Academics discover civlity –
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A study into why skeptics are not persuaded by the apocalyptic predictions of broken climate models has concluded that the solution is better communication.
According to the Toronto Star;
““When talking to skeptics it is probably important to focus on aspects that both skeptics and believers have in common rather than the differences between them,” said Ana-Maria Bliuc, a behavioural social scientist at Australia’s Monash University and one of the authors of the study.
As an example, the focus could be on “things like cleaner air, low power consumption, improved public transport, better waste management, efficient agriculture, reforestation … (they) are all in public interest, regardless of position on climate change,” she said.
Improving communication between the two sides of this big divide could be an effective pathway to reaching consensus, said Bliuc.
According to the study abstract;
“Of the climate science papers that take a position on the issue, 97% agree that climate change is caused by humans, but less than half of the US population shares this belief. This misalignment between scientific and public views has been attributed to a range of factors, including political attitudes, socio-economic status, moral values, levels of scientific understanding, and failure of scientific communication. The public is divided between climate change ‘believers’ (whose views align with those of the scientific community) and ‘sceptics’ (whose views are in disagreement with those of the scientific community). We propose that this division is best explained as a socio-political conflict between these opposing groups. Here we demonstrate that US believers and sceptics have distinct social identities, beliefs and emotional reactions that systematically predict their support for action to advance their respective positions.
The key implication is that the divisions between sceptics and believers are unlikely to be overcome solely through communication and education strategies, and that interventions that increase angry opposition to action on climate change are especially problematic. Thus, strategies for building support for mitigation policies should go beyond attempts to improve the public’s understanding of science, to include approaches that transform intergroup relations.”
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate2507.pdf
This isn’t the first time researchers have blamed “communication” for climate skepticism.
Given that the abstract bases its rather imprecisely defined assumption of climate consensus on the heavily discredited Cook study http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/19/97-articles-refuting-the-97-consensus-on-global-warming/ , I suspect there may be problems other than communication which need to be addressed, before a common understanding can be achieved.
The Toronto Star is known locally as the Red Star.
Academics and government. I recall an article written by a German philosopher sometimes during the Kaiser’s time stating that university professors are tools of the government whose main task is to promote that government. Looks like only the time, place and characters change.
I also read an article from the 1980’s, by a former academician that came to the conclusion that used car salesmen are more trustworthy than “professors”.
Ah, yes.
The conflict between skeptical realists – who look to observations of objectively verifiable reality for judgement criteria – and the “believers,” who take this preposterously bogus anthropogenic climate global change premise on faith.
Jeez, no wonder the Bishop of Rome has judged it appropriate for the Holy See to weigh in on this issue. It’s a matter of religious belief, not valid scientific examination of phenomena in the physical universe.
Has no one else reading here picked up on this?
“Has no one else reading here picked up on this?”
I suspect everyone did; it’s just so obvious it doesn’t really need commentary. When the pope gets on board you know it is social rather than science (it could be both of course, but the pope is interested in social).
Somewhere in this porrige is science. It’s a bit like “nail soup” (*). Everyone with a social agenda is leveraging “global warming” to offer their own cure-all.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
“When the pope gets on board you know it is social …”
Don’t be so certain. Look up the history of the Big Bang theory (no, not the television show) and Georges Le Maitre’s biography (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre) – and note the collar in the image. Or maybe you’re right, but where does that leave physics?
“Calling climate skeptics ‘deniers’ just pisses them off”
Well Duh!
I’m always denying stuff, last night I woke the wife up by snoring and denied I’d been drinking Sam Adams before I came to bed, I also denied eating all the cookies last week and that bit of chocolate my wife had saved a couple of days ago, I also occasionally deny having a sneaky cigarette.
I just don’t understand how the climate alarmists I exchange views with always know I’m a compulsive denier – but they do.
Funny that this study, while pointing out the obvious, hits on my next biggest pet peeve.
“As an example, the focus could be on “things like cleaner air, low power consumption, improved public transport, better waste management, efficient agriculture, reforestation … (they) are all in public interest, regardless of position on climate change,” she said.”
How exactly are any solutions to AGW supposed to accomplish any of the above? I would argue that putting up tons of windmills and solar panels is likely to contribute to deforestation and habitat destruction not help the environment. Improved public transit ignores the inconvenient fact that in North America, depending on whether you are in Canada or the US, between 77% and 80% of freight travels by truck so removing cars from the road doesn’t even begin to address any issue there. We could go on.
