Guest essay by Eric Worrall
They actually used the word “converts” to describe people who changed their mind about climate change.
How to change the minds of climate deniers
Kate Yoder for Grist
Sun 3 Feb 2019 21.00 AEDTFor some people, the awakening comes in science class.
In the Reddit thread titled “Former climate change deniers, what changed your mind?” the most popular comment comes from chucklesthe2nd (probably not his real name). Chuck, as we’ll call him, essentially inherited his dad’s views on climate change.
“I grew up actively and obnoxiously denying climate change because my dad told me it wasn’t real,” Chuck wrote last year. Then, during a high school science course, he learned about feedback loops: “It suddenly hit me. As the atmosphere heats up, more CO2 is released, which heats up the atmosphere, which releases more CO2, which heats up the atmosphere, which releases more CO2, which heats up the atmosphere, which releases more CO2……etc.”
It looks like Chuck is at the forefront of an encouraging trend. A recent Monmouth poll found that 78% of Americans believe climate change is real and leading to sea-level rise and more extreme weather. That’s up from 70% three years ago. The headline-grabbing takeaway: a majority of Republicans – 64% – are now believers, a 15-point jump from 2015.
To learn more about these converts, researchers at Yale and George Mason crunched the numbers from a blend of responses to surveys conducted between 2011 and 2015. They found that 8% of Americans said they had recently changed their opinion on the matter, according to a new analysis from Yale University and George Mason University. Nearly all of the recent converts said global warming had become a bigger concern for them.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/03/climate-change-denial-changing-minds
Why is it necessary to be “converted” to climate change belief?
Am I reading too much into use of this word? I suspect not. The climate converts appear to embrace a rigid, harshly intolerant belief system which drives them to try to punish public figures whose stated position deviates even slightly from their views of what is acceptable.
Consider Bjørn Lomborg and Roger Pielke Jr., who were recently accused of “fact mongering“.
If you’re not sure what “fact mongering” is, the author of the accusation against Lomborg and Pielke provides the following explanation;
Consider a couple of examples, both from the realm of climate science politics where questions of rhetoric, fact, and fear are most crucial. In July 2017, David Wallace-Wells published in New York Magazine an article titled “The Uninhabitable Earth,” arguing that we are not scared enough about climate change. It prompted some denunciations, but also soul-searching among the climate science community about its rhetoric. Perhaps in their desire not to be discounted as fear-mongers, scientists had become fact-mongers. They may have assumed that they don’t really have a “fact” until it is scrubbed clean of all emotion, especially fear. This is certainly not misconduct in a narrow sense, but it may well count as a form of irresponsible research. Has the climate science community hid behind neutral facts and insufficiently scared the public? If so, theirs would be a rhetorical, not a logical, failure. …
Read more: https://issues.org/philosophers-corner-fear-mongering-fact-mongering/
Bjørn Lomborg and Roger Pielke Jr. are not climate skeptics. Both of them accept the IPCC position on climate sensitivity to CO2. Their transgression is they question some of the wilder predictions of climate activists, and don’t use emotive language when presenting their research.
Even the founders of the climate movement, people like James Hansen, are not immune to denunciation – Naomi Oreskes called James Hansen a “denier”, because he suggested that renewables alone might not be enough to decarbonise the global economy. James Hansen upset believers by suggesting we might also need nuclear power.
And of course we have children like Chuck, who have been “converted” into detesting the “obnoxious” climate views of their families, thanks to green indoctrination from activist teachers. Growing up is difficult enough, without our school systems deliberately driving a wedge between children and their parents.
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Chuck left out the part about Earth turning into Venus.
I wonder how many people will cling to their beliefs when the lights go out. The proposed solutions peddled by the climate change fanatics will make modern life impossible. Try sustaining that when millions decide they want to keep warm but can’t.
It is idiots squared.
The lights may not go out, but we are sure are losing more and more jobs to Asia because of CAGW the idea.
It is sort of CAGW light. We do things which will make almost no difference to CO2 emissions and certainly will have no affect on climate ‘change’, to feel politically correct.
Canada for example.
Canada largest balance of trade issue is tourism. Canadians who can afford it take a expensive winter holiday in warm places. Less people visit Canada which explains the tourism deficit.
Now Canadian action on CO2 emissions is primarily stopping the building of pipelines which are required to enable the Canadian third largest oil reservoir in the world to be sold to Asia and to be sold to Canadian on the east coast who are currently importing foreign oil.
