From Yale University and the “we had to burn the village to save it” department:
Geoengineering, an emerging technology aimed at counteracting the effects of human-caused climate change, also has the potential to counteract political polarization over global warming, according to a new study.
Published Feb. 9 in the journal Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the study found that participants — members of large, nationally representative samples in both the United States and England — displayed more open-mindedness toward evidence of climate change, and more agreement on the significance of such evidence, after learning of geoengineering.
“The result casts doubt on the claim that the advent of geoengineering could lull the public into complacency,” said Dan Kahan, professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the research team that conducted the study.
“We found exactly the opposite: Members of the public who learned about geoengineering were more concerned and less polarized about global warming than those who were told of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a way to reduce climate change,” he said.
As defined by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), “geoengineering” refers to deliberate, large-scale manipulations of Earth’s environment in order to offset some of the harmful consequences of human-caused climate change. Potential examples include solar reflectors that would cool global temperatures by reflecting more sunlight away from the Earth and so-called “carbon scrubbers,” which would remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Both the NAS and the Royal Society, the preeminent association of expert scientists in the United Kingdom, have issued reports calling for stepped-up research on geoengineering, which also was identified as a necessary measure for counteracting the impact of global warming in the latest assessment report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In the study, researchers divided the 3,000 participants into groups, providing some with information on geoengineering and others with information on proposals to limit greenhouse gas emissions. They instructed the participants to read and evaluate actual study findings offering evidence human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels, was heating the Earth’s temperature and creating serious environmental risks including coastal flooding and drought.
“The participants who learned about geoengineering were less polarized about the validity of the evidence than were the ones who got information on carbon-emission limits,” said Kahan.
“In fact, the participants who read about carbon-emission limits were even more polarized than subjects in a control group, who read the information on the evidence of global warming without first learning about any potential policy responses,” he said.
This result was consistent with previous research on a dynamic known as “cultural cognition,” which describes the tendency of individuals to react dismissively to evidence of environmental risks when that evidence threatens their values or group identities.
“The information on geoengineering,” said Kahan, “helped to offset bias by revealing to those study participants with a pro-technology outlook that acknowledging evidence of global warming does not necessarily imply the ‘end of free markets’ or the ‘death of capitalism,’ a theme that some climate-change policy advocates emphasize.”
Kahan added that the significance of the research extended beyond the issue of whether the advent of geoengineering would stifle or promote public engagement with climate science.
“What’s important is that people assess information about science based not only on its content but on its cultural meaning or significance,” explained Kahan. “The study supports the conclusion that science communicators need to broadcast engaging signals along both the ‘content’ and ‘meaning’ channels if they want their message to get through.”
###
The study was conducted by a team of researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma.
Citation: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science DOI: 10.1177/0002716214559002
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I particularly like the idea of pumping liquid CO2 into the ground or the deep oceans.
One of the anti-fracking claims is that it causes earthquakes. I’m sure that pumping the liquid form of the miracle molecule into racks won’t do the same. It lakes pressure to keep CO2 liquid. (Or very low temperatures. But the temperatures were that low nobody would be concerned about Global Warming.) Liquid CO2 is very cold. I’m sure that frozen rocks wouldn’t tend to crack under added pressure.
And pumping liquid CO2 into the ocean would go a long way toward reducing ocean acidification.
As RGB was (I think) the first to say here, “What could go wrong?”
There is no theory at all about how we might control the climate. What, for example, are the control variable, can we actually manipulate the variables, what is the stability of such a scheme, what are the time constants, etc. etc. We don’t know…
Here is an musing script. Put out reflectors to cool the planet. Crops at high latitudes fail a couple years running. Panic about global cooling. Open the CCS reservoirs in hopes of warming the climate back up. Witness a large temperature rise and panic once again about global warming. Put out the reflectors once again. Continue ad nauseum.
“Open the CCS reservoirs … Witness a large temperature rise…”
I love the circular analogy and I agree that there will always be politiciane working feverishly to separate citizens from their money and freedon. But why would there be a large temperature rise?
