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
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans and there is nothing we can do to change it. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. Even if we could cause some change in climate we do not now how it should be changed. We are currently warming up from the Little Ice Age but it is still not as warm as it was at the warmest part of the Medieval Warm Period. But we also must be nearing the end of an interglacial period with another 100K year ice age to follow. Maybe we should be concentrating more on fending off the next ice age then on cooling down the Modern Warm Period. Instead of trying to change climate which we cannot really do and we do not even know how it should be changed, we should work on solvable problems like Man’s out of control population or our using up finite resources just a quickly as possible.
See, I don’t believe in space monsters. But, if they were to come up with some super-duper star wars type of ray gun we could zap ’em with, why then I’d be more inclined to believe in them. Because that would be really cool.
+1 #(:))
This is a bit of a non sequitur, but I earned a degree in geophysics from University of California, Berkeley in 1984. I was, and still am, very proud of that accomplishment. The geophysics department was awesome! Great professors. Great classmates. Great topics. To earn money for school I worked at the Byerly Seismographic Station, and at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. I surfed. I played hoops with friends. Partied. Chicks galore! It was all so … cool.
But now when I see how the department of earth sciences has gotten sucked into the green hole of cAGW, I wince. I cringe. My shoulders climb up to my ears. It’s just so very very sad. I have to think that some of my most awesome professors, who have passed away, are cringing too.
At least I have the fond memories.
Wow chicks.
Talk about Goebels style propaganda! That is truly evil. Any discovery of governments spraying chemicals into the atmosphere should be met with overthrow of said government,
Hum can you spell chem trails, I can’t because that isn’t a real thing.
“…displayed more open-mindedness toward
evidence of climate changehaving even more money forcibly extracted from their wallets to solve an imaginary crisis.Over my dead body. Send them to Mars to fiddle about with their geo-delusions of grandeur.
I thought the Babylonian Syndrome of kontrolling ze klimate was bad enough.
Does this ‘preoccupation with the apocalypse’ know no bounds? /rhet
To all who would contemplate this radical course of action “Geo-engineering” May I suggest Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a cautionary tale.
michael
Hi, Mike — good to “see” you again 🙂
Great allegory to suggest!
Hopefully, the AGW Cult Members still have enough cylinders firing to “get it” and reject government funding of such doomed-to-failure schemes.
Bye for now!
Janice
Hi Janice, thanks for replying.
I can understand other disciples wanting funding. And in truth they are more worthy of our tax dollars.
They (the geo-engineers”) are looking to take a step forward. The “Alarmists” are all about taking a step backwards
michael
Did anyone notice in the graphic the reference to “genetically engineering crops”? Aren’t these GMOs? I thought GMOs were baaaaaaaaadddd. Guess that only applies to the drought and disease-resistant types that could feed poor nations. What lunacy.
This is easily explained (or at least correlates with) the difference between willingness to accept (WTA) for loss of a good or service and willingness to pay (WTP) for the gain of the same good or service. WTA/WTP ratios are almost always greater than 1.0, because of our aversion to having something “taken” from us. In this case, it seems to draw on the concern that addressing climate change through more rational approaches will disrupt the economy, and take from the current “haves.” Thus, we are willing to pay more (take more risks) for a geoengineering solution that allows us (seemingly) to keep doing business as usual in the rest of our lives.
Intentionally doing anything to worsen the radiative balance (to me, lessening energy experienced at or near the surface constitutes worsening) is the same as trying to kill the biosphere. Therefore, they are contemplating murder on a scale previously unheard of.
How can we be sure they wouldn’t do exactly the opposite of what should be done?
This result will almost certainly be used as a justification for promoting geoengineering, which will then become the new rallying cry for the hysterical save-the-planet contingent. No good can come of this.
Actually this is a quite brilliant ploy.
Very similar to beating the drums and chanting on high to avoid the wrath of great deity.
An imaginary problem, will attract imaginative solutions.
What better than a government funded gong show.. to save us from the hobgoblin of Calamitous Climate..
Spend billions on very flashy, science C sounding activities.
Then claim fantastic results..
Why not? anyone can cure a nonexistent problem.
Just as the Team IPCC ™ will soon be claiming to have prevented Catastrophic Global Warming.