The no brainer Canadian job creation and deficit elimination program would be to build new pipelines to the west and east coast.
If you convince me we’re good. If you insist I accept your position on trust or faith it isn’t going to go well for you. The less that’s been proven in the debate the louder one side screeches. What are you supposed to do in these circumstance. This side hasn’t been shoveling BS and calling it science, comparing critics to holocaust deniers, or making bank off the backs of uninformed citizens. That’s you boss and we are not going to say otherwise.
Trebla says it all. In the West the belief that Gods only son had to die a cruel death to save the Jews who were sinning has ceased to be believable.
But something in most of us humans has a built in desire to believe in something. Before Emporer Constantine for simply political reasons decided to have just the one belief system in the hope of unifying his Empire, the belief in what had originally been a off shoot of the Hebrew faith was just a minor thing, but it caught on in the wider community. As ” a Roman Senator said at the time ” Its a faith fit for slaves.
Today in the Western world we seem to need something to believe in and “Gaia”” seems a good and in many ways a far more believable thing to follow. The Marx Engle belief system of Communism, now called Socialism loves it, so many very Useful idiots” “as Stalin once said.
Sadly we may just have to wait until the lights start to go out. I just hope that we don’t end up as a part of the Chinese Empire.
MJE
That Trebla hates what he doesn’t understand is quite evident.
There’s something really pathetic regarding a person who has to lie about what others believe in order to justify his hatred of them.
It’s worse than that when even the fact checkers with actual global satellite data get a bullet through their office window. Did that make the national news? I thought not.
“[Chuck] learned about feedback loops [in his science class]: “It suddenly hit me. As the atmosphere heats up, more CO2 is released, … etc.”
That’s not science. It’s narrative thinking. The climate includes negative feedbacks as well, which apparently were not covered in Chuck’s not-science class.
Most especially, the water cycle controls atmospheric temperature. It can speed up or slow down, depending on thermal energy flux, all keeping the troposphere near a stable temperature. Call it a far-from-equilibrium dissipative system, kept in a quasi-stable state by the nearly constant flux of energy through it.
Chuck isn’t a convert. Chuck is a deceivant.
There’s a useful neologism, meaning one who has been deceived. The class of AGW believers is dominated by the deceivant population.
Chuck’s high-school teacher is likely one of them, spreading the intellectual disease to which s/he has fallen prey.
This is too funny for words. Quoting Reddit which banned climate change denial some time back. If you read the actual blog from which Chuckles is quoted it also looks like Reddit has banned anyone over 12 years old from posting.
And then Grist goes on to quote a poll of Americans on their beliefs about climate change. This is the same Grist that dismissed the Oregon Petition with 31,000 signatures.
http://www.pensee-unique.fr/images/yannjudy.jpg
I think I understand the words, Petit_Barde, but I still don’t get the joke.
“It’s no use boss, it doesn’t want to heat.” (Backslider at the stake)
What does it mean?
This cartoon represents Judith Curry when she was traited as a “climate heretic” by the Climate Cargo Cult believers (see article in American Scientific https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-heretic/).
It was in november 2010 and global temperatures were in a cooling trend for a decade or so at that time, hence the joke (a sentence with two meanings : “it – the stake – does not want to burn” and “it -the climate – does not want to warm”).
Hope this helps 🙂
Yes, that context helps a lot.
Merci pour la clarification, c’est amusant!
It’s the Guardian. What else would you expect? Truth??
Polls mean nothing except virtue signalling. Revealed preferences really indicate opinions.
SadButMadLad
I suspect it is more sinister than VS. People like to be right. To be on the winning side. It is called getting on the Band Wagon. If the MSM can convince the public that only ‘losers’ question CAGW, then people (read: sheep) will clamor to be acknowledged for their wisdom and foresight.
Steamboat Jack’s Dictionary: Convert
(1) One who has changed it’s belief system to align with an apocalyptic suicidal cult. E.g. Islam, Socialism, and Apocalyptic Anthropogenic Climate Disruption.
(Since the gender is not identified as one of the 32 determined to exist by the New York City Council, “it” has been used.)
(2) A male or female who has, in the vernacular, taken the “red pill” and rejected suicide for life.
Time to do another survey of all those qualified to participate, and to do it properly this time with clear questions.
