From MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY and the P.T. Barnum department, via Eurekalert, comes this actual headline that made me chortle, then I read the money quote: “But so far there is almost no funding” and the purpose of this inane press release became crystal clear. Josh was right.
Sexy ideas won’t slow climate change if people don’t buy in and buy them
As governments and researchers race to develop policies and technologies to make energy production more sustainable and mitigate climate change, they need to remember that the most sophisticated endeavors won’t work if they’re not adopted.
That’s the viewpoint of Thomas Dietz, Michigan State University professor of sociology and environmental science and policy, and co-editors in “Towards a science of climate change and energy choices,” their introduction to a new collection of papers on how to address the linked problems of energy sustainability and climate change jointly published by the journals Nature Energy and Nature Climate Change on May 9. Dietz is also a faculty member in the MSU Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability.
“The special issue was prompted in part by the Paris Agreements where 177 countries have agreed to take action on climate change,” Dietz said. “To meet the goals set by those agreements, we will need to draw on what we know about human behavior, about how organizations work, about how policies unfold. Insights from the social sciences can help achieve those goals and at the same time help insure that people throughout the world have access to affordable energy.”
The two linked special issues bring together an international group of social scientists to reflect on the state of the art in energy social science research. The topics covered are broad:
- how best to structure international treaties on climate change
- how to encourage more energy efficiency by households and organizations
- how communities react to new energy facilities like wind farms
Dietz, along with co-editors Benjamin Sovacool and Paul Stern, synthesize the papers in the special issue.
“The overall message is that we know enough to have much more effective policies on energy use and climate change, and that the design of sound policies has to be based on social science research,” Dietz said. “The starting point for most policies and programs is to assume people make carefully thought out decisions with all the information they need. But we don’t usually do that — we are busy, some of the tradeoffs we have to make are complicated, and it can be hard to get the information we need. So we have to design policies for real people and real organizations. We have to make it easy to make the best choice.”
Dietz also pointed out that people are not just consumers when it comes to energy. They are also citizens, neighbors, members of a community and likely work in organizations. There are many ways and places people can influence decisions about energy use, from buying products from companies that pledge sustainability, to voting for politicians who offer tax incentives for residential solar panels.
Dietz has been studying energy since the 1970s. He is known for his leadership of the behavioral wedge studies demonstrating that simple, money saving actions by households could reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by more than 7 percent.
“The social sciences know a lot and we know what to do next to help with the climate and energy problems,” Dietz said. “But so far there is almost no funding. One estimate is that the United States invests less than 3 percent of the funds it puts into energy hardware research into social science energy research. But if technologies don’t get adopted and used, they don’t have any impact.”
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Dietz has been studying energy since the 1970s. He is known for his leadership of the behavioral wedge studies demonstrating that simple, money saving actions by households could reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by more than 7 percent.
“The social sciences know a lot and we know what to do next to help with the climate and energy problems,” Dietz said. “But so far there is almost no funding. One estimate is that the United States invests less than 3 percent of the funds it puts into energy hardware research into social science energy research. But if technologies don’t get adopted and used, they don’t have any impact.”
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Since 1970 Dietz knows households could reduce emissions by 7%.
But only 3% goes into social science energy research :
since 1970, 46 years, Dietz had reduced emissions by 3% of 7% when appropriate funded.
Didn’t happen, Dietz hangs on.
/sarc of
when social science funding > 3% then emission reduction were 100% of 7%.
Since 1970, 46 years. Exponential. Didn’t happen, Dietz.
Wonder how many courses in radiant heat transfer he had to take to become a professor of sociology and environmental science and policy .
Sexy ideas lead to sex, which leads to more humans, which worsens climate change!
1.07^46 = 22.4726233817810604
People always talk about fossil fuels. However isn’t there a tremendous amount of methane
Hydrate in the world, more than coal and gas deposits combined. I believe we will not run out of ways to power our civilization if we think rationally and act accordingly.
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. If CO2 really affected climate then the change in CO2 over the past 30 years should have caused a noticeable change in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. Before they start worrying about following a plan to control climate they have to come up with a plan to intimidate the sun and the oceans to provide the optimum climate. They do not even know what the ideal climate is let alone how to force Mother Nature to provide it.
You can learn more about the goals of sociology in this NSF funded paper, written by sociologist including Dietz. I’ve just skimmed through a few pages. What I have read so far seems to be just a bunch of very predictable questions. But, I did finally find some clear stated goals:
“Increase the presence of sociologists in local, national, and international research and decision-making by clearly articulating the distinct contribution of sociological approaches, research questions, and contributions to climate change research.
Provide funding opportunities to develop and conduct research projects that investigate the human dimensions of global climate change broadly defined, including small grants to encourage new projects, new investigator awards, and funding to develop collaborations, convene workshops, and offer short courses in new techniques for studying the human dimensions of climate change.”
