Social science provides a lot of useful insight as to why logic and data rarely convince warmists.
Guest essay by Matt Manos
Many of the posters and readers at WUWT have expressed frustration at convincing warmists. Using facts and logic seem to fall on deaf ears. There are some interesting social sciences theories on why warmist are unresponsive. I know the social sciences aren’t a favored science with this group but if you’ll bear with me, you’ll hopefully see how social science can be useful in describing why warmists are unreachable. And possibly, what to do about it.
In their latest speeches on global warming, Obama and the Pope weren’t trying to convince skeptics that CAGW is real. Instead, they were sending signals to their supporters on what “all right thinking people” should be saying. This is classic in-group/out-group communication. Obama and the Pope were setting up the talking points for their in-group members to use to determine who can be considered part of the tribe and who should be rejected for being outside of it. This is a process called Othering. Othering turns political foes into non-beings. Others have no value. Others can be discounted and ignored. Others can be mocked.
Obama and the Pope are examples of bellwethers; the sheep with the bell that the other sheep follow. Bellwether is not a derogatory term, it’s a descriptive term. The job of a political bellwether is to indicate the position that their followers should take in their everyday conversations. Obama and the Pope’s latest speeches function as position papers for the delegates of all right thinking people. You meet these people at work, church, school, at the coffee house, etc. The delegates will mirror the words that the President or the Pope used to identify other in-group members, normalize beliefs and mock out-group members. One of the main themes of both speeches was shame. Shame on those who aren’t right thinking people. Shame that they aren’t as intelligent and capable as “us.”
That type of smugness is almost impossible to penetrate. When a skeptic questions a warmist’s view on global warming/climate change, the warmist hears something vastly different than what the skeptic is saying. A skeptic might say, “The models don’t match the actual measured results.” What the warmist hears is how stupid deniers are because that’s what John Stewart told him he should think. If the warmist doesn’t prove that he thinks skeptics are stupid then he might be confused for a denier! And no one wants to be identified with being a denier because they’re mocked, don’t get tenure and don’t get invited to the right parties. No amount of science can penetrate the ROI the warmist has internalized in believing in CAGW.
Many of the warmist are running on pure rational ignorance. Rational ignorance is a belief that the cost/benefit to researching every issue is so low as to be a net negative in time utilization. Thus the ignorance is rational and everyone utilizes this mental process on certain topics. People who are rationally ignorant about global warming look to bellwethers that support their gut stance. Rationally ignorant warmists would look to world leaders, mockutainers and warmist scientists for guidance on how to communicate their position on global warming.
Penetrating rational ignorance is tough because the position warmists have taken isn’t based on logic. Their position is actually based on an appeal to authority. To question the rationally ignorant warmist is to question the field of science as a whole (to be a science denier) or to question the leadership of their favorite bellwether personalities. This will cause the rationally ignorant warmist to become defensive and try to stand up for their favorite bellwether. The rationally ignorant will also point to their favorite bellwethers and say, “Who am I to doubt all these intelligent people?” It’s intellectually offshoring. It’s lazy. It’s human nature.
The scientific method rejects outright in-group/out groups, Othering, bellwethers and rational ignorance. A scientist is supposed to follow the results on an experiment even if the results don’t support his hypothesis. The scientist is clearly not supposed to rig the data to ensure he gets invited to a party with the right people or continued funding. But science has a poor track record on controversial topics. It often takes decades to accept new theories that are clear winners (e.g., continental drift).
Scientists are still social animals. Social animals follow hierarchy and incentives. If you really want to win the debate on global warming, change the opinions of the bellwethers. Change the economic incentives for the global warming scientific paper mill. Otherwise you’re stuck debating only the people who are unable to change their minds because it would cost them personally to do so. Rare is the person intellectually honest enough to bite the hand that feeds or is willing to violate social norms to speak the truth.
ROI ???
I hate acronyms – I think I will find something else to read.
Return on investment. That’s what I always thought it meant. Could mean something different now
It should be written RoI. When one reads RoI, in English, we know it to mean Return on Investment. I was stumped by posts with “POTUS” in them until I realised it mean President of the United States, so the acronym should be PotUS. Well that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it!
TPOTUS. The TelePrompter is in charge.
It’s actually the TOTUS Twins.
DirkH, are you referring to how he can’t look us straight in the eye when he reads lies to us?