Because a degree or two rise is “unprecidented”! You know the routine.
My apologies. You were being /sarc
It’s the thinking that leads to an epidemic of toadies.
Geo-engineering only makes sense if it can stop human-caused global warming. There is no such thing as human-caused global warming as I have been constantly pointing out. Let’s see how hard it is to understand this simple fact. It is an observation of nature that there has been no warming for 18 years while atmospheric carbon dioxide steadily increased. According to the IPCC greenhouse theory such increase of carbon dioxide is supposed to warm the atmosphere but nothing has happened for all these years. That is sufficient to invalidate the greenhouse theory in use. According to the IPCC their Arrhenius theory proves the existence of the greenhouse effect which is the alleged cause of anthropogenic global warming or AGW. With the greenhouse theory invalidated by direct observation, it follows that the greenhouse effect, and with it AGW, do not exist either. All of the laws and regulations to curb emissions, and all of the proposals for geoengineering are invalidated thereby. To argue for their acceptance is to argue that global warming has the power to overcome the laws of physics. Anyone who takes this stand is treading in the footsteps of Velikovsky who thought Venus passed close to the earth in biblical times.
I am ………gobsmacked!
Can you imagine the uproar we’d be witnessing in Boston after the winter storms they’ve weathered if those storms had been preceded by “geoengineering”?
The same clown-crowd that currently points to hot summer days as “proof” of human-caused warming would have to assert that their atmospheric tinkering was not responsible for unduly cold winters – and its costs – anywhere.
“Can you imagine the uproar we’d be witnessing in Boston…”
That was my first thought. Any weather-related disaster (or mere inconvenience) that occurs after a “geoengineering” project begins will be blamed. Lawyers will have a field day.
The climate kooks promoting “geo-engineering” are bassically saying “do what we tell you or we wreck the entire planet in our righteous anger”.
Prove you can successfully geoengineer (Terraform) Mars before you try it with our only lifeboat.
(Of course, the big space mirror idea has additional uses – turn them to other angles, and we can burn your crops if you don’t comply with our global directives…)
“‘Be still, and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10.
This smells of an agenda, rather than being an objective study.
So… who funded it.
Well, its funded by:
http://www.culturalcognition.net/projects/
Doesn’t tell you much, no obvious agenda there. But who funds them? List of funders at the bottom of the link above, bold mine:
Research of the Cultural Cognition Project is or has been supported by the National Science Foundation; by the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars; by the Arcus Foundation; by the Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School; the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; Skoll Global Threats Fund; and by GWU, Temple, and NYU Law Schools. You can contact us here.
And who is Skoll Global Threats Fund?
http://www.skollglobalthreats.org/global-threats/climate-change/
Yeah, shocking, I know. They have an agenda, who woulda thunk?
Arcus is a hoot too. They exist to protect the LGBT community and “fellow apes”.
Not that I have anything against either of those two goals, just the combination struck me as amusing for some reason:
http://www.arcusfoundation.org/who-we-are/
Thanks for that.
LGBT and “fellow apes”. Protecting animal behavior?
I’m really puzzled by the hostility towards research into geo-engineering options. No-one is suggesting that we suddenly put sunshades over the Earth (or whatever), just that we test the technology of e.g. ocean fertilisation on a small scale. I can understanding why the Greenies don’t like it, because it might show that the destruction of our present economic system (their real aim) is unnecessary. That is no reason for anyone else to get hysterical.
I take it, David, that YOU are going to fund the Enviroprofiteers (which includes their shills, the geoengineers). Whew! I feel much better, now.
I take it, David, that YOU are going to fund the Enviroprofiteers (which includes their sh1lls, the geoengineers). Whew! I feel much better, now.
