Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Guardian social scientist Rebecca Huntley, climate activists have to get even more emotional to convince the rest of us of the importance of global warming.
Stop making sense: why it’s time to get emotional about climate change
Rebecca Huntley
Sunday 5th JulyIt took me much longer than it should have to realise that educating people about climate change science was not enough. Due perhaps to my personality type (highly rational, don’t talk to me about horoscopes, please) and my background (the well-educated daughter of a high school teacher and an academic), I have grown up accepting the idea that facts persuade and emotions detract from a good argument.
Then again, I’m a social scientist. I study people. I deal mostly in feelings, not facts. A joke I like to tell about myself during speeches is that I’m an expert in the opinions of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Over the 15 years I’ve been a social researcher, I’ve watched with concern the increasing effects of climate change, and also watched as significant chunks of the electorate voted for political parties with terrible climate change policies.
There is clearly a disconnect between what people say they are worried about and want action on and who, when given the chance, they pick to lead their country.
The science behind climate change has been proven correct to the highest degree of certainty the scientific method allows. But climate change is more than just the science. It’s a social phenomenon. And the social dimensions of climate change can make the science look simple – the laws of physics are orderly and neat but people are messy.
…
In an article for the academic journal Risk Analysis, the head of Yale’s program on climate change communications, Tony Leiserowitz, showed that in 2003, when respondents were asked in surveys for their first reaction to the phrase “global warming”, only 7% reacted with words like “hoax” or “scam”. By 2010 that had risen to 23%. There was a parallel trend in the UK: between 2003 and 2008, the belief that claims about climate change had been exaggerated almost doubled from 15% to 29%.
…
Rebecca Huntley is the director of research at Essential Media. She is an author of numerous books and a regular commentator on radio and television. She is an adjunct senior lecturer at The School of Social Sciences at The University of New South Wales.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/05/stop-making-sense-why-its-time-to-get-emotional-about-climate-change
There is an alternative to trying to persuade people with emotion. Green activists could try making sense.
If climate activists had embraced nuclear power from the start, I would never have questioned global warming predictions. It was the absurdity of the proposed renewable solution which first raised questions in my mind about climate claims – if the proposed solution doesn’t make sense, maybe none of it makes sense.
The handful of green activists who are now embracing engineering sanity does not make up for the rest of them.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The Guardian has zero credibility, I don’t waste my time reading it.
It’s got the best football pages, when they can be bothered with anything outside the top 6 of the PL.
# BackPagesMatter ?
👍
Now that the games are played behind closed doors, can you actually trust the Guardian to print the right score?
They’ve manipulated numbers concerning everything else, so maybe just a matter of time before sport-scores get falsified. Who’s going to challenge them?
However, as a narrative producer/echo chamber, it’s OK to read a headline to know what the Left is up to and what narratives/strategies are being amplified.
And note: One thing the Left is hugely successful is using any component that has worked, especially ones that were winners. Like rinse, repeat.
It this case, the Covid-19 hysteria generated and amplified by the Left’s various organ was like hitting a Grand Slam Home Run right after winning Golf’s Grand Slam and Tennis’ Grand Slam. It just doesn’t get any better than hysteria driving an agenda.
More emotional and unthinking? What a good idea! How about lining up in your emotional thousands on the White Cliffs of Dover and then hurling yourselves over the edge? That will show all the rationalists and climate deniers that you are serious!
Climate suicide and murder has already been discussed by the BBC. I’m hoping we can defuse this nightmare delusion before something horrible happens.
BBC: Its Important to Let Climate Worriers Talk About Murdering Their Own Children
So this psychiatrist wants parents who fantasize about murdering their own children in order to
offload the responsibility of raising themprotect them wants them to have “safe spaces to express these fantasies.“Here’s another thought: contact the police and social services, you God damned idiot.
Planned Patsies. There is precedent in Dodo Dynasties and other dysfunctional choices and orientations.
But having failed with facts I suppose we’ll have to fall back on scaring the shyte out of people . OH wait, didn’t we try that too ?
At least that’s honest. Now why does that mean we should believe your dishonest, BS claims like:
If you don’t like horoscopes why do you believe climate models?
“If you don’t like horoscopes why do you believe climate models?”
