From the University of British Columbia
Delayed gratification hurts climate change cooperation
Time is a huge impediment when it comes to working together to halt the effects of climate change, new research suggests.
A study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change reveals that groups cooperate less for climate change mitigation when the rewards of cooperation lay in the future, especially if they stretch into future generations.
“People are often self-interested, so when it comes to investing in a cooperative dilemma like climate change, rewards that benefit our offspring – or even our future self – may not motivate us to act,” says Jennifer Jacquet, a clinical assistant professor at New York University’s Environmental Studies Program, who conducted the research while a postdoctoral fellow working with Math Prof. Christoph Hauert at the University of British Columbia.
“Since no one person can affect climate change alone, we designed the first experiment to gauge whether group dynamics would encourage people to cooperate towards a better future.”
Researchers at UBC and two Max Planck Institutes in Germany gave study participants 40 Euros each to invest, as a group of six, towards climate change actions. If participants cooperated to pool together 120 Euros for climate change, returns on their investment, in the form of 45 additional Euros each, were promised one day later, seven weeks later, or were invested in planting oak trees, and thus would lead to climate benefits several decades down the road – but not personally to the participants. Although many individuals invested initially in the long-term investment designed to simulate benefits to future generations, none of the groups achieved the target.
“We learned from this experiment that even groups gravitate towards instant gratification,” says Hauert, an expert in game theory, the study of strategic decision-making.
The authors suggest that international negotiations to mitigate climate change are unlikely to succeed if individual countries’ short-term gains are not taken into consideration.
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Perhaps the environmentalists could learn from some 4 year olds.
http://gayathrimoosad.weebly.com/delayed-gratification—the-magic-key-to-success.html
Jeez. Whatever will they discover next? Bears defecating in the woods? Shocking confession from Benedict – ‘I am a Catholic’? Mann’s work ‘a crock of shit’?
For supposedly clever people, academics seem to have a huge capacity for wasting their time – and our money – on ‘rediscovering’ simple stuff about human nature. Next week I plan a treatise on ‘Rearranging my Sock Drawer with especial reference to Putting the Warmer Ones to the Front’.
Seems to me that ‘the devil makes work for idle brains’ is one of the better observations from the bible.
there being little to nothing at all we can do about an ongoing natural process we don’t understand could be part of the problem too.
just sayin’…
Have these dumb fraudsters ever thought that it is the variations of climate that control the climate, and has nothing to do with people. I see there is a new peer reviewed consensus floating around that 97% of so called climate scientists and their supporters are dumb, fraudulent, or both.
Our grandchuildren will never forgive us…
Just like we resent our grandparents for concentrating on WW2 instead of the Millenium Bug.
You mean they want the millions up front?
This sounds to me like the run up for a massive new funding quest.
And yet no studies on the national debt problems…
Oh, is that their problem?
I thought it was more along the lines of:
Beaten to the grandchildren comment by ‘M Courtney’.
Well done M Courtney!
“Researchers … gave study participants 40 Euros each to invest, as a group of six, towards climate change actions. If participants cooperated to pool together 120 Euros for climate change, returns on their investment, in the form of 45 additional Euros each, were promised one day later, seven weeks later, or were invested in planting oak trees, and thus would lead to climate benefits several decades down the road – but not personally to the participants.”
“none of the groups achieved the target.”
If you were given 40 Euros to spend on slaying a mythical dragon, how would you spend it? What is the likelihood that you would cooperate with someone else on such a project? To get the 120 Euro pool, they needed only three of the six in each group. They could not, apparently, manage to get more than two in any group of six to cooperate!
Think! You get 40 Euros to spend on a project you don’t believe in, and if three of six agree on a project 135 more Euros will be added to the project you have managed to agree on. Why am I not surprised that “none of the groups achieved the target”? What the report did not say was what happened to the 40 Euros if you did not agree with any of the others. This appears to be a study either badly reported or else badly designed. Perhaps designed following a preliminary study from the Australian National University School of Inconsequential Studies.
