Essay by Eric Worrall
According to climate research, Democrats are more likely to accept assurances from people who claim to be experts. Republicans don’t trust claims of expertise, they want to see the evidence.
How to talk about climate change: Highlight harms — not benefits — to alter behaviour
Eugene Y. Chan, Toronto Metropolitan University
Published: July 11, 2022 11.31am EDT…
In a recent paper I co-authored with Jack Lin, a student at the California State University Northridge, we found that stressing the “seriousness” or “importance” of climate change could lead to counterintuitive results.
We recruited randomly selected 762 Americans and had them read a passage outlining the effects of climate change. But, in the passage given to half of the participants, we added words such as “serious” and “grave” to stress the importance of the harmful effects of climate change.
We then asked the participants how likely they were to engage in various sustainable behaviours such as eating locally grown foods, taking public transportation and using less water.
You would think that saying that climate change is serious would promote more sustainable behavioural intentions. Instead, we found that using “serious” and other similar adjectives lowered behavioural intentions to make sustainable efforts. This effect was especially pronounced among participants who identified supporting the Republican Party.
Word choice can trigger your sense of free will
How could these results be explained? Well, Republican supporters generally are higher on “psychological reactance.” Meaning they are typically more averse to restrictions on their individual freedoms and sense of free will. Therefore, to say that climate change effects are “serious” are seen by these individuals as an attempt to influence their perceived views of climate change. Conservatives in other parts of the world also tend to score higher on psychological reactance.
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Whether one is conservative or liberal, research has found that highlighting losses is better at promoting behaviours than highlighting gains. For example, indicating the harms to humans, animals and the environment from not acting is more effective than indicating the benefits from acting. Other research has also found that using pie charts to communicate statistics and figures is better at promoting comprehension than writing those figures down in text form.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/amp/how-to-talk-about-climate-change-highlight-harms-not-benefits-to-alter-behaviour-185356
The abstract of the study;
Political ideology and psychological reactance: how serious should climate change be?
Climatic Change volume 172, Article number: 17 (2022) Cite this article
Abstract
The divide in how people with different political views act upon climate change is evident, with conservatives generally less likely to take action to limit the effects of climate change. Typical communications aimed at conveying the importance of climate change and its effects on both the environment and human well-being typically stress the “seriousness” of such effects. In the current examination, we posit that using such adjectives can actually exacerbate the left–right divide. This is likely because, we propose, conservatives are higher on psychological reactance, and so they see communications conveying the “gravity” of climate change to be a limitation of their free will, thus producing the opposite behaviors of what such communications intend. We find support for our hypothesis in two studies with Americans with both dispositional as well as situational psychological reactance measures. Our results offer novel policy implications regarding by suggesting how a typical communication tactic could actually hamper the very aims of such communications.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Read more: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-022-03372-5
Of course, the problem with having to present evidence of harm is that other people can present counter evidence.
For example, claims of climate harm look very shaky in the context of NASA’s evidence the world is greening. To date, adding CO2 to the atmosphere has been beneficial, and has increased plant growth rates across the entire planet.
What about possible future global warming?
The evidence from much warmer periods in the past demonstrates that primates and other mammals thrive in very warm conditions. Our primate ancestors thrived and spread across the planet during the Eocene Thermal Maximum, one of the warmest periods in the paleo record – a period which may have been as much as 14F (8C) warmer than today. Primates thrived during past periods of extreme global warming. If our small brained monkey ancestors figured out how to thrive during past periods of extreme global warming, I’m pretty confident big brained Humans could figure it out.
The evidence of current global greening, and the evidence of past abundance during warm periods, is quite a mountain to climb, for those who wish to persuade evidence based decision makers that a mere 1.5-2C of warming is a climate crisis.
These green devils are so predictable it takes my breath away. Your message is not reasonable or believable so blame the messenger. Just because you have drunk the kool-aid doesn’t mean we all have.
Two years exposure to Anthony Fauci is sufficient to convince any sane citizen that anyone government designates an “expert” is in fact a charlatan.
Let’s not ever forget what President gave grouchy Fauci so much TV face time to scaremonger about Covid — Donald Trump.
A stupid accusation.
Republicans and evidence: 698 mass shootings in USA in 2021. In the whole of Europe (population over 500 million) approx 10.
Apparently it is people who kill not guns – we have different people in Europe.
Exactly, nobody dies in Europe 😉
Just as well all those Ukrainians were disarmed…
F the Ukrainians if they can’t take a joke. We got no dog in that fight,,,,
Everybody has a dog in that fight.
