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.
I started out a believer after seeing “An Inconvenient Truth” it was obvious after seeing the hockey stick and the graph showing CO2 and temperature going up and down together.
I went to the web to get informed and found websites pointing out the fallacies in the movie and others defending the movie. In my opinion the websites showing the fallacies made their case better than the one’s defending the movie.
It s about 2 1/2 years later and despite years of reading the true believers still haven’t provided answers to my questions. I have read books and hundred’s of articles and my doubts have gotten stronger.
Example: The fact that CO2 came 800 years after the warming after the last ice age. The true believers do a verbal tap dance to say the CO2 amplified the warming. How do they know because it is a GHG and it was there. That is circular reasoning at it’s finest. No attempt is made to quantify the alleged amplification or to separate it from water vapor feedback because that is not how they think. The fact that the temperature goes down when CO2 is at it’s maximum makes me believe CO2 is a minor player.
I have a technical education and obvious sloppy thinking makes me think there is an agenda somewhere. I have read the above argument in 20 or more “rebuttals” and cannot believe educated men wrote them.
Darn those cognitive brain functions! Down with cognition!
Oh, and cognition: 2 – of or pertaining to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes.
Yeah.
Academics also couldn’t understand why the public didn’t panic over the global cooling scare in the 1970s
http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
or when Paul Ehrlich warned that we were all going to starve to death by 1980. Why can’t we all be open-minded and delusional like liberal academics?
Aha! the twinge I felt in my brain at the statement “Scientists today said the drought was further proof of global warming as it was the worst in 114 years” (meaning it was even worse 114 years ago?) was due to a cognitive malfunction, not logical fallacy detection.
What comfort to find that this first skeptical twinge in my conservative mind was due to a latent defect, for which I am presumably not responsible.
But then, I had even misunderstood “conservative” to mean the personal responsibility to conserve beneficial physical, environmental, social and fiscal values.
What a joy to be liberated to enforce other people to be open minded too!
My own experiences suggest very much the opposite of what this paper is describing. I see the conservative as the deeper thinker who initially accepts a new idea or proposal and then asks, “If this is true, then what?”
Proposal: Increases in CO2 will cause the earth to warm.
Therefore: CO2 has continued to rise for the last ten years so…..the earth should have continued to warm
Proposal: The Climate models are wonderful and can project 100 years out.
Therefore: The models should agree with current measurements. WhatIsUpWith this big tropical mid-altitude hot spot in the models?
Why is the humidity dropping above 300 mb?
Proposals are not only rejected but are also accepted after asking, “Then what?”
Proposal: The AGW scientists are a bunch of snake-oil salesmen
Therefore: They will seek to hide the data and methods used.
They will use ad-hominem attacks and call critics names
They will attempt to silence critical papers
They will have financial incentives to make alarming claims
When their models fail to make accurate forecasts they will stop making forecasts to avoid embarrassment rather than ask for help to make improvements.
The shallow thinker (liberal) seems to just accept statements and not think about them.
Proposal: We must stop using fossil fuels because CO2 is a problem.
“Oh. Okay. Hey, did you hear about Tiger Woods?”
Cognitive dissonance is the problem.
OT
“”Historically, low solar activity periods like the Dalton and Maunder Minima have been connected to cold winters in Europe. It seems very possible that the low solar activity forced areas of low pressures into a southern route or caused a negative Arctic Oscillation, AO, which in turn allowed cold air from the North Pole to flow across Europe. But can we obtain from real measurements that low solar activity really is able to do that?”
A breakthrough in long range forecasting?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/03/-i-am-indebted-to.shtml
“Believe it or not, in the early 90’s I used to be a global warming activist. But that’s another story.”
A 5 year old will believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are all real. Youth accepts a lot of falsehoods as truth.
Maybe we need a study on what age did Liberal’s reject the notion of Santa Clause as compared to conservatives.
“And what they (conservatives) 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,”
What does it matter what the motivation is? If the science is debunked, it’s debunked. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. It doesn’t matter who proves it’s wrong, or what their motivation is, or what their cognitive processes are.
“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,’”
Bullspit! Liberals say, “How can we take away people’s rights and freedoms and make them forever dependent on the government while simultaneously increasing our own power and wealth?” And the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming was tailor-made to fit that bill.
“On the other hand, liberals’ cognitive process allows them to be ‘open-minded.’”