In short – 1. give us more power. 2. give us more money.
Ever since Social Studies changed its name to The Social Sciences – they have been trying to pass themselves off as real “scientists”, and now they want to get involved with scientific subjects which are completely outside of their range of expertise and competence.
It is saddening to see that the National Science Foundation is funding this brain-vomit.
http://www.asanet.org/research/NSFClimateChangeWorkshop_120109.pdf
Page 70 of that pdf file (post above), is:
“The Conservative Assault on Climate Science: A Successful Case of Deconstructing Scientific Knowledge to Oppose Policy Change.”
Apparently sociologists need to deconstruct the skeptics case against climate science.
It doesn’t seem to occur to them that they might consider deconstructing the mainstream climate science “message”. Or deconstucting the life’s work of Hansen, Schneider, Mann or Gore. No, no. All of a sudden they are only allowed to deconstruct the “skeptical” viewpoint.
I thought that science itself was a social constructed modern myth!!! At least according to this bunch of fools.
My experiences with the social science field is that they spend a very high percentage of their time in justification of their field as a science. My first exposure to this was in the 70’s in my first social science elective at university. Coming from a math and science background, I found it odd that so much time was spent in this justification. I find that this has continued throughout my exposure to the social sciences. One of the initial statements made by Mr. Dietz is an indication of that justification – “The social sciences know a lot and we know what to do next”…and this is typically followed by “show me the money”.
Perhaps the researchers should check out the CFL mess. People hated the things, so the government outlawed the alternative, incandescent. Still, everyone seemed to hate CFLs. In comes LEDs, not mandated by the government, having no mercury and people liked them. Now, General Electric is shutting down production of the CFLs. Forcing people into making certain choices only works until a real alternative comes along. The middle phase, CFLs, just made people angry and determined to fight the whole “save energy” idea.
Social science says people are not smart, no savvy, and can be manipulated easily into doing what the government wants. Reality says forcing people to buy things that make no sense is not the road to success. In the end, less energy is used. Now the power company will raise rates and/or fees to make up for it, negating any “save energy, save money” promises. It’s all short-term, crazy ideas. No wonder it fails.
At first I bought CFL bulbs rationally. Back in the early 1990’s each one was £12.
I assessed the potential saving in electricity and bought a few for situations where they would pay back.
About a decade later the government subsidized these bulbs (to £1 each) and I went a little bonkers and bought an entire box-full. (actually, I still behaved rationally but in response to irrational pricing.)
Now I still have most of a box-full, but I am already switching to LED.
What will happen to all my unused CFL’s?
Maybe I should release them back into the wild.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
The one use for CFLs versus incandescent I found is for power outages—I have five CFLs in a lamp which I can plug into my backup battery system and use very little electricity. LEDs are better yet, but I’m watching for the prices to drop even further. I, too, have several CFLs left and will use them up slowly while switching to LED. I also stocked up on incandescent before they stopped manufacturing them to use for keeping reptiles warm and my well house from freezing up. There were some uses for CFLs in some situations (another was where it was tough to get to the light fixture, like in a very high hallway—again LEDs are even better there), I just object to the government’s one-size-fits-all mentality.
That’s why I ended up using them for my entire house.
I am off the grid and run on lead-acid batteries for long periods whilst I am not running a generator.
CFL were a great blessing for me and my family.
LED – even more so.
The great advantage of LED is the simple fact that the light can be projected specifically onto the thing that you wish to see.
Especially with the LED equivalents of the old halogen reflectors, MR16 and GU10.
So, for example, just 3 watts of directional LED warm white is plenty enough to illuminate my desk and keyboard.
I’m actually a life long fan of renewables and energy efficiency.
Where formerly I might have been using 40-60watts overhead I am now happily typing with only 3watt illumination. All good in my view.
As sociologists, they must surely have noticed that broadly in almost all classes, genders, castes, racial or religious groups (apart from the severely mentally defective), the people of this planet invariably believe that they know what to do next and how to solve the problems of the world.
I too, believe that I would know how to solve the problems of the world.
But, so does my Jehovah’s Witness friend at work. And that causes me to reflect on whether my own self-confidence is on similarly shaky foundations.
Here in the U.K. casual discourse on topical issues among even poorly-educated working class folk, is self-described as “putting the world to rights”.
In other words the basic assumption behind such conversations is that “we would know what to do next”.
This is true, also of other cultures. Take for example at the Islamic Fundamentalist – he knows what to do next. And he knows what is necessary for the world. He acts with total confidence in his own purpose and mission. In spite of access to modern education – or the lack of it.
Intriguingly, Mr Dietz, holds that he knows what to do next, and states this with confidence, even though he himself is a mere sociologist.
He chose to study an entirely non-mathematical and frankly non-scientific, twaddle based subject, but believes that he is equipped to solve the problems of the world.
As a sociologist he should have taken the time to notice that this means that he is just like everybody else.