFA is talking about), while the latter studies mental disorders. Wikipedia is just a few mouse clicks away - educate yourself.
The cost of those efforts is probably going to make $16T look like a drop in the bucket.
No offense intended to the rest of humanity, but I'm pretty sure I could do a lot about AGW with 16 trillion present value dollars.
You could now, but probably not if you wait for a runaway positive feedback to happen.
Exactly. And to those Americans who'll answer: "well duh, we don't want to lower our standard of living to China's level": Germany and Japan are at roughly half the US level and the UK, Italy and France are even lower.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass.
You're in luck; your fellow denier bluefoxlucid just unwittingly posted links to the article that solves the riddle to the slowdown. Basically, it's cold deep water from the pacific temporarily absorbing some of the excess heat, and the slowdown in heating (which still isn't cooling) won't last.
Congratulations, you just regurgitated most used climate myths #66 and #59. Please fact-check before showing off your ignorance.
You're not too far off the truth, but it's only a half truth. The global warming/climate change cultists are getting their money from big-govenment sources that have at least as vested an interest in producing results that can be used to argue for increasing government authorities and funding as the oil companies have in the dissenting research. This is a common fact of life in academic research - funding sources are never perfect.
Ethical researchers will not compromise their results, and take what funding they can get as a result. They may go from one source to another frequently in order to keep working, and typically run on a shoe-string.
Unethical researchers find a good titty and make sure their results always line up with that prominences interests without needing to be told. Whatever their other problems, they tend to do very well at keeping the funds flowing and that counts for more than any of us really want to admit.
The people that are best at funding in climate research decided years ago that anyone who denied their faith in 'global warming' were not to be reasoned with but rather to be excommunicated, shunned. They have turned their departments into churches, and away from science. You cant even get a passing grade, let alone a degree, without mouthing the creed obediently. If you manage to get a degree before you start doubting them, you still wont get funding from anyone except the fossil energy companies, so it wouldnt be any surprise at all that they are funding virtually all of the real science that's going on in the field today.
And sad as it is (they are figuratively fossils themselves, and need to die) it's still better this way than if they were not doing this and NO ONE would fund climate science anymore, period.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Congratulations, you just regurgitated most used climate myth #11. (I can do this the whole day.)
Oh hello, most used climate myth #59 again! They really ought to rank that on higher.
You could now, but probably not if you wait for a runaway positive feedback to happen.
I'm pretty sure I can get that money to stretch out. For example, what positive feedback are you thinking of? Massive methane release? Small airplanes dropping flares greatly reduce the impact of that. I could be flying them for the next millennium for maybe a few tens of millions of dollars a year.
Develop and subsidize lighter albedo roadways. Iron seeding of the Pacific. Fighting fires in northern Canada which blow soot across Greenland. Putting out coal mine fires throughout the world.
Then you get to the big projects like putting up a vast solar shade in the L1 Sun-Earth Lagrange point or dumping enough ice on the Antarctica continent for the next millennium to counter sea level rise. I think those are quite feasible on my budget.
But I don't think AGW is that serious that one really needs to do much about it even over the next millennium. I would much rather just invest that money in normal businesses.
or dumping enough ice on the Antarctica continent for the next millennium to counter sea level rise.
Right. For only $16T.
You're an idiot.
Is that it is just one of shuffling around who produces what. Now this may well work, if all we need to do is maintain our level of emissions or decrease them. However if we are past a tipping point, where nothing short of a massive reduction (and perhaps not even that) in emissions will stop the warming then it does no good.
What I was talking about with proposals and so on was things outside of "emit less CO2" or "here are way to try and emit less CO2". The reason is this is assuming that we are indeed past a tipping point, as some climate researchers claim. In that case, the issue of emissions is not one to concentrate on, but rather on how to either prevent the change via other means, prepare ourselves to deal with the change, or some of both.
Isn't this kind of obvious?
I mean this is the whole reason why our advancement in any field is ridiculously slow.
We still drive cars with inefficient combustion engines burning away precious resources for what? Because it's easy to sell something that you use up instead of selling something once that lasts an lifetime.
We still drive cars, humans suck at driving cars and are the cause of traffic congestion costing tons of money, wasting millions of fuel and pumping poisonous gasses into our atmosphere. We have to breath that stuff, yet we don't care.
We still throw away the majority of our used resources. There are billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, lithium and other rare earth materials dumped in 3rd world countries all because it's easier to just make something new. Instead of investing in technologies to re-use those resources.
We still believe that if you work hard you do well and that everyone should work even if that means you're doing something you hate, is simply degrading and can easily be replaced by a machine that can do it faster, work 24/7 and produce a higher quality product. All that for the simple reason that 'society' considers this to be a better option then leaving people jobless.
Our society is stuck in limbo worshiping money and the people that have it at the cost of everyone's well-being and happiness all that while destroying our planet, our home for the sake of those beliefs.
