Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Psychologists Claudia Nisa and Jocelyn J. Bélanger believe even people who say they believe in climate change are unlikely to make low carbon choices unless they are “nudged”, by removing or disincentivising the option of making high carbon choices.
Can You Change for Climate Change?
Probably, but research shows that most people need behavioral “nudges” to do so; just the facts aren’t enough
By Claudia Nisa, Jocelyn Bélanger on December 23, 2019
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has scolded world leaders for failing to save her generation from climate change, rallying youth climate strikes and taking millions of people to the streets worldwide, demanding action. For many, Thunberg’s emotional oratory is a spark.
To us, however, Thunberg’s environmental actions are more impressive than her words. Thunberg crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard a zero-emission sailboat to attend September’s climate talks in New York, eating freeze-dried food, not showering, and eschewing other comforts of air travel to spend 15 days on the high seas.
Thunberg’s sacrifice epitomizes the challenge underlying climate change: if global warming is to be curbed, comfortable lifestyles in developed countries must be amended. Put another way, it doesn’t matter how much uproar an activist’s speech creates because it distracts from the fundamental fact that the only way to save our planet is to change how we live.
…
But our research, which was recently published in Nature Communications, throws ice water on a theory that was already frosty. People do not change their environmental behaviors simply because they are told to. Rather, they must be enticed to make greener lifestyle choices with interventions sufficiently compelling to overcome the strong resistance to changing habitual, comfy habits. Identifying these motivators, and the psychology behind them, could help slow the climate-change crisis.
…
Read more: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-you-change-for-climate-change/
The abstract of the study;
Meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials testing behavioural interventions to promote household action on climate change
Claudia F. Nisa, Jocelyn J. Bélanger, Birga M. Schumpe & Daiane G. Faller
Abstract
No consensus exists regarding which are the most effective mechanisms to promote household action on climate change. We present a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials comprising 3,092,678 observations, which estimates the effects of behavioural interventions holding other factors constant. Here we show that behavioural interventions promote climate change mitigation to a very small degree while the intervention lasts (d = −0.093 95% CI −0.160, −0.055), with no evidence of sustained positive effects once the intervention ends. With the exception of recycling, most household mitigation behaviours show a low behavioural plasticity. The intervention with the highest average effect size is choice architecture (nudges) but this strategy has been tested in a limited number of behaviours. Our results do not imply behavioural interventions are less effective than alternative strategies such as financial incentives or regulations, nor exclude the possibility that behavioural interventions could have stronger effects when used in combination with alternative strategies.
“Choice architecture” sounds so innocuous, but in my opinion it is a deeply unpleasant form of government coercion.
For example, in 2012 Britain banned incandescent lightbulbs, following a phaseout which began in 2009.
The available alternative to incandescent light bulbs at the time was compact fluorescent lightbulbs like the one pictured above, which flicker and contain small quantities of toxic mercury.
I once managed to accidentally break two fragile compact fluorescents on one day, trying to replace a bulb in an awkward location. I was less than enthusiastic about splattering microscopic droplets of mercury around a confined indoor space used by my child. But the low carbon “choice architecture” imposed by the British Government didn’t grant me the option of choosing a safer but less energy efficient incandescent lightbulb.
Imagine if your entire life was constrained by a series of such “nudges”. The nanny state coercion might well drive you to reduce your carbon footprint – but I doubt politicians and bureaucrats would care about any problems caused by their restriction of your freedom, their imposition of “choice architecture”; the government’s desire to force you to cut your carbon footprint would override any personal concerns you might have about the choices they imposed on your life.
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“..Put another way, it doesn’t matter how much uproar an activist’s speech creates because it distracts from the fundamental fact that the only way to save our planet is to change how we live…”
To me there is something seriously lacking in psychologists who actually believe the planet needs saving.
Have they not spent any time at all studying the psychology of mass hysteria and group-think? Have they not spent any of their training and professional careers studying the characteristics of cults and cult-like movements? Or are they just going along with the “save-the-planet” and climate alarmist narratives just to be “good citizens” and feel nice and warm and fuzzy about themselves inside?
As a skeptic myself, being treated as a psychology patient would result in a response from me that these psychologists undoubtedly would not appreciate (if you know what I mean). At my age, I’ve been around the block of life enough times now to know when to question mass hysteria and group-think, especially when it’s considered an Orwellian thought-crime or religious heresy to do so. Don’t try telling me that I can’t. Money, political ideologies and activist agendas can corrupt anything they touch.
Some might say that psychology isn’t really even a science. I am beginning to understand why some people would say that.
