Essay by Eric Worrall
Associate Professor of Philosophy Michael Brownstein thinks you can lead your neighbourhood to climate activism by riding a bike and installing a heat pump.
The surprisingly simple way to convince people to go green
Advice by Michael J. Coren Climate Advice Columnist
December 5, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EST…
Your trusted inner circle is one of the most potent and overlooked weapons to stave off the worst of climate change. Our individual actions appear small, but they act as billboards for others looking for cues on what to do in their own lives. These social comparisons can add up.
The most powerful thing that gets people and politicians to support biking? Seeing other people ride their bikes, says Michael Brownstein, an associate professor of philosophy at the City University of New York. “It’s a shift of perspective to see yourself as a member of the community, as an entrepreneur of norms,”says Brownstein, who studies societal change.
While policy, regulation andclean technology are essential to reduce emissions, they aren’t sufficient. Humans evolved, says Brownstein, to pay incredibly close attention to what others are thinking and doing as models for their own behavior.
…
There’s an assumption that good data speaks for itself. In reality, it usually whispers. Take vaccines. About 21 percent of eligible Americans say they still haven’t gotten a coronavirus shot. “Maybe we underinvested in behavioral research,” Francis Collins, then leading the National Institutes of Health, said to “NewsHour” on PBS in 2021. “I never imagined a year ago, when those vaccines were just proving to be fantastically safe and effective, that we would still have 60 million people who had not taken advantage of them.”
…
For now, unfortunately, we just don’t know what’s going on in people’s heads, says Fischhoff. Few rigorous studies have been done on why people change their climate behaviors. “We don’t know how people are making these decisions,” he says.
…
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/05/improve-sustainability-help-climate-change/
I can’t help thinking the professor has over generalised his theory of human behaviour.
I get that a lot of people copy others, otherwise there wouldn’t be any fashions or trends. But there are plenty of the other kind of people as well.
The Covid vaccine is an interesting case in point. I didn’t decide to reject the vaccine because President Trump said “make up your mind”, or some big name Conservative expressed doubt, I rejected the vaccine because I read studies suggesting previous SARS vaccines created horrible immunological complications, and concluded that accepting an untested SARS vaccine, which had every chance of being just as broken as the previous SARS vaccines, was a risky idea. Covid, or SARS-CoV-2, is very much a SARS virus. Many of my friends took the vaccine, and I respected their choice. Some of my friends listened to me, when I mentioned I had some concerns, but they didn’t blindly take my word for it, they demanded to see some research.
What about climate claims? Here it gets even more interesting. Surveys repeatedly rate climate change dead last in terms of life priorities. So most of those follower types who claim to take climate change seriously appear to be somewhat less than totally committed to the cause. They might buy a bike because the neighbour is riding around parading his virtue, but that bike stays in the garage next time it rains.
Being contrary, demanding evidence before acting, is not an impediment to action, it is very obviously necessary, a critical human survival trait. In a dangerous situation, perhaps jumping off a cliff is the only option, but jumping off that cliff is dangerous. People who follow the leader off the cliff are helping to ensure the survival of their tribe. But those who refuse to follow, who stay behind to face whatever is causing the scary rustling noise, they are also helping to ensure the survival of the tribe. Both kinds of people are necessary, a successful evolutionary survival strategy which has passed the test of time.
The sad thing is people who are running out of money are asking family visitors not to turn up the heat because they can’t afford the bill.
Humans evolved, says Brownstein, to pay incredibly close attention to what others are thinking and doing as models for their own behavior.
And sure enough, once the motor car appeared in a reliable and economic form – with its abilities to haul multiple passengers and freight – the abovementioned herd mentality spread worldwide as the average citizen abandoned the donkey, the horse and buggy and the bicycle for the vastly superior benefits of the auto in overcoming time, distance and back pain.
And if Brownstein thinks that merely trying to reverse that decision, without providing any benefits superior to fawning green reporters clucking their admiration, he can rightly and safely be ignored.
If a neighbor of mine bragged about installing a heat pump, I’d tell him to enjoy freezing his ass off when it gets cold.
I wouldn’t repeat his stupid mistake.
In the US there is a Natural Gas Engine powered heat pump for commercial and large residential buildings. The virtue signaling City of Las Vegas built 4 new fire stations using them for their air conditioning and heating needs. They work REALLY WELL and are way cheaper to run than electric heat pumps, even considering the maintenance requirements for oil changes, etc.
The smallest unit is 7 1/2 tons the larger 10 or 12, I can’t remember.
I looked into putting one on a 4300 sq. ft. house but it was prohibitively expensive as a retrofit.