Yeah, “ROI” sent me off to Google to try and figure out what was being said.
I wrote TOT (The Other Day) that PWUA (People who use acronyms) are snobs who think it MTLS (Makes them look smart).
I would suggest that if you consider that the radiative model is sound, and hence that an increase in greenhouse gases leads (inevitably) to warming, there is only one aspect upon which it is possible to convince warmists, namley that climate sensitivity may be lower than they think, whether because feedbacks are not as positive as they think or because natural variation is stronger than they think such that warming in the period of the late 1970s to 1980s was overestimated ans some of that warming (or a greater part thereof0 was natural not CO2 driven.
If you consider that the radiative model is sound and hence that increasing levels of greenhouse gases must result in warming and since factually CO2 levels have increased since the 1950s it follows that their theory provides that the globe MUST be warming (unless counteracted by aerosol emissions), and hence if the observational data does not show that to be the case, then warmists have to question the validity of the data.
If they were to accept that the observational data is sound then this data shows a fundamental problem with the theory. Of course they can come up with mad cap ideas that the heat is hiding in the oceans without explaining how the properties of CO2 and/or the atmospheric physics changes such that pre 1998 increases in CO2 went to warm the atmosphere but after 1998 it goes to warm the ocean, and/or how heat finds its way to the deep ocean without being dedected on its way down, or that long tem warming leads to short term cooling etc but this is just desperate denial not to face realities.
It should be clear by now that either there is a fundamental problem with the thoery (possibly fatal), or that climate sensitivity is low (at least with no net positive feedback). But given that water vapour is a greenhouse gas, it is difficult for them to accept that climate sensitivity is low and not amplified as this too strikes at the very heart of the theory itself.
The radiative model really cries out to be re-examined. It would appear that radiative movement of energy below TOA is only a bit player, and on planet Earth (below TOA) it is convection, conduction, and latent energy changes with the phase change of water that dirve and distribute energy around the planet and within the atmospheric system. It would appear that the warmists have not got to the bottom of the selective surface nature of the oceans, and do not understand and appreciate the implications of this.
Some of the recent articles on this site are pointing to the warmists only beginning to appreciate the role of the oceans. It is the oceans that drive the climate (the winds are largely driven by oceean temperatures and currents below, including of course the difference between eqitorial/tropical oceans and the poles, and the spinning nature of the globe), and the key to understanding climate science is to understand the oceans. It is unfortunate that ARGO was not rolled out at the same time that the satellites were launched for atmospheric temperature measurement since the land based record was never fit for purpose and the land based thermometer record should have been ditched long ago.
We agree on this 110%. I blockquoted to emphasize your words. I wanted to write up a small post looking at some of the competing theories that make more sense and submit it, but I soon realized that it would sound to supportive of a group that is banned here so decided to forget it. Perhaps you might consider expanding on the above quoted bit and submit it for a post. I think it would be valuable coming from you.
AGW radiative theory fails to realise that the lower is a radiative molecule within an atmosphere the higher its temperature needs to be for it to be able to radiate to space at the S-B temperature through the barrier presented by conduction and convection.
They think that a surface at 288K must be emitting photons commensurate with a temperature of 288K at the boundary of space. It isn’t.
For Earth, the surface at 288K emits 255K of photons upward and the other 33k is locked into collisional exchanges that keep the atmosphere aloft.
The blocking effect of GHGs applies to the 255K but is cancelled by convective changes that remove the blockage. I have explained the detail of that elsewhere.
All one really needs to know is that CO2 has been much higher in the past with no correlation to global climate regimes.
Or:
All one really needs to know is that it has been warmer in the past without any runaway warming due to water vapor feedbacks.
or:
All one really needs to know is that CO2 has not led, but has in fact followed, temperature in the proxy records.
That the earth has remained in a stable range hospitable for and amenable to the continuation of life is hard to doubt…we are all here.
That this range has been maintained despite a great many shocks and inputs from all manner of perturbations is equally hard to dispute.
On an entirely different mental track, it seems that a large number of people have always had some seemingly inner need to believe that the end is nigh, and that the evil must be punished, and that those who will not believe as they do are causing all the ills of the world.
In short…’twas ever thus.
Well said.
‘Right-thinking’ orrrrrrrrrrrrr is it actually ‘LEFT-thinking’?
Definition of a “wether”:
A castrated ram….
