From CNSNews.com – Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that “cognitive” brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says “climate change” is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.
George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and author of the book “The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics,” says his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily experience and how one functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.
Lakoff told CNSNews.com that “metaphors” shape a person’s understanding of the world, along with one’s values and political beliefs — including what they think about global warming.
“It relates directly (to global warming) because conservatives tend to feel that the free market should be unregulated and (that) environmental regulations are immoral and wrong,” Lakoff said.
“And what they try to do is show that the science is wrong and that the argument is wrong, based on the science. So when it comes back to science, they try to debunk the science,” Lakoff said.
On the other hand, he added, liberals’ cognitive process allows them to be “open-minded.”
“Liberals say, ‘Look seriously at the science and look at whether people are going to be harmed or not and whether the world is going to be harmed,’” Lakoff said.
In a Feb. 23 report on National Public Radio, reporter Christopher Joyce began his story by stating that recent polls show that fewer Americans believe humans are making the planet dangerously warmer, despite “a raft” of contradictory reports.
“This puzzles many climate scientists, but not social scientists, whose research suggests that facts may not be as important as one’s beliefs,” Joyce said.
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Read the entire piece here
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The explanations are getting desperate. I wonder then how Dr. Lakoff explains people like myself, who once accepted the scientific arguments presented on global warming, but who now reject most of the hype and urgency attached to it? Believe it or not, in the early 90’s I used to be a global warming activist. But that’s another story.
If you use seawater, it will end up acidic enough to use as battery electrolyte, an added bonus.
Seriously, I keep hearing from the left that the right is “mean spirited” and “hostile” and whatever else, and yet this is the kind of analysis they seem to produce. It’s nothing more than an attack on a mindset. It’s not even really worth commenting on, since it’s so over the top. Tragically, I do know people who probably would be nodding their heads in agreement.
and:
I know you don’t realize it, but that was one of the funniest things posted here. The real question is how to explain all of the lefties insisting that the “science” shows a “conclusion” that CAGW is a threat that requires action, when the “science” is clearly flawed, the data gathering that is not flawed is manipulated, and all of the proposed solutions would do nothing anyway.
At some point even the most adamant will have to come to the realization that they were duped, and are completely wrong.
After looking at the science I’ve determined that global cooling of any degree is bad news and global warming of modest degree is good news.
This is not surprising given that for the most of the history of life on this planet it was much warmer with a much higher concentration of CO2. Life adapted and optimized over geologic spans of time for those typical conditions. Where is life more abundant and diverse – in the Amazon or in Alaska?
I’ve been saying for many years “If the earth starts getting colder we’ll be left fervently wishing that warming it up was as easy as burning more fossil fuels.”
Cooling it off in the exceedingly unlikely event it gets so hot as to cause a net negative effect, on the other hand, is cheap and simple. Most of us have probably heard the term “nuclear winter”. If it gets too hot all we have to do is pop off a very small fraction of the cold war nuclear arsenal in some remote desert region to loft a calculated amount of dust into the stratosphere and bingo, the earth cools down within a matter of days.
But you might say “Dave! Won’t that cause everyone to get cancer from the radioactive fallout?” Well, it will raise the background rate of cancer significantly but not to some horrible degree. But here’s the thing. There’s a win-win plan to handle that. Let’s take all those trillions of dollars that the global warming whackos propose spending to lower CO2 emissions and instead invest that RTFN (right the f*** now) on curing cancer. See, that way, if we have to pop off some nukes to cool the planet the increased cancer rate is a non-concern because we’ll have cured cancer. And if we don’t need to break out the nukes, well, we still cured cancer and that’s a good thing in an of itself worthy of the investment. It’s called a win-win situation.
davidmhoffer (23:20:56) :
Wren
You shouldn’t expect me to present FACTS to counter Lindzen’s OPINIONS>>
And there, in one brief sentence, Wren summarizes the entire AGW debate. Thank you Wren for stipulating that your argument does not rest on facts and that you see no reason that it should.
