Warren Meyer runs the website climate-skeptic.com and has been one of our early surfacestations project volunteers, getting that famous photo of the climate monitoring weather station in the hot parking lot at the University of Arizona’s Atmospheric Sciences Department. He’s also produced a marvelous movie that defines the skeptic position. You can watch it on YouTube here. (nine parts)
He was recently asked about the role of young people in climate skepticism by the Washington Independent, “for his views on whether future generations will raise questions about climate science in the same way that many Republicans do today.”
His response reminds me of the phrase often attributed to Winston Churchill:
“If you’re not liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re older, you have no brain.”
Climate skepticism indeed tends to be rejected by the younger generation, but not by all. Remember the stir young Kristen Brynes caused for publicly rejecting what she had been taught in school? On the other hand, in most colleges, there are so many activist groups recruiting to “save the planet” that skepticism generally gets drowned in the cacaphony.
Meyer sums up the issue pretty well in his response:
Young people approach issues in different ways and have different interests, and that has not changed. For example, young people of every generation are suckers for the “civilization in peril” line– they like to think that they as young people are uniquely position to save the world from a once-in a millenia threat. It’s only the threat that changes. In the 50′s it was communism. In the sixties it was the Vietnam war. In the seventies it was hunger and over-population. You get the idea. I read a really interesting treatment of this topic, how the young want to feel they can change the world, that they don’t have to expend decades of work to build up their skills and credibility — that they can be instantly powerful at age 22. There is nothing compelling among young people in the “do nothing” case on any issue, and the rewards systems (school grades, college admissions) is skewed against those who are not openly advocating to change something. So folks who are young who might be skeptics expend their energy on other issues where they can advocate for change rather than the status quo. It doesn’t mean there are no young skeptics, just that these folks may expend their activism in other areas.
The other thing is that younger people are notorious for dismissing or grossly underestimating complexity and costs. We see this in the climate change notion of the precautionary principle, that supposedly if there is even a tiny change of catastrophe, we should act. This seems really compelling to the young. Until you understand that on the other side of the equation is a 100% chance of really high economic costs, including punishing effects on the poor of developing nations who are just emerging from millennia of poverty and need to burn every hydrocarbon they can find to do so.
None of this is unique to our times. Skeptics today in their forties are not skeptics because they were in their teens. So the lack of teenage skeptics today is meaningless for whether there will be skeptics in 20 years.
The issue of climate change skepticism is often described as one of feelings versus facts. Just look at the most popular icon of climate change, the polar bear, to see how climate change imagery tugs at heartstrings. But, one might even say it’s just a “phase”. In 20 years, will it even be an issue?
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All very well, but you have to understand that this scare is different! We have very very fast computers programmed by experts like Ian Harris (see Harry_Read_Me in the Climategate files) to tell us so.
And if it comes from a computer it must be true, as any fule kno.
n.Molesworth
The heart tugging of a polar bear rapidly disappears once you actually encounter one in the wild.
I had a course in university on thermal power systems. One of the tenants at the beginning of the course was “CO2 is causing global warming. This will not be debated in this class.”
It’s not just that the young are naive to accept the AGW position.
But in all fairness, at the time, I agreed with that viewpoint.
Born in 1952 I can just about remember the Cuban Missile crisis – when my parents really thought it was all going to kick off. My Father was in the UK Civil Defence and I could tell even as a kid he was scared.
Then we had DDT, Global Cooling, Overpopulation, Peak Oil.
It is true – the young do lurch from one catastrophic scenario to the next – as a way of gaining a feeling of power without any hard work. I can remember the liberating feeling of thinking “If it does happen – it solves my problem of money, where to live etc.”
Extreme? – Yes – But I do believe this is why such Catastrophic scenarios are painted on top of serious and challenging problems, that whilst they are serious and challenging and need to be managed, they are not “ELE’s”.
And the fact that “doing something/anything!” is far more dangerous, particularly to the developing world, if the basic premise/gravytrain that our rich kids in the west have jumped upon is not something we should lose sight of.
A wise post, Anthony.
The Global Warming movement is dying, its leaders know this. Bio-diversity is next, after that there will be something else. A cause for each generation. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it appeals to the young and naive (and hence also to politicians), and as long as “they” control the agenda.
“They” may struggle, however, in so far as populations in the developed West are ageing (meaning proportionately more natural “sceptics”). These older people also have a higher propensity to vote. This may explain why “they” are trying to go the unelected route (EU and UN).
