From the University of Amsterdam and the answer is nothing department comes this Lewandowsky style premise with an irrational idea: “climate change, at least in part, is rooted in human behavior”.
What psychological science can offer to reducing climate change
For some years, there is a good deal of consensus among scientific experts that climate change is real, and that it is caused by human behavior. The consequences of climate change are immense, and believed by many experts to be largely irreversible (and exponential), causing threats coming from heat waves, flooding, declines in agriculture, and decreasing biodiversity, to name a few. Given that climate change, at least in part, is rooted in human behavior, an obvious question to ask is: Can psychological science offer evidence-based solutions to climate change?
In their recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, an interdisciplinary group of professors from the Netherlands, USA and Germany offer some innovative answers. They frame climate change as a social dilemma, a pervasive conflict between immediate self-interest and long-term collective interest. Lead author and Professor of Psychology at the VU Amsterdam, Paul van Lange, emphasizes that “For effectively reducing climate change, it is essential to promote a longer-time perspective and a broadened intergroup perspective — in addition to strengthening the belief that climate change is real.”
One way to convince people about the reality of climate change, they argue, is to have governments tailor information to local circumstances because it is the most concrete and relevant to decision makers. As Jeff Joireman, Professor of Marketing and International Business at Washington State University, notes “Flooding is a key example that could be very concrete to some people living in lower-altitude countries, while increasing heat might be more convincing to people living in hotter climates.”
But how can a longer-time perspective be promoted? One way is to emphasize that the young and vulnerable, especially one’s own children, are the ones who need to deal with these futures. Manfred Milinski, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Max Planck Institute at Plön, Germany, highlights the importance of kinship cues, and suggests that “The recommendation is to include children in public education campaigns for increasing awareness of what climate change means for the future. Children serve the cue of vulnerability and trigger the need of caring and protection.”
This is not the only recommendation to promote an orientation to the future. Paul van Lange adds: ” It is for some decisions wise to include relatively uninvolved people, expert-advisors, in discussions of climate change – and especially in advice regarding urban planning and infrastructure. Involved people are likely to focus on the here and now of their houses, but research has shown that uninvolved experts are prone to look at longer-terms consequences of human decisions”.
The final recommendation focuses on decisions that are made by representatives – such as national leaders when they have to reach an agreement about the climate agreements. As we know, such agreements are often less than successful. Why might that be? According to Paul Van Lange and Manfred Milinski: “Our research has shown that leaders tend to have a distrustful and competitive mindset toward one another. And those who are competitive with other leaders are often well-supported by the constituency” One potential solution is therefore to use this competitive mindset by having leaders compete over global reputations. For example, installing a “sustainable city award” may help majors to develop local policy to reduce car use in their cities or promote public transportation.
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…N.U.T.S. !
How can we manipulate these morons to believe anything we say………
Latitude :
“How can we manipulate these morons to believe anything we say………”
TRY THIS FOR SIZE :
“The recommendation is to include children in public education campaigns
for increasing awareness of what climate change means for the future.
Children serve the cue of vulnerability and trigger the need of caring and protection.”
MY OWN GRAND-CHILDREN RECEIVE HOME-WORK WITH “GREEN” THEMES NOW !
I have no idea how BAD it is DURING SCHOOL HOURS but I guess that
it goes a lot further and deeper into the “GREEN INDOCTRINATION”
process than the small amount that is revealed in their “HOME-WORK”…
This continual imposition into kids PRIVATE LIVES and their OWN
SPARE TIME of the same ” WESTERN CIVILISATION IS EVIL…..
..GREEN is GOOD…therefore , DESTROY INDUSTRY and
SAVE THE PLANET “….themed propaganda is ON THE INCREASE !
Unfortunately , as it is contained WITHIN their home-work and
that home-work is assessed and since they have to answer it “correctly”
to pass this is a very effective “green-washing” technique.
Basically , the SHEETS come from “on high” and are issued by the
individual class teachers ( who may or may not support the propaganda
….but are complicit all the same ….even if it is by default because
they are only TOO LAZY to provide any alternative ! ).
SO….THAT is HOW you manipulate………..GET IN EARLY !!