Hansen's 1988 paper predicted a climate sensitivity of 3.4C per doubling CO2e. It has since been seen to follow 3.2C per doubling.
First, it's worth noting here that they have huge error bars on equilibrium temperature sensitivity. They also have yet to actually measure it. Thus, I don't believe you at all in this respect.
Actual observed temperature sensitivity or "transient" temperature sensitivity is around 1.3-1.8 C per doubling and I have yet to see evidence that equilibrium temperature sensitivity will be much different.
So, we've waited. We let the clock run. It agreed with the models.
So, now you will change, yes?
No, because they don't agree with the present.
As I mentioned earlier, we'll run the clock out and see what happens. If you're right, then reality itself will show me in error and that's far more solid than your assertions above.
I figure it'll run around $1 trillion, maybe even considerably less with our continued technology development. That leaves plenty of money for other things.
The UN is predicting a 22 ft sea level rise over the next 1000 years. That means you're allocating only $22 million to make and stack each cubic mile of ice. I don't care how many John Galts you think you're going to put on the job, that's just not going to happen.
No, dumbass. I was referring to the nickname of the person I replied to.
No sig for you!!
The whole 'climate change' culture exists so that the lonely academics can be hip and cool with their huge NSF grants and invites to Al Gore's latest shindig. God help you if you use your education and position to do critical analysis. No party with Bono for you!
Uh, that argument is easier to shoot down than that: No the courts, police, and military do not enforce acceptance of US currency. You are not forced to accept US dollars as a form of payment. You can refuse to do business with someone. You can refuse to do business with someone unless they pay in goats or whatever.
The exception to that, however, is that the USD is legal tender, and is a valid form of paying off debts. You know, like one that the US government places on you. Like taxes and fines. You gotta pay that in USD. Probably. I dunno, maybe you could talk the IRS into accepting goats. I don't think they have to accept goats, but they might go for it.
The courts and such most certainly don't have control over the dollar... that, in theory, is the Fed, but even that is pretty questionable.
People are too partisan to deal with the fact that their side isn't any less corrupt and in need of constant monitoring and aggressive demands for accountability as the other side.
Because, you know, if FEELS good to identify with THE RIGHT side, the side that appeals to them emotionally, despite the fact that both sides are screwing them.
Everything else is just an excuse to pollute and make other people pay for your trash.
Adapt. Because the oceanic heat sinks are turning acidic and 500 year events are happening every 2-3 years NOW.
Nobody cares about your excuses.
Ford - yes, the private company I used to own shares in - quadrupled sales of electric vehicles this last quarter.
Adapt. Or die.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This idea has been around for a very long time to the point that it is basically common sense.
People tend to be more attuned to the "here and now" than to some nebulous "future state".
There was a similar study not all that long ago, that offered people on the street 20$ right now, or like 100$ in a month. Almost all subjects took the 20$.
This is probably hardwired to our lizard brain regarding survival instincts. Grab what you can, while you can, etc...
It appears some people still haven't read the climate change memo. Global warming debunked: NASA report verifies carbon dioxide actually cools atmosphere
Practically everything you have been told by the mainstream scientific community and the media about the alleged detriments of greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon dioxide, appears to be false, according to new data compiled by NASA's Langley Research Center. As it turns out, all those atmospheric greenhouse gases that Al Gore and all the other global warming hoaxers have long claimed are overheating and destroying our planet are actually cooling it, based on the latest evidence.
As reported by Principia Scientific International (PSI), Martin Mlynczak and his colleagues over at NASA tracked infrared emissions from the earth's upper atmosphere during and following a recent solar storm that took place between March 8-10. What they found was that the vast majority of energy released from the sun during this immense coronal mass ejection (CME) was reflected back up into space rather than deposited into earth's lower atmosphere.
The result was an overall cooling effect that completely contradicts claims made by NASA's own climatology division that greenhouse gases are a cause of global warming. As illustrated by data collected using Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER), both carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), which are abundant in the earth's upper atmosphere, greenhouse gases reflect heating energy rather than absorb it.
"Carbon dioxide and nitric oxide are natural thermostats," says James Russell from Hampton University, who was one of the lead investigators for the groundbreaking SABER study. "When the upper atmosphere (or 'thermosphere') heats up, these molecules try as hard as they can to shed that heat back into space."
Almost all 'heating' radiation generated by sun is blocked from entering lower atmosphere by CO2
According to the data, up to 95 percent of solar radiation is literally bounced back into space by both CO2 and NO in the upper atmosphere. Without these necessary elements, in other words, the earth would be capable of absorbing potentially devastating amounts of solar energy that would truly melt the polar ice caps and destroy the planet.
"The shock revelation starkly contradicts the core proposition of the so-called greenhouse gas theory which claims that more CO2 means more warming for our planet," write H. Schreuder and J. O'Sullivan for PSI. "[T]his compelling new NASA data disproves that notion and is a huge embarrassment for NASA's chief climatologist, Dr. James Hansen and his team over at NASA's GISS."
