Here’s another one of those things I discovered when I was looking at something else, and serendipity kicked in. This comes from comment in Chris Mooney’s Twitter feed highlighted by Tom Nelson.
In another laughable Cool Hand Luke “you gotta get your mind right“ essay at Mother Jones, Mooney complains that “emotions come faster than the “rational” thoughts” when it comes to climate blogs. He writes:
In the context of the psychological theory of motivated reasoning, this makes a great deal of sense. Based on pretty indisputable observations about how the brain works, the theory notes that people feel first, and think second. The emotions come faster than the “rational” thoughts—and also shape the retrieval of those thoughts from memory. Therefore, if reading insults activates one’s emotions, the “thinking” process may be more likely to be defensive in nature, and focused on preserving one’s identity and preexisting beliefs.
I about fell out of my chair laughing when I saw this ad image that went with his story:
The advertisement for the National Resources Defense council has two images:
![NRDC_YearEnd_Stop-BadGuys_DonateNow_300x250[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/nrdc_yearend_stop-badguys_donatenow_300x2501.jpg?quality=83)
Photoshopped for emotional effect much? Here’s the other ad:
![NRDC_YearEnd_Statistic-Belugas_DonateNow_300x250[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/nrdc_yearend_statistic-belugas_donatenow_300x2501.jpg?quality=83)
Research for the Beluga whale population reveals this from the NOAA fisheries office of protected resources:
Population Trends
In the U.S., there are 5 distinct stocks of beluga whales–all in Alaska:
- Cook Inlet
- Bristol Bay
- Eastern Bering Sea
- Eastern Chukchi Sea
- Beaufort Sea
Of those, the Cook Inlet is the only endangered population. It is the most isolated stock; genetic samples suggest these whales have been isolated for several thousand years. The Cook Inlet stock has been severely reduced in numbers over the last several decades. NMFS estimates this population numbered as many as 1,300 in the late 1970s. The current estimate is about 325 beluga whales in the Cook Inlet.
“Of those, the Cook Inlet is the only endangered population.” That’s a pretty glaring lie of omission, don’t you think? Here’s a thought; maybe they just moved to a different location. After all, whales have been known to migrate vast distances. Their range (from NOAA) seems to indicate they aren’t static:
Beluga Whale Range Map
But wait there’s more! At the link the ad goes to at NRDC we see these images:
On the link upper right, Stop Big Oil’s Attack on Whales campaign page » we are directed to a page which shows this image of the whale sans the stop sign:
Note the background for the whale image and how the water and sand/gravel looks. Some image research reveals the image to be part of a series taken by photographer Flip Nicklin. On the presentation page at Animals and Earth, we see this image from the series along with the caption:
And here’s the one NRDC used:
Since NRDC doesn’t credit Nicklin in their advertisements, I sure hope they have permission to use the photos.
So, not only does NRDC not tell the reader that only one population has any notable changes, that the 284 Belugas remain is a false number not representative of the whole global population, perhaps only the Cook Inlet population, the photo they use isn’t even FROM Cook Inlet.
Rational readers might find all that a bit incongruous, perhaps even false advertising.
In another hilarious twist of irony, there’s this ad on the story by Chris Mooney at Mother Jones.
I have to wonder if I give them $5 will they bar Chris Mooney from writing junk stories about emotions and science and take NRDC advertisements off their web site? Inquiring minds want to know.
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“pretty indisputable observations about how the brain works” ??? when did that happen? I hope not, that would take all the fun out of living.
I wonder if anyone has access to Mother Jones’ income and expenditure accounts. It would be interesting to see what salaries are paid to its senior staff compared to their spending on their so called good causes. They must have a huge income through soliciting donations so strongly via their website
Anthony, the ad picture is NOT the same as Nicklin’s pic on AnimalsAndEarth. Nicklin’s whale has its “tail” raised, its mouth under water… and other minor differences.
However on other points I fully agree.
I blame Al Gore-zeera. That no good so and so.
This craziness is a little O/T but it certainly qualifies as crazy. I came across a video on the NYT’s Andrew Revkin (via Climate Depot) blog. It’s a Skeptical Science video trying to rebut the lack of warming since 1998. However the video gets off to a fraudulant start. At the 14sec mark they show a graph which the narrator and type on the video that state is a NASA long term temp record. Now I’ve a few NASA long term temp records both before/after “adjusting” and not one of them shows the 1930’s to be cooler than the 1970’s. And not one of them show an almost linear rise in temps from 1910 forward. This appears to be an outright case lying/fraud from the team over at SkS. And to think a prominent climate scientist at a prestigious Pennsylvania Univ often refers people to this website to get the “facts” about the climate.