Why? Is your Grannie a Uki?
Why? You can’t see the reason why?
They came for the Jews, but I wasn’t a Jew, so I said nothing.
Martin Niemöller
Yes, something like that. Gregory thinks he won’t be next.
Define a mass shooting.
That’s what’s known as part of the evidential process.
Mass shooting = 4 or more people shot
Mass murder = 4 or more people killed
There has been a significant increase in mass shootings in Europe over the last few years.
The “mass shootings” are mostly gang related.
Biden ought to be traveling to Chicago every monday lamenting the shootings and deaths that took place there over the weekend. But we never hear a peep out of Biden over the slaughter in Chicago. Perhaps that’s why the slaughter continues. Democrats control the city of Chicago.
And yes, it is people who kill people. The trigger doesn’t pull itself.
Gun laws only disarm the law abiding.
Criminals will always have easy access to guns.
Briad definition of mass shootings.
If four people are shot and no one dies,
that’s being called a mass shooting.
The FBI traditional definition for mass murder is a better statistic.
Four or more dead in one incident
A typical year has 100 dead from mass murders.
In 2021 there were about 21,000 gun homicides
Mass murder deaths are less than 1% of total gun homicides.
Leftists frequently combine gun suicides (55%) with gun homicides (45%)
You missed that propaganda Grifter, you’re slipping.
The former prime minister of Japan was killed with a home made gun.
There are also a lot of suicides in Japan, but rarely with guns
Here in the US suicides are almost 55% of gun deaths.
Now you can 3D print a gun.
I don’t believe you can 3D print the barrel. However the barrel is pretty easy to make in just about any machine shop.
Shinzo Abe’s killer apparently did. What was he using for ammunition?
The descriptions I’ve read said that there was a lot of smoke, so black powder is a possibility.
Speaking of being immune to evidence, here comes griff.
As I pointed out to you last time you came up with this little piece of folly.
Gun violence in Europe was very low prior to them passing their current gun laws. These laws had absolutely no impact on the rate of gun violence.
In the US, back in the 1950’s there were almost no gun laws. You could buy a gun through the mail and kids often took guns with them to school because many schools had gun clubs and the kids would do target practice after school. Yet there was almost no gun violence.
In the US, almost all of the gun violence occurs in those places where gun laws are the toughest. Often stricter than gun laws in Europe.
At no time have gun laws brought down gun violence.
griff, Europe has people that give up their guns so that the state can kill them via saving money on medical treatment. Those 698 mass shooting resulted in a total 703 deaths. Just the difference in cancer survival rates between the US and Germany or Britain accounts for 50,000 deaths per year. Decent people of any intelligence think both numbers should be improved upon, but would surely prefer 703 deaths to 50,000. But I guess the people in Europe tend to be more like Democrats than Republicans.
In Europe, socialists are called conservative.
If you push for any form of free market, you qualify as a member of the extreme right.
This is why we have parables like Chicken Little and the Emperor’s New Clothes……to teach people not to follow the herd, develop critical thinking and to take no-one’s word for it.
Nullius in Verba. Shame the Royal Society doesn’t follow its own motto.
In God we trust, all others must bring (measured) data. W. E. Deming
N.B. Computer model output is not measured data.
Oh brother. Another “Oh, if we just ‘communicate’ better, we could convince the non-sheep that bullshit=fact” campaign.
EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE.
Provide EVIDENCE to support every link in your chain of bullshit assertions, or STFU.
Good advice.
BS study is dumb BS.
EVERYONE is skeptical of things that they perceive as harmful.
Take the exact same study but reverse it to make liberals itchy and you’ll find that they need proof, too.
Maybe try it with deregulation. “Regulations are a risk to American competitiveness in the global markets” vs “Regulations are a SERIOUS risk”
See which makes your liberal friends ask for proof. Send your results to the very special people who published this braindead nonsense.
Sorry, this was previously typed by me as all caps and I’m too lazy to retype:
COMING CLIMATE CHANGE CRISIS PROPAGANDA IS SO EFFECTIVE THAT IT PREVENTS MOST PEOPLE FROM ENJOYING TODAY’S WONDERFUL CLIMATE.
U.S. HURRICANES MAKING LANDFALL HAVE BEEN IN A DOWNTREND SINCE THE LATE 1800s.
MAJOR US TORNADOES HAVE BEEN IN A DOWNTREND SINCE THE 1950s.
US HEAT WAVES, DROUGHTS AND FOREST FIRE ACRES BURNED PEAKED IN THE 1930s.