Ah, thank you !
The reason why there is even a debate about the climate “science” is because, at this point in time, it does not come up to a standard of a science for different reasons. There are deductive sciences which from a few axioms discover new and interesting relationships that hold by the laws of logic that most of us accept as universal. Then there are inductive sciences, such as physics etc which climate science would be a member of. In those sciences we have to formulate a hypothesis about the real world and find by experiments that the hypothesis is not disproven. We can’t ever prove a hypothesis, just observe that it is never disproven. We might trust Einsteins theories as unchangeable laws of nature, but what we really know is that the universe seems to behave as he said at the moment. Who knows, maybe it will start behaving differently next Thursday due to characteristics of the universe that we do not have any knowledge about.
We must verify and try to disprove our hypotheses in an inductive science by experiments in the real world. Physicists have spent billions and billions to collide particles just to see that they behave the way that they are most certain they will. Often they can confirm exactly what they know in these experiments, but there will also be new unexpected results that trigger further questions and yet more hypotheses and this is how science advances.
Here’s where the first big failure of climate science occurs. It is of course obvious to everyone that it is impossible to conduct planetary scale experiments about how CO2 affects climate. Due to some strange reasoning climate scientist have come to the conclusion that they can computationally simulate the world well enough to enable a “no discussions/the debate” is over kind of results. It’s only at the year 2100 we will know for sure how the climate will look in 2100. So we’re back in the same realm of uncertainty such as for economics, politics etc. We have devised a democratic system and public debate to try and handle those things. I would suggest we keep doing this for climate “science” and the proposed political solutions.
Indeed.
Imagine if there was a “no discussion the debate is over” rule in physics?
Copernicus, Galileo and others questioned the science of their day and even though the consensus was that those science was true, that old science has since been completely discredited, so much for having a consensus. Newton and other great minds and those that followed went on from there to create what we have now, a science that seeks knowledge and understanding because it cares not were the study leads as long as it follows the facts, seeks truth and is able to stand up to criticism.
Climate science, and I use the term science loosely, cares little for facts, seeks political results and uses a mythical consensus to limit debate and bully critics into silence. If Galilao were here he would shake his head in wonder at it. We have come full circle and have let a pseudo science rule us with an iron fist. Pathetic eh?
You remind me of a statement by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a supporter of President Obama in the last election. When he publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS), it was with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?” [emphasis added]
“In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”
Hear ye!
I am particularly taken with long and involved papers on such topics as how the universe evolved during the first ten to the minus 18th of a second after the Big Bang, or discussions of whether ‘branes slamming into each other can cause new multiverses to spontaneously form, or the range of possible values that the fundamental physical constants can have in other separate universes created during other Big Bangs, being that they would almost surely not have the same values as in our happy little universe.
What I never hear discussed, but would like to, is just what lies beyond the edge of the universe, and what the expanding universe is expanding INTO?
Hmmm, my brain is itchy now…
My blood runs cold when I read this story. Isn’t this what the NAZI’s did in Germany 1930’s. If you don’t know about what they did from 1930’s onward educate yourself. I was lucky enough to be a member of a extended family who took in refugees after WW2, what I absorbed as a child has stuck, big time. I learned to question what I was being told, and also to question my own self belief, which I try to apply to the best of my ability. Remember part of global warming used to be sea level rising,. Found myself in an argument about why the sea was high in the Maldives and not in Australia, bullying me about my knowledge of sea level’s, finally made my point by upending my glass of water on the table, and making the statement “water finds its own level”, observe.
Everyone knows about the Nazis, but all too few know what the Soviets were doing at the same time, or what Mao did later on.
Philip Arlington: “Everyone knows about the Nazis, but all too few know what the Soviets were doing at the same time, or what Mao did later on.”
It’s not that they don’t know Philip, it’s because they are Socialists, and their motto is “there are no enemies on the Left”.
After all, what are a few hundred million speedbumps when you’re building the road to the Socialist Workers’ Paradise?
What they are reluctant to acknowledge is that Hitler was a Left winger too, of course.
Whoa. Off topic.
But, note that the Nazi’s did their atrocities during the war. The Russians did their’s before, during, and after the war. We made common cause with the Russians. Go figure.
Typo alert in 5th paragraph.
“Rational ignorance is a belief that the cost/benefit to researching every issue is slow low as to be a net negative in time utilization …” should read “is so low”.
