Via The Corner, something I always knew deep down, but never had succinctly coalesced into a single paragraph.
In 1999, Cass Sunstein wrote an article in the Harvard Law Review entitled “The Law of Group Polarization.” Its thesis was simple:
In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments. For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent global warming. This general phenomenon — group polarization – has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions. It helps to explain extremism, “radicalization,” cultural shifts, and the behavior of political parties and religious organizations; it is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the Internet; it also helps account for feuds, ethnic antagonism, and tribalism.
I suppose this explains why extreme measures such as erecting thousands of expensive and sometimes operating windmills that blight the landscape, are often attractive to the global warming movement.
Imagine the howling if somebody wanted thousands of natural gas well derricks on the same plot of land in California, yet they would produce far more energy and help far more people, at a lower cost.
Oblique low-altitude aerial photo of wellpads, access roads, pipeline corridors and other natural-gas infrastructure in the Jonah Field of western Wyoming’s upper Green River valley. Photographer: Bruce Gordon, EcoFlight – Image via Flickr
Interesting after a brief perusal. I contribute ‘Uncle’ Al Schwartz’ essay, ‘The Mathematical Impossibility of Compromise – http://mazepath.com/uncleal/comprom.htm
Teaser: “Create a multidimensional compromise space. Choose a variable, normalize it on a scale of 1 through zero to -1 inclusive. Love thy neighbor, kill thy neighbor. Racial integration, racial segregation. Keep all that you earn, the State confiscates all that you earn. …”
Conclusion in brief: “A hypercube with edge length 2 and volume 2N circumscribes about any unit N-hypersphere. The ratio of our N-hyperball’s volume to its circumscribed hypercube monotonically decreases as the dimension N, the number of independent variables, increases. As a problem’s complexity increases the closed N-hyperball of all possible solutions – of any kind – monotonically shrinks toward a zero volume point.’
In a word, as the sociological problem approaches useful and realistic complexity, beyond five-ish dimensions, the remaining compromise space decreases and vanishes.
Here is an interesting piece . . . it’s an example of why there should be some long term “skin” in the game . . . “”The firm, which is still hoping to collect $12 million it feels it was deprived of in a $78.3 million reimbursement from the US Treasury Department’s 1603 program, indicated it feels it is being pushed into the sale.””
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/6513486
I dunno, davidmhoffer. Let anyone wonder aloud on this forum where fracking chemicals injected into the ground at incredibly high pressure might seep to, and he/she will be shouted down pretty quickly.
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David Ross says:
August 18, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Very true. Unfortunately some people use this phenomenon to manipulate people. It’s called “community organizing”.
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Thanks, David. Your description sounds like an overview of a “modern” university social studies/communications/education/political science course.
Doug Huffman says:
August 19, 2012 at 6:22 am
How does this show that compromise is impossible? That guy uses mathematical terms so I use mathematical terms to show that he proved exactly nothing.
“Shrinking towards a zero volume point” means the remaining area for compromise is always bigger than zero, and with each dimension added, it even grows into another dimension.
The only thing missing in that photo is Godzilla….crunching his way through the mess.
Interesting post and great images Anthony! And just so you and your readers are aware – the Jonah Field is not drilled using todays directional drilling techniques. If they choose that method they would have fewer pads, but less gas would be economic.
The group cited below isn’t sueing to stop drilling, rather change the drilling and completion strategy.
http://wyomingenergynews.com/2009/01/group-sues-to-stop-jonah-field-drilling-expansion/
mike g on August 19, 2012 at 7:05 am
“I dunno, davidmhoffer. Let anyone wonder aloud on this forum where fracking chemicals injected into the ground at incredibly high pressure might seep to, and he/she will be shouted down pretty quickly”
Mike G – what would happen is that they would be provided the references and data that would critique their assertions and allay their concerns.
Who sounds like they have been blinded by groupthink more? The ones who claim 97% of all scientists believe in man-made global warming or those who talk about the scientific method?