Dr. Hansen, of course, is an outspoken global warming activist who helped spark man-made climate change hysteria in the U.S. back in 1988. Just after the release of the new SABER study, however, Dr. Hansen conveniently retired from his career as a climatologist at NASA, and reportedly now plans to spend his time "on science," and on "drawing attention to [its] implications for young people."
Sources for this article include: Be sure to read this one... http://principia-scientific.org/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
We're still burning all that coal in power plants because the omni-obstructionists have spent over 40 years blocking the alternative.
The alternatives are (1) coal, (2) nuclear, (3) get rid of most of the population of the planet and condemn the survivors to impoverished squalor. All else is arithmetic denialism.
In present money. Remember that will be more money by the time that ice gets "stacked".
I was merely pointing out that without other information calling it a trace gas that has minimal effect is unscientific and meaningless. If you have science based information that climate scientists are wrong in their estimation of CO2's effects let's hear it.
It's basically useless. Anything less obvious than a charging tiger just doesn't register.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Now now, it's not fair making them think, when they've got a nice pithy sound bite that expresses their tribal shibboleth. And here you come bringing up things like confidence intervals and length of period being averaged and all that stuff. You could be responsible for their blowing a mental fuse.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"How Human Psychology Holds Back Climate Change Action"?
Simple. There are like $5 trillion of fossil fuels still underground. And human psychology cannot let that $5 trillion stay underground.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
A few decades should be enough time to provide the evidence it'll need.
The issue isn't the paucity of evidence. The issue is how people are able to ignore the overwhelming evidence available.
It'll also be enough time for your emotions to cool and you to get some perspective on this debate.
My emotions are ice cold. I'm an analytical type (I've been described as an android ... and that's my friends!). As far as perspective, mine is clear: In a field where I lack the expertise to form an opinion, I accept the best available science as it changes from day to day. BUT ... to re-iterate this discussion is not about climate science.
So when are these psychologists going to study your preference for a good story over science?
Since I don't, I guess never. A nice example of projection though.
When such research gimmicks are blatantly biased against one side of a crucial debate such as this, something is going on other than scientific research.
Sides? Debate? Something other going on? Now that's the "good story" version of science.
It's amusing, this tendency of yours to indulge in the very behaviours you criticise even as you are criticising them. I guess you honestly can't see it though.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
BUT ... to re-iterate this discussion is not about climate science.
Sure, it's about a political hack playing pop psychology on his opposition. That discussion is fundamentally a joke.
The issue isn't the paucity of evidence. The issue is how people are able to ignore the overwhelming evidence available.
It's a great illusion, isn't it? But there are several obvious problems with the claim. First, we don't know key properties of climate to the accuracy desired such as temperature sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2. It's worth noting here that the typical figure used (which bounced around between 2C and 4C per doubling of CO2) has not actually been observed because it allegedly takes centuries for temperature changes to settled down.
What we can observe is transient sensitivity which is much lower (recent research claims around 1.3-1.8C right now). That's the observation of short term change of temperature to the small increase of CO2 over the past century or two.
Note the games played here. This is supposedly the most reliable part of the AGW theory, but we have both huge error bars and a result reported in a way that will take centuries to verify.
Second, let us consider what data is actually out there over the time frames we need. We have roughly 35 years of satellite data. That's the only way currently to directly measure a global mean temperature. That's our sole high quality data for the AGW theory. Then there's around a century and a half of weather station data. And then temperature proxy ("paleoclimate") data stretching out hundreds of thousands of years (with some shaky geological data going back hundreds of millions of years).
That's your "overwhelming data". It's not.
Third problem is the gatekeepers of this data. The key bottleneck is the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the 1990s and 2000s. While there are several holders of paleoclimate data, the more I read of this period the more I'm struck by how dominant the CRU was over this time.
They had access to station data for most nations of the world which no one else had (crucial data for bridging temperature proxy data to modern satellite data) and their interpretations of this data were taken by many researchers wholesale. They along with allied researchers decided what was the effect of phenomena like urban heat islands, the extent and characteristics of the notorious Medieval Warm Period, tree ring data, etc and their resulting aggregation of data was used to vet climate models.
And they were heavily biased in favor of the AGW theory, even to the point of breaking UK law in order to deny data to critics.
So this is why I will wait for supporting evidence rather than merely assume that the current "overwhelming evidence" is accurate and trustworthy.
Of course not. What makes it real is empirical evidence in the real world.
35 years of satellite data ...[is] our sole high quality data
If you discount the 150 year instrumental record, and all the various proxies, then sure the evidence isn't overwhelming. The question here is what the motivation (as opposed to the rationalisations) for ignoring evidence is.
Uncertainty is hardly an argument against risk management.
And the story you tell about CRU is laughable.
[T]hey were heavily biased in favor of the AGW theory, even to the point of breaking UK law in order to deny data to critics.
Oh please!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
The 4Runner is one of the few.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel