Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Conversation asks why ordinary people are so hostile towards Extinction Rebellion, when the world is on the brink of a sixth major extinction?
In the face of chaos, why are we so nonchalant about climate change?
October 19, 2021 9.37pm AEDT
Tom Pettinger
Research Fellow in Politics and International Studies, University of WarwickThe dire state of the planet’s health was unambiguously demonstrated by the UN’s climate body, the IPCC, when it sounded a “code red” for humanity in its latest report.
Yet public involvement in environmental activism has consistently remained muted, particularly in the wealthier nations most responsible for the destruction of the environment.
In the UK, for example, peaceful protest by environmentalist groups like Extinction Rebellion tends to be opposed more than it’s supported. This is despite the limited disruption these groups cause in comparison to the extreme disruption already produced and threatened by climate breakdown, such as extreme droughts, wildfires and tropical storms.
Recent protests blocking British motorways to call for the government to insulate homes have been met not with policy reform but with outrage and proposals to increase police power to arrest protesters.
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So why do so many people oppose the call for change in the face of a sixth mass extinction? Why is there resignation, rather than resistance?
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And I think that the lack of widespread mobilisation is borne, not from outright climate denial, but rather from a more insidious climate apathy: what might be called “climate nonchalance”.
This nonchalance – recognising the impending collapse of our world and shrugging our shoulders – is made possible only by a profound separation between the comfortable lifestyles of the privileged and the consequences of those lifestyles elsewhere: including increased death rates, frequent exploitation and environmental displacement for the less privileged.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/in-the-face-of-chaos-why-are-we-so-nonchalant-about-climate-change-166040
The author appears to suggest people are too comfortable to embrace change. We do not support Extinction Rebellion because we are selfish and lazy.
But I think the answer is far simpler – human belief is a continuum.
How can the answer to a true or false question, like “is climate change a problem”, be a continuum?
As a software developer, I see this odd continuum behaviour manifest all the time, when working with artificial neural networks.
Neural networks, attempts to create an artificial intelligence which mimics the architecture of the human brain, are not places where the absolute rules. If you say attempt to train a neural network to add two numbers, it is very difficult to get an exact result. Ask a trained neural net the answer to 2 + 2, and you will receive an answer like 4.1, or 3.9, or 3.5 – anything but 4, most of the time, unless the neural net is very rigorously trained.
Similarly if you ask a trained neural network if something is true or false, you are more likely get an answer like 70% true, or 48% true. An answer of 100% or 99% true is very unusual.
Computer scientists usually deal with this kind of ambiguity from artificial neural networks by interpreting the answer. So for example, they might apply a rule that if the answer is 70% or more true, report the answer as completely true.
Obviously humans are capable of concise mathematics, so our brains are not exactly the same as artificial neural networks, but in my opinion this neural net continuum of belief manifests throughout human behaviour when you look for it.
For example, many people when asked agree that climate change is a problem. But if you ask them if they are wiling to spend even one dollar more to fix climate change, agreement plummets.
Based on what I have personally experienced when working with artificial intelligence, I believe this strange belief yet not belief is a manifestation of the human brain’s neural net continuum of belief. People might answer they believe in climate change, they believe enough to say yes, but deep down they do not believe enough to commit actual effort to solving the issue they verbally agree is a problem.
Society’s current level of almost belief is precarious – a neural net which returns an answer of 70% true can easily be trained to raise that result to 98% or whatever. Getting to 70% is far more difficult than raising 70% to 98%. In my opinion there is a real ongoing risk that people who are mildly concerned about climate change could be rapidly tipped over into fanaticism.
But training an artificial neural network to such a fever pitch of compliance requires utter silencing of all discord in the training data. Even a few discordant training samples, a handful of voices raised in disagreement, is enough to introduce doubt, to nudge the neural network away from perfect compliance.
If you achieve perfect compliance, the end result of such rigorous training is surprisingly dysfunctional. Overtraining or overfitting as AI scientists describe it, creates an artificial neural network which is far less able to cope with ambiguity or new data, than a neural network which was less rigorously trained, or was trained using noisier, more discordant data. An overtrained neural network responds perfectly to its training stimuli, but does not respond well when presented with new data (see the diagram at the top of the page).
The parallel with the human condition seems obvious.
I am joking but maybe I am not?
The answer is explained by the children’s tale about the little boy who cried wolf too often, everybody stopped listening to him.
In marketing it is unwise to repeat the same advertisement for too long, same reason that people lose interest and ignore it.
Not a joke. We’ve been hearing the doomsday predictions of global warming, watched the shifting goalposts, and seen nothing much materialize for the past 40 years.