I’ve worked a good chunk of my life to achieve the quality of life I enjoy, and the psychologists in the posted Scientific American piece above
Oops, problem with last sentence: I’ve worked a good chunk of my life to achieve the quality of life I enjoy, and the psychologists in this posted SciAm piece above are wasting their time trying to make me feel guilty about it.
CD in Wisconsin,
+1000!
I want a survey to see how many of those psychologists are practicing what they preach. I suspect very, very few to zero. Does anyone think they’ve given up their smart phones and computers?
Given the Climate Hypocrisy of AlGore, LeoDiCrapio ER et.al. perhaps the only way to enforce a significantly lower Carbon Footprint on them would be to remove their Carbon Feet
“Have they not spent any time at all studying the psychology of mass hysteria and group-think? Have they not spent any of their training and professional careers studying the characteristics of cults and cult-like movements?”
Of course they have. Where do you think they got their instruction manual? Remember propaganda? It was designed as a marketing tool until the NAZIs got hold of it.
The key word here is “belief.” In this crazy world, humans are free to believe whatever they want to believe, (but not necessarily free to act on those beliefs), — hence the plethora of religions. Minus the religious belief system of whatever traditional religion a human left behind — or was never exposed to, that human will generally replace it with a belief system espoused by the next charlatan that comes along. In some cases the human will make up his own syncretic system of beliefs.
Hence CAGW is just another religion, which unfortunately is becoming the state religion in some countries. As such, a portion of those countries’ taxes are becoming the tithes & offerings supporting that religion even though some of their population are unbelievers.
Nope. You can have your own opinion, but not one that conflicts with reality. That’s cognitive dissonance AKA mental illness.
Chaswarnertoo, I am neither crazy or an expert on such, but I believe that occult ideation is more associated with low intelligence than mental illness. Sure, there is actual mental illness, but it cuts vertical across intelligence levels. See the story of the Manhatten Project, where they built churches and none of the scientists showed up.
Occult Ideation is associated with *all* levels of intelligence. Germany’s intelligentsia were the first to fall for the German ‘superman’ theory proposed by Nietzsche decades before Hitler used it to advance his aims.
Very opinionated of you Chas; thanks for telling us what we can or can’t believe.
I bet you’re a riot at parties too.
People believe things for a reason, it’s not just random. Although when one believes a voice from authority it may seem random, because it has no foundation. Belief if more complex than your simple black & white thinking, at least as stated here.
“Some might say psychology isn’t a science.”
All right, I’ll say it. Psychology isn’t a science. Name one scientific principle or truth that underlies psychology and makes it a science.
Psychology is a science, just not a very effective one. Like the weather, human beings are quite complex so it’s extremely difficult to make accurate predictions even about aggregated behavior such as voting percentages. Another problem is free will, which is not a factor with the weather.
Psychology ain’t falsifiable so it ain’t a science. Psychology is merely an ana, a compendium, of ad-hockery. Eschew ad-hockery.
Evolutionary psychology is getting very close, correlating genes with personality traits.
See Robert Plomin’s book, “Blueprint: How DNA makes us who we are.” Matt Ridley’s review
I thought it “was in the pill you took today”.
(The secret? Don’t swallow.)
They wanted a paper in Nature Communications. End of story. By the way, that is a gold-plated journal with a $5200 article publication fee. Authors there typically have more grant money and ambition than intelligence.
Individual actions have no effect what so ever. From: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-change-activists-empty-gestures-by-bjorn-lomborg-2019-12
“Going vegetarian actually is quite difficult: one large US survey indicates that 84% of people fail, most of them in less than a year. But a systematic peer-reviewed study has shown that even if they succeed, a vegetarian diet reduces individual CO2 emissions by the equivalent of 540 kilograms – or just 4.3% of the emissions of the average inhabitant of a developed country. Furthermore, there is a “rebound effect,” as money saved on cheaper vegetarian food is spent on goods and services that cause additional greenhouse-gas emissions. Once we account for this, going entirely vegetarian reduces a person’s total emissions by only 2%.”
Lonberg nails it with this one. But we have to challenge the premise— why build a massive strategy for crisis when there aint one?
“Save-the-Planet” ™ is a marketing meme and nothing more. It’s expressly designed to HYPE the very social-contagion group-think moral hysteria that we’re seeing (only in self-exalted circles). Convenient “universal cause” to be weaponized toward acceptance of totalitarian, globalist control over every aspect of our lives, to our general impoverishment. The key bit to know here is that since around 2012, leftist virtue-signaling is the new social climbing requirement. It’s a badge of liberal-arts educational cred. You have to make the gestures and obeisances to be members of the elite wannabe fan club.