Yes, but there is more to it than that. Someone mentioned Maslows heirarchy of needs. A professor who worked with him at times studied these kind of groups a lot. There is some very powerful stuff that explains how people and societies congregate around sets of values and form groups.
And people can at times change their values, as the circumstances they find themselves in change – but people generally don’t tend to change quickly – all though it is not unknown. There is social pressure not to and the underlying reason behind that is that by cooperating together we survive. We build our values around what works for us and our social groups – or society. And that is a large part of why people are so unhappy with different sets of values – they apparently challenge the things that help us to survive.
What we really need now in such a complicated world is people that understand the need for different behaviours in different situations more fluidly.
In theory the scientific method should not be influenced by our values but in practise, like most of us, our work is influenced by our values.
It is a bit academic but there is more at http://www.spiraldynamics.net/
[snip – racist hate speech – Bob Phelan warned you about this before, and yet you continue. Therefore you’ve have now been permanently banned from WUWT. I don’t have time nor tolerance for this crap – Anthony Watts]
I started out as a “true believer” and was very impressed by Al Gore’s movie. As a result of the movie, I wanted to learn more about the catastrophe that would surely befall our planet if we didn’t change our carbon-intensive ways and began to search the Internet for more information. One of the first sites I stumbled into was Climate Audit and the rest, as they say, was history. I also ended up at RealClimate and after reading the articles and the echo-chamber comments, became even more convinced that there was another side to the argument that was not being presented.
In reply to Bruce Atwood’s comment.
“””””…..Bruce Atwood says:
August 18, 2012 at 6:52 pm
Yup. That’s why deniers should read some of the actual research reports,”””
Bruce,
Can you perhaps provide a link to a paper to support your position? There is a reason for Climategate. Observations do not support the extreme AGW paradigm. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 will not cause dangerous extreme warming.
See the link to Lindzen and Choi’s paper below. Long term top of the atmosphere radiation measurement from satellites compared to ocean surface temperature unequivocally shows tropic cloud cover increases or decreases to resist forcing changes (negative feedback). The IPCC models assume positive feedback to amplify the forcing change which is positive feedback. If the planet’s response to a change in forcing is negative a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C warming with the majority of the warming occurring at high latitudes which result in the expansion of the biosphere.
Increases in atmospheric CO2 is beneficial to biosphere. CO2 is not a poison. Plants eat CO2. We are carbon based life forms. Commercial greenhouses inject CO2 into the greenhouse to increase plant yield and reduce growing times. The optimum level of atmospheric CO2 for plants is 1000 ppm to 1500 ppm. The current level is 400 ppm.
The extreme AGW believers are trying to force Western countries to spend trillions of dollars on green scams which will not significantly reduce carbon dioxide emission in western countries. Total world CO2 emission is increasing not decreasing as China and India CO2 emissions are increasing as they industrialize.
Western countries do not have trillions of tax payer dollars to spend on green scams. Reality will prevail. The EU is heading for economic collapse.
A group of fanatics are trying to convince western countries to commit financial suicide. A study of Spain indicates that 9 jobs were lost for every 4 “green jobs” created. The massive spending on “green energy” has had no significant reduction in total CO2 emissions, if one includes the energy input to construct wind turbines, wind turbine supporting structures, roads to wind farms, electrical power lines to wind farms, back up open cycle natural gas power plants to provide daily and multi day back for wind farms, and so on. Engineering and cost benefit does not support the construction of wind farms.
I notice there is no practical discussion “green energy” at RealClimate. Logic and facts are on the side of the so called “skeptics”.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
“On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000-2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. An earlier study (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) was subject to significant criticisms. The present paper is an expansion of the earlier paper where the various criticisms are taken into account. ….
….we show that simple regression methods used by several existing papers generally exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative. We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise.
… We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.”