BTW I have a screen copy of the graph as I’m sure they’ll take the video down for editing 🙂
agimarc says:
January 10, 2013 at 1:53 pm
==========================
Thanks for that comment. It is always refreshing to hear from someone who has a true perspective on the subject.
DirkH said @ur momisugly January 10, 2013 at 12:42 pm
No, they do not get stranded. Locally (Tasmania) they have become so numerous, the government had to reintroduce a hunting season. Like geese, they are grazers of grass and they contaminate the paddocks along the river. Cattle won’t eat grass contaminated by their poop.
Damn Big Oil’s right. I never have received any of those paycheques I’m supposed to be getting!
I think i’m going to set upsome sort of conservation charity , it seems pretty easy to fleece the greentards of their money and charities these days can consume up to 25% of donations in ‘overheads’. Looks like I’m jumping the green gravy train
Emotions are quicker, than rational thought. Well, yeah, like flight or fight and other base (primative, reptilian) brain responses evolved to keep us alive. But, with a reasonably intelligent person were talking milliseconds, not minutes, hours, or days. Unless, of course, if you are a self-deluding, politically driven nitwit.
Repeated for emphasis:
john robertson says January 10, 2013 at 1:06 pm :
“Mooney a dripping mass of projection.”
This applies pretty much across the board for AGW promoters. For all the accusations they hurl out, they could aim them all right back at themselves. But on top of that, now they have to project their own “feel first, think second” flawed mentality to us skeptic trolls in a wacko twist to insinuate we do actually ‘feel’ the righteousness of AGW, but we ‘think’ our way back into our defensive corporate capitalist, pry-my-SUV-from-my-cold-dead-hands, Fox viewer/Limbaugh listener selves.
Meanwhile, I’ve dived headfirst into MotherJones and other such sites as a troll asking if any of them have outright proof that skeptic climate scientists were given money in exchange for false fabricated papers, assessments or viewpoints, and not one of the AGW promoters can answer that. Naturally, they ‘feel first’, hitting me with all kinds of weird sidesteps, insults and whatnot. But if one of them actually ends up thinking “Oh, wow, there is no evidence for the ‘big oil corruption accusation’, watch out!
I figure there are only two kinds of people out there: skeptics, and people who will become skeptics when they read and fully comprehend skeptic material.
@ur momisugly philjourdan on January 10, 2013 at 1:43 pm
and Robert M on January 10, 2013 at 1:48 pm:
A guy I know said he did this at college, about mid-1970’s. I’ve heard of others doing it.
Set out a chair upholstered in leather-like material. Add sign decrying the hunting of the noble Nauga for its valuable hyde. Poor things are almost extinct, no one’s reported seeing a live Nauga in ages. Collect signatures on your petition to ban said hunting. Yes, you will get people signing up, seriously.
If doing it these days, don’t forget to mention the habitat loss mainly from fracking, with more expected from climate change.
Yes, there are people worried about how the fate of these Beluga Whales is tied to the supply of Beluga Caviar. Field research indicates that those who are more likely to donate to the above cause are also more likely than the general population to worry about said Beluga connection.
BTW, thankfully we are in the internet age of instantly-available trustworthy information. For those worried about the fate of the Naugas, you can show them this helpful site supplied by Uniroyal, where it’s revealed the Naugas are an intelligent species that has peacefully coexisted with humans for millennia that willfully and harmlessly shed their old hydes. So those people can instead worry about real problems, like the unreasoning hatred and proposed wholesale slaughtering of the hapless nekomimi species.
“Based on pretty indisputable observations about how the brain works, the theory notes that people feel first, and think second.”
It depends upon the stimulus and the “people”. If the stimulus is a statement such as the above, then how can I feel anything before I read it, while thinking? If it’s a visual by the NRDC…since I know they lie, then I expect something to be wrong with their Advert.. But when I see a beached whale supplied by the NRDC, yes, I do immediately groan!
Yeah, that “feel first, think second” sounds like a load of cobblers to me.
It implies that everything we perceive generates some sort of emotional response. Rubbish. When I look at a mathematical equation, or the wall of the smallest room, I don’t “feel” anything. It also seems to ignore the wide range of differences between individuals. Some people seem to experience the world almost entirely through their feelings, and the converse is also true.
Besides, feelings can be rational. If I am hanging from a precipice by my fingertips, do I feel scared? You bet. Is that a rational response? Oh, yes.
It is one of those catchy throwaway lines that doesn’t stand up to analysis.
(No feelings were hurt in the creation of this post.)
