Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Vox, one of the most influential emotional levers available to promote compliance with the climate conservation agenda is guilt about hurting children.
Why humans are so bad at thinking about climate change
How psychology can trick us into keeping Earth habitable.
Updated by Andy Murdock, University of California Apr 19, 2017, 9:10am EDT
When Per Espen Stoknes looked at polls going back to 1989 assessing the level of public concern about climate change in 39 different countries, he found a surprising pattern in the data.
“Incredibly enough, it shows that the more certain the science becomes, the less concern we find in richer Western democracies,” he said. “How can it be that with increasing level of urgency and certainty in the science, people get less concerned?”
…
To Stoknes, the dissonance problem might be an even bigger deal: What we actually do every day conflicts with what we know we should do.
“It makes us feel a little bit like hypocrites because I know it’s important, I shouldn’t do this, but yet we do it and we do it all the time, every day: eat meat, drive a car, go by plane,” he said.
…
While Stoknes concedes that individual actions alone can’t solve the climate problem, he doesn’t buy into the idea that we’re powerless.
…
“In terms of behavioral change, we need two things,” said Magali Delmas, a professor at the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and the Anderson School of Management. “We need first to increase awareness, and then second, we need to find the right motivations for people to change their behavior.”
She’s on the hunt for these motivations, looking for simple ways to make climate change personal.
In a recent study, Delmas and colleagues tested different messaging approaches with consumers to see what could cause them to lower their electricity usage. Some households were sent personalized emails with their monthly power bill telling them how they could save money, while others were told how their energy usage impacted the environment and children’s health.
Money proved to be a poor motivator: It had no effect. But linking pollution to rates of childhood asthma and cancer produced an 8 percent drop in energy use, and more than double that in households with kids.
…
Read more: http://www.vox.com/videos/2017/4/19/15346442/humans-climate-change-psychology
The following is the abstract of the Delmas study referenced by Vox;
Nonprice incentives and energy conservation
In the electricity sector, energy conservation through technological and behavioral change is estimated to have a savings potential of 123 million metric tons of carbon per year, which represents 20% of US household direct emissions in the United States. In this article, we investigate the effectiveness of nonprice information strategies to motivate conservation behavior. We introduce environment and health-based messaging as a behavioral strategy to reduce energy use in the home and promote energy conservation. In a randomized controlled trial with real-time appliance-level energy metering, we find that environment and health-based information strategies, which communicate the environmental and public health externalities of electricity production, such as pounds of pollutants, childhood asthma, and cancer, outperform monetary savings information to drive behavioral change in the home. Environment and health-based information treatments motivated 8% energy savings versus control and were particularly effective on families with children, who achieved up to 19% energy savings. Our results are based on a panel of 3.4 million hourly appliance-level kilowatt–hour observations for 118 residences over 8 mo. We discuss the relative impacts of both cost-savings information and environmental health messaging strategies with residential consumers.
Read more: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/6/E510.abstract
As a lifelong asthmatic I’m horrified that climate advocates are using what is in my opinion misleading information about childhood asthma to promote their political agenda.
CO2 is not an asthma trigger.
Pollution – smoke, car exhaust, pollen, etc. – is a trigger, but in my experience, the quickest way to make many asthmatics like myself sick is to “conserve” energy by turning down the household central heating. As the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America confirms, Cold air is a significant trigger of asthma attacks.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, the irony is amazing. Today is the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday, and he said in Mein Kampf that telling parents you are looking after their children would mean they would allow you to introduce all kinds of controls without protest.
Child abuse
The best way to prevent asthma is to let children play “in the dirt” literally. Just as it once was. Only then can children build a healthy immune system. Asthma is a city-dwelling disease and there above all “spread among the better circles”. The smog is also the highest in the cities. Pollen is only a trigger of asthma attacks, but not the reason for this disease. An immune system that is not properly developed, which overreacts, is the reason for the disease.
funny how rural kids in Aus have far less asthma?
and no ones mentioned all the chemical fragranced home cleaners soaps shampoos and other crap used daily?
if you can smell the washing powder 3 aisles away..and it is often stored near petfood and the sealed pet food packs smell of that scent?
isnt that telling you something?
and it can be rinsed twice hung on line or stuck in a dryer and still smell in the linen cabinet months after?