THE 1930s STILL HAVE THE MOST US STATE MAXIMUM HEAT RECORDS OF ANY DECADE, BY FAR.
Not only a totally capitalized statement, also a very bold one. 🤗
Its called shouting louder.
Has anyone “fact checked” whether this article actually originated on The Onion or The Babylon Bee ?
NB : It is a psychology paper, NOT a “climate change” or “(climate) science” paper.
– – – – –
From the abstract of that specific (single) “research” paper (DeGolia et al, 2019) :
Democrat (/ progressive / …) response
1) You are “people (mostly men) in white coats” … which means you must be “experts”
2) If you make the BALD ASSERTION that something is “serious” then … IT IS INDEED “serious”
3) I am (/ we are) too stupid to work it out for myself (/ ourselves), so please TELL ME (/ us) what I (/ we) ALL “have to” do
Republican (/ conservative / libertarian / …) response
1) Bitter experience and world-weary cynicism leads me (/ us ?) to question excessive use of words like “serious” (and/or “crisis” and/or “emergency” … and/or “only temporary, until things go back to ‘normal’ …”)
2) Where is the EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE to support your original BALD ASSERTION ?
>> a passage outlining the effects of climate change
This seems to be the key phrase in here..
This could be of of those examples where the question reveals more about the person asking it, that the people answering.
I havnt read the passage yet, but knowing that there is a difference tremendous between climate change and dominantly human caused global warming and about the critique McKitrick published about attribution from climate models into real world last year, makes me just cringe about what that passage could be and what reaction I am supposed to show with or without their further additions.
I got into this topic realizing that McIntyre was spot on with his questions and critique about Mann´s reconstructions. Then is became clear to me that climate models are not adequate to describe or predict the real world in the necessary detail (just look up how the time constants for the carbon cycle change between every IPCC report).
30 year later, nothing has changed! CMIP6 models show clearly that CMIP5 and all older models got the clouds wrong, the IPCC6 SPM figure 1a is based dominantly on the Cape Ghir proxy series (and again thanks to S. McIntyre for pointing that out), which shows a strong recent warming signal and is the lead factor in the resulting curve in that figure, but completely inconsistent with the temperature trend we know in that region. So everybody who wants to knows wwithout doubt that the first figure of the current IPCC report is fishy, but nobody does anything about it.
Now that is an interesting passage Chan could give out to readers.
Maybe GOP should talk more about the harms of green policies, for example, Sri Lanka or Ghana. Or make clear that much of the current US economic crisis is due to the wat against fossil fuels, the coming food shortages due to the demand to reduce nitrogen fertilizer.
Sales 101: You sell to the emotion of the buyer.
The climate change fear pushers have been selling the fear very effectively for decades now. Trying to counter that with actual facts does not work on a large scale. Sure, you can convince some people who have the time to learn but most of the average people do not care enough or have enough knowledge of the subject to consider the facts.
In order to change the emotional reaction, “warmer is better” must be the focus to counter the “warmer is bad” campaign and it must be done 1000 times more intensely than it is now.
re: “Our primate ancestors thrived and spread across the planet during the Eocene Thermal Maximum, one of the warmest periods in the paleo record – a period which may have been as much as 14F (8C) warmer than today.”
A further temperature increase of 8 degrees C warmer than today would lead to the flooding of the homes of hundreds of millions of people living in coastal regions worldwide. In fact, that degree of warming would eventually put much of the state of Florida underwater.
Yet this author Eric Worrall wants to pretend that such outcomes are no big deal.
So ridiculous.
It ain’t gonna happen overnight Scooter.
The good burgers of threatened inundation would have generations to get t.f. out of Dodge.
How long did sea level rise of ~ 600? ft take after the last ice age finished?
Yet another utterly tragic excuse. If it’s not going to happen within the next couple of decades, then why bother with it?
We’re talking about trillions upon trillions upon trillions in eventual infrastructure losses worldwide with that kind of temperature rise. Or even with significantly less temperatures rise than that. And “skeptics” just want to pretend it all away.
So wildly irresponsible.
And as usual, MGC can’t be bothered to respond to what a person actually wrote.
1) If it takes many decades, people have plenty of time to react and adapt. This “why bother” is just another pitiful attempt on your part to put words into other people’s mouths.
2) It’s centuries, not decades.
3) Trying to panic people over something that is easily adapted to is not responsible. However it’s the only game you got, so I understand why you have no choice but to be irresponsible.
A further temperature increase of 8 degrees C warmer than today …[the thought of which is] So ridiculous.