“The debate is over” – Al Gore. Sound open-minded to you? Proponents of CAGW have been spouting this, or its equivalent, for years now, refusing to even consider the possibility that they are wrong. They cannot conceive of anything beyond carbon dioxide being the culprit behind the recent warming. Meanwhile, skeptics have come up with dozens of alternative explanations, none of which the warmists have conclusively disproved. And the one semi-realistic policy alternative that might stand a chance of reducing carbon emissions (nuclear energy), most warmists refuse to even consider. Where is the open-mindedness there, Georgie?
sometimes to have a completely open mind means you cant stop any crap getting in..
its interesting they bring in the idea of beleifs, in regards to non agw/climate change, but dont apply the same criteria to the climate change
So “open-minded” their brains fall out.
Would that be the famous liberal open-mindedness that sees anyone opposing Obama’s healthcare plan as being a racist? One can’t just be in disagreement with the plan, or its costs, one must be against it because one hates black people or something.
Of course, psychology and linguistics arent’ climate sciences anyway, so his opinions counts just as much as say, a railway engineer’s.
He is quite correct cognitive brain function does prevent many from not accepting poor science, half truths and the sophistry of propaganda. This life long liberal, has never accepted if from any source and I have as much faith in the market as I do in unreliable models based on incomplete understandings of anything.
I think his name is not spelled quite right…
Readers should do a search on George Lakoff and relativism. Then you will realize that there is no point in wasting your time and energy trying to reason with a relativist. They live inside a bubble. Most of us have to interact with the world around us and expect consistent results and responses to that interaction. Science, mathmatics, engineering, and technology all move forward without the relativists.
Oh dear, poor Dr Lakoff, I think I’m seeing a need for a frontal lobotomy here. He will be much happier when he forgets about liberal cognotive processes and their threat to planet earth.
Here’s a study showing how “greenies” believe that by being “green,” it’s okay to be selfish in other things”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/15/green-consumers-more-likely-steal
And the Guardian is hardly a right-of-center paper.
Per progressives, Conservatives are never “green” (whatever that really means), so I guess this little bit of human thought processes should be owned by them, and them only.
Since we can’t help it, does that qualify us for special protections and benefits under the law?
More pandering to the intelligensia that want to control every aspect of our economy. The arguement for nationalized health care is exactly the same…(“they’re too stupid to realize how good this is for them”).
I’m a hydogelolgist that spent 12 years in environmental consulting cleaning up all manner of polution problems. I’m also actively involved in prairie restoration projects here in the Midwest. I’ve spent most of my career working to improve and restore our natural environment.
I also count myself among the skeptical camp because the CAGW science is specious. I wonder what Lakoff would say about me?
There is a vast difference between being “open-minded” and suffering a head wound.
Hmmm….perhaps conservatives know taht apocalyptic cult predictions have a 0.000 % success rate?
Perhaps conservatives are historically literate, and recall that popular obsessions with weather swing over time from cooling to warming and back.
Perhaps conservatives are well versed and know that the truth is that large groups of people can become obsessed to the point of irrational fear or exuberance, and that education is not a protection against falling into this?
Or perhaps Lakoff is a complete and utter jerk who puts together reactionary drivel and calls it ‘science’?
Bart (10:02:45) :
Very nice!
“Nice knockers!”
I hope the author will allow me a bit of leeway for some nuisance with his words.“…his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.” Yea it’s hard to think straight clawing at the crapper, especially after a prolonged dose of AGW – “The thinking man’s laxative.”
I seem to remember there were five traits within this linked behavioural family. The first one, ‘Cognitive’ thought is actually healthy – relying upon our feelings, a need to be involved and often jumping at the chance to offer help. So let’s take it as a complement.
On the other hand, (the second) ‘Cybernetic’ thought is inflexible, often authoritarian and stifles other people’s wisdom; (three) ‘Participative thought’ responding well to deliberately vague communication; (four) ‘Experiential’ often using manipulative tactics to test people’s values and integrity; and finally (five) ‘Conditioning’ – one directional brainwashing.
Now which camp are the warmists from?
Unbelievable, absolutely masterful and totally insane. This week I’ve learned that sceptics are, to a person, right-wing religious fanatics, who are not only anti-science but our brains are pre-wired to make us oppose the global warming movement. What can you do except let the old jaw hit the ground and laugh out loud?
“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.
By that argument the pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger who successfully landed a powerless flight 1549 in the Hudson must obviously be a Liberal and not a highly trained pilot with loads of experience.