Now that is funny
“The science behind climate change has been proven correct to the highest degree of certainty the scientific method allows.”
Shows right there her scientific illiteracy. She hasn’t the skill to determine what is fact vs conjecture.
Bob, since they tag the word ‘scientist’ onto just about every university graduate these days, she thinks that she is a scientist. She is not, they used to call people in her field of work ‘social workers’. I doubt that she would even know what the scientific method was.
She is simply one of the people who have been labeled ‘scientist’ to make her more useful as a propagandist. Scientists these days are so tied in with politics that that have lost their integrity, the truth is irrelevant.
The numbers of scientists and actual ‘experience’ based experts to speak out against CAGW are growing, and I hope it continues. Though the way the MSM is, the platform is somewhat limited. People want to hear the truth, or even just to know the whole story so they can decide for themselves. They are being taken for fools when all they really want is facts. That’s why they are so hungry for movies like Michael Moore’s and books like Michael Shellenburger’s.
You can’t call just anyone a scientist and expect that they will be trusted. That was what once set scientists above politicians, they had to prove themselves, over and over. Isn’t that what the scientific method was all about, proving that your theory is correct as opposed to a ‘consensus’ amongst you and your buddies. These days a scientist is ‘bought’ to promote a political agenda. I’d like to see them once again separate and above politics, as respected advisors.
Ms Huntley is of the same ilk as Naomi Oreskes, I find her to be arrogant and dismissive of others views.
To all the ‘actual’ scientists on this site, no offence intended, just keep up the fight and regain the respect you deserve.
Religion lives in a state of certainty , science in a state of doubt … Paraphrase of richard feynman
As soon as you become emotional, you will lose the argument.
Sales 101: You sell on the emotions of the buyer. Facts are secondary only to find out where the hot/cold buttons are.
“You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.”
The warmists have been successful in selling on the emotion that climate change is bad.
Until people see climate change as good that will not change regardless of the facts.
I was taught in sales 101 that people make their decisions emotionally then justify them rationally.
Except that in practice, most of my easier sales were won without the rationality part being invoked.
Even business systems decisions are not exempt from human flakiness.
In Sales 102 you learn to encourage their decisions by helping them with their “rationalizations” and confirming their decision as correct to avoid buyers remorse.
Everyone wants to be told they made the right decision.
Waiters are a good example of that confirmation: “Excellent choice sir,” even though the waiter may dislike the food that was ordered.
I frequently wonder about people like this.
Do they know that their food doesn’t really come from “the store”? Same thing for clothing? Do they have any idea where stuff goes when they flush the commode? Have they gone out and done a dead critter count at wind farms and solar farms? Ever wondered what happens if there’s a blizzard or tornado and that whole thing shuts down for months?
I believe (oh, bad word!) they don’t have a clue; that they think summer heat is climate (not!) and that water just comes out of the faucet, etc., etc., etc.
Gee whiz, people, lemmings are smarter than that!
Agreed!
Is this the same reason the BLM are rioting?
Burning, Looting, and Murder is an effective persuasion method and vents frustration at the same time?
Idiots!
Yes Climate Alarmism is another branch of the same anti-western revolt… it comes from the brain virus known as “Critical Theory” that toxic mix of isms and ideologies… atheist cult religions. This is why the Guardian, BBC and the Independant all react the same way on BLM issues as on climate issues… that is their dishonest game… we are trying to rebuke them with facts but they are not interested in REAL truths and facts… they just want their end goals.
As Michael Shellenberger notes in “Apocalypse Never,” if environmentalists are antinuclear they aren’t clear on the concept.
She’s well educated, rational, a social scientist, daughter of academics with an innate ability to determine the veracity of another persons opinion, but please do not think that this is an appeal to authority.
A rational social scientist..
Now there’s a bizarre concept !
Now there’s an oxymoron.
actually Im pretty sure shes an Aussie moron;-(
she gets airtime on abc far too often
Social science: trying to prove facts about the universe with questionnaires.
Is that supposed to be an accolade or an insult?
adjunct as in unpaid. A “senior” unpaid lecturer in sociology, the bar must really high for a post like that !
an adjunct senior lecturer?
Does that mean that she hasn’t been paid for a long time?
You’d think that a self-styled ‘expert’ on human behaviour would recognize groupthink when she sees it!