Very interesting. People want to belong almost as much as they want sex. In fact belonging probably leads to procreation.
So who are the bellwethers we need to convince.
What I see in the university where I work is that “Science” is seen as a particular set of dogmas, not as a method of arriving at truth.
That is to say that what they say when they claim to believe in science is not that they believe in impartially examining the evidence and using the facts to build a hypothesis which is then tested by experiment. What they mean is that they have a particular set of beliefs that they accept, and a complimentary set of ones that they reject.
So they use the phrase “science supports climate change” in exactly the same way that a Catholic says, “the church supports transubstantiation.” It’s an article of faith, not a considered opinion. Evidence and reason are irrelevant. Science is their god, and their god has spoken. Questioning it is blasphemy.
This is close to what I think.
The best analogy to warmista beliefs is religion.
Observations will trump Bellweathers.
Bellweathers are not going to change what is currently happening to the sun or what is going to happen next to the earth’s climate. A plateau of no warming for 18 years can be ignored and/or explained away with heat hiding in the ocean or a half dozen other incorrect explanations.
Significant abrupt cooling cannot be hand waved away with a sciency sound bite. There will need to be an official response to reduce public panic in response to observational evidence of abrupt cooling. I am curious how the different fractions and political parties will respond to observational evidence that the entire scientific premise of the IPCC was incorrect.
Observations continue to support the assertion the solar cycle has been interrupted. An analogue of what to expect next is the 8200 BP (before present) abrupt cooling event. It is difficult to even imagine abrupt climate change.
The 8200-year Climate Event
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/8200yrevent.html
“Observations will trump Bellweathers.”
I don’t think you caught what the poster was trying to say. Facts, observation, and logic are not what these people are guided by. It will take the cooling event you mention plus a new generation coming up whose natural rebellious attitude might cause them to question the dogma. The Catholic Church is slowly dying so perhaps even “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” caused by the Demon Magic Molecule CO2 will also pass away. (but don’t count on it in your lifetime)
A mile of ice over all of the northeastern US would help overcome cAGW, but not guarantee the demise of the theory.
Isn’t it obvious what the response to abrupt cooling would be? We had it laid out for us back in the 1970’s when the climate activists thought the world was starting to cool. Back then they agitated for more political control over fossil fuel production so that we could conserve them — burn less of them right now — in order to have enough in the future to stay warm as the world got still colder. No matter what the scare is, their solution is the same: More power for me and less for thee.
Truly abrupt and dramatic cooling may end the debate because people will be too busy surviving to debate much of anything in a polite way.
AGW alarmism is a substitute religion for those who cannot live without moral suspenders, plus a means of power and control for those who cannot live without persecuting their betters (out of fear for the survival of their outdated kind).
Fraction of the population able to successfully resist mass hypnosis, in most countries, is about 11%. (Note that in the USA home schooling is done by approximately 11% families. 11% of American population doesn’t watch TV.) These are the owners of the future.
A good read, Mr Manos.
Invites to the right parties aside, I’ll add
For about thirty-four years now, I’ve been observing the “We’re All Gonna Die!” catastrophe caterwauling clowns in this category – the flatly contrafactual premise that anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide can possibly have any adverse impact upon global or regional climate by virtue of the “greenhouse gas effect – and I’ve come to the conclusion that their motivations are predicted upon prejudices determined by subjective primary and secondary gain, and have nothing genuinely to do with objective, verifiable, mensurable reality.
There is no surprise whatsoever in the observation that this bloody nonsense is being pushed almost without exception by the political left.
Not that the political right is markedly better, but the leftards are far more reliably prone to espousing nothing that is not evil, stupid, or insane.
The interesting thing is that all warmist arguments are the same as if it is a mantra. Today on TV a comment that the world has paused for at least 15 years is answered by “13 of the last 15 years have been the hottest “. This ridiculous answer says absolutely nothing about the future or the trend. It’s like a person who lowers his golf handicap when he first learns to play from 27 to say 10 in 5 years. The next ten years the handicap barely moves. When someone points out that his handicap hasn’t moved the warmist replies that the last ten years have been his hottest golf years ( ie his lowest handicap) and on that basis unless we do something dramatic like amputate his arm in ten years time he will play off scratch and be a pro golfer.
Warmist arguments are just as stupid.
