Here’s a story that maybe some AGW outliers might want to read. Finally, recognition that doom and gloom, hell and high water, and all that… really aren’t effective, and people are getting “climate fatigue” from all that sort of senseless hype. Surprisingly, many major science news outlets (Physorg, ScienceDaily for example) are carrying this press release from University of California, Berkeley, of all places. But then, after you get past the headline, your realize who’s really in denial. – Anthony
Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.
BERKELEY — Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.
“Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people’s fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair. As a result, people may respond by discounting evidence for global warming,” said Robb Willer, UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of a study to be published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.
“The scarier the message, the more people who are committed to viewing the world as fundamentally stable and fair are motivated to deny it,” agreed Matthew Feinberg, a doctoral student in psychology and coauthor of the study.
But if scientists and advocates can communicate their findings in less apocalyptic ways, and present solutions to global warming, Willer said, most people can get past their skepticism.
Recent decades have seen a growing scientific consensus on the existence of a warming of global land and ocean temperatures. A significant part of the warming trend has been attributed to human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite the mounting evidence, a Gallup poll conducted earlier this year found that 48 percent of Americans believe that global warming concerns are exaggerated, and 19 percent think global warming will never happen. In 1997, 31 percent of those who were asked the same question in a Gallup poll felt the claims were overstated.
In light of this contradictory trend, Feinberg and Willer sought to investigate the psychology behind attitudes about climate change.
In the first of two experiments, 97 UC Berkeley undergraduates were gauged for their political attitudes, skepticism about global warming and level of belief in whether the world is just or unjust. Rated on a “just world scale,” which measures people’s belief in a just world for themselves and others, participants were asked how much they agree with such statements as “I believe that, by and large, people get what they deserve,” and “I am confident that justice always prevails over injustice.”
Next, participants read a news article about global warming. The article started out with factual data provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. But while half the participants received articles that ended with warnings about the apocalyptic consequences of global warming, the other half read ones that concluded with positive messages focused on potential solutions to global warming, such as technological innovations that could reduce carbon emissions.
Results showed that those who read the positive messages were more open to believing in the existence of global warming and had more faith in science’s ability to solve the problem. Moreover, those who scored high on the just world scale were less skeptical about global warming when exposed to the positive message. By contrast, those exposed to doomsday messages became more skeptical about global warming, particularly those who scored high on the just world scale.
In the second experiment, involving 45 volunteers recruited from 30 U.S. cities via Craigslist, researchers looked specifically at whether increasing one’s belief in a just world would increase his or her skepticism about global warming.
They had half the volunteers unscramble sentences such as “prevails justice always” so they would be more likely to take a just world view when doing the research exercises. They then showed them a video featuring innocent children being put in harm’s way to illustrate the threat of global warming to future generations.
Those who had been primed for a just world view responded to the video with heightened skepticism towards global warming and less willingness to change their lifestyles to reduce their carbon footprint, according to the results.
Overall, the study concludes, “Fear-based appeals, especially when not coupled with a clear solution, can backfire and undermine the intended effects of messages.”
As I wrote on Revkin’s Facebook entry of this study:
First, one of the IPCC “leads” admits that AGW/Climate Change/Label of the Month is just a thin disguise for World Wealth Redistribution, and now a psychologist writes on how best to slap some lipstick on the pig.
They’re not even thinking of giving up, folks.
Fear-based snake oil disguised as science is easier to sell than just the snake oil, at least for a while. Yeah, we knew that. Now they’re saying, oops, we should’ve skipped the fear-based stuff, and should do so from now on. Two problems: 1) they never would have been able to sell as much snake oil as they did, without the fear element, and 2) now that people know it’s just snake oil they are pissed, and certainly aren’t going to go for the stuff in whatever bright shiny new packaging they put it in.
Well eternal damnation kept billions believing in god for centuries so why AGW?
“… factual data provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. ”
ROFLMFAO!
“45 volunteers recruited from 30 U.S. cities via Craigslist,”
Via Craigslist????? Perhaps they were escorts.
From physorg: “Results showed that those who read the positive messages were more open to believing in the existence of global warming and had more faith in science’s ability to solve the problem”.
.
This study obviously aim to provide facts on how to save the lie AGW. A useful strategic effort if global temperature drops (say 1-2 degrees C). I also think IPCC’s Mojib Latif’s prediction of falling temperatures due to ocean cycles was made to save AGW when temperatures drop.