Greta Thunderbird is doing more than her fair share of not making sense. However, she is not that far ahead of the rest of the Alarmists. If they reject Nuclear Power, they are not serious.
Nuclear and atomic power are the only energy solutions of the future since they alone have essentially unlimited potential! All that we lack is the political will!
You are mistaken. They are serious. Very serious.
Very seriously unbalanced…
” …. correct to the highest degree of certainty that the scientific method allows”?
Sorry, Rebecca. The scientific method calls for hypotheses to be constructed, predictions made, tested, then discarded if they fail.
I am unaware of any substantial climate change hypothesis that has not been shown to fail. Geoff S
The fallacy in her statement there, Geoff, is her incomprehension of what constitutes ‘the scientific method’. She sees the simplistic and assumption riddled computer models as an accurate enough reflection of the incredibly complex reality to accept the outcomes as valid. And she trusts the purity of motives of the ‘scientists’ who create the models. So what could possibly go wrong?
The models predict that CO2 will cause the planet to warm.
CO2 went up and the planet warmed.
Ergo, the claim that CO2 will wipe out all life on the planet has been proven.
The Guardian is now read by people too dumb for The Daily Star.
…. and those poor souls who suffer from the highly debilitating Chronic Virtue-Signaling Disorder
LOL!
So in the 7 or 8 years from 2003, a time when climate change scientists were making the most absurd global warming forecasts and filling the media with dire predictions, scepticism about their claims more than doubled. And Rebecca hasn’t joined up the dots to figure out why.
These po-faced policers of other people’s moral values and duties are unintentionally amusing. Indeed, much of the Guardian’s content is side-splittingly funny – the writers just don’t know it. Back in the 60s and 70s, when its contributors included Harry Whewel, James Cameron and, of course, Jack Trevor-Storey it had genuine class. Then it became a creature of the hard left and sadly lost its way.
Needless to say, the newspaper has been a vociferous supporter of the statue-smashing vandalism that characterises much of the BLM movement but has curiously failed to address its own slave-owning past. In much the same way that socialist governments are always running out of other people’s money, it’s a case of “do as I say, not as I do” with the Guardian.
I’ve often wondered what the greats of the old Guardian like Neville Cardus would say about the newspaper as it is today. I suspect it would be highly uncomplimentary.
There is a typo in the article
Should read
I quite like her joke that she says she’s an expert in the opinions of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. She doesn’t need to go too far for material. The saying “it takes one to know one “ is appropriate.
Rebecca must talk to herself a lot.
Chris Hanley
Who said that? 🙂
I read an interesting, and apparently well-researched, paper once saying that only crazy or very intelligent persons talk out loud to themselves. I offer this comment to defend myself as I shout at the idiots on the TV (mostly CNN International) but neither expect nor wait for a reply from them.
Ron
Why do you continue to torment yourself buy watching that rubbish. That’s why they provide a remote with an off button. Do yourself a favour.
Regards
Indeed Zigmaster, She clearly has lots of personal experience what with her being one of those people who don’t know what she’s talking about. Case in point, that she says “The science behind climate change has been proven correct to the highest degree of certainty the scientific method allows” shows she doesn’t know anything about the scientific method or how it’s been (mis)used by climate science.
First, I would tell Ms Huntley that her Social Sciences are not science and only imitate science in form but not repeatability. This is essentially one argument Dr Feynman made regarding the social sciences are better described as pseudoscience.
Second, she said, ”The science behind climate change has been proven correct to the highest degree of certainty the scientific method allows.” which is an outright laughable statement.
That statement from her clearly shows she knows absolutely nothing about climate science and the alarmist claims being made by the climate dowsers she has so much faith in. Also she clearly knows nothing of the natural sciences and what uncertainty is as well no understanding of the real practice of the sciences like physics, chemistry, and biology..
Ms Huntley is simply pathetic… and she doesn’t even know it.
Well she is certainly well versed in the use of logical fallacies
The scientific method allows? Contrary opinions have not been allowed for decades. Well before some argued that ‘the science’ shows that the world has warmed 0.6°C in the 20th C, and most before 1940, which as been ‘robustly adjusted, again, since.
