Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Sociology Professor Kari Norgaard thinks people believe in global warming, but behave as if it wasn’t an issue, by numbing themselves to the reality.
Climate Change in the Age of Numbing
“We live in one way, and we think in another. We learn to think in parallel. It’s a skill, an art of living.”
By: Kari Marie Norgaard
It was not long after my arrival in Bygdaby — a pseudonym I use for an actual rural community in western Norway — that I began to sense a paradox. Norwegians are among the most highly educated people in the world. Global warming was frequently mentioned during my time in Bygdaby, and community members seemed to be both informed and concerned about it. Yet at the same time it was an uncomfortable issue. People were aware that climate change could radically alter life within the next decades, yet they did not go about their days wondering what life would be like for their children, whether farming practices would change in Bygdaby, or whether their grandchildren would be able to ski on real snow. They spent their days thinking about more local, manageable topics.
Ingrid, a local high school student, described how “you have the knowledge, but you live in a completely different world.” Vigdis told me that she was afraid of global warming, but that it didn’t enter her everyday life: “I often get afraid, like — it goes very much up and down, then, with how much I think about it. But if I sit myself down and think about it, it could actually happen; I thought about how if this here continues, we could come to have no difference between winter and spring and summer, like — and lots of stuff about the ice that is melting and that there will be flooding, like, and that is depressing, the way I see it.”
…
Community members describe climate change as an issue that they have to “sit themselves down and think about,” “don’t think about in the everyday,” “but that in between is discouraging and an emotional weight.” People in Bygdaby did know about global warming, but they did not integrate this knowledge into everyday life.
…
Read more: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/climate-change-in-the-age-of-numbing/
Kari seems to assume people believe and are desperately worried, but psychologically numb themselves to the awful knowledge of imminent doom so they can function in their daily lives.
The other possibility of course is that people are a bit worried, but not worried enough to act on their concern.
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“We learn to think in parallel.” That is exactly the heart of the problem. Everybody is supposed to think the same thing and there is no debate. There is no room for science anymore, which is replaced by “consensus”. The same holds true for about 90% of our newsmedia: complete one-minded conformism. Other views are censured/deplatformed. George Orwell must be stirring in his grave…
If thinking in parallel, we must thinking, that everyone knows we living in Ice Age- the coldest Age in Earth’s long history.
Worried about warming?
That is funny!
And in NORWAY, yet.
Sadly the works of George Orwell are no longer read by the fully woke class, and your reference to him would only be considered a manifestation of your white privilege.
Potty Kari Norgaard wrote a book about climate denial last year, and could not understand why people were not interested in her apocalyptic views.
On her trips she visited a small town in Norway during the mild winter and could not understand why the locals were not concerned. Turns out they knew such winters were perfectly common!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/bbcs-age-of-denial/
Doesn’t she know that denial is a dirty word ?
And she wrote a book about it ?
– JPP
I like the part where she interviews middle school children who hear horror stories their whole lives and treats their anecdotes like it means something or should.
…or where she sets it up with how educated they are
then quotes some moron and proves the opposite
Yes, some girl concerned the seasons might disappear! Definitely not educated about what causes the seasons…earth’s axis inclined 23 degrees to ecliptic, etc. Norway has very short daylight in winter, midnight sun in June…that CANNOT change no matter how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. Is even Greta worried about the seasons disappearing?
A mild Norway winter is far better on Norwegians than a harsh one, so of course they’re not worried. I just don’t understand why people in northern countries aren’t clamoring for more CO2 emissions just in case the IPCC is close to correct about how much warming it will cause. Even under the most exaggerated worst case warming scenario, the climate of Norway will still be far colder than any Mediterranean country is today.
Yes, there used to be “Minnesotans FOR global warming”, who wanted some, as they shoveled much snow. What happened to them? We were promised some global warming, and we want it NOW!
We are! (Canadian speaking)
People may be worried about ‘Global Warming/Climate Change’ theory’ but they are waiting to see if there are any sign of the wild predictions coming true and so far there are none yet. People are just continuing to wait.
I disagree. I think the people believe what the media tells them. They do believe in Global Warming. And they believe it is scary.
And they do choose to act. Just not in the way the Greens want.
Adaptation is an alternative policy to trying to alter the entire world economy and infrastructure. Most people know they cannot do the latter so they are all for doing the former – adapting to what happens.
And as adaptation takes resources the correct approach everyone is taking to fight Global Warming is to ignore it for now and fight poverty instead.
It’s the economy that matters in the fight against Global Warming.
I hate the term “fight against poverty”. It almost always means government handouts to poorer people to reduce their poverty. All the various “anti-poverty” programs have succeeded in doing is allow poorer people to eat all the want of the worst foods.