The reason it has “paused” is cause of the government remediation efforts…
For sure our “progressive” citizens will buy into such a meme.
Lawyers and social ‘scientists’ came up with this nonsense? Figures.
I’m old enough to remember other geoengineering proposals, like using a series of atomic bombs to dig another canal in Central America. Great idea, huh?
But with time it became clear that doing that would be insane. It would fling radioactivity into the stratosphere.
If we give these stupid ideas a little time, they will also look insane. Sequester harmless, beneficial CO2 underground?? Where it will be heavily concentrated, and a constant danger?
Ri-i-i-i-i-ght.
Db,
“Sequester harmless, beneficial CO2 underground?? Where it will be heavily concentrated, and a constant danger?”
Peanuts. Just peanuts! 🙂
Gee what a GREAT idea. Attempt to alter climate when it is beyond obvious that we aren’t even sure how it all works.
***NEWS RELEASE***
+++FROM LONDON, DEPARTMENT FOR CLIMATE CHANGE+++
We are pleased to announce that the test flight of the Ultra Large Orbiting Mirror (ULOM) has resulted in a drop in the average global temperature of 1 degree C.
The Prime Minister, whilst extremely happy with the result for the whole world, offers his condolences to those countries under the flight path of the ULOM and their consequent devastation.
Although the loss of life is regrettable and many terrible stories are continuing to appear as we discover more snow buried towns and cities, the global imperative to combat man made climate change informs us that this project has been and will continue to be a resounding success.
The Prime Minister when asked of other geoengineering projects ‘in the pipeline’ stated that each car will carry its own built-in wind mill to make it self powered, and a smart grid will be rolled out across the country to bring a true market economy to the supply of electricity to people and businesses. His science advisor, a 21 year old economics graduate, commented that choosing which 2 hour slot that your electricity will be available for, will be as easy as ordering your food from the supermarket.
Other countries and groups are looking at the use of geo-engineered solutions to build a better life for themselves.
All world leaders are confident that these solutions will not fall into the hands of despots or terrorists.
***END***
Just follow the money…all will be revealed.
In the 70’s they were proposing geo-engineering to WARM UP the planet!
From the book “Omega – Murder of the Eco-system and the Suicide of Man , Paul K Anderson, 1971
Chapter on “Controlling the Planet’s Climate”, J. 0. Fletcher (Rand corporation)
“Since about 1840, a new warming trend has predominated and appears to have reached a climax in this century, followed by cooling since about 1940, irregularly at first but more sharply since about 1960.
“…..the sharp global cooling of the past decade indicates that other, oppositely directed factors are more influential than the increasing atmospheric content of CO2. For example, Moller (1963) estimates that a 10 per cent change in CO2 can be counter-balanced by a 3 per cent change in water vapour or by a 1 per cent change in mean cloudiness. Let it also be noted that the oceans have an enormous capacity to absorb CO2, this varying according to their temperature with colder oceans being able to store more of the gas. Thus, a warming of the oceans could also be a primary cause of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It has….already been noted that the creation or dissipation of high cloudiness has an enormous influence on the heat budget of the atmosphere and of the surface. Moreover, under certain conditions, only one kilogram of reagent can seed several square kilometres of cloud surface. It is estimated that it would take only sixty American C-5 aircraft to deliver one kilogram per square kilometre per day over the entire Arctic Basin (10 million square kilometres). Thus, it is a large but not an impossible task to seed such enormous areas.
Many engineering proposals have been advanced for improving the climatic resources of particular regions. All of these schemes share the common defect that their influence on the global system cannot yet be reliably judged. Some are on a scale that could well influence the global system and possibly even trigger instabilities with far reaching consequences.
The largest scale enterprise that has been discussed is that of transforming the Arctic into an ice-free ocean. As was noted earlier, this has been very carefully studied by the staff of the Main Geophysical Observatory in Leningrad.
The Soviet engineer, Borisov, has been the most active proponent of the much-publicized Bering Strait dam. The basic idea is to increase the inflow of warm Atlantic water by stopping or even reversing the present northward flow of colder Pacific water through the Bering Strait. The proposed dam would be 50 miles long and 150 feet high.
Diverting the Gulf Stream: Two kinds of proposals have been discussed, a dam between Florida and Cuba, and weirs extending out from Newfoundland across the Grand Banks to deflect the Labrador current as well as the Gulf Stream.