Poor numbers calculated in dubious ways, but labelled sacrosanct by a self designated elite, backed by self serving rulers, is not the scientific method.
I saw this the other day pop up in a Google news feed. I never click on any Guardian poison like this normally but for some reason I thought I’d take a peek.
As you can see from the excerpt above it’s really bad, but the worst, if you dare go there, is the comment section.
There I think there you can see quite clearly the ramping up of the cultural war over this battleground that is climate change.
The totalitarians/puritans/marxists call them what you will, are sharpening their pitchforks for the next Great Purge folks, and it ain’t pretty.
They are the modern-day equivalents of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi who was an ardent environmentalist, a proponent of organic farming, and very much into animal welfare. Pity was that he also was very much into hating many of his fellow human beings, Oh Wait——!
This creature is so blind she cant see her own blinkers bu t insists on putting these blinkers on the rest of us. for our own good you know.
What a doubleplus Paragon of woke British goodthink
Put up a statue of her so that I can pull it down
What does a social scientist know about “The science behind climate change”? Obviously nothing, based on this Grauniad article.
The article author doesn’t know what science is. Science is all about falsification, not the promotion of a false paradigm.
http://phzoe.com/2020/03/04/dumbest-math-theory-ever/
Excellent, Zoe!
How dare you all…… You should be subjected to the ducking-stool….
If you’ve done nothing wrong you need fear not.
What are you talking about Jones?
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/crime-and-law-enforcement/ducking-stool
Thank you kindly Phillip. My English humour is frequently lost on others.
Yes thank you Phillip, but my question was to you Jones. Your comment was a little obscure, did you forget the ‘sarc’ tag?
The science is very clear, we are living in a Ice Age.
Everyone agree we not going to leave the ice Age, what isn’t agree upon is
when we going to return to the glaciation phase of our Ice Age.
A reason we not going to leave this Ice Age is because we have a cold ocean. The average temperature of all of Earth’s oceans is about 3.5 C.
In terms of human lifetimes and the ocean does change it’s temperature much.
I don’t believe there any evidence of the ocean warming or cooling as much a 1 C in time period of less than 1000 years. But over periods of 10,000 years or more the ocean can change by 1 C.
Over last million years of our Ice Age, the ocean has cooled down to about 1 C and has warmed up to about 5 C.
As far as I know: At all times the ocean is cooler, global average air temperature is lower, and all times the ocean is warmer, global average air temperature is higher.
It well know that in last interglacial period, Eemian when global average air temperature was at highest was when the ocean was significantly warmer than our present ocean temperature of 3.5 C.
In terms of within our present interglacial period, Holocene:
“The Holocene Thermal Maximum, also called the Holocene Thermal Optimum, occurred at different times in different parts of the world but generally between 10,000 BP and 4,000 BP. I use BP to indicate years before 2000. The world ocean was probably 0.7°C warmer than today 8,000 BP.”
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/holocene-thermal-optimum/#:~:text=The%20Holocene%20Thermal%20Maximum%2C%20also,warmer%20than%20today%208%2C000%20BP.
https://tinyurl.com/yb8w77xv
And: “First, the world was much warmer 8,000 BP than today and the total heat stored in the atmosphere and in the oceans was much greater. That 0.7°C represents the heat required to warm the atmosphere to over 700°C. This would never happen, of course, ocean-atmosphere heat transfer processes would work to move heat from the ocean to the atmosphere and back again to keep temperatures moderate and stable”
[I assume the ocean was about .5 C warmer]
Also I will note:
“During the “Green Sahara” period (11,000 to 5000 years before the present), the Sahara desert received high amounts of rainfall, supporting diverse vegetation, permanent lakes, and human populations”
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601503?intcmp=trendmd-adv
Wiki says:
“The end of the glacial period brought more rain to the Sahara, from about 8000 BC to 6000 BC, perhaps because of low pressure areas over the collapsing ice sheets to the north.”
I would say, if our ocean warmed by .5 C the Sahara desert would be green.
But it’s going to take at least centuries to warm the ocean by .5 C, and I think we should make Sahara desert green, before nature might be able to do it.