“Saving the Planet,” conveniently coined on Madison Avenue, is something NO ONE could DARE avow opposing. Who, after all, is in FAVOR of cancer, or child abuse, or killing shelter pets? You would have to be a TERRIBLE, AWFUL person to oppose ANY measure that’s marketed under that catch-all “Saving the Planet” banner. The fact that “The Planet” is in no danger whatsoever barring an asteroid strike is entirely irrelevant!
The same Alinskyite spin job is being used to vilify any opinion to the right of AOC by tarring it “racist,” “misogynist,” “imperialist,” “transphobic” or God forbid “capitalist.” No one can be of good standing among The Best People of the Acela corridor or the aptly named Left Coast while harboring such anti-human ideas!
BTW, “Scientific American” has been publishing tripe for quite some time and deserves to be ignored,
like the equally fossilized vestiges of “Time” and “Newsweek.”
Complete nonsense !
I have personally changed my old lightbulbs with (always on) LED.
Saved a lot, and I am a firm disbeliever in the CAGV religion !
“I have personally changed my old lightbulbs with (always on) LED.”
Ditto. We get a lot more light for less power, and I no longer have to care if I accidentally leave a light on all night.
People generally do things that make sense. They usually don’t do things that make no sense, unless forced to do so.
We have two decorative fixtures in our living room that take a smaller base bulb. Incandescents barely lasted 2 or 3 months. LED lasted 4 or 5 years.
Tje author’s point was that it didn’t make sense at that time, in that situation.
Incandescent bulbs giving off heat is only wasted energy if the space heat is more efficient than electric resistive heat, or the space is too warm.
The heating season here is more than six months long. I would never have used mercury CFL bulbs, but switched to all LEDs and LED flat screens when they became cheap. Sorry about all the rare earth mining and pollution they caused in China.
Every bulb in my house is now LED – except for the “beauty bars” in the bathrooms during the winter (240 Watts of “waste heat” makes a big difference in a small enclosed space). The bulbs last somewhat longer, the fixtures also last longer – and I can put 100 Watt equivalent bulbs into my fixtures and lamps that are all rated to draw 60 Watts maximum.
I too switched to flat screens when they got to a decent price point. They last longer, too (I’ve had these for nearly twelve years now), but another reason is that they are SO much lighter. I have the image burned (pun intended) into my brain of a colleague many years ago running out the door with a 17″ monitor that was giving up its smoke. (Electronics actually run on smoke, you know. When they lose that smoke, they die.)
They should make burnt silicon vapes for overclockers to scare each other with.
I heat my basement computer room with my computer equipment until it’s really cold out. I’m a volunteer cruncher for GPUGRID and Rosetta@Home, along with Asteroids@Home and Milkyway@Home. I have 20 threads of Rosetta DNA folding models running as I type this, also 2 NVidia GTX GPUs on the GPUGRID.
Am I hurting the environment?
Replacing any light bulb that has not failed with even a energy efficient bulb is a waste of money and energy. That is why I still have the junky CFL bulbs in my house, I have to use halogen in my older outside light fixtures, Arizona summers a to hard on CFL or LED lamps, they just weren’t design to work in + 100 F temperatures.
Yes, there’s no point in replacing until the old unit has failed.
But, LED bulbs will work well up to about 60C with some degradation in light output.
Put simply, the colder it is, the brighter they will be.
Most LED’s are designed with an operating range of -25 to 40C
40C isn’t enough for an Arizona Summer.
Oh, certainly. I was thinking of the indoor lighting.
The yard lighting in the back are halogens, and I wouldn’t put anything else there. The two porch lights (enclosed, and only get slanting morning/evening sunlight) are LEDs – but 40 Watt equivalents. Just enough to not trip over a fool cat or the flower pots that the wife moves around all the time in the winter.
Actually, I wouldn’t use LEDs in any weather exposed lighting, even if I didn’t live in Tucson myself.
“I have personally changed my old lightbulbs with (always on) LED …”.
That’s ok, presumably you made a free choice.
In Britain the sale of incandescent bulbs is banned, apparently.
That would rile any adult who doesn’t like being treated like a child.
Once they started rumors of doing similar in California, I went out and bought a couple hundred incandescent bulbs to store, before their priced spiked.
Strange logic to want to buy such inefficient bulbs that consume 100w of energy and last only about 1000 hours to provide the same amount of light as an LED one that consumes about 15w and lasts about 15000 hours. Do you have any left or have you burned through them all?
Er, not quite. In the UK, halogen lamps are still readily available and they are still an incandescent type. So you can legally purchase and use them, period.
But with LED lamps available in a variety of colour temperatures, that last considerably longer, use much less energy, cost a little more and whole life cost is much less, why would you use anything else?