All the best.
Very interesting post and covers something that’s i’ve always failed miserably to articulate, i.e. that the young get whipped up over causes and are often exploited in this drive by the more, synical elements of our society.
To be that young again, huh.
I feel many people (conveniently?) forget an important premise when talking about the precautionary principle, which was stated in Agenda 21 of the 1992 Rio Summit as follows:
“Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing ‘cost-effective measures’ to prevent environmental degradation. “
Hence we should not do everything. We should do anything if and only if ‘cost-effective measures’ are there. As I see it, no cost-effective measures have been there, are currently there, and will be there, for the mitigation of AGW or Climate Change/Disruption, even if the latter is a real phenomenon. The best way may be adaptation, which does not require a huge amount of money, and we can have a relaxed attitude because the climate change, if any, is to take place in a time span of decades or even longer.
I’m afraid it comes down to ‘what sells newspapers?’ or what gets major media websites, CNN etc etc income streams?
Like stock markets, in the short term, money can follow wrong causes, because there is a profit so to do.
But in the longer term, economic sense comes through.
All that changes in each generation is the economic issues which can be satisfactorily decided on, once and for all.
The economic issue here is long-term energy generation.
And the argument goes: ‘wind, tidal and solar are perfectly clean and will be our future’.
Well, the key issues about that are:
1. Are they perfectly clean?
2. Are they economic?
3. If not now, when will they be?
4. What about all the folks working in traditional energy industries – how do we manage that transition?
5. Do we know what the known unknowns are, let alone the unknown unknowns??
Questions like that.
There are more cynics and skeptics among the young than most of us older people would credit. They are just starting on the journey of learning how the world works. Mostly they just need a few pointers on the complexity of most subjects and some time ( a few years). Eventually many of them will realise that the world is not so black/white as they initially believed. I see this learning process as one that gradually gathers momentum as we age. One issue for climate realists is how to engage with the young people before they are fully captured by the warmist movement. This is an area where the warmists have had vastly more success than the climate realists. But then I suspect that most of us at the luke-cold to luke-warm end of the opinion spectrum would take little enjoyment from attempting to force our views on the younger generation. The warmists appear to have no such scrupples.
If I knew then what I know now after 3 score years and ten how much fewer stupid mistakes would I have made!
I had a tee shirt printed for my son when he was about 18.
TEENAGERS! LEAVE HOME NOW!
WHILE YOU STILL KNOW EVERYTHING!
🙂
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
Oct 21 2010 By Charlie Gall UK
SHIVERING temperatures brought the first blast of winter yesterday – with more cold weather on the way. Heavy snow and ice hit Moray, Aberdeenshire, Tayside and Perthshire, causing chaos for early morning commuters.
And this morning the weather forecast told us we were having the coldest October for 17 years.
But somehow I guess the non deniers will tell us this all to do with global warming 🙂
Klyuchevskaya Sopka in Kamchatka, one of the largest volcanoes in the Northern Hemisphere, has increased its activity, with ash cloud up to 10km height. The aerosols are bound to spread around higher latitudes of NH, and may affect weather patterns.
In 1829-30 volcanic eruption in Kamchatka caused large drop in the N. European temperature , the annual CETs fell by order of 2 C.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
Paul, “they” have been trying to go the unelected route for decades. Socialist Workers Party, IRA, you name it. If you know that you cannot get the majority to vote for you — ever! — then bomb or bully them instead.
You’re right; biodiversity is next and the language is already more than reminiscent of the climate change meme.
Children are being indoctrinated with the CAGW message in schools, and multiple choice exam answers mean there is no room for dissent. It may take years to undo this and turn them into thinking sceptics.
See Climate Lessons, http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/
and Harmless Sky, http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=340
I agree Messenger. It will take a while.
But a slow change is better than a quick fix. Rob R says :-
“…..But then I suspect that most of us at the luke-cold to luke-warm end of the opinion spectrum would take little enjoyment from attempting to force our views on the younger generation. The warmists appear to have no such scrupples.”
And I agree 100% with this. We have to let people discover the truth for themselves.
And this is an important and vital difference between the true sceptic and the advocate. Young people are not stupid, they just often react without the benefit of experience. When the experience of being duped hits them, as it will, then the backlash against the spin will be dramatic.
Just look at the W. Connelley story re his blatent manipulation of Wikipedia. That story has gone viral. I suspect that there are a lot of people of all ages looking at the various ‘gates and the lies and spin of WC and starting to ask questions. We sceptics have to answer them honestly.
