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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This would be the same wacko that equates “denial” as the equivalent to racism and is a “sickness” that must be “treated”.
https://www.prisonplanet.com/climate-change-skepticism-a-sickness-that-must-be-treated-says-professor.html
In Vermont we are being inundated with wealthy refugees from urban areas. They seem to be fleeing the social unrest caused by their own political actions. People are buying houses over the Internet and paying cash for places they have never seen in person. It is as unbelievable as the rioting.
The locals believe in the adage – “Enjoy your visit, leave your cash, but not your lifestyle.”
As one of my hard working waitress friends explained – “I don’t respond well to finger snapping”.
But come the aftermath of this winter, many will change their minds and leave.
I hope.
Give them the answer that I got as a soldier asking directions in rural Vermont once. “you can’t get there from here!”
In reply to:
“Claim: People Believe in Global Warming, But Choose Not to Act”
What the heck is “Act”….
… there is no money and it is not possible to get blood from a stone.
The optics of wasting money on green stuff does not work now.
Regardless, how many voters want higher electrical prices when there is double digit unemployment? Kill the US companies that are competing with coal fired China?
China is still building coal plants.
Like most progressives, they may believe in something, but they are waiting for someone else to pay the price for it.
Talk about gaming the system! From Dr. Norgaar’s CV: Not only is she interested in “environmental justice”, she is interested in INDIGENOUS environmental justice. Specifically, environmental justice for the indigenous Karuk tribe of Northern California. Her CV lists the following grants between 2009 and 2018 (from most recent to earliest):
“Examining the effects of climate change on American Indian uses of forests,
habitats and resources in Pacific Northwest and Northern California” With Frank
Lake, Kathy Lynn and Jonathan Long, Northwest Climate Science Center
($74,000)
Climate Adaptation Planning, Department of Energy on behalf of Karuk Tribe
($250,000)
PG and E Resilient Communities on behalf of Karuk Tribe ($99,998)
Climate Vulnerability Assessment, Bureau of Indian Affairs on behalf of Karuk
Tribe ($57,000)
NPLCC Tribal Climate Change Grant, “Preserving Tribal Self-Determination and
Knowledge Sovereignty While Expanding the Use of Tribal Knowledge and
Management in Off-Reservation Lands in the Face of Climate Change,” US Fish
and Wildlife Service on behalf of Karuk Tribe ($34,386)
Tribal Wildlife Grant, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on behalf of Karuk Tribe and
Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation ($100,000)
That would be the same 4800 member Karuk tribe that practices the ancient tribal custom of owning and operating a casino; Specifically, the Rain Rock Casino on I-5 in Yreka, Ca.
oe
That’s $615,384 over 9 years, or an average of $68,376 per year, plus whatever she earns on her ‘day job.’ She has obviously found how to make the system work for her.
“Tribal Knowledge Sovereignty”
That’s really rich.
Sociology Professor Kari Norgaard is really lost in the wilderness.
I wonder what questions this idiot was asking to get those responses.
One of the large issues around AGW is the fake surveys and polls they do. When I had some PR training a few decades back, it was driven home how important it is to check what responses your Q’s will bring due to language used, surveyer body language and tone and even the order in which you ask the questions.
So we have a radical lefty ‘expert’ talking to kids who have been programmed for years about the dire nature of climate and even so, the BEST she can elicit is a lukewarm, ‘I know about it but it doesn’t really affect my actual life’ answer?
When I see ‘radical’ polls I always try to find the actual questions asked and of those I can find, all would have gotten a Flunk! from the PR instructors back in the day.
The reason they keep being surprised is because they are trying to use polls to GUIDE the People instead of see where the People are heading.
Sociologists are not climate scientists. They don’t realise that science is not based on public opinion.
Most people have enough common sense to realise that a world that has taken 4.5 billion years to give birth to them and that all surface energy comes from the sun, that is not going to change overnight. As a for them useful alternative, religious people put their faith in the Almighty.
Like a flock of sheep, many climatologists are blindly following their leaders of a cliff not knowing that the little they know is not enough to make predictions. They think, that just putting your ideas in a computer must give you the right answers, not realising that their omissions and errors make that impossible. It is like standing in the dark and from close range shining a torch on a large painting and without knowing the context pretending to know it all from that tiny observation.
If you have not done so already, feel free to check out my answers on
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-major-errors-made-by-scientists-in-approaching-a-climate-change-problem/answer/John-Bruyn
The third option: I’ve evaluated the issue and it ranks dead last in my set of issues to worry about. It will not be a serious problem for me or my grandchildren. the coming ice age deserves far more thought, but even that will not be a serious threat because we will be able to adapt. Several major polls show that a lot of people share my priorities.
I am both a qualified engineer a qualified social science graduate. So let us take my engineer side first. In all the years of computer modelling I had a pass mark of 95% timing accuracy and 100% correct functionality. As a result any less and I simply despise both the result and the people producing the result. Now the social science view point. The people around me without the specialised computer modelling assessment skills have a simple approach. They look at the headline predictions like Maldives flooded . NOT They look at the hundred months to uncontrolled temperature rises and tipping point. NOT. They look at the all glaciers melted by 2000. NOT. They look at no Arctic ice by 2016. NOT Three strikes and you are out. So it is well and truly a non issue. It is young mindless conformists, taught not educated, children who are convinced not thinking people and one thing I have found out from taking a degree in social science is that it is not a profession for thinkers with even moderate numerical skills. Man made climate change is the leaning tower of Pisa. A pretty structure based on terrible foundations that need constant attention and modification to stand at all. They after all the prattling about weather not being climate use weather data as input to their climate models. Even on an averagely sunny day the measured the temperature difference between road and the grass verge is around 10 degrees here. The weather network explicitly avoids measuring this so how can the data be suitable for climate models?
Sherrington’s postulate from year 2010 is that elevated atmospheric CO2 is causing faster tooth growth in those born since about 1990.
Asia seems to be very successful in numbing themselves, since they manage to rapidly expand their coal power system in spite of their overwhelming fear for the climate catastrophe