Ha ah I like the analogy. Makes sense. (no sarc)
In short you cannot win the argument by using facts , when its not fact based argument in the first place.
Its seems to be part of the industrial scale of protection, along with claiming sceptics are all conspricy nuts , we see from the warmest that they claim sceptic’s views are no based on facts but emotions, while in pratice the whole ‘ no time to lose and social justice ‘ approach seen form the warmest has nothing but emotion behind it in the first place .
So if you wondering why poor science and worthless data means nothing to those pushing ‘the cause’ ,included those working in climate ‘science’. It is because these are not highly rated in the first place . The support anything things to the CAGW dogma is the prime means to measure its value, along with strength and firmness of belief in ‘the cause ‘ of those promoting the idea . If all those lie up then it really is ‘facts be damned’
“Its seems to be part of the industrial scale of protection…”
There is more truth to this statement then you may understand, and its why the whole “appeal to authority” logical meme has so much persuasiveness..As animals, we can only interpret our environment through our senses. Through the experiences of life and the grace of evolution, our senses have the capacity to “fill in the blanks” with presumptive data, when real data is missing. To the extent our experiences allow. we achieve comfort in our environment through this infilling of experiential data.
When our minds can’t in-fill, we first try to rationalize our environment through rationalization of what we can directly observe. For each of us, there is a finite limit to the degree in which we can achieve a comfortable rationalization. As a species, the bar is relatively low, hence we depend on our social interactions to complete the rationalization process. For some, we can successfully interpret our observations and life carries on on our own, local, terms. For many, (and anecdotally, this appears to be more prevalent in those of us further “removed” from our “natural” world, i.e. urbanites) we can’t complete the rationalization to a point of local comfort, so we lean on others whom we perceive at being better at the task (appeal to authority). Challenging that puts us back into uncomfortable territory where we have to again rely on our own sensory interpretation, and we believe we can’t. We therefore defend our “authority” because we don’t believe we can do otherwise. The failure to believe is a symptom of our incomplete rationalization.
Of course, a segment of our population understands this behavior and has learned how to exploit it, for all the same reasons: to be individually comfortable in their immediate environment. By keeping that group “comfortable”,, i.e. protective, the rest of us remain comfortable ourselves.
Why It’s So Hard to Convince Warmists (but not impossible)
Headline on leftist Australian Fairfax Media flagship The Age:-
“Cost of household solar has outweighed benefits: Grattan Institute report”
WOW! That is not your usual Fairfax headline in this area!
then it goes on
“The cost of installing and maintaining more than one million household solar power systems has outweighed their benefit by more than $9 billion, a new report has found.
And by the time generous federal and state government subsidies run out, households without solar will have subsidised those that have made the switch to the tune of $14 billion.”
The big question is, has Fairfax sniffed the wind? Is yesterday’s headline ‘Deadly Storm Threatens Town’ tomorrow’s (Town Saved From Deadly Storm’ (Annie Proulx – The Shipping News). Is tomorrow gonna bring “Economy Saved from Monstrous Rip Off!” ? ….
Not that it was actual news but it’s encouraging that an ‘independent think tank’ which is not known as ‘conservative’ is writing arriving at such conclusions.
In the bigger world, most people don’t know anything about climate. It’s a boring subject to them and not something that they are at all interested in. If they do have a view it would be predicated by politcal belief. Just start with evil big oil and the thinking stops there. Why are skeltics generally conservative and warmists liberal?
This issue will remain that way until it actually plays out in the future. Suppose some of what we here about comes to past. A solar minimum or weaker solar cycles kicks in along with AMO PDO cool phases. It’s possible in the next decade. An actual reversal in trends for a long enogh period is the only way this will change the perception on this. If instead the pause ends and temperatures rise it’s game over for skeptics.
The big problem is that world governments are spending huge sums of our money in the name of AGW without really understanding that the science is NOT settled…Or if they do know the truth, it is for political and monetary gain / position.
That is a good point. If they end up unable to convince people if temperatures reverse trend they’ll have to jump ship and find a new vessel. Evil big oil will still remain a good target so maybe nothing will change. This issue may also be decided by the economy. If we have another big downturn that many expect that may override a lot of things. I don’t know if they will be able to convince people that their catastrophe is much worse.