Have you noticed that the loudest activists are all young? That’s because they haven’t experienced the continuous pushing back of the doomsday deadline, they haven’t been deadened to the hysteria. So we get a 16-year old scolding the world. They hear the so-called consensus pushing fear for the future and are understandably swayed. In 20 years when they hear “we have to do something in the next 10 years or we’ll be past the tipping point” for the 40th time most of them will respond with “oh, that again?”
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5720/downs_1972.pdf
There are five stages in any social or political movement and climate change has run its course:
Five (5) Stages of Interest in Political Issues
Political scientist Anthony Downs described the downward trajectory of many political movements in an article for the Public Interest, “Up and Down With Ecology: The ‘Issue-Attention Cycle,’ ” published in 1972. Observing the movements that had arisen to address issues like crime, poverty and even the U.S.-Soviet space race, Mr. Downs discerned a five-stage cycle through which political issues pass regularly.
· The first stage involves groups of experts and activists calling attention to a public problem, which leads quickly to
· The second stage, wherein the alarmed media and political class discover the issue. The second stage typically includes a large amount of euphoric enthusiasm—you might call it the “dopamine” stage—as activists conceive the issue in terms of global peril and salvation.
· The third stage: the hinge…there soon comes “a gradually spreading realization that the cost of ‘solving’ the problem is very high indeed.”
· the fourth stage: a gradual decline in the intensity of public interest in the problem.”
· The fifth stage – where an issue that has been replaced at the center of public concern moves into a prolonged limbo—a twilight realm of lesser attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest.”
I am strongly in favour of Extinction Rebellion becoming extinct! i would almost consider driving over the top of them if they glued themselves to a road near me. However, like most other middle class hypocrites, they dont intend the requirements of zero emissions to apply to them. The best laugh I had in a long time was watching the locals deal with the fools when they tried to stop the train in London. I note they have not been back there to Camden Town. Perhaps if our police did their jobs and stopped XR inconveniencing the majority of us, we would see less of these fools. And if it is too much for the coppers, just get out of the way and let the citizens deal with them.
The problem is that police departments world over, are run by the politicians.
For any police officer opposing the radicals could cost them their jobs.
If it was a matter of public safety, I’m sure most would do something.
As long as it remains a matter of public convenience, most will decide to preserve their jobs.
Yet public involvement in environmental activism has consistently remained muted, particularly in the wealthier nations most responsible for the destruction of the environment.
It’s pretty simple. Leftys taught everyone that anything goes bump in the night then Big Gummint takes care of it with Laws Regulations and Taxes. Ipso facto they now expect Big Gummint and Big Biz to take care of it and it will all be fine. Basically leftys are victims of their own success in that regard.
XR just ooze middle class entitlement
They’re no friend of the working classes, they loathe them
The trouble with the climate catastrophe story is that the catastrophe is always in the future. I cannot imagine anyone really being concerned about the state of the world thirty years from now. Thirty years from now, everyone will be thirty years older and baby, thirty years of normal aging is going to hurt you a lot more than an immeasurably trivial rise in the mean global temperature.
In thirty years, Greta Thunberg is going to be 48. (I am going to be dead for about twenty years, which will probably be a dramatic change in my present state of wellbeing.) Greta is going to be a lot nore upset about middle age than she ever was about rising oceans.
Like all mirages, they recede into the distance as they are approached.
Ford Prefect had the answer down pat:
There you have it, folks!
Arrrrggg!
Apparently these morons are invading Australia now!
It’s like climate refugees and people who weren’t allowed to vote because of voter ID requirements.
I’m still waiting for them to find the first one.
Climate change fear could be ended very easily. It just takes the media to bring skeptical scientists onto their shows, giving scientific counter arguments using real data. Even disseminating a few facts about this “code red” – that it is based on an absurd RCP8.5 scenario, and that the computer model is actually an average of 100+ different models that vary from 1.5C to 10C – just giving these facts would damage the credibility of the alarmist position. Imagine if they broadcast interviews with Willy Soon, Patrick Moore and Richard Lindzen. Basically, game over.
However, the media learned a long time ago that disaster sells newspapers, etc.
They also learned that the politicians they favor won’t get elected with the truth.
the problem is XR have two distinct groups
Spoiled western school kids who have everthing and no reason but to protest that they are hard done buy buy living in a very comfortable place
And retired grey haired middle class nobodies who at best were public service bureaucrats or low level losers pushing paper – they are now trying to prove to themselves that their life had meaning so they are out protesting
Unfortunately both groups are uneducated and stupid and dont realise that without energy there is no society period – that is the basics of life (food water and shelter) will disappear
there wont be facebook iphones etc
whats worse is everybody believe the information and nobody even challenges it
pain is very near this winter with no energy
I hope the XR people are made to suffer for there stupidity
I prefer to judge people by their actions, not their words. Here’s an example of Extinction Rebellion in action https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-london-49923049
Why are People so Climate Nonchalant?