{Note: “SH1LLS” is a bad wordpress word — in moderation for it right now}
‘Cuz:
1. Small scale doesn’t tell you very much about something you want to do on a global scale.
2. If you succeed on a global scale, you’ll now have a weapon in your hands that makes nuclear bombs look like nerf guns. Worse, “you” might not have it, someone who doesn’t like you or humanity in general might have it.
3. While we have a pretty good idea what the consequences of setting off a nuclear bomb are, we have NO idea what the consequences of a global geoengineering project would be. See RBG’s comment upthread. This is WAY beyond nuclear war.
Well, what if just for the sake of argument climate models over estimate global warming, which the evidence so far strongly suggests is true? What if even those models are correct, but the danger is way overstated, which the evidence even more strongly suggest is true, how does it make sense to spend billions to explore the idea of stopping a non-existent threat. That is billions just to explore it, not to actually do it which will cost trillions.
Well geo-engineering the earth is a task that is comparable in scale to doing controlled thermo-nuclear fusion.
After all, if the sun’s variations of TSI, don’t seem to have much geo-engineering effect, at least none that Willis can find, then you know that some tests with a couple of test tubes and a hundred watt light bulb (now banned) is not going to reveal anything.
And our sun demonstrates just how large in scale, you have to build a controlled thermo-nuclear fusion reactor.
Remember ; Gravity Sucks !!
Agree with David.
I also didn’t get what was nutty, but OTOH, I had to search google for ‘complacency’.
The claim is self-evident instead. Of course people are less polarized if they are told ‘scientists or engineers might be able to fix climate change or its consequences’ instead of ‘you have to stop having your standard of living and then still boil, drown, freeze, bury in sand and snow’.
…Because the peer reviewed journals said if she didn’t, she was gonna die!
lol — nice one, Mr. Murphy. Great metaphor.
Of course, it only goes so far — makes a great point about geoengineering, per se, but, … in THIS case, no one has swallowed a fly.
(i.e., there is no evidence humans can do anything to alter the climate of the earth)
I don’t know how she swallowed that goat, she just opened her throat , and swallow the goat. In the AGW world a lot of people are swallowing a lot of bull.
It finished with:
“She swallowed a horse;
She’s dead, of course!”
So I guess we should thank the Chinese for their successful geoengineering. Their cloudseeding brown soot cloud coming from the mainland is quite impressive. The CO2 is good, but the real carbon pollution changes the albedo in the Arctic.
Advocates of “Geo-engineering” need look no farther to the history of the California Development Company in 1905 and their “creation” of the Salton Sea to see the wonders of modern tinkering, bad luck and a nasty engineering mistake one fine day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
Throughout the “Great California Drought” I have not come across any tears over the Salton Sea drying up by the mainstream press and enviro-nutt-jobs.
Ha ha
Wow. Just wow. Of course, we’ve learned so much since then, and couldn’t make mistakes like that again.
And again the (in-)cognoscenti trying to fix something that ain’t broken.
I am surprised that they did not suggest human sacrifice as one of the options. I understand Aztec priests convinced their flocks that human sacrifice would prevent adverse weather. As a result, the Aztecs sacrificed young men from captured tribes. They, then turned to their own young, once there were no non-Aztec tribes left to enslave. Sadly for the Aztecs, it didn’t take very many Spaniards to take over Mexico because the Aztecs could not muster enough young men to defend themselves. Is that whats about to happen to us. We are destroying our industrial base to satisfy the Gods of AGW, while China is building a huge navy to push us out of Asia.
Sky god plenty angry. Throw all your money into climate volcano or be big plenty hot!
(Big Chief Willis show climate volcano eruption not associated with sunspot cycle so must be our fault.)
The method most likely to work would be to spray sulfates in the lower stratosphere from large airplanes. This would cool off the planet similar to the way volcanoes do.
All one would have to do is to dump a Pinatubo’s worth of sulfates into the lower stratosphere/Ozone layer every few years. This would cool off the planet by 0.4C.
If one needed to cool off the planet by 2.0C, then it would take 5 Pinatubos worth of sulfates every few years.