THE OPPONENTS ( “us” ) WILL DIE OUT IN TIME !!
The problem with that, is we would first have to pretend such a basic propaganda tool, hasn’t been being utilized right from the start.
From Psych Central:
https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-catastrophizing/
Catastrophizing is an irrational thought a lot of us have in believing that something is far worse than it actually is. Catastrophizing can generally can take two different forms: making a catastrophe out of a current situation, and imagining making a catastrophe out of a future situation….
etc.
Thanks!
N. U. T. S.! in the garbage’ even.
Isn’t it time we just ignored such blathering?
Lewandowsky has become something of a lightning rod for controversy.
But he is no more qualified to discuss the veracity of future projections of global climate, weather, etc. as a function of human CO2 emissions than the Average Joe.
This fellow feels empowered when attacked. Perhaps it’s time we yawned instead.
Climate Change is science which has yet to discover all it’s causes as the Climate was changing pre-industrialized history. Global Warming, on the other hand, is Political Science
Never discount the value of exposure and ridicule.
The audience is not the author, fools like him are pretty much beyond help.
The true audience is the silent majority who might be fooled by this kind of semi-scientific sounding nonsense.
Lewandowsky had nothing to do with this study. Even he wouldn’t be that stupid.
Call me crazy, but I think Colbert’s ratings would triple overnight if he had a segment hosted by Lewandowsky and Bill Nye.
So…….? Improved ratings go nowhere toward proving a fallacy to be correct.
Mind control, brain washing
Yes, they are just trying to refine their propaganda techniques.
Think of the children!
Think of the taxes the children will be paying when they grow up, to pay off the debts that arose from their parents’ follies.
“caused by human behavior”
– That “odd” human behavior is to not see your children suffer and die from disease and starvation.
– That “odd” human behavior is due to an ancient desire to live nearly as well as the feudal King does in his castle surrounded by guards who go out and collect taxes from the peasants.
– That “odd” human behavior is not be lectured to by self-appointed, supposed betters who think they know what’s best for everyone else.
– That “odd” human behavior to write “silly little documents”, like the Declaration of Independence.
You get the point: It’s our human behavior to stay warm, stay fed, raise healthy families, to not get stomped on by a dictator’s jack-booted thugs claiming to be doing what is in our interest.
And then “they argue, is to have governments tailor information to local circumstances because it is the most concrete and relevant to decision makers. “
Governments tailoring information to locals… yeah, that’s the ticket.
There’s a word that begin with “P” that describes that brain-washing of the masses. And it requires the government or its allied media to control the information and message to succeed. Thus they attempts to control the internet we see slowing growing and creeping in today.
And the elitist attitude in that pile of junk social science paper reeks to high hell.
WTF, now we’re dissecting the observations of the likes of, “Jeff Joireman, Professor of Marketing and International Business at Washington State University” and “Manfred Milinski, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Max Planck Institute at Plön, Germany” … regarding matters of Climate Policy?
Isn’t this just a tad insane?
Is this field so inundated with funding dollars that Marketing and Evolutionary Biology specialists now feel the need to opine on Climate Policy? What’s next, the Pope?
Oh, wait.
The Pope hasn’t got a prayer of affecting ‘Climate Change’. Neither does professor Paul van Lange.
God stopped listening to the Pope long time ago when the Pope said “I speak for God” and God said, “Oh yea? Let’s see you walk on water.”
“Let’s see you walk on water.”
__________________________________________________
Tricky magicians don’t belong to the heavens. But to the other, the downside.
They don’t wade into climate policy, which is in the realm of great scientists like Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann, and politicians like Angela Merkel and Governor Brown. They only focus on how to manipulate you into de developing your lifestyle, paying higher taxes, and wearing sandals instead of boots.
Which Governor Brown? Oh yeah, there isn’t any difference, they just dress differently.
Kurt, what they are up too is trying to figure out how to sell AGW and the hugely expensive “policies” they believe will fix it all. In other words the public ain’t buying it so they need to determine how to force it down our throats.
There have been several articles here discussing “research” and other efforts on exactly how to develop the propaganda and who best to sell it to various target audiences, from kindergarten through national leaders.