But no “normal” people who want to stay non-heretic dare to have an objective that differ from AGW. Here are thoughts on what I think is a problem which has to change.
I think a problem is the dialectical approach in both science and society, and that power can be achieved using this. We are more busy to search for and establish truth on agreement than on the premise of -and humble search for objective facts.
AGW a lie? Non-scientific gloom and doom indicates dishonesty from those participating in that. But I don’t think this phenomenon is a just conspiracy. Not even if political goals somewhat seeded the issue. It was able to take off and expand in a methodologically relativistic context, where quite often leftists were the driving force. (Another important explanation is that media and politicians gain from alarmism, and together increase it.) Dangerous AGW (D-AGW) fits discourses involving social responsibility well, thus it’s been rooted in universities. (But if social responsibility is an attribute displacing objective truth it’s false and inherently non-responsible.)
Physorg also mention the cliché “growing scientific consensus” on global warming recent years in order to push a dishonest connection between actual temperatures a few years with IPCC’s D-AGW.
The AGW issue has been overall successful because it has been intertwined with politics (on highest level UN), and maybe also because multi domain (holistic?) approach are too much encourage on universities.
This is also Christmas evening for the Marxists, with their critical analysis. I understand critical analysis to be a branch in social science with the goal to identify cases of, say, injustice and oppression, which are used to push forward an alternative society (the socialist utopia) where the old bourgeois with these cases of injustice and oppression are targeted eventually in order to destroy the unjust capitalist society.
But to if this problem is relativism in general — and dialectics — it’s not enough to describe as a Marxist problem, although Marxists gain from this, and although former communists run much of the environmentalism after the communism era.
AGW may be an issue in natural science where a successful replacement of truth with construction with moral implications has been made due to methodology in social science.
If this is the case a way forward — and to prevent environmentalism — is to target that phenomena. It isn’t easy for anyone to counter constructions regarded as holy truth with moral implications with facts. That’s why dissenters are heretics. But on the universities one should be able to discuss methodology and how politics has entered science, both in scientific bodies (e g what Lindzen describes in “Climate Science: Is It Currently Designed To Answer Questions”), or in e g too much of idealistic interdisciplinary approach to encourage moral. In methodology Josh Willis adjustment of data in order to, explicitly confessed, fit theory is an example.
Btw, also extreme feminism’s construction on gender oppression, suggesting that girls shall be forced to play boys’ games and vice versa, escape reason. Global warming is a more simple, good, world saving issue.
When temperature rise during a year, or a decade (I do admit we have had modern global warming), and one suggests that it may have natural causes one is immediately regarded heretic, but if temperature drops that’s 100 percent natural fluctuations, weather, or just completely irrelevant. The opposite is suddenly heresy! Funny!
Btw I do think temperature drop is irrelevant to long term (in 100 years) +0.05 C, or +1.2 C temperature increase — none dangerous, just as +2.1 degrees –, but all focus is on whether one bear witness of faith or not.
That’s sick.
This was discussed on Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog earlier:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/an-inconvenient-mind/
Here’s one comment I made:
“Seriously though, in recent times we have seen a great deal of inventive theorising, to account for the fact that most people are not stricken by terror at the prospect of catastrophic man-made climate change.
Some suggested reasons for this are that we are in classic denial (as per Kubler-Ross), we’re short-term thinkers, we’re unconsciously repressing our fears, we lack imagination, we are suffering from green fatigue, we’re unable to comprehend the complexity of the danger, we’re selfish, climate change is too abstract for our simple brains, we’re mostly older people and set in our ways, we’re absent-minded, we’re short-sighted, we’re religious, we have internal filters that prevent us from appreciating the dangers, and this week it’s because we believe in an orderly and just world. Next week, no doubt there will be a new and even more elaborate hypothesis to add to this list.
Spinning theories is fine, as is running experiments with tiny samples of (mostly female) undergraduate students; people make a living from this sort of work, and that’s fair enough. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Could it be that the simplest, most straightforward explanation is the closest to reality? That the majority of us are sceptical because the claims of the catastrophists are overwrought and that the evidence for climate doom is unconvincing.”
Wait, aren’t the warmers the ones saying climate is “safe, stable, and fair,” and humans are messing that up?