The problem is that Pinatubo’s sulfates also destroyed about 5% of the Ozone layer. Its a good thing there are only about 5 such large volcanoes every 100 years because it takes at least 25 years for the Ozone to rebuild after these large volcanoes. With 5 every century, the Ozone layer is always about 90% of its peak maximum potential. 90% is good enough for life on the surface.
So let’s put 5 Pintaubos worth of sulfates into the lower stratosphere every few years and then the Ozone layer is completely destroyed in just a 5 or 10 years. Mankind goes extinct, and most everything else and then the global warming problem is solved.
These people should be locked up because they are completely insanely obsessed with trying this out. They are the mad scientists of the James Bond movies.
And, as a result of such nutty engineering, we may experience for the first time in history actual man-made climate change.
“after learning of geoengineering”
For the read ” after being brainwashed”.
The thought of geo-engineering scares me witless. See you in the next Ice Age.
A question for the denizens here:
If the fears of many in the 1970s that we were starting to enter a new Ice Age appeared to be coming true 40 years later now (whether human-caused or not), with significant cooling and the start of advancing continental glaciers, how many of you would be comfortable with geo-engineering counter measures like spreading coal dust on spring snow and glaciers to encourage melting?
Answer: It would be a complete waste of time and money.
The oceans with their currents and onshore flowing winds cover over 75% of the planet… as was mentioned, volcanoes are pretty tough to control… then, there’s the Sun… .
As if we humans can do ANY-thing to change the climate of the earth.
As if.
“Geoengineering” of the planet’s climate is a bunch of HOT AIR.
Curt asks an excellent question:
Not me. I’m all for adaptation. Think of how much easier it will be to drill for oil and gas with the seas 100m or more lower. That’s a lot of easier-to-get-to energy on the continental shelves to keep the hydroponic farms going and my toes toasty warm. Think of how much land mass will open up on the continental shelves. Sure, more water will be tied up in glaciation, but we have desalination technology now and perhaps the ability to melt and transport whatever water we need from the glaciers through pipeline and excavated channels. Comparatively low-tech stuff, actually.
Our ancestors came up with fur skins and fire as an adaptation to the cold and it seemed to work well enough because.,, well, here we are! We are so much more technologically better equipped to adapt to climate than ever before in the history of humanity. If we ever get that fusion thingy figured out homo sapiens are set for an incredibly long future so long as our “concerned, wise, loving leaders” don’t do us in first with their greed and lust for power.
So, chalk me up as being against geoengineering and all for adaptation. It is far easier to protect ourselves from the elements than it is to protect ourselves from those that would seek to enslave us.
#$@ur momisugly!! I could SWEAR I closed the blockquote after Curt’s question.
Mods; please bail me out if you get the chance. But still, the readers here are more than smart enough to separate out my answer from Curt’s question if our (N.B.) overworked volunteer mods don’t get the chance to save my bacon.
H.R. — Your fine answer was also a distinguished one.
#(:))
It happens to the best of us… . And the mods often do not fix stuff, I’ve noticed, so, don’t take that personally (if they don’t).
[Those who would write the writers about those who right the writers that need rightin’ need to tell us readers of the writers that there is something to be righted upon something earlier written by the writers for the readers of the righters of the writers for the readers. Otherwise, we who right the writers who erred in writin’ for the readers don’t assume there is rightin’ to be done on the writing written by the writers for the readers … .mod]
Hi, Janice.
I’ve been commenting on WUWT since somewhere around there in 2008. My wife had a stroke that year and swinging back and forth between caregiving and concerns for her and the intellectual distraction of WUWT marks in my mind the time when I started reading here. I didn’t know what to make of CAGW back then.
Back when all posts were moderated and there was no white-listing, the mods saved my bacon many-a-time before I could even post an apology… what error? It was fixed aw’right already, yes?