In short if AGW doesn’t trivialize or make an environmental issue worse, it does nothing to help it. This head in the clouds idea that by addressing AGW we can fix every other environmental issue is BS.
Al: “…between 77% and 80% of freight travels by truck so removing cars from the road doesn’t even begin to address any issue…”
Actually, more like 90% of all freight has been on a truck at one time or another in its journey from point A to point B and then on to point C and so on.
However, if cars were removed from all roads, the truckers in general would be very happy campers.
I’ll add to your list of Climate Change policies that are done in the name of “stopping climate change.” This stuff that just enrages me to no end.
– Cutting down Southeastern USA forests to make pellet fuel for European biofuel electric generation plants
– Spending money on solar panels and CFL bulbs instead of clean water and sanitation for poor people.
– Subsidizing massive amounts of solar and wind, but building massive amounts of lignite coal stations cause solar and wind can’t do base power load or power on demand, and the energy spikes are so bad that even nuclear can’t handle it (Germany’s Energiewende disaster)
– Cutting down tropical rain forests to grow palm oil trees for biofuel
– Cutting down rain forest to grow soy, sugarcane, and corn for biofuels
– Should we get started on the consequences of raising energy prices on the poor, and then what the poor will do to forests and natural resources to survive?
– I already had my rant about the UN IPCC policies and the massive number of people those same policies starved to death in the “What do you fear about Climate Change” post. That’s seven years of criminal policy man. The IPCC is gonna pay for that.
The list goes on and on regarding the bad policies that the UN IPCC “recommends” and then gets pushed on us. Considering how bad the results are from those policies from just the last seven years, shoot, I say shoot the turkey at the heart, which is the science. The whole thing is just awful, from the science to the disastrous socio-economic policy.
And of course on top of that, the Climate activists/alarmist finally figure out one of those basic rules of human communication, which is, “don’t insult the person you’re trying to get to agree with you.” Which of course they had to spend tax dollars and resources to research, tabulate and say, “Hey look, we just discovered the Golden Rule!” Which is something you can get from religious texts, philosphical texts, business books on sales, relationship books on how to treat friends and partners, emotional intelligence books, seminars on better relationships and communications…
It just makes me do a face palm when I see the Climate Activist’s/Alarmists sheer incompetence, disconnectedness, contempt, and arrogance flowing like a busted fire hydrant on a hot day in NYC…
At 12:51 PM on 3 February, SABicyclist had commented:
I’ll believe that when The New York Post (’cause the New York Times sure as hell ain’t gonna report it) begins relating as news items multiple episodes in which IPCC bureaucrats begin showing up at hospital Emergency Departments with legs broken by baseball bats and briskly-swung lengths of rebar, with concussions, cerebral hematomas, scalp lacerations, rib fractures, and the results of sundry other acts of personal retribution conferred upon them in recognition of their works.
And the rank-and-file N.Y.P.D. simply shrug.
“What could I tell ya? My partner’s grandmother froze to death in her apartment last winter. These U.N. bastids shouldn’t expect something in return?”
I don’t accept the proposition that consensus is necessary. Especially on anthropogenically induced climate for non-climate reasons. But, did someone just admit no consensus?
Its clear to me that Brandon Gates is an intellectual moron and should be banned from this scientific website. Anthony– comments should be limited to no more than two with one defense of lunacy.
No, let him speak. I think, he’s incredible.
He’s like the 97% in miniature. Anyone can see that if the “consensus” was real they wouldn’t need to fake a survey and make up numbers. 97% is a great red sign for anyone who’s ever bought cat food or washing-up liquid.
And Brandon Gates is also incredible.
carbon bigfoot,
I’ve notice that B. Gates’ arguments have devolved from his original alarmist position to now, where he says that his position is to ‘leave the planet better off than I found it’ [paraphrasing]. He has been forced into that position by readers here, who use solid facts and evidence to counter anything he posts that isn’t supportable.
First, the planet doesn’t care. At all. People care, and his implication is that he cares more than skeptics. But I don’t know any scientific skeptics who are not just as concerned about the evironment as the most rabid climate alarmist. Our proposed solutions are different, that’s all.