LEDs do not yet match the raw light quality of an incandescent. Some people can’t tell the difference, but others can.
Agreed, CRI of incans is higher than LED’s and some folk just prefer the warmer colour.
You can also still buy heavy-duty incandescents, ostensibly for use in situations where other technologies are too fragile (including halogen, which has a much lower vibration tolerance). Aldi sold them until about 2 years ago. Other places still do sell them. I’ve got a bunch on the garage that I bought up cheap before the last price hike in 2012.
I use LED everywhere now, though. Buy them direct from china for about a quarter of the price you pay here, with a much wider variety of fittings and much brighter output. Anything from classic B22s to incredibly thin all-in-ones that practically disappear on the ceiling.
The article was referring to this;
“I was less than enthusiastic about splattering microscopic droplets of mercury around a confined indoor space used by my child. But the low carbon “choice architecture” imposed by the British Government didn’t grant me the option of choosing a safer but less energy efficient incandescent lightbulb.”
I must say, I’ve wondered about this for some time and the fact that my city’s trash dept. tells us to throw them in the trash. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right that I’m throwing things containing mercury and/or other dangerous metals into the landfill.
ENVIRONMENT
The Dark Side of LED Lightbulbs
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/led-lightbulb-concerns/
…Ogunseitan adds that while breaking open a single LED and breathing in its fumes wouldn’t likely cause cancer, our bodies hardly need more toxic substances floating around, as the combined effects could be a disease trigger. If any LEDs break at home, Ogunseitan recommends sweeping them up while wearing gloves and a mask, and disposing of the debris — and even the broom — as hazardous waste. Furthermore, crews dispatched to clean up car crashes or broken traffic lights (LEDs are used extensively for automotive and traffic lighting) should wear protective clothing and handle material as hazardous waste. LEDs are currently not considered toxic by law and can be disposed of in regular landfills.
_According to Ogunseitan, LED makers could easily reduce the concentrations of heavy metals in their products or even redesign them with truly safer materials, especially if state or federal regulators required them to do so. “Every day we don’t have a law that says you cannot replace an unsafe product with another unsafe product, we’re putting people’s lives at risk,” he concludes. “And it’s a preventable risk.”
__
This was from 2012. Maybe they’ve changed? I don’t know but this does seem rather stupid to me and to be a product unlikely to be approved but for CC/AGW Alarmism and virtue signaling zealots.
CFLs with their small mercury content are a low but possible risk of toxicity once broken. Any heavy metals in LED lamps are not in liquid form and pose almost no realistic hazard to users. Given the copious availability and superior performance of LED lamps, what is the fuss all about?
That article has all the tone and fact selection of an assassination piece from the CFL manufacturers of the time. Any heavy metals used are either in the soldering of the LED chips to the heat sink base or metals used in doing the semiconductor. The latter is a tiny tiny amount locked up in the LED emitter itself and the ROHS legislation now prohibits the use of lead in solder. The manufacturing processes in modern LED construction uses a very small amount of solder anyway, if at all, any more.
I would never remove your choice to purchase incan lamps, but why select what is an inferior product? For the record I don’t work for anyone who manufactures, designs, sells or promotes LEDs in any way.
The hardware stores around here offer LEDs of various sorts that will fit standard light bulb sockets. They aren’t cheap in the initial cost, but they last a good deal longer than incandescent bulbs and they do reduce my power bill a bit. So what’s wrong with that?
You saved them to save money and because they probably had other benefits like light quality etc. Everyone would do exactly the same to other technologies that were cost effect and offered benefits the current problem is they don’t which is why they have to try and force people to make change.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!
“Thunberg crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard a zero-emission sailboat to attend September’s climate talks in New York, eating freeze-dried food, not showering, and eschewing other comforts of air travel to spend 15 days on the high seas”
Her carbon footprint for this voyage was greater than simply taking a plane flight. The movements of the crew to set up for the voyage and the boat’s next trip have to also be included. No, it was not a carbon-low trip, being on a high-end tech ship and taking over 20 times longer for the trip. The world simply cannot function using this level of travel and technology
yaeah and the freeze dried foods?
well thats NOT a process thats low energy either
fresh food would have been cheaper and more economical and less packaging as well
no showers for 15 days
welcome to a taste of how many people live with no water or low supplies, where a litre of water for a washdown is a luxury
The breakdown of emissions is approx as follows
Embodied construction emissions for using Malizia 2 for 10,000 km: 9 tonnes
Malizia 2 crew flights (7): 7-14 tonnes
Car journey across Canada and USA: 2 tonnes
Diesel use on la vagabonds (tanks were empty on arrival): 2 tonnes
Flights for vagabond crew (1): 1-2 tonnes
Etc (trains, food, hotels)
.when you calculate your emissions for a train or plane, crew and embodied emissions are included. It is only fair that the thunbergs should take responsibility, but they don’t.