Buckets of jam tomorrow, no jam today.
That’s why it will only ever be adaptation that society embraces.
Perhaps the bigger the group, the more likely it is to contain a sceptic who could point out for them the irrelevance of their actions. Given a choice on whether to waste $40 on preventing something that wasn’t happening, or going down the pub, I know which I’d rather do.
Time for another struggle meeting for this bunch of researchers, methinks.
Here’s to coming Cold winters, may they kill AGW Dead in the minds of (hundreds of) millions!
The study is flawed; it does not accurately model the war on climate and the related green scam madness. It does not accurately model the amount of money that is been requested to be spent on green scams and misses important nuances concerning the issues.
The developed countries have spent (wasted) two trillion dollars on green scams which have made almost no difference in CO2 emissions in the countries where the scams have been installed and have made absolutely no difference in world CO2 emissions.
The study should have asked people if they would support a government program that would force them to sell their home and give the funds to a middle man (massive new government bureaucracy), who will in turn send a portion of the money raised to corrupt third world countries to ‘fight’ climate ‘change’. The remaining funds after middle man skimming will be spent on green scams in their own country. The people for this case need to be informed that green scams do not work. If the increase in atmospheric CO2 was a problem which it is not, the solution would be a massive investment in nuclear power plants and draconian changes in society such as the banning of all tourist air travel, the banning of private homes, and forced population reduction which is the only possible solution to reduce world CO2 emissions by let say 50%.
The study should have also included a case where in addition to being forced to sell their home to spend on green scams that do not work, the people need to be informed that the science concerning climate science is incorrect – rigged perhaps is a better term – there is no extreme AGW problem to solve. The increase in atmospheric CO2 is on the whole beneficial to the biosphere and to humanity. Would they support a government program that forces them to sell their home to spend on green scams that do not work, to address climate ‘change’ which is not a problem to reduce atmospheric CO2 which is on the whole beneficial?
Lastly the study should have included a case where in addition to being forced to sell their house to give to a new government bureaucracy to waste on green scams, the people are informed that the planet will cool.
“Time is a huge impediment when it comes to working together to halt the effects of climate change, new research suggests.”
Wake me up when we can stop the glaciations, will ya? Heck! I’d settle for being able to control tomorrow’s weather, but I hear we’re not quite there yet.
They should have tested to see how many in each group wanted to pool their money to buy a unicorn.
Isn’t instant gratification the mo of folks like Gore? He is taking lots of cash now to save the earth in 100 years. Same can be said for the warmists at the public money (grant) trough.
H.R.Says@2.33am,
‘they should have tested to see how many in each group wanted to pool their money to buy a unicorn’.
Much better to hire St. George – great dragon slayer!
Messrs Alder and Courtney summed it up pretty well.
My only other comment is that they assume that everyone agrees about what the future will be like. If you polled a representative sample about what they thought the future would be like on any topic (the economy, the state of society, the climate, the fortunes of a particular sports team) you would not get agreement. If you polled them on what should be done about it, if anything, they wouldn’t agree on that either.
Academics are often really dumb about common sense, and seem to get an endless supply of public money to demonstrate it over and over again.
Bog standard game theory stuff. I’d like to cry about the internet patent feel of “But now with climate,” yet folks tend to be pretty bad about applying abstractions to new places. So kudos to the folks that are trying to teach Model Mavens the basics of economics and incentives.
M Courtney says:
October 22, 2013 at 12:07 am
“Our grandchuildren will never forgive us…
Just like we resent our grandparents for concentrating on WW2 instead of the Millenium Bug.”
Your mileage as a Brit will SURELY vary; but I personally DO resent that generation for MAKING WW2.
The Climate Alarmists have developed their rhetoric and rationalizations to a Fine Art, able to concoct persuasive (although not necessarily correct) answers to every question the masses may ask save one: “What’s in it for me?”
Sorry for the broken block quote.