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.
is Rotschild a denier ?
ttp://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/05/22/weather-war/
Was this the derivation of the alarmists as DBs ? (Deaf to reason, Blind to facts )
I had a rather depressing exchange about GW with friends on Facebook this weekend. One fellow was posting something impassioned in support of a new carbon tax being discussed in Alberta now that the New Democrats are in control after a long period of having Conservatives form the government there. I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations based on the accepted wisdom about GW that you can find on Wikipedia – i.e. this is their own facts, nothing I cooked up. I said “For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right and CO2 is going to fry us all. Canada as a whole (not just the one province) produces 1.48% of the world’s CO2 emissions. This means that if everyone in Canada were to drop dead tomorrow, and every single activity that produces CO2 immediately came to a stop, that this would slow the rate of warming (by all of the accepted numbers) by 0.01184°C per century.” The response was “we have to be seen to be doing SOMETHING.” By the gods, there’s no talking sense to these kinds of people. Maybe it was my fault for not pointing out that that infinitesimal amount of heat is below any accurate means of measurement.
If you want to stop a Warmist in their tracks, just ask them two questions. The first being. What climate do you want? The second, based on their assumption we are living in a hotter world, how cold do they want that climate to be?
(Another wasted effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
“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.”
I’ve been saying this for years in various contexts. DailyKOS isn’t read by its opponents; its articles exist to keep people in the fold and define appropriate beliefs. SkS is the climate politics equivalent; define what is approved and mock everything else.
The approach obviously works extremely well on sheep and they can be right-wing sheep or left-wing sheep. It’s who gets there first with the young sheep.
In all my life I think I have changed the opinion of only two people out of thousands on the topic of religion which is very similar to climatology insofar as a typical citizen is concerned who can neither prove the existence of God or Global Warming and takes both, one or none on faith.
Changing the opinions of bellwethers is even harder than their followers’. Bellwethers get major props and status from leading their flocks, and are especially resistant.
Excellent post.
Don’t forget the groundbreaking book “When Prophecy Fails”. The authors predicted that the inevitable disconfirmation of a prophecy would be followed by an enthusiastic effort at proselytizing to seek social support and lessen the pain of disconfirmation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
That raises the question, is “global warming” a cult?
Bjorn: ” I believe that approx half of the population have the “sheep gene”. ” It must be much more than that how else would you explain the popularity of religion? – Chris Schoneveld
The simplest explanation would be that there is a God. Your statement presumes that religion has no redeeming value except the need to obey, which would be a false presumption. People come to faith as a matter of free will….they are not ordered to believe. Most come to faith by finding wisdom in it which applies to their lives.
Read both Saul Alinsky books and you’ll understand why leftists appear to be so dense: They refuse to debate any subject, from income inequality, to the minimum wage, to climate change, because participating in a debate implies the opposing party has something of value to say. Not to mention that one could lose a debate, so why take a chance?
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Better to attack the characters of people who disagree with you, and ridicule them with names like “deniers” — that puts them on the defensive.
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Challenge his motives, and denounce his character enough, and even the most brilliant scientist with a PhD will not be taken seriously when he says the climate in the past 100 years has been perfectly normal.
I have found Warmists are usually Progressives. They are Authoritarian and Fascist. They are not good people who are open to ideas. They are bad people who want to ram their Authoritarian agenda down the throats of everyone else. If you voted for any of these people, particularly President Obama, it’s your own damn fault.
There are a LOT of Conservative Authoritarians too. The libertarian faction in the country is small. About 15%.
Writes M Simon:
True the former. The latter? Let’s say that “About 15%” of Americans consciously admit their adherence to the principles of libertarian political philosophy.
However, it’s a testable hypothesis that far more of our countrymen – particularly in the middle class – adhere to the non-aggression principle, and are therefore libertarians whether they’re aware of it or not.
Does the term “psychological projection” mean anything to you, Mr. Manos?
Is that bridge going to fall down? Your opinion is the only one that matters so – or is it? What about this lump, is it cancer? Again how much is your opinion worth? Oh that’s right your opinion is worthless – thanks