It seems to me that many in the “Hockey Team” just want the whole gravy train to stay on the rails just long enough for them to achieve financial independence/retirement.
Once you have a system that asks the questions and then gives the answers albeit multiple choice. The right questions and the right answers for the establishment is certain to produce the right academics and right scientists for the paymasters. 1984 was just a bit late in coming.
I’m reminded of George Carlin again:
“Save the trees, save those bees, save the whales, save those snails”
“And now it’s saving the planet! C’mon!”
Although I think that the early adult phase of a human’s life cycle is the most idealistic phase, it does not explain the apparently irrational thinking of many young adults who support causes.
The irrationality must come from their upbringing by their family and society as well as from their formal education.
John
When you have college professors who teach liberal dogma that cannot be discussed, it says that the blind have no brain and are teaching the young not to use thiers as well.
Young people are susceptible to propaganda.
Propaganda tells a simplified story emotively.
While there is some truth in this post, it is in no way the whole story. And in that it is not the whole story it is a trick thing to present a generalisation that types youth by us older wiser folk…who surely know best. Hummm, we might know best, but is it helpful to talk about ‘the kids today’ like this?
This AGW issue has emerge in may ways that are unique in the modern scientific age. To be a sceptic is not to be conservative but to be radical…and yet to be aligned with conservatives who are radically anti- the prevailing dogma. Time and again the youth have been told that the science is conclusive…that it is only for selfish reasons that sceptics protest etc…. Such indoctrination is hard to overcome.
Every generation expresses greater complexity than is always apparent. And what is apparent changes — often depending on how the older generations treat them. Kids have always been used as foot soldiers in the wars of men — whether they be Lenin, Mao, Gore or Churchhill (btw a tough one for us downunder as he sent many a Ozzie youth to a pointless death on Turkish beaches).
One difference that needs to be noted is this: When I was at school in 1970s Australia, being an environmentalist was radically against the prevailing dogma of progressivism. Now environmentalism is like a sunday school dogma.
It is not the radical thinkers among the young who are environmentalists today, rather it is the sunday school pet, the head boy scout, the sheep. There are other youth who are cynical and sceptical (as I was), and some who are interested in challenging the dogma with new ideas. But, for now, they are all but invisible from above.
You might be interested to read a guest post I wrote at Bishop Hill a few months ago on a pilot study which took place in [some] English schools. http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/8/education-or-green-propaganda.html
There is the additional point that sceptics have all been painted as right-wing anti-science, creationist fanatics in the pay of big business who selfishly want to drive SUVs at the expense of drowning peasants.
On the other hand, the likes of Greenpeace and WWF are portrayed as the idealistic underdogs saving the world for cuddly animals, altruistically struggling against governments and big bad business funded only by tin-rattling and the bequests of little old ladies.
As long as these grossly misleading stereotypes exist then teenagers on the whole are hardly likely to join the bogeymen.
Hey, I’m young and I’m a skeptic! I also always consider the cost of a proposal and do all those others things you say I don’t do… however, when I think about all my friends and peers, I’m really the only one- hmmm.
What you’ve really got to realize about young people is that it’s not that we’re dumb, but that we’re inexperienced. We’ve never had a politician lie to us before, we’ve never had a person come up to us and say “Boo! Overpopulation.” and then ten years later say “Ah, yes, it seems we kind of exaggerated on that”. No one disbelieves what those in authority says, and so no one checks their facts. And no one disbelieves when they tell us that if you chant really loud and march in circles you can change policy. And no one will disbelieve until life kicks them around a little bit and shows them that’s not the way it is. In a nutshell, that is what it really means to be young.
I rang my insurance company this morning after having backed into another car in a car park. I was asked by the young lady at the other end “did the impact between the cars occur at the same time?”
One of the problems of being young is that as young folk haven’t had time to do a lot of thinking!
I took unpaid leave to help start a school in India – yes I was idealistic and this over-rode common sense as I ended up three months in hospital, not having listened to my elders advice and wisdom.
Thank goodness there is enthusiasm in youth, and idealism too which looks for causes, but there is a need to stop and think too!
It is perhaps as well that young people are activists in the area of climate change. There are powerful pressures on them to conform, and not to be activist could seriously affect their wellbeing.
I saw a snuff movie just recently showing the consequences of school kids just shrugging their shoulders and not taking an active part to save the planet.