First, the “certainty” in “the science” is as fake as “the science” is, and people sense that, or at least those with at least half a working brain and an adequate BS detector do. Secondly, he is talking primarily about the US, though he doesn’t want to admit that, pegging the difference to wealth instead. Climatists have a pathological hatred of freedom and capitalism, both in ample supply in the US. We’re sort of funny that way. We don’t like being told what to do, how to live, and most especially by other countries who very likely don’t have our best interests at heart.
Again, There is absolutely ZERO evidence that CO2 causes asthma.
IN FACT, CO2 is actually a BRONCHIAL DILATOR, and breathing methods such as the Buteko method rely on that fact by INCREASING the amount of CO2 in the persons airways.
CO2 is absolutely required for human life and breathing.
It regulates the system.
Fortunately, our bodies CREATE CO2 as we need it, by burning carbohydrates.
love the “wall is cow” I’ll be using that.
Climate Change politics has nothing what so ever to do with science and never did. Every community has its share of millenarians screeching about a coming catastrophe unless we all repent our sins. Repent our sins meaning change the way we live. Nothing new in any of this. We have bits, bytes, and rocket ships but the nature of human beings has not changed one iota. I say we give our modern day Savonarola’s the same treatment the original received. Wonder how much CO2 that would release.
It all goes back to what I have posted many times. It is Sales 101. You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle. Bombarding people with facts, no matter how true they may be, will not have any effect on them unless they see a real benefit for themselves. And the benefit must be easily attained without too much effort on their part.
Using Altruism as an emotional value, would not only be easy for the alarmists; but once the idea is established, it would be easy to hijack as well.
Imagine an asthmatic Johnny asking his Mom with a wheezing voice to turn up the heat, while dressed in a hat, scarf and coat indoors; then a teary Mom replying “I know its easier to breath when it’s warmer, but we just can’t afford the carbon taxes”
Joseph Goebbels had a lot to say about how to manipulate people. Perhaps they should have started there.
But not even him succeeded in fully influencing what the population thought. My mother often told of listening to English and American radio-channels and that this was done, although under severe punishment. In the wake of Goebbels’s desire to the german people, to eat sausages with sawdust and soy meat, there was a winged saying: herring, herring, as fat as the Goering (also a propaganda hero of the National Socialists). We can learn from this that the population thinks their own, the propaganda can still be run on so constantly and soaringly. On the contrary, the more propaganda, the more people fall from faith. Therefore, let them propagate. Nothing better can happen to us.
This keeps going because we have created a Pavlovian behavior reinforcing system for those working at our universities. Tasty biscuits are disgorged when a green party line spouting academic demonstrates their fidelity by whoring the prestige of their education. That and the fact that many of them simply are not that bright but were disciplined in school.
When the FBI started to dismantle the Mafia agents called the leadership “dumb, dummies, or idiots” in every media interview. That was a calculated strategy to demystify their opponent. It worked. We should try it.
Whaaat?
http://www.buycostumes.com/ideas/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/wicked-witch-minions-mashup.jpg
The psych ops teams are at it again.
The reverse of discovery science. Instead of a hypothesis, the researcher posits, “What do I want my research endeavor to politically say?” Then he/she creates a research design that will indeed say exactly that. Why is this so? Because many grant sources require the research to speak towards a certain conclusion. Follow the money.
“How psychology can trick us into keeping Earth habitable.”
The opening sentence reveals the complete lack of science that lies ahead. If the IPCC was actually correct, which it obviously isn’t, the Earth would still be very habitable. In fact, it would likely be more habitable than it is now. All scientific evidence and rational thought indicate that a modestly warmer planet would be more hospitable for the entire biosphere than our current climate. There would be areas that would be a little less hospitable, but they would be small compared to the benefits to many other areas.
Secondly, the notion that we have any ability to control the global temperature by a few lifestyle changes is patently false and utterly ridiculous.
“Incredibly enough, it shows that the more certain the science becomes, the less concern we find in richer Western democracies,” he said. “How can it be that with increasing level of urgency and certainty in the science, people get less concerned?”
People are getting less concerned because they are smarter than you, Mr. Stoknes. They know that the science was never certain, and they also see that much of it is becoming more nonsensical by the day, including the ridiculous things that you are saying in this article. Your assumptions are false. Your arguments are irrational and your conclusions are nonsense. That is why people who are smarter than you are less concerned than ever.
I think we are onto something here — totally new forcing factors for climate change, namely, as alluded to earlier, the willie-frying factor and the sentient-plant factor, both seemingly at odds with one another, but a good computer model could rectify this conflict.