Quite frankly, all these international meetings should be done via Video Conferencing systems.
Be it a Climate change or a corporate (rape the planet) meeting, they all should be done from the branch offices using nothing more than a few watts of electrical energy (maybe a couple of kilos of CO2 instead of Tonnes) rather than transporting people half way round the world.
These days, there are no excuses for not using technology to reduce wasteful energy consumption.
Of course manufacturing the equipment uses resources, but no more than the average consumer piece of tech and far less that the extra Aircraft/cars required to transport people around when it is not necessary.
The same could be said for nearly all knowledge work.
Why build entire buildings in the centre of a city and expensive transportation systems to have everyone spend an hour or more every workday going to a ‘call center’ or a ‘College’ or an ‘office’ when they could probably work or think from home?
The waste is staggering when you add it up. It’s fun to point fingers at the hypocrites, but these non-virtual (and non-virtuous) conferences aren’t the biggest waste of energy. And the ‘conference centers’ and ‘stadiums’ are used the other 364 days of the year.
OMG! I just want to destroy the earth as fast as I can. I saving up for a 40 year old diesel school bus that belches black fumes. And I’m switching to cooking outdoors on a wood stove. That way I can clear that old-growth forest next to my neighborhood. And as soon as find an oil-fired heater that’s going in place of the solar one in using now. And when the permafrost thaws that garbage mound is going into the ground by the pond.
Could you possibly make a dumber comment? I doubt you’ll try but I bet you could.
Are you really that stupid? How did you learn to read? Or do you not have any cognitive ability? It was humor, you imbecile.
“Even Believers Must be Compelled to Live Low Carbon Lifestyles”
EVEN believers?? ESPECIALLY believers!
Only Believers Must be Compelled to Live Low Carbon Lifestyles!
Too right.
“I’m sorry. I don’t take orders. I barely take suggestions.”
Rebel in Menopause
a zero-emission sailboat
These writers are dumber than schist.
We had a canoe at one time. Big deal. Climate didn’t change.
Her trip to the US left a huge CO2 imprint. That it didn’t is a joke and, I suspect, her jaunt to Madrid was similar.
Let them sail yachts: Why Greta Thunberg and the environmental elite hate you — RT World News
https://www.rt.com/news/465501-greta-thunberg-hates-you/
…However, the young proselytizer will not cobble together a boat from upcycled oil drums and driftwood. Instead she’ll be traveling on the Malizia II, a 60-foot racing yacht.
Its crew are also a far cry from the ragtag band of crusties you might imagine. The Malizia II will be captained by renowned yachtsman Boris Herrmann and Pierre Casiraghi, grandson of Monaco’s late Prince Ranier III and actress Grace Kelly. The boat, too, was once named the Edmond de Rothschild, after the financial baron and founder of a fleet of racing yachts. Its construction cost upwards of €4 million.
https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/08/six-sailors-fly-across-the-atlantic-to-enable-gretas-climate-trip/
Six sailors fly across the Atlantic to enable Greta’s climate trip
http://bit.ly/2mi1PgH
Greta Thunberg’s sailing ship for the climate, Malizia II, must return to Europe after it has reached New York. For this, four new professional sailors fly to the US. Their mission is to release the crew of two skippers on board and sail the boat back. Altogether, six sailors must take at least one trip each by plane.
Amid invited to the UN Climate Summit in New York in September, Greta Thunberg refused to go by plane and wanted a carbon dioxide neutral way of travel. Fortunately for her, the Malizia II team came to her assistance, offering to sail Greta and her father across the Atlantic. As a return, the boat became the nine o’clock news all over the world when Greta set off from Plymouth a couple of days ago.
Multiple times more emissions . But going by sailing boat, might not be such a clever idea after all if the objective is to spare the climate. It turns out that Greta Thunberg’s trip adds many times more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than if she and her father just bought two airline tickets. Her sail results in multiple flights across the Atlantic since all the sailors must take one flight each, taz.de reports.
And she went from Lisbon, a coastal city, to Madrid, the highest capital in Europe, by a diesel train. Not a low footprint trip.
She should have stayed in school. Much more climate friendly and she would have learned something too.
She didn’t need to attend the summing on the other side of the world, she could have written a letter and sent that.
I laughed when I read that the boat was “zero carbon”. The mental dissidence in that is just amazing. It wasn’t even her boat, it had to be crewed by others to make the journey possible. So it goes from her, her father and aid, to a crew of 4 on top of that. So all up, it took (I believe) 7 people to help her get across the pacific. If she just jumped on a plane she could have done the trip in 4 hours and occupy a single seat.