It has been proposed that the narrow mouth of Tatarsk Strait, where a flood tide alternates with an ebb tide, be regulated by a giant one-way ‘water valve’ to increase the inflow of the warm Kuroshio Current to the Sea of Okhotsk and reduce the winter ice there.”
There were more suggestions including creating vast inland seas in Siberia and Africa.
But then it got warmer……
A full copy of the above chapter can be found here: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cooling2.pdf
Another trial balloon that simply can’t float. Interest in “global warming/climate change” by the masses has dropped to a non-detectable level. World wide all governments are concerned their plan to hyper-tax and hyper-regulate human life has stalled. Why not hype geoengineering and do it up big? Forget about trying to convince the people, they’re too dumb to get it anyway.
Probably the most ignorant idea ever proposed for the non-problem of “global warming/climate change”. This is more dangerous than a terrorist with a nuke; our bureaucrats at EPA are insane enough to demand it.
Man, some of your answers remind me of how hopeless this freaking world is. I couldn’t even make it past the first 10 responses; complete intellectual garbage. I guess some of you just can’t help but let your brain get the best of you huh.
Pathetic quick witted bloggers with no heart; and that goes for those who are for it…. and against it. There is much more to be learned..
Obviously (wry smile).
If you, dear dour, Kenin, can stand to read one more of our hard hearted comments, this one by mosomoso sums up all the rest: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/nutty-claim-advent-of-geoengineering-may-help-lower-temperature-of-debate-over-climate-change/#comment-1858607
And, to cheer you up — here’s a little song for YOU!
#(:))
Some of us WUWTers and Frankie boy …
We actually think we CAN save our society from the Envirostalinists and Enviroprofiteers! This world isn’t “freaking hopeless,” dear Kenin —
take heart and
“… just remember that ant.” #(:))
“Rubber Tree Plant Song” — Frank Sinatra (youtube)
Truth wins.
Every time.
“so-called “carbon scrubbers,” which would remove CO2 from the atmosphere.”
We got ’em. They’re called “plants”. We don’t need no steenking geoengineering.
There was a paltry iron fertilising exercise going on in the Pacific at great expense (I needed to specify?) back in 2009.
That was the same year the rains made masses of silt in the middle of Oz, which was then dried, lifted aloft and sent west by the El Nino spring winds. As happens naturally every few decades, the outback, rich in iron, headed to the surf then out into the Pacific. Maybe that’s part of how El Ninos lead into their opposites. I dare say our dust was a million times more effective than ships dumping chemicals – and all done for free.
Ignored, of course, except for the usual alarms over soil erosion etc. I’m sure the people on the iron spreading ships wouldn’t have noticed or cared. Climate solutions are for selling, not for solving.
And that last line by Moso Moso nicely sums up the entire thread (and Enviroprofiteer industry):
Janice,
you lost me there. If there were those who truly can get their nerdy little heads out of academia, then they would know the answer to saving our planet from”Envirostalinists and Enviroprofiteers”. Do you know what that is?
If your answer wasn’t LAND (private property) …….oh boy do you ever have a lot to learn.
Dear Kenin,
It’s pretty clear that you have not read a meaningfully high enough percentage of WUWT comments (at least half of us are strongly PRO-private property and free markets — and say so on a regular basis), for
if you had, you would not have asked such a question.
Get to know your allies for truth here and what many of them stand for. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Sincerely (with a twinkle in my slightly narrowed eyes and a hint of a smile),
Janice
Well, l will put it this way: if people [knew] much about the preservation of land (private or public) and free markets as much as they [knew] about every statistic known to man…….we wouldn’t haven’t these problems.
Its one thing to believe and comment with the heart and its another thing to post comments like some freak of nature intellectual who can’t stop the voices in his or her head. I mean look at some of the answers on the blog, some are completely devoid of any substance, but written eloquently.
you may have understood, but clearly there are many who are not even close.
i appreciate your comments
no harm given and none taken.
peace
Scrubbing CO2 from the environment would be incredibly dangerous. During the next glaciation the seas will cool and absorb more CO2. This is basic science. The level of CO2 will plummet (as it has done before) and may well drop so low that all plants starve. That would be an extinction event like no other.