——-
You missed the point by a mile. Opinions are opinions, not facts, but you seem to think a person’s opinions should be regarded as truth until countered with facts.
Here’s some opinions I have heard.
The CRU hack was carried out on orders from Sen. Inhofe.
President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.
Do you believe these opinions are true until proved false with facts?
R. Gates (08:42:56) :
The 2007 Arctic low was due to less ice on the west side of the Arctic. Ice drifts from west to east and melts in the North Atlantic. This year drift is very low due to the negative AO, which points to a larger amount of older ice in the summer.
I already knew Lakoff was a lousy linguist; now it looks like he’s a whackjob as well. This is, after all, a man who managed to piss off both Steve Pinker and Noam Chomsky simultaneously. He’s cracked, his theories are bunk, and he hasn’t done a day of honest research in his life. Pay him no mind.
Wren
You missed the point by a mile. Opinions are opinions, not facts, but you seem to think a person’s opinions should be regarded as truth until countered with facts.
Here’s some opinions I have heard.
The CRU hack was carried out on orders from Sen. Inhofe.
President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.
Do you believe these opinions are true until proved false with facts?>>
I consider them opinions which might be proven true, and might be proven false, by facts.
Which returns me to the same point that I have repeatedly made. Why, when asked to support your opinions to you seek to change the subject instead of providing evidence to support your opinion?
The fact that you can’t suggests you have none to offer. The logic behind this seems to elude you, as you continue to run away from the argument and change the subject instead.
I have two rats in a cage. I overhead one say to the other “well, if there’s no God, then who cleans the cage”. The other rat pondered for a moment and then responded “the cage was never dirty in the first place. you are delusional if you think it was because look at it, it is clean right now. That poop you just laid down is new poop, there is no evidence to suggest that there was poop before or ever. Your claim that there was poop before, but it is now gone is just an opinion. In my opinion, neither of us poop, ever, except for that one single instance of you going poop just now. Don’t tell me that poop is natural either because my opinion is that it is not. Nor will I consider an experiment where we measure the amount of poop every day and see if it slowly increases and then suddenly disappears since I have no need of facts to show that my opinion os correct.”
So, while you ponder if I am delusional or not, or if my pet rats are, or both, I want to thank you for your assistance in picking out names for at least one of them, which I will henceforth call “Wren”.
Peaceful and open-minded liberals shut down free speech at Ottawa University – by threating violence.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/speech+cancelled/2718883/story.html
Wren:
You have missed the point by a mile. Dr. Lindzen was reporting his observations, i.e. “facts”, not opinions. The facts may be open to interpretation or modification by the introduction of other evidence, but you have no other evidence. You just prefer to ignore Lindzen because you don’t like his position. As for the good Senator, I’d heard from a reliable source it was really a certain Canadian Blogger who did the deed… and the CiC can fix his problem by just releasing the damn piece of paper and then laughing in their faces.
It helps to use specific examples of the “open-mindedness” of the liberals cited by the good Doctor of cognitive and linguistics science.
Green opposition to technological progress in nanotechnology:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/how-did-the-uk-nanotechnology-strategy-become-such-a-shambles
From Friends of the Earth:
http://nano.foe.org.au/
“Liberals say, ‘Look seriously at the science and look at whether people are going to be harmed or not and whether the world is going to be harmed,’” Lakoff said. This has nothing in the world to do with being open-minded. It is adopting the position that all technological progress and decent standards of living are unsustainable and automatically “harmful” to “the world.” The opposition to the remarkable vistas of possibilities opening up in nanotech is going to be a textbook case in this point, for any who care to watch.