The worst thing is they believe they are really, really smarter than everyone else. Reminds me of a recent US President.
Run the AGW unreslistic prognostications with their current recommendations on how to fix the AWG non-problem, and the non-problem is still not “fixed” (falls short by just under 2 orders of magnitude…with a pricetag of only ~$10 Trillion over the next few decades). So, by simple calculations using their own exaggerated numbers, what they wish to impose on the world will not work fast enough.
I suspect motivations other than fixing the AWG non-problem are at play.
Though, to be fair, marketing has been a priority from day 1.
Substitute “Bigfoot” for “Climate Change” in the “promoting belief” department and these people are only half a shade away from longhaired sandwich-sign wearers handing out flowers in airports. However, listen to wee-hours radio and you quickly learn that commercially viable numbers of people do indeed believe in Bigfoot, “ancient astronauts,” and placebo vegetable pills that mysteriously cure everything from MS to Alzheimer’s.
Go figure . . .
…you can fool some of the people all of the time…
They broadcast this tripe in the wee hours because only the credulously irrational stay up late at night worrying about such nonsense.
(I suspect they would be staying up late regardless as they search for something to fret over.)
The annoying thing is climate ‘deniers’ are seen as the irrational ones, the tin foil hat wearing ones, fretting over ‘conspiracy theories’.
rocketscientist
There is no such thing as the wee small hours on the internet.
Funny, I just ran across this 60 yr old cartoon posted.
It reflects our current conflict in a different era, yet still rings true.
Late night radio time is very cheap. You don’t need a lot of listeners to break even.
An unconfirmed class of large primates, something along the lines of what could be described as a Yeti, is a vastly more credible theoretical possibility, than that slight fluctuations in the relative concentrations of a single trace gas, will turn Earth into Venus.
OMG
> One way to convince people about the reality of climate change, they argue, is to have governments tailor information…
Anyone who read further wasted their time.
That’s where I finished up. I knew everything I needed to know.
Ministry of Truth
So they explicitly support propoganda? Why am I not surprised?
“… a pervasive conflict between immediate self-interest and long-term collective interest.”
In other words, a pervasive conflict between individual liberty and collective slavery… and they of course believe that collective slavery is the only way forward. And they dare to call themselves “progressives” – that’s not progress, that’s a return to serfdom!
Maybe U of Amsterdam needs a new school song.
What’s wrong with their old song:
Meanwhile, the US has led the world in the reduction of CO2 emissions…without even really trying.
Easy answer. Non-industrial commerce. How long can the US last without sufficient heavy industry inside its borders?
Only time will tell.
As long as there is free trade, we could last forever.
Any who, we still have a lot of heavy industry. What we don’t have as much of, is workers in heavy industry. Those numbers have been reduced by automation and short of outlawing computers will never come back.
We appear doomed to become a nation of shopkeepers selling each other shoes made in Korea.
Eventually, human physical labour which is what the Chinese and East Asians are providing will become less important (despite what Tesla learned recently when they tried to automate too much and too quickly). The Chinese have one big advantage in that they are the biggest marketplace. However, as Trump has pointed out they don’t trade fairly. The West should deny any Chinese company any access to acquiring any western company and put tit for tat rules( the same rules that China has on western companies) on any Chinese company trying to sell in the West. You must remember that the Chinese economy is 2/3 owned by the state and thus the CCP. They will eventually lose that 1/3 that is truly capitalistic if we deny them the right to expand to the developed world. The CCP even though it is an evil organization itself, cannot prop up the 2/3 that is owned by the state and it will eventually collapse. We must get the capitalistic 1/3 back. So far the West has played into the Chinese hands and we are committing economic suicide. The CCP has been hugely successful in enticing western industry in and stealing our technology. The West has not realized that we are in an economic war against the CCP and we are losing that war. Trump is the 1st president to realize this.
Thanks for the laugh. This whole thing is nothing more than a junior league lesson in in propagandizing.
Pop Piasa
A criticism levelled at Margaret Thatcher when she de nationalised, and virtually closed all loss making heavy industry in the UK.