Anthony has contemplated and made changes to his blog a few times and he has always had the good sense to get some feed back from his readers. The few times he’s done that, my vote has always been to “dance with the girl that brung ya.” Mr. Watts is a natural at balancing the technical and political components of CAGW with techno-gee-whiz posts and things of a puzzling nature. When messin’ with success, mess carefully, and Anthony has done so. (Smart man.)
Anthony and The Mods (Doo-wop, doo-waaahhh…) are a phenomenon unto themselves. The results are evident in the ratings but there is no way to describe it. It is Anthony and the Mods who make WUWT what it is.
So, the bottom line is my goof will get fixed – or not – by the precious resource aka ‘overworked volunteer mods’ And I thank you very much for taking note of my opinion, Ms. Moore.
(The mods? I thank them and think of them every day. They are the 5th column of this blog. A leader with formidable lieutenants is a force to be reckoned with.)
Dear H. R.,
My pleasure. I am sorry for what you and your wife had to go through. We are all, however, the richer for your being here. Not to minimize your suffering, but, given your thoughtful, well-informed writing (so far as I have seen), your becoming a WUWT regular was a “working all things together for good” part of that terrible ordeal.
Sincerely,
Janice
***********************
Oh, MOD! #(:))
You KNOW I think you guys are the best! You just get busy, sometimes, and, well… even though writin’ isn’t always righted, we aren’t upset (as H.R. so ably articulated).
Cut it out! I just pulled something laughing and I’ve got two payments left on my hernia surgery. I can’t afford another one. I can’t find the term for “kind but evil” in my Roget’s Thesaurus. ;o)
(Thanks for the fix, mod.)
“Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing…block it out”
-Mr. Burns.
(Execelllent)
Solar engineering is the topic we should be researching!
When I was a kid, I was very concerned that the sun would run out of fuel to burn and we would all die, based on what I was taught in elementary school science class. I measured the sun using a ruler, it is about an inch across. Knowing that far away objects appear smaller I figured it was probably in reality 3-4 inches across. So my idea was that as the sun began to run out of fuel, we could go up there on a really tall ladder or something and add a couple spoonfuls of water and that should keep it going for another 1-2 billion years. As I got older I realized that it is a bit bigger and further away, so it might actually take a few barrels of water and a rocket… yeah…
lol.
Unlike the true believers in AGW, YOU grew up (intellectually).
(and I’m not castigating the AGW Cult members who are, sadly, truly insane — just those who have the ability and yet refuse to take personal responsibility for their minds.)
When I was in elementary school I knew better, because I had a record and the guy on the record sang
“The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho it’s hot, the sun is not a place where we could live
But here on earth there’d be no life without the light it gives
We need its light, we need its heat, we need its energy
Without the sun, without a doubt, there’d be no you and me
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees
The sun is hot
It is so hot that everything on it is a gas
Iron, copper, aluminum and many others
The sun is large
If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside
And yet the sun is still only a middle-sized star
The sun is far away
About 93,000,000 miles away, and that’s why it looks so small
And even when it’s out of sight, the sun shines night and day
The sun gives heat, the sun gives light, the sunlight that we see
The sunlight comes from our own sun’s atomic energy
Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions
Of hydrogen,carbon, nitrogen and helium
The sun is mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees”
I now know more about the sun because Leif is here, but a simple kids song can tell
you a lot, like the sun isn’t half a mile away and 150 degrees.
So many climate “scientists” don’t seem to know as much as can be learned from a kids record.
And i just knew I could get out of the freezing “blue northers” blowing down from Colorado into south Texas by standing out of the wind in the sunshine on the south side of the school ….
I went to public school… never learned that song. I did however learn about climate change and the looming ICE AGE!!!
“When I was a kid, I was very concerned that the sun would run out of fuel to burn…”
Sounds like the plot of the film “Sunshine”, 2007:
“A team of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in 2057.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/
Oh, WOW. That is just so exciting. Just 42 years until we find out if they succeed. I hope they do, but, well, I’ll be pretty old and I really don’t think I’ll care at that point if I die of old age or of The End of the Sun.