FIFY
It would take thousands of years for the so much flooding to occur. As buildings reach the end of their productive lives, tear them down and rebuild a bit inland.
No big deal.
Only the utter clueless panic about a few inches of SLR per century.
“It would take thousands of years”
So ridiculously false.
“few inches of SLR per century”
More falsehoods. Sea level is already rising over a foot per century and speeding up.
Only the “utterly clueless” pretend away reality.
And once again, MGC demonstrates his complete impermeability to reality.
At present rates of melting, it will take Greenland about 100,000 years to completely melt. Antarctica on the other hand is gaining ice.
At present, sea levels are only rising about 7 inches per century and there is no sign of any acceleration.
The only so called study that finds “acceleration” found it by splicing two different data sets, that used two different technologies, together.
Of course MGC will defend this mal-practice because it showed the right end results.
re: “At present, sea levels are only rising about 7 inches per century and there is no sign of any acceleration. The only so called study that finds “acceleration” found it by splicing two different data sets, that used two different technologies, together.”
False, false, and false. As usual.
Current rise rate (AVISO 3.5 mm/yr) is over a foot per century. And even your own Willis E. found acceleration; “no sign of any acceleration” is ridiculously wrong. And those two data sets “spliced together” are actually calibrated to each other, so it is known that they match over time.
But your sources of “information” never properly spelled out any of these details, now, did they? No, of course they didn’t. Doesn’t fit the head-in-the-sand political narrative.
The problem with AVISO is that the error bars on that data are several orders of magnitude greater than the signal found.
The other problem with AVISO is that it runs counter to actual measurements made on the ground.
As usual, you take anything that supports your belief system and reject any data that doesn’t.
Have you ever reviewed all of the problems and sources of error that have to be removed from the data when trying to use satellites to measure sea levels? I’m willing to bet that you haven’t. Questioning what you want to believe just isn’t your style.
Willis found that the only way to find “acceleration” was to splice different data sets together. If you look at only the surface readings, there is no acceleration.
re: “The problem with AVISO is that the error bars on that data are several orders of magnitude greater than the signal found.”
More laughable made-up-out-of-thin-air nonsense.
re: “The other problem with AVISO is that it runs counter to actual measurements made on the ground.”
Also false. The satellite data is calibrated with ground based data.
re: “Willis found that the only way to find “acceleration” was to splice different data sets together. If you look at only the surface readings, there is no acceleration.”
And yet another falsehood. Try reading again what Willis actually wrote. Not to mention that there are other major flaws in his “analysis”.
Pretty much nothing that MarkW has posted has been accurate. Nothing. And yet he still wonders why “skeptics” like him are not taken seriously.
Notice how MGC never actually counters the claims of others. Instead he just insults those who don’t worship as he does.
Notice how MarkW ignores the fact that his nonsensical falsehoods have been countered.
He refuses to accept that his “AVISO runs counter to actual measurements made on the ground” is false because the satellite data is actually calibrated with ground based measurements.
He also refuses to go back and check that yes, Willis did actually find acceleration without “splicing different datasets together”.
MarkW simply refuses to accept reality. Period.
But what else is new.
Our economy is now being run by “experts”. Considering their track record, I don’t know why any sentient being would want these people in charge of anything.
Not only can they not show harm at 1.5-2.0 degrees, and most objective scientists say it will be helpful, but it appears from the temperature record that we will achieve that while doing NOTHING to curb manmade CO2!
Or it could be that adding the unnecessary and false “serious”, “dangerous”, alarming” adjectives and adverbs is correctly identified as an overt attempt to propagandize the reader into accepting a FALSE viewpoint.
People who read and think critically do not tend to be fooled by simple “words on a page” — they want to see the evidence behind the word, and that is seldom provided or is obviously “iffy” or “opinion-based ‘facts'”.
For instance — “Alarming increase in hot days” does not change the fact that people have lived through hot summers before. This summer does not seem any different than the last 20 or 30 summers. Thus….”alarming increase” seems like a lie.
“Dangerous winter storm” does not fool a 70 year-old living in the same area all those years — it is just “yet another snowy week” to the Old Man. Not “dangerous” at all.
They reason that hyping up weather into alarm does not work is that thinking critically includes a heavy dose of Psychological Reactance.
“Why is propaganda frequently ineffective in persuading people?
[Psychological] Reactance – the motivation to regain a freedom after it has been lost or threatened – leads people to resist the social influence of others. “
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4675534/
This study conflates “conservatives” and “Republicans” (like almost all politically motivated studies in the USA).