The point she was making is, that if we want to compete with physical labour on the international market, we have to pay Chinese wages.
Which is why now, Intellectual Property is so valuable to the western world. We invent it, the developing world makes it. Our education system is better therefore we can dream up the ideas.
It’s no surprise that the banking system evolved from that philosophy in London, we had the technology, the knowledge, the contacts, infrastructure, and history to shape the banking environment and plenty have benefited from it.
We are better at stimulating the manufacturing environment now, than participating in it.
Not necessarily, a great deal of modern industries run their machinery with compressed air.
The biggest difference is in the economics and efficiency of natural gas for electricity generation, as compared to coal.
These world leading reductions in combustion exhaust, are simply a side effect of the economic benefits of fracking.
Yawwwwnnnnnnn.
Did I miss anything?
Nope, go back to sleep.
MarkW
Thanks.
Joseph Goebbels is apparently exempt from the post modern proscription of dead white males. Do these “academics” have any idea that they are treading over a well worn path? Or could this be an attempt at humor that misfired?
I’ve yet to meet an alarmist with a functioning sense of humor.
Mark:
I SAW ONE QUOTE RECENTLY that went along the lines…………………
“If one lacks a sense of humour he probably every other sense as well …..”
( Notice that ALL the NEGATIVE ASPECTS are now
always attributed to MALES……….but let’s NOT go there !! )
Edward Bernays would have been proud.
When he developed the new psychological techniques he named “propaganda” in the early 1900s he was merely trying to sell toothpaste and cornflakes. He later was asked to use those principles to try to drum up support for the war effort in the US, including selling war bonds.
Goebbels read his academic text “Propaganda” and took those techniques, kicked them up a notch, and used them for the German war effort and his misinformation campaigns.
Bernays was horrified and attempted to distance himself from what he felt was a “bastardization” of his work and coined a new label: “Public Relations” which he used in his subsequent studies, and which was used in his obituary to describe his life’s work .
And now you know the rest of the story. (a reference to the late US broadcaster, Paul Harvey who hosted a 10 minute program about little known, behind the scene historical facts.
Interesting.
Used to love listening to Paul Harvey.
Re: “They frame climate change as a social dilemma, a pervasive conflict between immediate self-interest and long-term collective interest.”
Note the ‘framing of a social dilemma’ as a socialist ‘collective interest’.
Then Professor of Psychology Paul van Lange, emphasizes “… it is essential to promote a longer-time perspective and a broadened intergroup perspective — in addition to strengthening the belief that climate change is real.”
He urges “strengthening the belief that climate change is real” rather than strengthening the evidence that climate change is real. Applying psychology to ‘strengthen beliefs’ unsupported by evidence smacks of overt marketing and propaganda, not fact based science. This may serve a socialist collective agenda but it does not serve honest science and government.
Re: your last paragraph.
I think it’s simple really, they believe it, therefor you are expected to believe it.
The sad part is; they never ask you why you don’t believe it. Even when they think they do know, they get it completely backward.
It’s got nothing to with science, it’s all about belief.
“psychological science” Really? Just how sciency is psychology? Real repeatable studies? Objective, verifiable data?
“psychological science” is an excellent example of an oxymoron….
I’ve always wondered why people feel the need to insult the intelligence of oxen. They aren’t any dumber than any of the other ungulates.
Pamela Dragon ( as in George and the Dragon ??…It’s a very GOOD PUB too! ):
Another splendid “oxymoron” is : MILITARY INTELLIGENCE.
MarkW :
Apologies to you if you feel impugned by the use of the word oxymoron !
JUMBO SHRIMP…POLITICAL SCIENCE, and now my mind has gone into ‘rest’ mode, not enough coffee!
Yes, you can call me an oxymoron, no offense taken. Although I rather like the story of Georgie and his Dragon, my appellation is more in the form of a warning to those who lack the wit to not annoy a busy Dragon. This one goes from 0 to 120 in a matter of seconds. Somewhere is my sign, ‘Do not bug the Dragon because you can be very tasty flame-grilled with garlic sauce.’