Also, the apocalyptic nature of Global Warning made me chuckle from the beginning. What wears me out is the warmers’ strident insistence that repeatedly being proved wrong doesn’t mean they’re not right.
Oh yeah, there’s that World Domination issue, too.
Dear Ge0050 (Nov 19, 11.22)
The statistics of human emitted CO2 are available and they show no correlation with global temperatures, sea level rise and gletscher shortening. My source is a study by Willy Soon et.al. (sorry, I don’t have the link at hand) which shows that yearly antropogenic emissions of CO2 started somewhere around 1800, then increased slowly to 1950, and after that increased rapidly. Taking into account the percentage of the total carbon cycle and the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere (about which there is much disagreement) the human contribution to the CO2 level must have been negligible before 1950, and as a consequence everything that has happened before that(such as more than half of the global temperature rise since the Little Ice Age) has been happening without any assistance from our fossil fuel burning.
Evert Jesse
And the Left just continues their assault on science. What should be revealing is the methods they employ to deceive people. If scare and awe don’t work then let’s go find out how to keep that frog of he public in the water as we heat it up. Note acknowledged premise of “warmers must be in control” so how can we “dupe the stupid so they are deceived”. This is just like how the Left uses phrases and arguments to hide their agenda such as “doing it for the children”, “pro-choice”, “tax cuts”, “contribution”, “a-b-c protection agency”, “shovel ready jobs”, “fair access” and, of course, “affordable health care”.
Thus the road of deception littered with “AGW”, “global warming”, “climate change” and what not. What’s egregious is taxpayer(s) fund these academic charlatans to develop and polish the deceit.
Re: redistribution of wealth and climate scare tactics
It has become clear to me that, while you and I suffer in a bad private sector economy, the ruling class climate elites have made sure they have “redistributed” billions of dollars of our “wealth” (i.e. tax dollars) to themselves. Take a look at the following AAAS summary report of the Climate Ca$h requested in the 2011 U.S. Federal budget:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/rdreport2011/11pch15.pdf
Please note, in many cases, the DOUBLE DIGIT increases their budgets!
That’s right, while you and have had our jobs eliminated and/or have had no salary increases due to the economy, the climate elites
wastespend our (borrowed) money with apparently no regard to the tax payers.To tax payers in the U.S. – Please inform your senator and congress person that this profligate spending on dubious research efforts must be reduced or eliminated in the 2011 U.S. Federal Budget.
Oh, and the help sell these budget increases, they employ the usual AGW scare tactics – from the above report:
INTRODUCTION AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Past scientific research demonstrates that the Earth’s climate is changing,
that humans are very likely responsible for most of the well-documented
increase in global average surface temperatures over the last half century,
and that further greenhouse gas emissions, particularly of carbon dioxide
from the burning of fossil fuels, will almost certainly contribute to
additional widespread climate disruption. This climate disruption poses
considerable risk to society because it can be expected to cause major
negative consequences for most nations and to a wide range of species
mosomoso says:
November 19, 2010 at 11:37 pm
I live near an Australian country town, and often have conversations with elderly fishermen and farmers. They were not surprised by the severity of our recent drought, nor are they surprised by our cool, wet spring, and the wide-spread flooding over eastern Oz. Talk of AGW will elicit nothing but a faint grin and a snort.
This indifference to science could be due to ingrained rustic conservatism….
_____________________________________________________________________
Actually it is very simple. (Willis is an example) Anyone who is still a farmer or fisherman at an old age has had a life time of dealing with reality. If you can not tell what is true and what is not – fast – you either go out of business or end up dead. Despite academia’s illusion that farmers are “dumb” (The USDA suggest addressing them at the sixth grade level) Farmers are smart, independent and well educated in their areas of expertise. They are also expert at spotting Con Artists. As one mechanic/farmer I worked with said about a new Management “Initiative” “I have seen them come and I have seen them go, it is just another flavor of the month.”
This, living with reality, is the reason why conservatives are generally rural and the “progressives” live in cities working at well paid city jobs. They are cushioned from reality and can hold onto their warped views without bumping into something that bites them in the rear. If you believe that fresh out of Ag school, wet behind the ears, USDA Extension Service Agent and then lose a whole crop due to his bad advice, you learn fast to be a skeptic and pass it on to your friends.