Conservatives are conservatives because they have Psychological Reactance and are not easily influenced by the views of others — conservatives need hard facts and need to see it themselves. Much less likely to “go along to get along”. And much harder to influence with childish, and obvious, propaganda effort of the Climate Alarm crowd.
Psychological Reactance is a GOOD THING . . . . a feature not a bug.
Of course, some psychologists are involved in finding ways to unduly influence others — they think it is their job to help governments and officials game the minds of others. That is a bad thing, not a good thing.
The progressives are deluded in their beliefs that facts are on their side. First, computer models do not output facts. Second, the proclamations of activists or the opinions of self-proclaimed experts are not facts, either.
It’s not facts that drive the left, it’s emotion. At every turn, they turn away from facts and evidence and push feelings. They stoke hysteria at every turn.
When a person’s beliefs are driven by emotion, no appeal to facts or reason is persuasive.
1) Show the “harms” are net harmful.
2) Show there is something significant people can do to avoid the “harms”.
The “harms” may be fully natural. We typically deal with rare impacts as they come, but learn from past impacts and protect ourselves from future events. The question is whether it is possible to circumvent certain “harms” by taking some action. This is where the decision to mitigate or adapt comes into play.
Mitigation assumes we can predict what will happen, and that we can do something significant to lessen the impact of the threat. Costs could be extremely high depending on the will of government or the people to spend, and the perception of the threat level. To what extent can we move the needle? If we can’t have a significant impact, then why bother?
Adaptation assumes nothing other than perhaps we will experience more of the same of what we have seen in the past. Humans have always adapted to their environments, and we use technology to do so. If we have more snow, we build a structure with a stronger roof or a steeper roof. If the weather will be colder, we may insulate more. If there is a threat of flooding, we build on stilts, build levees, or avoid building in flood zones.
Adaptation does not necessarily require anyone to do anything specific. We simply develop ways of coping with changing conditions. Adaptation can be much more consistent with individual liberty and the free market. Mitigation is more consistent with authoritarian government, high taxation, negative economic impacts, and other imposed restrictions.
People protected themselves from the harm caused by tornadoes by building storm shelters.
They didn’t run home to mommy.
They didn’t demand the government do something.
You know you are dealing with idiots when you see advice such as “sustainable behaviours such as eating locally grown foods, taking public transportation and using less water.”
Those people just repeat old greenie lies instead of checking the facts:
Even if buses were completely full, the fact that they have to come to a full stop every few hundred feet means they will never be able to compete with passenger cars in terms of energy efficiency.
PS, in cities, a lot of the energy used by cars is the result of having to stop behind buses.
I think the authors have it backwards. It’s not that Republicans are more apt to be swayed by facts and proofs, it’s that people who are swayed by facts and proof are more apt to become Republicans.
Gee whiz. This seemingly run-of-the-mill WUWT article is generating considerable debate.
It all reminds me of what the great musical satirist Tom Lehrer once said about the contentious political topics of his day: “Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.”
One of my all time favorite Lehrer compositions, one from sixty years ago but possibly relevant to the topic of what science says today about possible harm from climate change, is ‘We will all go together when we go’.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what the Republicans believe, or don’t believe, about the evidence of harm from climate change. I argue here in this long commentary to a recent Francis Menton article that Biden’s war on fossil fuels will go on by fair means or foul regardless of West Virginia versus EPA.
It will go on regardless of public opinion. It will go on regardless of the legal impacts of the major questions doctrine and regardless of what future decisions the Supreme Court might render. It will go on regardless of which party controls the Congress after the 2022 mid-terms.
The only question remaining to be answered is whether or not Biden’s great reset of America’s economy will be permanent and irreversible by the time he leaves office.
“The only question remaining to be answered is whether or not Biden’s great reset of America’s economy will be permanent and irreversible by the time he leaves office.”
That is a good question. I, personally don’t think it would be irreversible, but then I’m an optimist.
There is no evidence of harm being caused by CO2.
When experts do not follow science (computer models are not science) it gives science a bad name. So when a real expert predicts a real future disaster many people will be doubtful.
Journalism is always full of scientists’ “consensus.” (Politics works by consensus, science does not.)
Correct science makes predictions based on an hypothesis. If that prediction fails the scientists should adjust the hypothesis. Since the last century predictions have been made that the Arctic will be ice free by or before today. That has proved to be a faulty prediction based on a faulty hypothesis that carbon dioxide causes global warming.
The existence of an ice-covered north pole demands a change to the hypothesis.
There first needs to be negative consequences. Thus far, the warming (which is probably overwhelmingly natural) has allowed us to grow more food.