….However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1C (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of wellmixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5C to 5C and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds….
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/
“The problem for global warming supporters is they actually need for past warming from CO2 to be higher than 0.7C. If the IPCC is correct that based on their high-feedback models we should expect to see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2, looking backwards this means we should already have seen about 1.5C of CO2-driven warming based on past CO2 increases. But no matter how uncertain our measurements, it’s clear we have seen nothing like this kind of temperature rise. Past warming has in fact been more consistent with low or even negative feedback assumptions.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
“Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility. ..”
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
Cass Sunstein is a dissembling [snip . . you have been here before and so know the house rules . . kbmod]. The reason it’s polarizing is because opportunist [cv. . . kbmod] (select scientists, socialists, wall street financiers, lawyers, bureaucrats) stand to reap rewards of power/influence/cash at the expense of everyone else. The skeptic community is just reacting to what is more politics as usual from the federal government and those that use the federal government for their own purposes.
incestuous amplification!!
Don’t know if you are being serious or if you are being sarcastic.
Please inform the uninformed where the “97% of all scientists” -statement comes from.
It makes me laugh everytime someone mentions the 75/77.
Cass Sunstein on smearing climate skeptics by association with what he (very poorly) defines as “Conspiracy Theorists.”
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084585
Shameful scholarship, from a person high in the Obama Administration.
Stephen J Gould said something similar – and more pungent – in his essay, “On Dichotomy” in his excellent book, “Time’s Arrow Time’s Cycle”. It is all about another grand scientific debate that involved, among others, those known as Catastrophists.
I was always taken with the speed that the Revolutionary Socialists recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Here is the proposal to anchor ecology firmly to the left, This is from the Fourth International; World Congresses : 13th World Congress – 1991; Socialist revolution and Ecology
“The destruction of the vital basis of human community by the nowadays familiar effects of capitalist production on the climate and the quality of the air, water and soil has reached a new dimension for bourgeois class rule and its ideology.”
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article138
Tim Minchin says:
August 18, 2012 at 7:03 pm
why is Atwood allowed to troll?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
[Reply: That only applies to the government and the entities that it directly subsidizes, not to private businesses. Here, site Policy takes precedence. ~dbs, mod.]
The “what if all those windmills were oil rigs” question is so apropos! It never ceases to amaze me that people are willing to allow such incredible eyesores to spring up like massive alien weeds all over otherwise beautiful landscapes – especially when they are such a looser in terms of energy production and cost.
Then on the Jonah field photo – I’ve got to say that the first thing that came to mind is that a huge number of those could be replaced by a single nuclear power station that would take up vastly less land. Assuming a spot with sufficient cooling water is available, of course. And, of course, they can’t replace gasoline – but they do a fantastic job producing electricity and could replace any fossil fuel sources of electricity and reduce the overall land use significantly that way. (I know, I know – with natural gas so cheap now, we’re unlikely to pursue nukes very much, at least in the near future)
re: Tim Minchin says: August 18, 2012 at 7:03 pm
Because Anthony has an excellent policy of allowing free speech. One has to do something quite egregious to get a post snipped by a moderator or to be banned. It’s an excellent policy which allows free and open debate as compared to the heavily biased sites like realclimate where you can’t trust a thing that’s posted and it’s not worth even trying to post yourself. So I’d suggest giving Anthony and the mods many kudos, and just ignoring the few irritating trolls that pop up.
In Northern Ireland a similar polarisation occured. The Troubles brought five main parties to prominance.
Sinn Fein (republican, political wing of IRA)
Social Democtratic and Labour Party (nationalist)
Alliance (moderate coalition of nationalists and unionists)
Official Unionists ( unionist)
Democtratic Unionist Party (extreme unionist)
In the decades since the Troubles ended Sinn Fein and the DUP have taken control of the Northern Ireland Assembly between them.Voters have moved more and more towards the two extremes. The three moderate parties have shrunk.