I’ll never forget the story of one of my favorite undergrad Philosophy professors, who told us how just as he was writing his doctoral thesis for something or other having to do with the field of Psychology, that he suddenly came to the realization that “the field is completely stupid,” and instead went back and earned his doctorate in Philosophy instead.
And that enabled him to make a living afterward?
It did, unless he was teaching at university for free.
It is neither empirical science (like physics and chemistry) nor forensic science (like history and paleontology). It is non-evidence backed opinion. (gee why does that sound familiar?)
Madness
Substitute “BIG BUCKS” for “reputation” and you might be on to something.
“having leaders compete over global reputations.”
Oh, they’ve got reputations all right. Good and bad. There will always be someone who loves them and someone who hates them. Who then is the arbitor of “reputation”? The Nobel commity? Even they embaris themselves sometimes.
Yes. They embarrassed themselves so badly this year that they won’t be giving any out in literature this year. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/17/the-ugly-scandal-that-cancelled-the-nobel-prize-in-literature. Of course, we always knew that that particular prize was a joke. It was always given to a person no one had heard of for a book that no one wanted to read.
YACPPP – Yet another Climate Propaganda Positioning Paper.
At least there was less use of ‘ideation’ in the text.
Climate Related Authoritative Propaganda
All the world’s children have already been indoctrinated in global warming for over 30 years now. What more do these people want? Oh yah they want to convince the growing number of skeptics that havent got the message. Unfortunately as children turn to adults, not enough of them have taught themselves how to think independently. The school system surely doesnt. However you can only CRY WOLF for so long. I love watching the Guardian site clock where it shows the emission of CO2 by mankind at 1000 tons per second; always increasing. I love it, Go China and India Go. We need more CO2 in the atmosphere NOT less.
Why don’t we go all postmodern.
Anyway … climate change is merely a social construct. It is just the product of the oppressive patriarchy. Lewandowsky is a privileged white male and by definition one of the oppressors.
By postmodern logic, we can ignore climate change because it’s basically imaginary.
(The foregoing is a satire on postmodernism. It does not reflect the opinion of commieBob or any other sane person.)
“climate change is merely a social construct”
Actually, it is. I has nothing to do with weather. It is like truth, justice and the American way. Concepts that the orthodox must revere. A reification fallacy.
The foregoing is a satire on postmodernism. It does not reflect the opinion of commieBob or any other sane person.
Ah, yes, but sanity is a social construct, too, according to postmodernism. How do we know that your sanity is not the very definition of insanity in another university, somewhere? Even as we speak, some professor of Studies Studies may be planning to lock you up for crimes against postmodernism.
But crime is a social construct, too! How do we know that what we consider crime is not the very definition of legality in another universe, somewhere? 😮
And what is a social construct but its own social construct, etc etc. Constructception!
It is all so… BIZARRO.
“For some years, there is a good deal of consensus among scientific experts that climate change is real, and that it is caused by human behavior. ”
Uh…….hasn’t the climate always changed? Is consensus science? And what is the percentage of human behavior causing the climate to change?
Why didn’t they just come out and say, “We need to make an infomercial!”?
This sounds to me almost exactly like the Hitler Youth Camps of the 30’s. A blatant attempt to Brainwash the youth of the time to follow the Nazi Credo
The warmunists are the direct descendants of the fascists.
Just for the record. There are two universities at Amsterdam: the biggest ‘University of Amsterdam’ UvA, my Alma Mater, an institute founded on secular principles. And the ‘Vrije Universiteit’ VU, the somewhat ironicallly named ‘Free University’ of Amsterdam which is an institution originating in protestant and calvinist organisations. Biology at the VU could be challenging as they didn’t really figure out what to do with ‘intelligent design’. It does not surprise me that the lead author is at VU.
You don’t need propaganda, you don’t need to strengthen belief, you don’t need government controlling the message if you have actual evidence. But that’s the problem facing the global warming people and why they need propaganda. They have no hard evidence.
All you need to do if you want people to “believe” in global warming is produce an honest unbiased graph of average global temperature over the last forty or fifty years that is based on honest unadjusted data and make all of the data available to anyone who wants to examine it and make the data as transparent as possible. Just like real science does. But they can’t do that. So people are skeptical.