I spoke with a Mechanical Engineer who designs residential systems, I was a plan reviewer and knew he is VERY good. I was already retired but he gave me a little time. He told me that initial costs is close to double a conventional AC with gas furnace installations BUT you get much more flexibility with multiple zoning and the ability heat or cool to a lesser extent areas of the house not being used. When you are using less output, you are still using the whole large heat exchanger on the outdoor unit so efficiency goes way up. Multiple compressors are run by clutches, off the engine specifically built to burn natural gas, so only the number of compressors (2 or 4 depending on the unit) needed are spinning at any one time.
With the cost savings from electric to gas he estimated that most McMansions would pay off the difference in about 5 years in Las Vegas, with better comfort levels in the areas being used.
In the heating cycle, the system uses exhaust heat from the engine to boost the heating output, a win/win.
You do have engine noise, not a lot, but McMansions have yard areas to mitigate that.
I actually called the system designers and asked why they did not build a small 4 to 5 ton package unit for rooftop installation. If you have ever flown into Las Vegas or Phoenix, you have seen the thousands of rooftop AC/gas furnace package units installed. Since power and gas are already there, a changeout to a engine driven unit would be really easy, and the gas engine would not be any more noisy than a typical electric compressor. The engineer I spoke with (it really is amazing who you can talk to just by asking) told me that that was a good idea, and they could think about that in the future.
He told me they were working on designs for the US military where the unit, of a specific size to meet the military specifications, would provide all the power, water heating, and space heating/cooling for a mobile mess and shower facility. The unit would be dropped in place, with an LPG tank or two dropped beside it and the remote base would be up and running almost immediately. This was 10 years ago so I don’t know what came of that.
So depending on the size, heat pumps COULD be really good, if run off of natural gas.
About 61% of Americans support the “climate change” agenda. Two-thirds of Republicans under 30 support it and about 40 percent of Republicans overall say we should find new energy sources according to a recent Pew poll.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/
You going to post this on every essay?
The good Associate Professor of Philosophy, somehow knows that CoVID vaccines are safe and effective when the data says otherwise and that we should try to get people onto bikes to reduce emissions when there is not data supporting that proposal.
I am an infectious disease specialist. I state that not to imply I should be believed in my area of expertise (you would have no trouble finding people with similar credentials stating completely different conclusions than mine), but to simply note that this is my wheel house and I spend a large part of my time learning about and working with the consequences of infections in the human population. My thoughts about it don’t come from CNN, Sleepy Joe or tictoc.
I knew with some certainty in early-mid 2020 that CoVID was a mild illness for the vast majority of people, that those who were elderly or had chronic medical conditions were most at risk, that we had no good evidence that masks, distancing and lockdowns were necessary or effective in stemming the pandemic and I was fairly sure that vaccines (not then available) were not going to play a significant role in ending the pandemic. I knew this because we had a large body of evidence and experience around acute viral respiratory infections in people including a collection of well-known human-adapted coronaviruses.
It was also evident that closing schools and businesses was going to be far more damaging than helpful. I would not have allowed myself to be vaccinated with an experimental mRNA vaccine that had not been in production nearly long enough to be adequately tested for safety and efficacy, had it not been for the fact that higher ups insisted it was that or stop providing medical care to my patients. Now I could easily have reached those conclusions in error in 2020, but I think that time and experience has shown I was largely correct. What is really surprising is how many lay-people were able to discern these facts without a specialists background during the CoVID pandemic and made rational and, in retrospect, wise decisions for themselves and their families.
In spite of that a large majority of those in charge at the time, and an
Associate Professor of Philosophy today came to completely different conclusions and advocated for policies that were an unmitigated disaster.
Sorry but the lack of edit function makes it impossible to correct when the enter button is accidentally pushed too soon.
Note his profession. As soon as philosophy professors reveal their employment, their credibility vanishes.
There is one class of people who do manage to emulate lemmings. Leftists.
Leftists are all about letting others do their thinking for them.
Leftists take great pride in doing what those in authority tell them to do.
>> Surveys repeatedly rate climate change dead last in terms of life priorities.
I couldnt care less about that. why should I trust any surveys often they are manipulated bs?
BTW “manmade global warming” is the term to discuss not “climate disruption” or any of those made up aliases.
And or course if the science supports various claims or not, survey.. pfff!
Reconstruction dubious, attributions not matching reality and models lack a validation process..
What is the basis for global warming science?
Some of my inner circle are complete morons who believe that they will be informed by the BBC and the Guardian, and the vax is ‘safe and effective’ and importing over 10% of energy is not a potential problem for our energy security.