She’s a minor who must travel with her parents, who are no doubt having their adventures documented by film crews. Get with the program here. It’s all about sudden celebrity and dramatic productions.
You can be sure the Dumocratic Party candidate will provide lots of “disincentives” by making energy in all forms a luxury item so most of us won’t consume any.
Holding back this mob of crazed fanatics is the best (and one of the few) reason to Re-elect Trump, a person whom I otherwise, can’t support… but considering the existential threat posed by his opponents, there’s really no other choice… a point I’m sure he’ll hammer on relentlessly.
The Green Catastrophe crzies, of course , understand the stakes hence the hysteria stoke up to the hilt. The majority smell a scam, but Trump needs to frame this loud and clear in stark clarity
I often quip that one didn’t necessarily have to like Trump to vote against progressive Democrat socialism. That’s when the really brainwashed ones laugh and say “What do you mean? The Democrats fight for everybody’s rights!”.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a simple test to find out what a person really believes.
Don’t ask someone what they believe. Ask them what’s in their portfolio. That will show you what they really believe.
Also, ask them what’s in their closet and their garage.
Indeed “Choice architecture” “Energy demand management” and others are neologisms designed to disguise the coercive reality.
It’s high time people started nudging the busybodies out of their lives.
For a start psychology isn’t science:
“… psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability …”.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2012-jul-13-la-ol-blowback-pscyhology-science-20120713-story.html
Chris Hanley,
Thank you. Excellent article. I have a degree in Sociology and a minor in Psychology and years of experience in social work from back when I was going to Save the World. It took me six months to realize that the world had no interest in being saved by anyone and certainly not by me but I stuck with it for a long time.
My second career was in healthcare. Psychology is not science. I find it appalling that when it comes to understanding the human mind and psyche, I feel we are no farther along than we were in the Middle Ages. In fact, with the sorry state of Psychology today, we may have regressed to the Dark Ages.
I do see a lot of similarity between the “science” of psychology and the “science” of climate change, though. So much so that a degree in Psychology and a degree in Climate Science are of similar usefulness to the world i.e none.
Yep so called green certified building use more energy that conventional build buildings. Greens do not seem to understand people don’t normally build building that take more energy that necessary to keep humans comfortable. You don’t have to force people to save money, and what you pay for something generally has an energy cost to it.
“green certified building use more energy that conventional build buildings” I noticed a nice plaque at Cross Iron Mills mall that it was LEED certified Silver. Years ago I was in the Calgary Costco and noticed I could see daylight between the tilt-up slabs. I don’t know the R-value of those slabs plus paint, but it wouldn’t be so good. I think that building is still there, and still not insulated.
One would hope that new mall is built a little better (it couldn’t be much worse?), and there are virtuous Tesla superchargers in the parking lot. But with no sign of solar PV on their 1.2 million square foot roof or any mention of a combined heat and power system, I imagine they get all the electricity from the nearby Enmax CCGT power plant or the Hanna coal power plant.
Those bulbs contained about 5 grams of mercury which means every 200 globes in the landfill equal a kilo of mercury, and that’s just awesome for the environment. I wrote to Peter Garret to explain this to him, as he was at this time the self proclaimed Minister for Light bulbs in the then Australian Labor Party and received no response…so I upped it next time around letting him know exactly what I thought of him finishing my comments about his lying and hypocrisy as a Minister by saying “Who’s beds burning now asshole”…I did not receive a reply.
5 milligrams not 5 grams, so 200 globes is a gram of mercury. A couple of globes is only a small quantity, likely too small to do harm, but who wants to expose their kid unnecessarily to any quantity of harmful material?
I read somewhere that it’s sufficient to raise the ambient atmospheric mercury vapor levels to over 40,000 ppm in the immediate vicinity of a newly burst bulb
Somehow I don’t think my mercury exposed from a CFL bulb is rater insignificance compared to the times I played with the vial of mercury I had as a kid ditto for the mercury were had in the chemistry lab. Any mercury I might have absorbed at the time would have been swamped out by the lead in my blood, a child of the fifties and sixties had lead blood levels several time higher their entire childhood then any of the children tested in Flint Michigan(that was due to leaded gas.) By the way the so called experts treat mercury and lead today non of us should have survived. The chicken little of the world rule, and waste tons of money on non problems, which could be better spent on real problems, after fifty years we still have Superfund sites that have not been cleaned up, an I won’t go into the stupidity of the out leaching land fills, which we are still using!
I wouldn’t worry too much about CFL bulbs, they were only a transition technology between incandescent and LED lamps, they’ll soon be all gone.