It is not really a case of convincing the bellwethers, it is a matter of destroying them. History is alight with examples of this phenomenon and almost invariably they have to be removed physically from their sphere of influence. We find a few examples, mostly in the Evangelist camp of “leaders” caught dipping their wicks in the wrong bowl of oil and they are remarkably good at recovering their flock. Clinton is a fine example in the USA, the criminal and ex minister Huhne in the UK. It took Russian soldiers beating on the doors of the Reichstag to convince Hitler it was over. Stalin kept his power up until his death.
Pauchauri has received a hit but he will be back. The MSN rallied by not reporting his demise and his followers will sweep it under the carpet and give him a clean bill of health. The victim will be sacrificed in the process but all will be well with the status quo. He will get a UN job and a big stipend, perhaps not a big stiff end anymore as he would have liked.
I would suggest that the Climate claptrap will not end until they lose their political power and everything they do re-inforces the controls on that power. It may be that Putin sees things differently as does Xi Jinping. They are taking advantage of a weak and ineffectual President of the USA to expand their empires. I do not suppose that weeping over a warm day is going to stop them now.
Paris has all the makings of a total farce. You cannot impose sanctions on the third most powerful country in the world and then expect it to play your silly games. Still, in the event of a crisis, Britain can put up 64 battle tanks, 30 fighter aircraft and an Oxford 8 with a starting cannon on the front.
Ramble over.
“Pauchauri has received a hit but he will be back”
Not if he’s convicted.
There are many similarities of AGW alarmism and cult behavior:
http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm
If people reach an unjustifiable viewpoint without the use of logic, then they tend to be impervious to you using logic to get them out of it.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/la-la-la-i-cant-hear-you-im-not-listening/
Pointman
IMHO you will not be able to convince the bellwethers of global warming of anything, no matter how rigorous your science is. Its for the same reason you can’t convince a feminist that the ¢.77 pay gap between men and women is a myth even tho the studies are clear that it is. They have an agenda, its called Marxism, the rest are just useful idiots.
Warmers can’t be convinced. This will happen eventually as the man made global warming theory is shown to be false. Mother nature has to convince them. Better to direct efforts at those who are on the fence and those who question the theory. Many smell a rat, doubt the theory, but may not know the basis behind their feeling. Supplying them with facts moves them from the center and into the skeptic’s side. Giving good information to those who already are skeptics, makes their skepticism even stronger and perhaps will make them more determined to resist the warmers.
How are you going to convince science students when the majority of their tutors are warmists? One of my cousins asked his warmist environmental studies tutor if he could give him the names of any books/articles on lunar nodes, and how the Moon may have an effect on our climate. The tutor’s answer was that he’d never heard of lunar nodes, and it was impossible for the Moon to effect Earth’s climate in any way.
If this is what’s being fed to university students, and they are buying into it, there’s no way an ordinary person is going to believe you when you tell them that there is no GW. Having said that, luckily, most ordinary people don’t really care about it one way or another. They just get on with their lives. It’s the nutcases who get so worked up!
Belief structures are difficult to “dislodge” weather it be religion or whatever. The current monotheistic religions have been around for ~2000 years or more. Islam arrived ~700 years after Judaism. Paganism spans well before that. I am hoping AGW alarmism is a cult and not a religion like belief structure because we know cults don’t last that long.
‘Rational ignorance is a belief that the cost/benefit to researching every issue is slow low as to be a net negative in time utilization.’
: warmists run on heuristics.
to preferred endings.
Hans
” warmists run on heuristics.”
Exactly!
Yep – Thanks!
Boris Alotovcrap once famously commented about this subject at Zero Hedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-05/us-unveils-climate-hubs-war-aga…
“In cave in rural France is painting circa 5000 BC, and is tell story. One day is rain much and lightening is loud and scary. Leader of cave community is explain danger of lightening and is predict end of world if citizenry is not work hard for stopping of lightening. Every citizenry of community must bring it portion of berries and meat for sacrificial god and make incantation. Leader of cave community is so very smart, is not help hunt and gather, but is must make strategy and “guide” community for self-preservation technique. One day, citizen is look up and see is still lightening, but is look around and is still alive. Other is still alive. Lightening is come and go, and community is survive. Citizen is make comment at cave meeting and next day is fall in tar pit.
Leader of cave community is explain danger of tar pit and is predict end of world if citizenry is not work hard for prevention of tar pit…”