The only anti-poverty program that has really worked was during the second Clinton administration. Bill had lost a majority in Senate and/or the House and had to compromise. The compromise set limits on the length of unemployment benefits and a requirement to seek a job. People who got a job still received some benefits but were required to take government funded(but not run)classes to improve their work skills and habits.
It knocked some 30-40% off the poverty rolls in a couple of years but that all fell apart as congress, in later administrations dropped the most effective portions of the program in favor of dollar benefits with no other “onerous” requirements.
Who would have thought that when you pay people not to work, that more people would decide not to work?
Mark many of our indigenous people in the red centre of Australia don’t speak English and thus have had little if any formal education. All indigenous people receive generous benefits, free transport, housing, medical and dental care and free education through to university.
The city indigenous people who ‘identify’ as Aboriginal take advantage of these benefits, this is their right. The trouble is that they are going through an education system that is already leftist. This system does not empower them, it reinforces their own prejudices. The indigenous people in the red centre also receive royalties from mining and tribal law dictates that you cannot ‘refuse kin’, if you have something that your kin does not you are obliged to hand it over.
I fear that the indigenous people in the red center are being kept ignorant deliberately, and I fear that it’s by their ‘own’ people. Little English is spoken in their tribal lands. It’s not just a matter of learning their language, their are 350 different tribal languages. Their lands are not accessible without a permit so what they know of the outside world is what they are told. Just what is it they are being told? They don’t run naked and hunt with spears any more, 4 wheel drive vehicles and rifles are more the go.
Our indigenous people are not hated as the world is led to believe, but when the educated indigenous people aren’t willing to have a conversation it makes it difficult to help those who aren’t.
Incidentally, our indigenous Aboriginals in the outback call government benefits ‘sit down money’.
The government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.
I keep hearing that it will get warmer and warmer. We just had an almost exceptionally cool spring in the mid to eastern US. Now they try to say that was because of global warming and those months have been the warmest months in the history of the planet because it was just really actually very hot everywhere else. Obviously I can’t prove that, because I haven’t been to those places, but I hear it was exceptionally cool in India as well, so I feel skeptical.
If only she wasn’t so goddamned ‘hot’!
She looks Trans…
So what is your point? The debate is about the content of what she said. Her looks are irrelevant to the discussion.
Her looks are the icing on the cake.
In these times, she should definitely practice social distancing and wear a face mask.
Thank you Huub
Carbon dioxide has not been kind to her.
There’s also the distinct possibility that people are paying lip service to the concept of climate change, to avoid being harassed by activists, while not believing it
Or, the pain of ‘doing something’ vastly outhurts the faintly possible discomfort of ‘not doing something’.
Some people believe in plastic surgery.
I wonder if Kari’s house has rubber wallpaper
It should.
Bygdaby Norwegians obviously approve of the dialectical method in their discourses with Kari Marie Norgaard.
A dichotomy of thought, which is mutually exclusive. The Bygdaby Norwegians heard Kari Marie Norgaard, but did not listen to her!!!
She tells us that her neighbors all believe in global warming. However we aren’t given any hard data, nor anyway to validate her claims.
Or people aren’t worried at all because there is no climate emergency, and we don’t have climate derangement syndrome.
When reality differs from your mental construct of reality, reality should take precedence.
@Matthew “Or people aren’t worried at all because there is no climate emergency, and we don’t have climate derangement syndrome.”
Yep that ‘s my take on this. It is the opposite of what Ms Norgaard thinks. People don’t act because they don’t believe it. They know it is false. Some are aware that none of the global warming climate crisis horrors have materialised, others know because they have a particularly useful instinct; they know they are being lied to. Both types are cautious about saying this, so they say they agree, are worried etc. If Ingrid and Vigdis are high school students they have to watch their backs, go along with the crowd. Not safe to do otherwise.
Yep. Don’t say anything to rock the boat, even though every single prediction the “climate scientists” have made has been wrong.
People also go to church.
Random attack on religion? I don’t know. You didn’t exactly provide a lot of context here. I’m not sure what exactly you are getting at.
Rational minds will listen to irrational perspectives a few times…. and then just ‘tune it out’. The hazard is encountered when the irrational folks get so frustrated with being rejected they turn to even more irrational violence to gain attention. We see this in action world wide today.
Also, tuning it out gives them a long, long time to infest all our institutions. If you can’t reach the adults, brainwash the children, after all.
Another totally unsabstantiated claim from the soft “sciences”. Will these people ever learn that a theory does not equate to some gossipy ideas you and your friends had whilst drinking afternoon tea?
It is pure and utter BS what you are proclaiming.