This is a discussion of what is proper knowledge and what is belief. Proper knowledge for most of mankind’s existence has been what conforms with sensory experience but intellect also extends the realm of experience to the intangible and our methods of measurement also extend proper knowledge to, for example, the atom and its interior. And even here we have beliefs that extend philosophical notions of meaning e.g., since if we are largely made of empty space (the immense distances between the nucleus of the atom and its electrons, for an example of a reasoning starting point) and the philosophical question arises, is solidness an illusion. Certainly our sensory experience of solidness is a firm foundation or an assumption that won’t get us in trouble if avoiding a large falling object. But there are those who extend this specific proper knowledge to assert that reality might be an illusion. These beliefs emerge not illogically in the mind but a logical progression from proper knowledge but result in an unhinging of belief from proper knowledge. The property of solidness is real and the question should be if something is real we should strive to understand solidness as a property not extend the proper knowledge of the atom to make an improper conclusion about the real world where soliidness is a demonstrable property.
If we extend this idea of proper knowledge and belief to what this post is about we can see that in a particular group there are those who hold beliefs and those who have proper knowledge. In the case of the minimum wage we can see its harmful effects in raising the wage of teenagers above the value of their hourly output and increase the rate of unemployment in that group. We can call something a “living wage” and wax poetic about it and create a belief that a minimum wage is “good”. But why it is “good” in our minds has nothing to do with proper knowledge.
Extending these notions to climate change we can see that the proper knowledge of the global warming potential of a molecule of a GHG is a property of that molecule in our atmosphere but it is a belief to assume from that proper knowledge that the world in 100 years or 200 years will be a miserable place for human beings. It brings into the argument a whole set of unknown properties of civilization and its natural capacities for dealing with limits.
If we have an experience that is clearly shown in the data and the data show that the world has been decarbonizing for the past 160 years we need to understand this property. This emergent property of our energy use should allow us to model future concentrations of GHGs with better precision. This more accurate knowledge will eventually lead us to proper knowledge of climate change and beliefs will fall away.
Today we have been running a grand experiment in America with fuel switching, something that England did as it switched from coal to cheap North Sea gas. Our fuel switching has accelerated our decarbonization and we have direct experience now that decarbonization is a property of our energy use.
In most of the doomsday scenarios there is reasoning from the proper knowledge of exponential growth to conclusions about the future. In and of themselves these conclusions are proper knowledge and not belief. But these models are complex and their output is proper knowledge. But proper knowledge of what? Perhaps proper knowledge only within the model itself. This is where we all can fool ourselves about what is proper knowledge and what is only belief.
We all have to rely on experts because we cannot turn all of our beliefs into proper knowledge we have to trust. But we must be aware when we are holding just a belief and not proper knowledge. I think that skeptics are trying to argue with people who are holding beliefs and not proper knowledge. This is a problem when a scientist veers away from proper knowledge and tries to reinforce popular beliefs with polemic. I think that James Hansen is a person of goodwill but I also think that he holds many beliefs that he himself has not taken through the arduous process of turning into proper knowledge. Hansen and Mann truly believe that anyone who is a skeptic is a denialist and funded by big oil or the Koch Brothers. They cannot see that someone could have proper knowledge that differs from their proper knowledge. Somewhere there is an error in reasoning and someone is holding a belief.
You missed one thing that religion and environmentalism have in common: Quite often they are thick as thieves with politics. Many people still think President Obama is a Muslim; he is not but it was a big deal to many in this country. Look at Russia and how tight Vladamir Putin is with the Russian Orthodox Church as evidenced by the band that is going to spend 2 years in jail for having a concert at a church. Although less true today, many but not all religions use governments to further their interests, to control the people, and to make lots of money. Environmentalists do the same thing. They are using the government to promote their version of paradise, to control people so that they can get their paradise, and make lots of money in the process.
Please note: I am not trying to debate the point on whether or not you should be religious or believe in God.