Further proving that liberalism is a religion, its practitioners respond with the zeal of Torquemada to any dissent from the faith in global warming
Ann Coulter
How Global Warmers will make sceptics change their convictions:
http://images.google.com.pe/images?hl=es&rlz=1R2RNWN_esPE364&q=inquisicion%20peru&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tab=wi&imgtype=i_similar&sa=X&ei=W3GqS5ycHsGC8gbzl-C7Bw&ct=img-sim-l&oi=image_sil&resnum=17&tbnid=kjcs5I4BEnUjpM:
Robert E. Phelan (11:45:52) :
Wren:
You have missed the point by a mile. Dr. Lindzen was reporting his observations, i.e. “facts”, not opinions. The facts may be open to interpretation or modification by the introduction of other evidence, but you have no other evidence. You just prefer to ignore Lindzen because you don’t like his position. As for the good Senator, I’d heard from a reliable source it was really a certain Canadian Blogger who did the deed… and the CiC can fix his problem by just releasing the damn piece of paper and then laughing in their faces.
======
Lindzen extrapolated his unverified observations, and you believe Lindzen because you want to believe him.
As for the CRU hack, the police still are investigating the case, so we don’t yet know exactly what happened.
However, it may be theft.
I am wary of people who use things that may have been stolen. I don’t trust people who use things that have been stolen. If someone gives tacit approval to theft by using what’s stolen, I suspect that person also will think it’s OK to lie.
@ur momisugly Dave Springer (09:59:59) :
In SCIAM of January this year there was an article on what could happen if Pakistan and India decide to use their nuclear arsenal on each other.
20 million people could die directly with up to a billion later on from starvation and global average temperatures could drop as much as 1.2 degrees celcius within a month and could take to over a decade to rise 0.5 to 0.8 degrees wich by then is still well below todays averages.
For some at the extreme end of the argument this could be their wettest dream ever!
Wren (13:15:23) :
Pathetic.
Dr. George Lakoff asserts in his writings that conservatives have a Strict Father morality in which people are made good through self-discipline and hard work. Liberals have a Nurturant Parent morality which sees people as something to be cared for and assisted.
I believe his concise description lays out the divide between liberal and conservative ideology nicely. Liberals think they need to care for me. They don’t. They think I need their assistance. I don’t. They think the earth needs to be saved from me. It doesn’t. They think science is a tool with which to prove and thereby justify the need to enforce their care and assistance. It isn’t.
The fallacy of Lakoff’s public exposition on the skeptical view of climate change is he is obviously a liberal – hardly impartial or neutral in his characterizations of climate skeptics. It is not that I want the science to be wrong or feel a need to debunk science. Rather, I am a self disciplined, hard working researcher myself. I expect scientific conclusion to be impartial, unemotional, objective, unbiased and apolitical. When science is hijacked for purpose of posturing a political moral view, it has ceased to be science and has become a political movement cloaked in the false legitimacy of science.
Lakoff himself cannot differentiate between tenets of science and the convictions of his Nurturant Parent moral view else he wouldn’t spout such utter nonsense that so totally exposes him as yet another shrill, blaming, condescending liberal voice saying “we’re here to care for and help you.” No thanks, George, I can help myself.
Robert E. Phelan (15:45:50) :
Hey, I haven’t forgotten the pics you wanted.
Still in Taipei but heading back to SF (for a week) the Adirondack Mtns NY for the summer/fall.
John
A psychologist’s quick take:
George Lakoff (pronounced Lake-off, for those who are curious) was a solid linguist 35 or 40 years ago. His ideas incurred the displeasure of Noam Chomsky, but so have the views of virtually all linguists who are not in line with the latest edition of Chomskyanism.
Since he got into theorizing about political attitudes, he’s essentially been producing junk. On “climate change,” he seems to be indulging in breathtakingly circular reasoning.
It’s been a long way downhill.
sorepaw (17:55:27) :
A psychologist’s quick take:
Since he got into theorizing about political attitudes, he’s essentially been producing junk.