Off to write a grant now.
Here’s a nice research slogan for them.
Find the right lie to get them to comply.
RE: “Find The Right Lie To Get Them To Comply.”
Perfect!
‘Magali Delmas: “We need first to increase awareness, and then second, we need to find the right motivations for people to change their behavior.”’
Hear. Hear. We all need to find the right motivations for Magali Delmas to change ‘her’ behavior.
Funny how things suddenly become apparent when the shoe’s on the other foot. Our climate warriors need to develop an appreciation for the old adage; ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’
There is no doubt that air pollution affects asthma sufferers and can even contribute to cancer…
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/02February/Pages/Air-pollution-kills-40000-a-year-in-the-UK-says-report.aspx
Nobody has ever said otherwise.
On the other CO2 is not an air pollutant. Never has been, never will be.
Did you get those strawmen wholesale?
CO2 is not air pollution.
but the exhaust products of fossil fuel combustion IS pollution.
(The US classification of CO2 as a pollutant is not found elsewhere.. it is merely a classification for purposes of enabling US legislation)
Poor griffie, too stupid to grasp just how stupid you are. Bless your little heart.
So is the use of fire.
“Griff April 21, 2017 at 12:41 am
but the exhaust products of fossil fuel combustion IS pollution.”
NOX/SOX, particulates, yes. CO2, no. If you believe CO2 is pollution Griff, stop exhaling.
I keep suggesting that to warmistas and they refuse to do their part to save Mother Gaia. Funny how that works.
Eric says:
As a lifelong asthmatic I’m horrified that climate advocates are using what is in my opinion misleading information about childhood asthma to promote their political agenda.
My asthma can be dangerously aggravated by cold — in general, the warmer the temps, the better it is for my asthma. The misinformation being handed out is astonishing.
seems to me ,that the start of epidemic polio was traced to cleanup of former filthy living conditions…ie,less dispersal of poop
Listen parents, let the government take your money so that your kids might have a cleaner world to live in.
If the US National Institutes of Health state they do not know the cause of asthma, and the US EPA claims the Clean Power Plan will stop 90,000 cases of asthma, someone needs to get their stories straight.
Mostly, It is the lack of any consequences. The two groups serve different constituencies that only partly overlap, and Congress is notoriously shallow and negligent.
It is studies like this that are HELPING the skeptics win. No one already skeptical of the doommongering of the Climate Faithful will be convinced by this nonsense. And those that are fooled, what do you think their doctor will say when they tell them that they’ve turned down the thermostat because they got a letter telling them that CO2 is causing asthma to get worse?
Stoknes wrote “Incredibly enough, it shows that the more certain the science becomes, the less concern we find in richer Western democracies,”“How can it be that with increasing level of urgency and certainty in the science, people get less concerned?”
The answer is obvious when you concider that the urgency and certainty are UNWARRANTED. Certainty without evidence isn’t science, but faith. Urgency without cause is panic. And both certainty and urgency promoted based on false premises is usually the sign of someone pulling a scam.
I doubt if asthma has a single cause and sufferers can have attacks triggered by different things.
But I’m not in any doubt that modern allergies are made more prevalent by excessive use of various powerful household cleaning products, over dry central heating and air conditioning that “scrubs” air rather than using clean outside air, etc.
What did surprise me was the assertion that polio is a modern epidemic condition caused by increased cleanliness. I thought it was an ancient affliction which made it into the big time as population grew.
Asthma belongs to the autoimmune diseases, the cause of which is concealed. Namely the abnormal development of the immune system in children who grow up in a “clean” environment. And then it is still a question of the genes and the selection. In earlier times children with severe asthma rarely survived the age of adolescence, so that in the adult age asthma was significantly less. A conversation with a hospital doctor comes to my mind shortly before my gallbladder surgery in 2011. After complaining about an apparently demented room companion, who made the night’s sleep impossible, and another comrade, who apparently sang the whole night in another room, he said to me: “40 per cent of the patients admitted are nowadays dement. This is because people today are older than decades ago and older people are also more likely to have to go to the hospital. Therefore, this is slowly becoming a problem in most hospitals. Earlier, death ended up living, usually before dementia could develop.”
VOX is a pretty shameless, and purely political site – classic pseudo-journalism, without the objectivity of the post-Stewart Daily Show
What do they really want from people to do?
If you have to trick people into believing in your cause, it is likely your cause is a sham.