What Phil says is true. However, when they were “the thing”, the U.S. EPA had a warning and a lot to say:
https://www.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl
It’s like Mr. Buckley said: “A liberal is someone who wants to reach in while you are taking a shower, and adjust the temperature of the water.”
ROFL
As always, the desire to control the behavior of others comes to the forefront.
“Club and drag” – caveman style?
Does that idiot know how ‘carbon intensive ‘ the process of freeze drying is?
Very high energy process, yes. Probably less so, though, than Saint Greta’s clothing – which was almost certainly more than half synthesized from petroleum and/or natural gas.
When Saint Greta begins wearing clothing made by hand shearing sheep (no electric, just muscle power), hand carded, spun and woven with foot powered machinery, I’ll give her a smidgen of credit. (I’m going to assume that a true Saint would not kill the couple of seals necessary to make actually waterproof “natural” clothing – leaving the lanolin in the wool does help some at least, if they are thick enough.)
“St. Greta” is a grumpy little girl whose acting skills were weaponized for a marketing stunt that fell flat. Her rant at the UN was the very moment the “climate” freakout passed the insanity rubicon for all to see.
Let’s PLEASE stop giving her attention–daylight, pixels, ink, and air. Ignored, her 15 minutes are over.
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one to pick up on that.
She and her crew should have been eating nothing but smoked or salted meats and sun dried fruit.
If they wanted to avoid the planet-smashing impact of freeze-drying, their provisions should have included pemmican, prepared in the traditional manner of course. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican
Nudge nudge!
Here in Melbourne, Australia, we were visited by a government sponsored team to change all incandescent light bulbs to Compact flouros .
Free at no cost to me. This was about 5 years ago. A few months ago another team came around to change all the flouros to LED. They even did the halogen down lights the first mob could not do. New lights Right through the house for no cost to me. I expect someone’s paying for it is taxation though.
Nothing is “no cost”.
Ya think?
Replacing the lamps in all probability cost more energy that running the old ones till they burned out. Those programs were pure stupidity.
You’re paying for it in taxes Clarky. Have no doubt. The Government earns no money, it just spends it.
All of the history of mankind is rife with trying to control what others do and think… It’s a basic human instinct – try to make others do as I believe (but likely I do not do).
The mystery lies in that some humans seem resistant to trying to control everyone else – it’s like some people are born immune to this impulse while others are consumed by it, with all the shades in between. Progressives are defined by their group think and attempts to control everything. Now they are trying to control the Earth in the most basic primitive form around – sacrifice.
Robert of Texas “The mystery lies in that some humans seem resistant to trying to control everyone else – it’s like some people are born immune to this impulse while others are consumed by it, with all the shades in between.”
I, too, often wonder about this. I suspect it started when Man decided to establish civilization. I often think the Hunter-Gatherers were quite likely more civilized than “civilized” Man.
@KcTaz – I would suggest adding a study of anthropology to your other specialties.
A collectivist psychology was probably a survival trait during our time living in small groups. Cohesive loyalty was likely important when competing with rival bands. The collectivist psychology will have a normal-like population distribution of impulse. Maybe with a small standard deviation if collectivism were strongly selected.
Those more than 1 sigma to the high side will be strongly motivated toward moral collectives.
Two sigma out will be the obligate collectivists. It will be at the level of a visceral need linked to survival. They’ll likely to want to impose their morality on everyone. For their own sense of primal security.
Two sigma to the low side will likely include obligate individualists. Able to keep their heads down in moralizing societies, but always heretical.
One sigma low are the adaptables; collectivist or individualist societies, and they can find their way along.
From the Scientific American article “…just the facts aren’t enough”—
“… the fundamental fact that the only way to save our planet is to change how we live…..People do not change their environmental behaviors simply because they are told to…..Policy makers can lead by recognizing that people will not easily alter their high-carbon habits; they must be nudged.”
I live where David Middleton just showed a US map where the average wind speeds are high, no surprise there to sailors, southern Texas coast. What have been forced (a level above nudged) on residents include windmills (wind does die and some claim you can select to buy the blowing induced electrons), ethanol, recycling, light bulbs (rescinded), toilets, among many others. SciAmer has a nearly two generation history of questionable scientific journalism, I have one somewhere from the 1980s on the ocean dying. It may be more true that the problem is that they have called “Wolf” too often and don’t know it. They clearly don’t know what a fact is.
People do not change their environmental behaviors simply because they are told to.
Right. They have to be forced to live correctly, as determined by the unelected Great Leaders and demogogues who eagerly pop up all over the internet. Let the Wild Revolution start!
No they do so when a compelling economic argument for the change exists 🙂
“if global warming is to be curbed, comfortable lifestyles in developed countries must be amended.”