“The science is very clear, we are living in a Ice Age. Everyone agree we not going to leave the ice Age, what isn’t agree upon is when we going to return to the glaciation phase of our Ice Age”
Recent research by reknown climate scientist Professor Mark Maslin shows that our fossil fuel emissions could extend this interglacial by 60 thousands years as it continues to get hotter and hotter.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/03/the-co2-theory-of-everything/
I hope he’s right, but probably not (the “could” word is the clue). Interesting paper though, and I haven’t read Ruddiman (2003), his reference 13 but will this week.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/PT.3.4474
Yeah, even reknown climate scientists think are in Ice Age and we going to return to a glaciation period {have things like 1 mile high ice cap over NYC and sea levels 100 meters lower}.
And were times {tens of millions of years ago} when Earth wasn’t in an Ice Age- Earth was not covered with vast deserts, and their was huge tropical forests in the World.
But Earth now is unusually cold, perhaps the coldest it’s ever been.
One hope for such a warmer time period, but I think realistically it’s not going to happen unless humans make it happen. And if humans are spacefaring civilization they can easily do this.
But right the only easy thing to do is to make Earth become even colder.
Well, besides nuclear, surely we we will be in a position to build giant reflectors that are tunable and in stationary orbit somewhat sideways-on to the planet and choose exactly how we warm the planet via insolation. We probably already have everything we need for this technology, except satisfactory ways to defund parasitic politicians.
….. since we now know that carbon dioxide’s effect is too pathetic to handle the job.
Yes, and have the virtue signaling of using arctic lands to grow bio-sustainable natural food, which is harvested by the certified traditional methods of the indigenous Eskimos.
As do most ecomentalists
“It took me much longer than it should have to realise that educating people about climate change science was not enough”
I have to agree. Educating people about climate change science is not enough. You also have to educate people about statistics. Climate scientists too.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/10/a-monte-carlo-simulation-of-the-carbon-cycle/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/22/climate-science-uncertainty/
Social ‘science’ does allow for considerable intrigue with one’s own musings as a sort of bona fide human phenomenon in itself and so rather ingrown in its seeming high valuation. But as classics professor Allan Bloom observed (over 3 decades ago now) of fellow social science faculty members in his book “The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students”, they so lacked confidence in the real worth of what they had to offer their students in the form of a relativist openness that they quickly caved in to each rebellious student challenge to the traditional operation of a university. And here we are in the logical extension of that asylum run by inmates who are themselves bereft of any abiding wisdom that is contrary to their primal lust for expressive novelty.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53255535 (headlined “ Greta Thunberg, the climate campaigner who doesn’t like campaigning”)
“It took me much longer than it should have to realize that educating people about climate change science was not enough …”.
I wonder what Rebecca’s definition of ‘climate change science’ is.
I also wonder what entitles Rebecca to educate anyone about science of any kind when her only academic qualifications appear to be merely in film studies and something called ‘gender studies’ that has nothing to do with the study of Latin or French nouns and pronouns.
“…in 2003, when respondents were asked in surveys for their first reaction to the phrase “global warming”, only 7% reacted with words like “hoax” or “scam”. By 2010 that had risen to 23%.”
Imagine that! Now, if any of the catastrophic predictions made by Al Gore and others had actually come true, the public would have become more convinced of the need to address climate change instead of more skeptical. Perhaps Rebecca Huntley should take that into consideration instead of thinking she is just so much smarter than the rest of us. You can claim, “the science behind climate change has been proven correct to the highest degree of certainty the scientific method allows.” But if you can only point to the output of computer models rather than actual observations, then people are going to start thinking you’re selling snake oil. No amount of emotional temper tantrums is going to change that. Show us actual data that the climate is getting worse, or keep your mouth shut until you can.
Dunning Kruger in action. No one’s ever told her she’s thick.
She’s too thick to believe it.
Also, why are most of the comments on here referring to climate change, when this is all about phony-climate change? Let’s not fall into the “liberal” words-trap. The only thing the liberal totalitarian wannabes are liberal with is other people’s money. Climate change is something else. That’s actually real.
This paragraph stood out: “ Given that climate change is such a discomforting topic, I see this cognitive dissonance all the time in focus groups, where people try to find reasons other than climate change for the events happening around them, even when faced with a strong scientific explanation. They pick it apart because of Dunning-Kruger and then, because of confirmation bias, try to find a blog that states something other than what the scientific evidence shows.”