Easy. Because they don’t have your mental illness. Next question?
Yet public involvement in environmental activism has consistently remained muted, particularly in the wealthier nations most responsible for the destruction of the environment.
The narcissistic delusion is strong in this one. Wealthy nations of the west are literally the only nations of the world where climate change has any traction. It’s the issue du jour for the privileged. Poor people, poor nations – not so much.
People in Third World countries have real problems to worry about, like putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads. The entire Green movement is a luxury for wealthy, narcissistic Westerners.
“So why do so many people oppose the call for change in the face of a sixth mass extinction?.”
So we’ve gone from ‘nonchalent’ to ‘opposing’ in one easy step, they are not the same thing.
People who lie constantly about things they know nothing about are generally ignored by the majority, you can call it ‘nonchalence’ if you like.
People are ‘opposed’ to idiotic, dramatic change that resolves none of the ‘imaginary’ problems. People like reasoned argument, not fanatical scaremongery.
The public have long since lost their faith in polititians and activists, and now you can add scientists to the list.
Sixth mass extinction my arse.
Conveniently, all of the species that are going extinct, are ones still unknown to science.
Of the species known to science, they are all doing well. (Except the ones being over hunted.)
Or over fished. Or logged faster than the tree can grow back. Or aquifers drawn down faster than they can recharge. Not unlike a personal bank account.
I have a feeling the general population doesn’t give a rat’s ass about so called climate change. This nonsense has been spewed for decades by a rich elite who travel first class, living in big houses – there is a clue there and most people see it.
“Insulate Britain trains ‘working class’ activists to give interviews on TV to try to shake off its ‘middle class crusties’ image and appeal to Red Wall voters”
Which went horribly wrong when their ‘common’ spokesman, Liam Norton, went off script in a radio interview:
“Asked why he hadn’t insulated his home by host Cristo Foufas, Norton replied, “Because I’m a hypocrite.”
“Do you understand why people will think, well, this guy doesn’t really care about insulation, he only cares about disruption and trying to make a name for himself?” Cristo asked.
“Yeah, they’re right. I don’t particularly care about insulation,” Norton replied.”
https://www.climatedepot.com/2021/10/13/leader-of-insulate-britain-protest-group-i-dont-particularly-care-about-insulation/
Behind the failed ‘levelling down’ was Dr Larch Maxey. Maxey is also a leading light in XR.
Here he is in action attempting to glue himself to an automatic door at Bristol Town Hall – try not to laugh
The idiocracy is here.
If you get enough of these idiots t superglue themselves to your house it would be really good insulation 🙂
As the economies of the west tank and blackouts become common climate change will be a distant memory in most peoples thinking.
It never occurs to the author that maybe people need to heat their homes and drive cars and getting people killed by gluing yourself to a highway is stupid.
“…. the impending collapse of our world….”
People with common sense will ignore people who talk that way.
Climate models have a significant training and validation set, and yet they overpredict the temperature (except for that pesky Russian model). Over-trained, over-fitted using multiple adjustable variables that we don’t know the correct values, and not very good. Clearly funded by taxpayer monet since companies that have to make a profit can’t afford to be wrong for very long.
Personally, having studied the climate since 2006, I am far more worried about global cooling than I am about global warming. Other than moving toward the equator and emitting more CO2 to encourage more plant growth, I doubt that we can do anything about it.
More people would agree to spending money on this supposed problem IF there were any evidence supporting the idea – and I do NOT include ridiculously incomplete and deliberately biased computer models!
Because despite Democrats, Liberals, Islamists, and assorted Leftists being in power around the world, most people have enough common sense to see that Greta and Kerry and the hype are simply hysterics and not based on facts.
Occam’s Razer: Why do people act like climate change is not a priority?
Because they think climate change is not a priority.
The Conversation ought to ask themselves, “Why do people think we are wrong?” Instead they ask themselves “How can we persuade others that we are right?”.
Science works through doubting what one knows. Religion works through understanding one’s doubt. Madness works through having no doubt.
The Conversation has gone off the deep end here.
Maybe even simpler than a continuum, i.e. the collective knowledge knows better than the intelligentsia. Happens all the time in free markets. All the analysts think a stock will do X and the stock does the opposite and the market, i.e. the collective knowledge, is usually more right than the experts. Predictit beats the experts all the time. Same with the Radon scare, it came and went. This is why socialism is designed to fail, in an uncertain world, sooner or later a bad decision is forced on the masses and disaster ensues.
Well here’s a ripping good idea from the climate changers for once. Grab the public sector pension fund money to change the climate and not leave anyone behind with their Green New Deal-
MPs urge pension schemes to cushion economic effects of UK’s net zero plan (msn.com)
How could they possibly object investing in net zero where all the juicy future returns are?