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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A careful look at what I call “real history”, that is, how “common folk” life was, not the antics of kings, princes, generals or the like, shows that when it is quite warm, on average, life of Planet Earth thrives, and civilization advances (because farmers have surpluses of agricutural products to sell and feed city folk).
During cold periods, once flourising life perishes, and civilizations crumble, because farming becomes subsistance farming, and there are no surpluses to support city folk. It becomes every man for himself, and every woman for herself.
Charity MUST come from surplus. With no surplus, there can be no charity.
John Wright says:
October 25, 2010 at 9:11 am
“Well someone should have pointed out to that girl that the slogan on her board is equivocal for a start — which faction wants to “geo-engineer” the climate? – and for geo-political reasons!”
I actually took her for a skeptic and thought, whow that is courageous, going around with that sign at COP15.
When I read:
Sam the Skeptic says [snip; October 25, 2010 at 1:56 am]:
“You’re right; biodiversity is next and the language is already more than reminiscent of the climate change meme.”, I thought of the snippet of the BBC program “Science in Action” that I had heard this morning. It was the Oct 22 broadcast and it can be heard at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/scia
Reporter Richard Black was reporting from the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya. He made statements indicating that he is in thrall to the IPCC, and he interviewed a female attendee who was all in favor of modelling the Convention on the lines of the IPCC. Listen from around 13:30.
IanM
Paul Deacon, Christchurch, New Zealand says:
October 25, 2010 at 12:45 am
The Global Warming movement is dying, its leaders know this. Bio-diversity is next
I like it!….Biodiversity! LOL!, so they want us not to discriminate THEM! Ho!, Ho!
But…wait!, you will have to be and behave like the rest of us, normal hard working people; forget about your weird tendencies and strange desires. So, start looking for a decent job, …we’ll see…..then, just to begin with:forget about pot, sniffing white powders and the like.
A couple of things I taught my children, as early as they could understand, was, “If it’s too good to be true it proabaly is.” as well as, “If somebody is trying to ram something down your throat it’s probably not good for you.” I also taught them not to get too caught up in anything as most things are cyclical and tend to be trends/fads and to not accept anything as fact without some kind of proof. I have done my best to instill in them a common sense aproach to things. Now, far be it for me to critcize anyone else’s parenting, as I am far from the perfect father but, education starts from the day you bring them home. Moral education, right from wrong, as well as all the regular teaching our children must absorb. Children without proper educations in these matters will gravitate to something where they feel important and part of something. Poor kids might end up in gangs and more well off kids might get drawn into the enviro-fascist movement. It’s our responsibility as parents to guide our children in the right direction, to teach them to be objective, even sceptical. To me, if our children are taught this way they might stop and think for a second instead of jumping into somethind blindly. Of course, if you are drinking the Kool-Aid and putting in the baby botlle there’s no hope for you or your kids. I am proud to say that both my children have challenged their teachers who have tried to indoctrinate them into the AGW camp. There are more kids like Kristen Byrnes out there than you might think.
Ian L. McQueen
October 25, 2010 at 10:45 am
#
If you like Bio-diversity, you ought to give linguistic-diversity a spin, though it might make you loose your lunch!
“In 20 years, will it (climate change) even be an issue? ”
It definitely will still be an issue. Just like hunger, overpopulation, war, and pollution are all still issues.
In 20 years, climate change will be real and still with us, but something else will be taking front stage, and climate change will just be one of the many challenges to which the human race responds and adapts.
Red says:
October 25, 2010 at 12:28 am
I had a course in university on thermal power systems. One of the “tenants” at the …
Red, possibly you meant “tenets”??
I know I’m just being cynical, but young adults are gullible, have money (not much, but lots of them) and are considered fair game by every scam artist on the planet. Some scams are just more sophisticated than others. I’m not trying to say that there aren’t any good causes, but that it getting increasingly difficult for even less gullible adults to find and support them.
Love this blog. Thanks Anthony. 😉
The organized youth are global warming believers because the adults who organize them(teachers, schools, socialists/environmental organizations, unions, other government organizations) are global warming believers. The unorganized youth split the same way the rest of the country does.
It is as simple as that.
No need to get into some nut job physiological profile about how youth think vs how adults think. Authority is telling them to believe it so they believe it…the rest are told nothing so they do what everyone else does…wing it, look it up, do what their friends do or study it rationally and try to deduce the facts from first principles.
Good points…and some people never grow out of their pet theories from their childhood…I still have the odd old person tell me about the population bomb, and well, James Hansen….
Others have commented on my remark on the bio-diversity movement (whose UN arm already bears a striking resemblance to the IPCC).
On the plus side, there was a survey done in the UK to test public awareness of bio0diversity. The most common response was that people thought it was a soap powder.
All the best.
Rob Said
QUOTE
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?”
UNQUOTE
Rob – the correct response should be:
“I dunno what do you think?”
The response to that should be:
“I’m not paid to think – just to believe in AGW”
OR is that just TOO political?
Our future wellbeing is well served by the AWG bedwetters attempts to manipulate young people, after getting fooled or confronted by these selfserving charmers the youth of today will grow into cynism even faster than we did. I hope this will lead the next voting public to call BS way faster than we have especially as our current leaders seem to think the young are going to pay off the debts we have incurred without protest.
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