Hm. How old did you say those astronauts were in 2007? LOL, if that “documentary” was made by Al Gore, they would have been in their 80’s. And he still would have been given an Academy Award.
Almost 5 years ago this site had a guest article that pointed out the prospect of geoengineering negates the precautionary principle.
Thus, it argued, the need for actions now are negated by the study of geoengineering. And it seemed likely that without momentum the whole scare would collapse.
But the commenters then were too afraid of the damage that geoengineering could do to discuss the political advantages. This new paper has a similar problem. It actually seems to seek for a way to discuss climate issues without polarising the debate.
I would reply to that paper by saying:
“Geoengineering” is the Precautionary Fallacy re-invented.
PF: Worse-than-useless prevention.
GE: Worse-than-useless cure.
— BOTH for a non-existent malady
— BOTH do great harm
for NO benefit.
But the point of geoengineering is that you don’t need to use it. In fact you can’t use it as it doesn’t exist.
You just need to research geoengineering and that is “doing something”.
All the spin-off benefits of research with no actual impact on the planet or economy.
Dear Mr. Courtney,
In theory, if this were just a mental exercise, you may be correct, but the practical result of preaching “geoengineering” is the Enviroprofiteers (using the Envirostalinists) getting taxpayers to subsidize:
1. the “research;”
2. prototypes and supplies and “experiments” (gotta make sure it can work, don’t you know!);
{all of this takes A LOT OF MONEY we don’t have}
and
3. almost inevitably, re-directed use of the technology for “just in case” Precautionary purposes. (after all, we can’t just, willy-nilly, put all that geoengineering together at the last second, now can we?!)
Not to mention:
4. Takings of private property through forced purchases and by regulatory “taking” of ability to use/enter/alienate one’s real property — to make Geoengineering potentially possible and effective (lol — AS IF it could ever be).
Thus, practically speaking, Geoengineering = Precautionary Fallacy in result.
Oops!
Forgot to sign off — sorry about that. I hope that all is going very well with everything… . And, especially with the happy occasion of your upcoming marriage, Matt.
Tell your dad, “Hello,” and best wishes to you all!
Your ally for truth in science,
Janice
Thank you Janice,
My father is OK. He’s getting treatment for the heart problems and that should allow the other failings to recover (except for the cancer, of course, that won’t get better).
Point 1, I agree with. The Government will fund the research. Good.
All sorts of unknown discoveries come from supposedly uncommercial research.
The rest I doubt. They are all controversial steps. And nobody wants to take a risk… that is our weakness in the West. We are too risk averse. The downsides will be so delayed they will never happen. Never underestimate the sloth of a bureaucracy.
If there is a war then the priorities may change (fear is a great weakness).
But geoengineering will never be more deadly and targeted than tactical nukes, so why worry?
Dear MCourtney (hope I didn’t blow your cover),
I’m glad to hear that your dad is getting good care. I’ll keep praying for him.
Lol, well, you “agree with point 1,” but we must agree to disagree about taxpayers funding “geoengineering” being “good.” I think I’ll drop my end of the debate stick (sorry to be such a spoil sport), here, though, and just let the rest of our disagreements go…. until another day….. heh, heh, heh.
#(:))
Janice
********************************************
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quote of the Day:
A real engineer’s view on crisis {in a REAL crisis} management:
{Source: Failure Is Not an Option, pp. 28-32, Gene Kranz, Simon & Schuster (2000).}
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AS IF we humans can do anything, ANYTHING, to control the “rocket” called Earth.
LOL.
Bruce Cobb sums it up nicely in his usual witty style here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/nutty-claim-advent-of-geoengineering-may-help-lower-temperature-of-debate-over-climate-change/#comment-1857650
I object. The Earth’s average temperature has stabilized at about +15° C, which means less in Scandinavia. What have these guys been up to lately?
lol caption for graphic: “The secret to getting ahead at NAS.”
There is no such thing as a free environmental lunch. You always get to pay in some other way.