Next, the alarmist crowd’s solutions never, ever consider any cost/benefit equation. Damn the cost, let’s do it! That’s their attitude. It’s an easy way to wreck an economy, with no gain.
Finally, they have yet to demonstrate that CO2 — the original reason for the climate scare — does anything like what they predicted. In fact, after millions of reader comments just here alone, there is no credible evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is anything but harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
Gates can convince me he is right. All he has to do is falsify that last sentence. Show us either global harm due to the added CO2, or show that it is not a net benefit to the biosphere. Either one will do. But if he cannot post any such evidence, then he loses the debate, and it really is as simple as that.
dbstealey, maybe your excellently articulated rebuttal to BG should also apply to SHF (who, as yet, remains silent in the midst of all the thought provoking and passionate replies posted here).
dbstealey,
lol, no, it’s just common courtesy. Or at least common in terms of my largely conservative Midwestern upbringing.
We agree.
No, my implication is that “skeptics” do a lousy job reading my damn mind, and should probably stick to arguments with some reasonable basis in demonstrable fact rather than rambling on and on about the private motivations of some random dude on the Internet whose opinions they don’t agree with.
I agree with that too.
You always say never. Which makes you always wrong.
I await your forthcoming detailed cost benefit analysis with bated breath.
My crystal ball is broken. As such, my acutal position is that I don’t know with any great certainty what the future impacts will be down to the penny. But you knew that already, because I’ve written it many times.
Reminds me of Obama declaring that the only reason why people didn’t love Obamacare was that it hadn’t been explained to them properly.
I have long since ceased being a denier or skeptic.
I am a full blown climate infidel!!!!!
I’m not a denier, I’m a defier!
(Or hot-air heretic.)
I’ve always preferred “dissident.”
Where does a heretic and apostate end up in this equation? Cuz that’s what I am…
We denote AGW Catastrophists, “Warmists” who wouldn’t know a fact from a fiddle-fern, anosognotic “deviants” with all that that implies [cf: Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, 1914]. Those too stupid to know they’re stupid see groundhog shadows everywhere.
I will show the Climate Liars no civility. They are the ones who have lied, cheated, conned and scammed. They have shown themselves to be sociopaths that have and will continue to do anything underhanded to advance their agenda. They want civility? I suggest the first step is they stop lying. But I doubt they ever will. Unless they lie, their ‘science’ falls apart.
This is always the left’s go-to after-failure mode; the message isn’t the problem it’s how it’s presented or to whom it’s presented.
Democrats do this all the time when they lose big across the board. We mainly hear about it because the Press is their wholly owned subsidiary and thus every word they say is transmitted as if gospel.
It’s as if there’s only one church and we all get the newsletter whether we are members or not because all the mailmen are members.
they could start by stopping the “deniers” and even the “skeptics” labels.
Since when in real science has been being skeptical about results from new theories or discoveries a bad thing?
Science is about challenging our current knowledge of how the universe works.
It’s not a poll.
I guess we sceptics are the ones who are really deficient in the ability to communicate effectively! They start off as a given the truth of the “97%” and then puzzle the stark contrast with American public views. I note the abandonment of the discipline psychology and adoption of the oxymoron behavioral (social) scientist (misbehavioral scientists is what we are more burdened with, though). A real scientist (I hope) would wonder if there is a remote chance that the cartoonist/behavioral scientists that ‘Cooked’ the 97 myth could be off at least 10% or so. This post normal muscling in on the territory of “science” by witch doctors also must be having a debasing effect on science as a whole. I guess since scientists are less moved by real data these days (“Oh I dunno, it does seem a little low. What would we get if we chopped 0.5C off the 1930s and added it on to the 1990s? No data has been actually lost and the average for the century is the same!”), I guess it is what we should expect.
I remember after Sputnik (a kindly name meaning “traveling companion” sort of like ‘earth’s friend’) went up, the stock of engineers went up even higher. Everybody wanted to be an engineer (yours truly succumbed to the idea), but then it spread into unlikely territory. “Our dish detergent has been “engineered” to be soft on your sweetheart’s hands and a terror on dirty dishes!” No more of the early agricultural days ads “The old gray mare sh*t on the wall, Ma washed it off with Oxydol”
Before the heavy clanking persona of engineering got this airy lift, the world of adulation belonged to scientists. Einstein had died only two years before Sputnik and all sorts of wonderful sciency things had happened in the first half of the 20th Century. Now engineers had taken the stage and soon the oxymoron “rocket science” was born. Wow, this unabashed theft from engineering by mighty scientists was a huge boost! You do know that there are no ‘rocket scientists’ right?