The farmers in India who were sold a bill of goods, with the blessing and help of the USDA are a case in point.
Her is a round up of “Monsanto, and their Criminal Activities against the Farmers of India” India of course is only one of many victims of The Ag Cartel and their World Trade Agreement on Agriculture.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Monsanto-and-their-Criminal-Activities-against-the-Farmers-of-India
The impact of the Ag Cartel on our world wide food supply is outlined at this “leftist” site:
Part I: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11853
Part II: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11878
Part III: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11910
Most farmers are becoming aware of this and are starting to fight back. Hopefully it is not too late but I am very much afraid it is.
Please note the Supreme Court Ruling on the Commerce Clause:
“…Wickard v. Filburn got to the Supreme Court, and in 1942, the justices unanimously ruled against the farmer. The government claimed that if Mr. Filburn grew wheat for his own use, he would not be buying it — and that affected interstate commerce. It also argued that if the price of wheat rose, which is what the government wanted, Mr. Filburn might be tempted to sell his surplus wheat in the interstate market, thwarting the government’s objective. The Supreme Court bought it.
The Court’s opinion must be quoted to be believed:
[The wheat] supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Home-grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce.” http://www.fff.org/freedom/0895g.asp
Therefore despite propaganda to the contrary S 510 the Food Safety Modernization Act WILL allow the government to control what you grow in a home garden. If not now then, as in the case of the “Animal Welfare Act”, later when a one liner is added to another bill later on.
SECTION 406 (of HR875) CLEARLY STATES ALL FOOD OFFERED FOR SALE WILL BE VIEWED AS BEING IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE AND SUBJECT TO THE PROVISIONS OF THIS BILL. So the intent to add the Commerce Clause has been clearly shown.
Unfortunately the extreme right are the ones protesting these bills since the head of the Organic Consumers Union is a Canadian and has been given a job as a senior Adviser in the UN.
“Senate Bill S 510 Food Safety Modernization Act Vote Imminent: Would Outlaw Gardening and Saving Seeds” http://visiontoamerica.org/story/senate-bill-s-510-food-safety-modernization-act-vote-imminent-would-outlaw-gardening-and-saving-seeds.html
“Breaking: Cloture Vote on S-510 Food Takeover Act; S-787 Water Takeover Act also in Lame Duck Congress; “ http://gulagbound.com/8699/alert-s-510-food-takeover-act-s-787-water-takeover-act-in-lame-duck-congress-for-immediate-vote-contact-senators
They make a clear and undeniable statement:
“Recent decades have seen a growing scientific consensus on the existence of a warming of global land and ocean temperatures. A significant part of the warming trend has been attributed to human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions.”
But begin to raise doubts with this:
“The article started out with factual data provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.”
How certain can they be that the IPCC data is factual?
For the real looming global “challenge” see: ASPO-USA 2010 conference.
Especially: Peak Oil Versus Peak Net Exports–Which Should We Be More Concerned About? Jeffrey J. Brown, Samuel Foucher, PhD, Jorge Silveus
http://www.aspousa.org/2010presentationfiles/10-7-2010_aspousa_TrackBNetExports_Brown_J.pdf
Lloyds is warning to prepare for a global fuel (“energy”) crunch about 2012 – 2015.
Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic Risks and Opportunities for Business
Chatham House-Lloyd’s 360° Risk Insight White Paper
Antony Froggatt and Glada Lahn, June 2010
Robert Hirsch is raising the warning in: The Impending World Energy Mess. and in his
Presentation
“particularly those who scored high on the just world scale.”
What the heck is the “just world scale?”
“Progressives” are the idealists who view the world as “stable and fair”. They must have a boogeyman to explain obviously unfair events, so they find a boogeyman, a set of devils who can be eliminated.
Sometimes it’s the Jews, sometimes it’s the Masons, sometimes it’s the bourgeoisie. For environmentalists, it’s the entire human race.
People who innately understand that the world is unstable and unfair are not “progressives”. They just try to deal with reality as best they can, and thus have a pretty good BS detector.
It’s the science, in the sense that for the most part science has become predicting
doom and gloom, pandemics, famine, the bad news dejour.
It’s science, science magazines, science reporting, etc that is just simply turning
people off to all science in general.
Sitting back and watching their predictions – not – come true.