But it’s ok if you are one of the 200 million plus living a comfortable lifestyle in India or China?
The population of the world’s developed countries is currently a little over 1.3 billion people or just 17% of the world’s population.
Suppose we were to make contact with an intelligent race from beyond Mars’ orbit.
If these beings had no American Dollars and I do, does that mean I am opressing them because of our inequality? Was I opressing them before I knew they existed?
No, you were not oppressing the aliens either before or after you learned of their existance. To oppress someone, you have to take some action against them. Your living without knowledge of the aliens, no matter what your financial situation, is not an action taken against them. You are an innocent man.
Hope that helps. 🙂
The authors seem to think it is an easy thing to “amend” the lifestyles of the Chinese or the Indians or me, for that matter. It’s not going to happen. Trying to force things like this on people is going to be a big problem for those who think like the authors.
“Imagine if your entire life was constrained by a series of such “nudges”. The nanny state coercion might well drive you to reduce your carbon footprint – but I doubt politicians and bureaucrats would care about any problems caused by their restriction of your freedom, their imposition of “choice architecture”; the government’s desire to force you to cut your carbon footprint would override any personal concerns you might have about the choices they imposed on your life.”
Well, there is hope. Macron has learned about what happens when you “impose” a financial penalty to enforce a low carbon lifestyle. They are called Yellow Vests.
Germany is learning, too.
German Wind Industry In A Coma: Tenders For Wind Energy Projects “Have Fallen To New, All-Time Low”
http://bit.ly/2lRPY8A
…After the installation of thousands of megawatts of German wind power capacity led to instability in the power grid, exploding electricity prices and the destruction of natural landscapes and biotopes, protests against wind projects ratcheted up to the point where the government was forced to scale back on subsidies two years ago.
The result: investments in wind parks, once seen as the future of Germany’s energy supply, have since collapsed.
What did they achieve after building all those windmills at tremendous cost to the German taxpayer & destroying the environment?
CO2 HIGHER IN GERMANY THAN IN 2009
AFTER hundreds of €BILLIONS of taxpayer’s hard-earned money spent on sunshine and breezes, Germany’s Energiewende program has been exposed as a catastrophic failure, with carbon dioxide emissions higher now than in 2009,
the year before massively subsidised ‘green’ energy was signed into German law.
http://bit.ly/33pw2vm
“You can’t diet by eating more diet snacks. Likewise, you can’t reduce fossil fuel usage by using a lot more fossil fuel to do “green” things.” Imagine that?
Except the German grid is not unstable…
Where’s Griff? We need Griff to explain this alarming situation in Germany. Windmills down, CO2 up, and Germany hasn’t even come close to supplying its electricity with “renewables”.
What’s going on here, Griff?
Germany raises the cost of electricity for every German, and German industry, which causes the German industry to seek more favorable economic pastures, and all this because German politicians have the lame-brained idea that they can power their whole eonomy with windmills, and now, only a small percentage of the way there, the wheels are starting to come off the Windmill Delusion. Delusion is finally running into Reality.
Nobody in the UK buys CFLs any more.
Our electricity demand is still falling even with a growing population thanks to LEDs etc (most of our street lighting is now LED)
We moved on, like from Betamax to VHs (and now blueRay)
And we now get more power from renewables than gas/coal for most of the year… and are still moving on.
Nope. The UK gets about 6 times more energy from natural gas, as a heating/cooking fuel, than the capacity of the grid.
The UK grid would have to be about 7 times larger than it is, if all natural gas were replaced with electricity.
This does not count transportation fuels, either.
I think there would have been cold turkey for lunch on Christmas Day if one relied on wind power to provide the electricity for cooking it.
Carbon economy is better. You can be carbon neutral, high carbon and economically sustainable at the same time.
I have LED lights at home because they require less maintenance work. Reduction of maintenance is the driving force for electric cars as well as.
I use mulched Siberian willows from my property for heating in winters. Fireplaces are the best places for bush fires.
In the UK we call these people Champagne Socialists, who tell the plebs how to live their lives while they, the patricians, continue with their champagne lifestyle.
Think they are actually Chardonnay Socialists, a few notches down from the Champagne variety. But no less objectionable.
Actually the are just the inner city narcissists AKA imbecile pratt’s.
Greta’s example is more a demonstration of why most people (of sound mind anyway) will not be making the prescribed changes to their lifestyles. It might be a trendy thing among the gullible, to sing her praises, but, follow her example??? No chance, there’s far too much hypocrisy to lose.
I think the Mafia had an expression, ”you may need an attitude re-adjustment” These ”nudges” are essentially, putting a gun to our heads.