If they want to ‘convert’ anyone, they’d better start to address the science instead of using all of the ad hominem attacks– a sign of a losing position. The snag is, as soon as they address the science properly, they are the ones who have to recant.
Literally no one says the climate does not change. To say that now 78% believe in climate change, is to say that 22% say the climate does not change. I challenge the 22% number. It is closer to 0%. The whole article is intentionally inarticulate. What they mean to say is that 78% believe in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change, but they know that is not the case. I would say fewer today are converts to the CACC religion than in the past. By being intentionally inarticulate on the topic they can produce some meaningless statistic and make it seem meaningful. Don’t let them control the language we use. Force them to be specific.
I am in complete agreement if that was the question asked it’s stupid and they should have got 100%.
I suspect most of the 22% were wise to the true purpose of the question/survey and responded in accordance rather than to the literal wording of the question
The tagline on this so-called story should be-Our BS campaign is working.
That’s all it’s worth. People with an IQ higher than a Lord Deben beef patty live on the edge. They think for themselves.
Textbook CO2: CO2 is .0004 ppmv of the atmosphere and can only absorb 8% of the outgoing IR spectrum radiation -so .0032% of outgoing IR. That does even consider its low Greybody emmisivity. CO2 provides plant food which in turn provides O2 for us to breath. I just do not see the problem.
The Guardian is also worried about diversity and too many “white girls next door”, and, get this, identifying with children as a means to criticize selective/recycled-child policy.
Someone tell this boy that if it was a positive feedback into the system that heated up the atmosphere until all life on earth died. It would already have happened as CO2 in the atmosphere was higher in the past and life prospered to an extent not seen since.
The MSM is pushing a death cult. More CO2 means more life on earth and less CO2 means LESS life on earth.
The young and impressionable are being misled by people who do not think.
The educational system and the news media are trashing good minds by appealing to emotional vulnerability of particular types of people.
Vulnerable people are being parasitized by these powerful institutions.
Any poll or survey can easily be worded to “lead” the participant into the “answer” the designers want to hear, usually through limited choices or tricks of semantics. I honestly think most of them are worthless at this point. Participants are also a self-selected crowd, either by choosing to answer online or by not banging down the phone when they call during dinner. Obviously, people who either don’t know, don’t care or don’t wish to go on the record aren’t going to answer, which pretty much leaves the worrywarts and “activists” left.
Why do people believe?
CO2 feedback is a simple theory, relatively easy to understand and accept.
People who are overwhelmed with multiple complicated theories retreat, back to one simple theory.
Best path forward
Instead of talking about theories, provide simplest possible evidence of actual trends.
Use pictures, simple graphs, avoid lots of words.
Don’t let the discussion be confined to the last 250 years.
(Posted this in wrong spot, don’t know how to delete, so reposting here.)
I bet most people who disbelieve climate hype probably do so on the basis of common sense and ‘street’ smarts (skepticism to you): when you need to hype a product so much that reality flies out the door, then it’s almost certainly junk.
On religions, I’m agnostic.
On science, I’m skeptical.
On major sports events, I always back the team with the nicest uniform.
🙂
The solution coud be in the hands of as few as 200’000 persons worldwide.
Assume all commercial “drivers” deeply embrace the CO2 beliefs and go, all without exception, on a “Save The Climate” strike at the very same moment, planetwide.
A huge amount, though I can’t tell the numbers, of kerosene will remain unburned saving colossal amounts of CO2 emissions. An absolute shutdown of all commercial air transport operations.
What the green want BTW.
How many weeks would it take before a complete global economy collapse wipes all traces of green beliefs ?
Yes, i know, too many “if’s” and this is just one more bunch of them.
You always know which church is the state church; it’s the one that taxes you.
This is very like Hilbert’s Sixth Problem.
Can the discipline of Physics be paced on an Axiomatic basic as say geometry or simple logic?
Hilbert concluded no at the time, since General Relativity and Quantum Electrodynamics had not been unified – they still have not.
However, Climate Scientists put Climate Science on an axiomatic basic.
The basic axiom is that CO2 acts as a control knob on temperature.
AGW follows directly from this axiom.
If you look at the debate between Michael Mann and Judith Curry, Michael Mann’s opening remarks start by assuming that this is true. (He thus by passes the two basic questions of Freeman Dyson).