Besides. believing is what one does in a church. There’s no science involved
Eric is correct. The less complicated and more likely reason is that most people have been browbeaten into mouthing the words that make the pestering activists go away; without ever intending to support the cause. Even many of those who think they are on side with the talk have no sense of what walking the walk would mean. Global warming to them is about the evils of big oil and saving whales and puppies; they have no idea of what underpins their comfortable existence and oblivious to how the radical environmentalist lobby’s agenda would destroy this.
My god, the evil inside shows through. AGW IS BS.
Any “highly educated” person in Norway that worries whether their children will be able to ski on real snow or not need to demand a tuition refund from whomever “highly educated” them. That Kari Marie Norgaard ended up in Eugene, Oregon, at the University of Oregon is very telling. The LBGTQI group Queer Nation moved their headquarters from San Francisco to Eugene because San Francisco was not liberal enough.
They may have left because San Francisco is now full of ‘street people’ who litter the sidewalks with used needles and feces. Like most good leftists, their policies soil their own nests so they move to a new nest then soil that one. They don’t grasp why these problems keep following them. Self reflection us NOT their strong point.
Frisco is rough
Take a wrong street and suddenly you’re on the set of The Walking Dead.
Just a couple blocks from Union square it’s post apocalytic.
I would encourage people to take their kids to see what comes of caring leftist policy.
LBGTQ (I)?
Intersex. I do not want any further information, please. OK, here’s some more A: Asexual. Stop me, please.
Ron I liked it better when we were all just ‘people’. Some good and some bad. Labels add nothing.
Megs, you are 100% correct!
Excess of labels actually gets in the way of understanding.
The other factor is that a little extra warmth would be very welcome in many parts of the world
VK5ELL MJE
“*Sociology Professor* Kari Norgaard ”
So she is academically certified as knowing jack…..
She knows how to mine the “Climate Change” science prostitution scam.
It doesn’t take a high IQ, and actual work. Just “bend the knee” to the political science idol and “CHA-CHING”.
Because polls that have no consequences are 193% accurate!
You’d think a psychology professor would have heard of the term “lip service”.
What garbage.
“….People were aware that climate change could radically alter life within the next decades, yet they did not go about their days wondering what life would be like for their children, whether farming practices would change in Bygdaby, or whether their grandchildren would be able to ski on real snow…..”
Um. We have now HAD the ‘next decades’. Life has remained the same, farming practices have not altered and snow is still around.
People (In Aus) believe putting shit in the yellow bin saves the planet.
training too, educated to worry when told to by a “spert” of some type
but
in their real world little is changing at all
cognitive dissonance
NOT acting shows they’re pretty sane I reckon
I have to wonder why she thinks Norwegians would be scared of a little bit of warming ! ?
Maybe the Eskimos should be scared too… gunna over heat !
Some people really don’t have a clue… most sociologists seem to be among that “some”
Even Eskimo Pies must go. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/06/bye-bye-eskimo-pie.php
“Norgaard, Kari Marie. 2007 “The Politics of Invasive Weed Management: Gender Race and Risk Perception in Rural California” Rural Sociology 72(3): 450-477.”
What a nutcase. The world really is mad. How is it someone is paid to produce such rubbish.
What this professor thinks most people believe is far removed from reality. What she thinks – uses the word 18 times – is a worthless opinion. Her thinking is supported by confused reasoning. Let me explain.
If people really believed in catastrophic global warming that will end human existence tomorrow, they would certainly do something today. Notice that she uses the phrase “global warming” four times and “climate change” six times but nowhere defines what she means. She does not even consider that many people who while they accept climate changes do not believe it will be life threatening but that human ingenuity will help us adapt and even benefit from the changes.
How can sociology be called a science when sociologists write such drivel or hogwash?
We maybe witnessing the effects of “relaxed selection”.
This person would probably not have survived in society even one hundred years ago.
For example:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-017-0133-5
I’m not religious and I’m left-handed, so I’m genetically impure? That’s an…interesting…take.
Warm times = climate optimums. Even the IPCC says so. Climate and economic models by Richard Tol actually had improvements until nearly 2C of warning. Of course once this was discovered in the reports, the charts were removed.
The only people worried about climate changing are the ones running a scam for our tax dollars.
And I bet she uses fossil fuels EVERY DAY!! hypocrite – judging others when she is the same.
Do we really need to give her publicity ?
I think it is important to understand the crazy
Plus it’s so much fun to mock.
So much stupid, so little time to mock it all.
Making people laugh at them is how they get defeated.
“Sociology Professor Kari Norgaard thinks people believe in global warming, but behave as if it wasn’t an issue, by numbing themselves to the reality.”
The scaremongers aren’t doing a good job I guess.