I suspected so much, but must say I have not had a look at his book. If anyone really wants to see some exciting neuroscience, you must see Dr. Johnjoe McFadden’s Conscious Electromagnetic Field theory, which he discusses in his book, _Quantum Evolution_. He explores brain function from the electrical polarization of the cell membranes, all the way to the incredibly complex em fields that are produced by the sychronous firing of millions and billions of neurones. Loosely, the synchronous firing is linked to awareness and is happening at various locations all over the cortex, so the field theory offers a simple solution to the binding problem in brain science.
He is a great writer and I have not looked at the ol grey matter the same since…highly recommended reading.
Robert E. Phelan (15:45:50) : @ur momisugly Wren (13:15:23) :
“Pathetic.”
Agreed. Starting to feel sorry for him actually.
If he feels he could challenge Lindzen, I would pay to see that debate.
It would be short in duration though and there would be nothing left but little wren feathers.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
John Whitman (17:14:22) :
Looking forward to the photos. The Adirondacks are a lot closer to here than Yang Ming Shan…. if you want to come a little further East, I can throw a party here that would make TCM green with envy. The 2010 Summer Climate Picnic. Sheesh. I’m so close to New York that Gavin Schmidt could make it… and he’d be an honored guest if he chose to turn up and snarf a brew with us…
@ur momisugly Wren (13:15:23) :
http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/NewThinking/greenproducts.pdf
Doh!
Steve Goddard said:
“This year drift is very low due to the negative AO, which points to a larger amount of older ice in the summer.”
———-
I’ve been watching that, and actually thought we might see a positive anomaly for the first time since 2004 because of the light winds and related small drift. It certainly has been a good year for the multi-year ice to build back up. But the same light winds (caused by the negative AO) also brought a persistant high pressure area over the region) and higher temps over N. Canada and Greenland, and so I do expect pretty impressive melt in this part of the arctic because of the that. Despite some attempts to characterize arctic sea ice loss as coming all from wind and currents, higher arctic temps do play a part the equation.
I am sticking with my forecast that despite the rebound in multi-year ice the summer arctic sea ice minimum will be less than 2009 and 2008, but not as low as 2007. Between now and 2015, the arctic sea ice should hit several new record summer lows. If it doesn’t hit at least one new modern record summer low minimum by 2015, by confidence in the validity of AGWT will fall from 75% to 50/50 or lower.
savethesharks (19:54:34) :
Agreed. Starting to feel sorry for him actually.
If he feels he could challenge Lindzen, I would pay to see that debate.
It would be short in duration though and there would be nothing left but little wren feathers.
Chris:
Agreed about the feathers, respectfully dissent about the “sorry”. The only sorry thing in this exchange is wren’s logic, accuracy and integrity.
This might be a good juncture to point out that some of us use our real names and some of us make public service announcements linking our legal identities to our “handles”. Others with legitimate security/privacy issues declare their bonafides to the blog host. Posters like wren, who swears there is no ideological interest and lots of mirrors in his home, but whose statements belie that, and “sou”, who claims to be a concerned Australian but hasn’t said a damn thing that I, who has never visited Australia, doesn’t already know and know is false, are simply trolls and have nothing to contribute.
It’s too bad Lindzen’s defenders have little to offer other than ad homiens. He deserves better.
Lets face it, Lindzen (age 70) is past his prime and fading. It happens to all of us, and is nothing to be ashamed about. I don’t blame him for trying to add to his legacy by finding something new. I would do the same. The problem is you can do worse by trying to do better, and I think his recent work on GRL (Lindzen and Choi:2009) will do little to enhance his reputation. Even Roy Spenser found it seriously lacking.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/11/some-comments-on-the-lindzen-and-choi-2009-feedback-study/
I don’t know how posters got the idea I want to debate Lindzen. I never said anything about debating him.
“savethesharks (19:54:34) :
Agreed. Starting to feel sorry for him actually.
If he feels he could challenge Lindzen, I would pay to see that debate.”
But I am flattered.
As long as we are doing true confessions here, I must admit to being present for the 1st Earth Day. I’m not sure what metaphor made me do it but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I lost interest in the early 70’s when all the out of work anti-war Marxists/Maoists hijacked the movement.