Magnanimous engineers let them have this bone and went on to develop the electronic revolution -is this why scientists have been delving into quixotic windmills and other passe engineering museum items? Strangely, the term to describe the subverting machinations of the ‘new order’ progressive types, “social engineering”, was coined. Immediately I harkened back to the engineered dish soap days. I guess this was another accolade to the inventors of the wheel. Probably “behavioral engineers” will be the next evolution and the globes’ biggest employer.
Or in simple terms, engineers build things and scientists study things. But a scientist cannot study a thing that does not yet exist, hence “rocket engineers” makes sense but “rocket scientists” not so much, why study a thing after you have built it?
…an effective pathway to reaching consensus, said Bliuc
So, Biluc is occupied with reaching consensus, rather than engaging in scientific inquiry. I think He should consider that engaging in scientific inquiry might be better. It is more likely to uncover the truth. Moreover, since the truth can be very compelling when uncovered, it might even serve as “an effective pathway to reaching consensus.” Traditionally, science has uncovered truths and this has resulted in a reaching of consensus. To aim for consensus has so often resulted in concealing the truth, that I’m surprised anyone associated with science would still be preoccupied with it. Not only that, the consensus reached is usually unstable when it conceals the truth, because the truth will out. So, aiming at consensus is frequently self-defeating.
So, I recommend that Biluc reconsider his stance.
Good point. Why is there a need to reach consensus unless the consensus is right?
Surely the aim should be to determine how we evaluate the truth of the matter?
If we can agree that then the consensus could be reached just by following the agree method.
Otherwise we’ll end up with an unfortunate compromise.
“Why is there a need to reach consensus unless the consensus is right?”
The correctness of consensus is irrelevant. What is important is the well-ordered nature of the herd. Where it is going is also irrelevant; the predators will follow the herd where ever it goes as the herd wanders the Serengeti as its members wait to be eaten; trying each to stay in the middle of the herd so as not to be eaten today.
They are right communication is the problem. Stop communicating model fantasy and start communicating real life reality and there won’t be a problem. But then the shrill, crazy, vitriolic narrative would die and we can’t have that. Funny I’ve never heard “deniers” calling for Alarmists to be jailed but maybe I’ve missed something. How typical is this tripe? The extremist nut jobs are portraying themselves as the adults needing to communicate bettet to irrational children. Sounds like an Obama administration sound bite. Hilarious.
“As an example, the focus could be on “things like cleaner air, low power consumption, improved public transport, better waste management, efficient agriculture, reforestation … ”
That’s exactly what society should be discussing and working towards but I somehow can’t shake the feeling that someone the solution to these would be carbon tax and wealth distribution outside my nation’s borders.
*somehow the solution…
Not only does the paper cite the should-be retracted Cook 2013 paper but they are not aware that CAGW skeptics tend to have higher understanding of the science.
I fell foul of this a few years back – tried to engage regarding things that I had in common – maybe better insulation as a starting point, since that would be useful in both a warming and a cooling world. Oh the vitriol – they don’t want to find common ground with us they despise is because we disagree with their view of the world. We are either mentally ill, or just inherently evil.
That big 97% consensus porky again, how about improving communications by not using outright lies in the warmist narrative.
Here we demonstrate that US believers and sceptics have distinct social identities, beliefs and emotional reactions that systematically predict their support for action to advance their respective positions.
Yeah, it’s called IQ and a propensity for critical examination of ideas.
A “critical examination of ideas”? Agreed.
“IQ”? No.
An education in the Arts makes one susceptible to over ‘respect for the academy’ but doesn’t make you stupid, per se.
The “experts” are pushing global warming in exactly the same way they pushed eugenics, and for exactly the same reasons.
The “experts” are pushing global warming in exactly the same way they pushed eugenics, and for exactly the same reasons.
Improving communication between the two sides of this big divide could be an effective pathway to reaching consensus, said Bliuc.
I thought there already was a ‘consensus’. Are they admitting that there really isn’t?
The study for how they communicate has already been done and posted before on WUWT
The art of convincing skeptics
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20130826.aspx
They just haven’t tried hard enough.