Beluga caviar…..whale eggs?
johanna said @ur momisugly January 10, 2013 at 7:39 pm
Oh, I dunno. When I look at those things I think: “What’s for dinner?”, or “Hmmm, a nice curry would go down a treat.” Yes, we are all… different 😉
banjo said @ur momisugly January 10, 2013 at 8:09 pm
Yes. Few people realise they are the world’s only marine monotreme.
Whie reading these comments my wife showed me an ad for a ‘life-like’ doll of a baby orangutang for $200 and part of this cost is given to a ‘save the orangutang’ fund.
As with this article about saving belugas, the doll is designed to trigger an emotional response whilst my male brain thought “why wouldn’t you send the $200 to the fund?”.
On a related note.. I saw just the other night an ad by WWF for donations to help save the polar bears from extinction. Yes, you can “virtually” adopt a polar bear. The ad made it clear that their numbers were dwindling.
(Their actual population notwithstanding..)
Well spotted, TPG. I think you should submit this to Nature. There’s a good chance it will get published (happy to provide peer/pal review if required).
It implies that everything we perceive generates some sort of emotional response. Rubbish.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry folks, but people’s decision making processes are primarily emotional. Logic isn’t just second, it is a distant second. I’ve been in sales for over thirty years. It is my job to influence people who make highly technical decisions. Even in the technology industry, where you would think that the best technical decision would rule, actually emotion does.
Peer pressure for example is an emotional response over riding the facts. Confirmation bias is an emotional response over riding the facts. In any technical decision, the incumbent vendor wins 90% of the time even when they have the weakest product. Why? Because change = risk and most people are risk averse. Better the devil you know. Changing vendors gets you a pat on the back if things improve, it get you fired if they get worse. Unless the current vendor is so bad that keeping them around will get you fired, there’s little reward for changing. That’s why the incumbent vendor wins with an adequate product over and over against a stellar product.
Pick up any book on sales. There are a few exceptions that focus on sales strategy, but the bulk of them focus on building rapport, building trust relationships, building credibility. These are all emotional responses that must be dealt with first in the sales process or there will be no sale regardless of the facts.
In fact, one of the primary tools used by companies with a weak product set is FUD. Yes, it even has a three letter acronym. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. (To be honest, companies with good products often use FUD too, all is fair in love, war and business). FUD can be as simple as pointing out that a competitor has their 3rd CFO in six months, implying that they are financially unstable. Defending against FUD could be as simple as pointing out to a prospective customer that your company is restructuring due to rapid growth and the changes were planned in advance as part of an orderly transition. Fail to defend against FUD and you WILL lose the sale because customers don’t have time to look into these details themselves. FUD (emotion) wins. Fail to build rapport and trust (emotional responses) and FUD will still win because your defense lacks credibility even though it is factual.
Hence, CAGW proponents lead with scenes of polar bears stuck on ice flows and beached whales. They evoke an emotional response. Sets a negative emotional state. Associate global warming with the negative emotions. The poor whales, look what global warming did to them. Then hiit ’em with Appeal to Authority (people respect authority, it has credibility). The scientists say it is Big Oil’s fault. Hit ’em with consensus (which is nothing more than peer pressure). ALL the scientists say this, everyone knows this. Hit ’em with FUD. You know those skeptics are funded by Big Oil right? You know that if we let them go on, it will get worse, right?
It is all about the emotion, and the hard part of selling the facts is that they have little emotional appeal.
There is a population of Beluga (about 650) in the St. Lawrence estuary that is reported to have issues with chemicals causing high rates of cancer and other issues. That’s an old report (to 1999). In 2003 the estimate was 1,100. Strandings have been increasing: 8 in 2008, 9 in 2010, and 16 in 2012.
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/the-unexplained-deaths-of-st-lawrence-belugas.aspx
The “Range Map” (tiny globe image) presented above seems to miss this group.
The big story of the moment is the European Middle East freeze and snow. OT
The CBC had a tear-jerking item tonight on the trapped killer whale pod trapped in the ice complete with a ‘scientist’ who stated that the whales should not be there but were lured into the area by ‘global warming’ and ‘we are all partly responsible for this’. The CBC did not mention the fact the local temperature is well below normal touching near -60. The sea froze so quickly the whales were trapped. When a polar bear showed up to try to catch one, local villagers shot it. Unlike the makers of the 2008 video embedded at the top of this article, they did not use a camera.
How nature deals with these events:
Lucy Skywalker says: January 10, 2013 at 4:02 pm
“…Anthony, the ad picture is NOT the same…”
But undoubtedly the same whale, in the same place, on the same occasion…. with a slightly different viewpoint and a different lens….
Chris Mooney has an asymmetry hypothesis that things like motivated reasoning are more prevalent on the right. To his chagrin, further studies are not showing a strong correlation:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/04/often-wrong-never-in-doubt