People are savvy and can smell manipulation a mile away.
Global warming – climate change – climate disruption – weather
Bad news does not sell when people have enough other real bad news to worry about.
Having our president say that his subjects are just not smart enough to get it.
Scientists obviously reformatting the message to manipulate……….
Gail Combs said:
“Despite academia’s illusion that farmers are “dumb” (The USDA suggest addressing them at the sixth grade level)”
Indeed:
“Develop a local newsletter that identifies opportunities for conservation applications. Brochures, newsletters, fact sheets should be written for sixth grade reading competencies.”
http://www.ssi.nrcs.usda.gov/publications/_borders/1_ppcs/ppc041_barriersstrategiessmallscaleproducersfinal.pdf
On the side bar of that USDA pdf doc, it says
“USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
Social Sciences Team”
I’d love to read the “Field Office Technical Guide, Engineering Handbook” they use…
Heh- somebody started serving that dish a while back – it’s called Ravetz with Curry and Uncertain Tea.
No calories. Just warm air.
By the time I reached High School, I understood that life was neither fair nor even-handed. I had seen kids my own age die of measles. War, road and farming accidents had taken out various older family members. I had lived through the loss of very old and much-loved relatives who had lived out their allotted span. I had dealt with school bullies who wanted my lunch money, my best marbles, my comic books, or to beat on me because I ‘looked funny’ and got into fights to protect less sturdy kids who were getting similar treatment. At times, others stepped in to protect or shelter me. I knew teachers and adults had favourites and I knew adults and teachers who were totally fair and honest. When I started work as a contract labourer on farms at fifteen I knew I had to be sharp to protect myself from some of the less-than-lovely individuals I worked with, and I found that some of the farmers that we contracted our labour to were somewhat unwilling to provide good accommodation and food. I also worked for employers who were incredibly generous and great folk to be around. By the time I was married and raising a family, I knew that I had to mostly make my own luck and that everything I aspired to be and do was down to me. As life went on, I got both rotten breaks and wonderful breaks; decades later I see life as quite wonderful. I acquired a university education much later than most and went on to enjoy success as an educator.
And some bonehead from Berkely expects me to lose my scepticism while he and his ilk teach me to love his form of Socialism and believe the snake oil he’s selling is the genuine stuff ?
Sorry, buddy, I ain’t buying your stuff!
And thanks, Anthony, for running this blog that gives us all the oportunity to pursue enlightenment from some truly remarkable people who post at WUWT and to share stuff that’s important to us.
This sounds like the sort of research that would be conducted in Orwell’s 1984. Carefully indoctrinate your subjects in how they should be thinking, making it quite clear what the answers should be, and then ask the questions.
They call this rubbish “research”!?
No matter how much or what shade of lipstick they put on the pig it is still a con job.
They, from their lofty intellect, view the people as idiots who need special treatment to understand.
Rather than present their theory in a traditional manner they have used the law, censorship, fiction, advertisements, schools and even children and every other means possible to convince the general population of their unproven theory.
The problem global warming people are having is that people are smart enough not to want to kiss the pig.
“Fear-based appeals, especially when not coupled with a clear solution, can backfire and undermine the intended effects of messages.”
Conclusion: Marketing failed.
What THEY apparently ignore is the incontrovertibly fact that they wont be here in a few years living that self conceited life they lived up to now, and that´s their private armageddon. Nobody can eternally live a life based on lies, and worse if these lies are nothing else but self delusion.
But what the doom preachers´ attitude convey to us is nothing else but their profound fear, because their guts tell them that inevitably there will be an armageddon, a deep CHANGE; however it does not reach their conscious level how it will be and why they will be directly involved.
We live in a cyclical universe, where cycles repeat with some variations between the turns of spirals of evolution: They intuit that their “weltanschauung”, their way of conceiving the universe, rather theirs, it is over, whatever their field of action may be.
“Interesting Times” are here to stay and, weather they change or not, as the great intuitive George Carlin said: “Pack your sh**s folks….WE are leaving”
“Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people’s fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair.”
I’m gob smacked that a psychologist can make such a statement without being excoriated by his own profession. Physics and chemistry and other sciences have considerable precision, yet still leave considerable room for interpretation and bias. Psychology by comparison is barely a science, but that statement is the equivelant of proving the world is flat by sailing all the way around it.