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It's hard enough to know how to approach a tragedy of the commons problem like climate change if everyone could agree that it is a problem, but it's difficult f

It's hard enough to know how to approach a tragedy of the commons problem like climate change if everyone could agree that it is a problem, but it's difficult for me to understand why some people will argue that it is in fact happening. I would be interested in understanding the root cause of why people will disagree about this point. For example, a conservative friend of mine, who I think is one of the most intelligent people I know, will argue that climate change does not exist. I've asked him what he makes of e.g. the rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere. His response was there are scientists interested in self promotion and are willing to fabricate data, and/or that we can't actually measure CO2 accurately. Those are very unconvincing counterarguments in my view. I'm led to believe there must be a deeper root cause that prevents someone from objectively looking at data and seeing that some change is occurring (without even coming to a conclusion about what that change means or what to do about it). Yet, I have no idea what that root cause could be. Any ideas?

poke111 9y ago
It's because of the way the issue has been politicized. In people's mind it's a binary issue: either you agree that warming is happening, we are causing it, it is likely to be catastrophic, we can substantially improve the outcome by acting now, and the cost/benefit of this intervention makes sense, or you don't. In reality the basic science is but one small piece, and reasonable people can disagree about the economics or politics of it. But the tribalism of politics make most people boil it down to only two possibilities.
- r00fus 9y ago
  All part and parcel of the anti-climate-change coalition's efforts to poison the well. As long as people are divided, they can continue to pollute the planet while reaping windfall profits. Meanwhile, wind/solar will get killed with new congressional tax plan and state/local legislation that makes them infeasible. Ironically I think only China will have global power to do something about climate change because their air (Beijing) is so damn dirty.
dinoleif 9y ago
Among the conservatives/libertarians/etc in my life, who I broadly consider among the smartest people I know, there is a broad unwillingness to have a real discussion for fear of being shamed. The climate debate has become more about moral posturing and smearing people who disagree as "deniers", which has made it impossible to convince anyone who's not already convinced. It has also deprived climate activists of substantive critiques that could help them move past their own biases (which are substantial).
- llamataboot 9y ago
  Reasonable people can disagree about what our course of action should be and what sort of incentives we should use to bring it about. Reasonable people cannot disagree about the science, which is overwhelmingly on the side of possibly catastrophic climate change that has been brought about by human activities. They are /right/ to be shunned as science deniers, just as we "smear" anti-vaxxers, etc.
  - xupybd 9y ago
    I'd like to point out that yes there is evidence of the possibly of catastrophic climate change. But we do not know enough to have any certainty on probability of catastrophe, we also don't know enough to be sure we could properly mitigate the current changes. Or that any mitigation will have a net positive effect on life on earth. There are very dogmatic people involved in this argument that want to put in place very expensive measures to avoid a catastrophe but we have to be careful. We could drive our global economy into the ground if we go to far. The cost to the environment would be far worse. Industry gets very dirty when people go into survival mode. Clean technologies could alter the balance, but they're only going to get developed if we have the money to invest in them.
    - stuaxo 9y ago
      That sounds like something that could be tackled further down the line. I see people against any changes. Even if global warming wasn't a thing reducing pollution is worth investing in for all sorts of reasons.
oarla 9y ago
My guess is that most people who deny climate change, may actually mean that humans are not the primary reason for climate change. Since this topic has been politicized a lot, it has shifted the meaning of what people mean when they deny climate change. Regarding the data, it's not very conclusive. Given the scale of time over which data has been collected, is it sufficient to create a reliable model and predict the future changes in climate? Even if we were to assume that everyone agreed that human activities are the cause of climate change, it would still require huge amount of participation and co-operation among countries across the globe to fix it. That is impossible.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Then how did things like the Paris accord come to exist in the first place? It's strange, somehow the world manages to cooperate on things like the internet, international banking, and all sorts of other stuff - not perfectly, but substantively - and yet the notion of cooperation on this one issue is 'impossible.' It seems tome that no amount of evidence will ever be sufficient for folks such as yourself, no matter how many predictive milestones are passed.
  - oarla 9y ago
    Paris accord hasn't been around for long enough to see if it'll actually produce meaningful results. Kyoto Protocol was around longer, and would you call it a success? If it was, then why have a Paris accord? The examples you have listed are things where the benefits are pretty immediate, not a couple of generations away. To get to the level of co-operation needed, a significant investment needs to made in educating people of all mindsets, about the benefits of this co-operation. That itself is going to take a couple of generations.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      I didn't say it was easy, but dismissing it as impossible doesn't do anything to accelerate that process because it drains people's morale at the beginning of the task.
  - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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crispinb 9y ago
> Yet, I have no idea what that root cause could be. Any ideas? I don't know, and haven't read anything remotely convincing yet. Accounts based on individual psychology (cognitive biases etc) don't do the job, as this form of irrationalism is peculiarly concentrated in parts of the Anglosphere (notably the US, Australia, and the UK). An explanation can only emerge from the domain of history and/or culture: what has made these regions so distinctly dysfunctional?
- oldboyFX 9y ago
  Are you trying to argue that the US, Australia and the UK are the most irrational and dysfunctional countries in the world?
  - crispinb 9y ago
    No. Not 'most irrational/dysfunctional' in any sense beyond the topic at hand: > this form of irrationalism Nor 'most in the world': > is peculiarly concentrated
danjoc 9y ago
Asking a skeptic how to change their mind, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc Asking a believer? "The science is settled!" http://thecommonroomblog.com/2010/02/who-said-the-science-is-settled.html http://thecommonroomblog.com/2010/02/who-said-the-science-is... I think that's the main problem.
gyokuro 9y ago
I had an eye-opening conversation with a co-worker recently, who unexpectedly disagreed with me about the fact that CO2 was causing global warming. She is an intelligent mechanical engineer, who seems to be very progressive otherwise. Eventually she revealed that the reason that she feels this way is because she is a pretty serious Christian who is trying to reconcile her creationist upbringing with modern science. Since historical CO2 levels are obtained from a "fossil record" of arctic ice cores and geological samples, the evidence for the historical correlation between global warming and CO2 presupposes a certain age and history of the earth which contradicts the creationist myths. I am sure that this is a common issue among such people, since if such a person is to accept the geological evidence for anthropogenic global warming, they have to face a deep contradiction to a long-held worldview and belief system (a contradiction that is actually tangential to the issue of global warming.)
- nashashmi 9y ago
  I also had a conversation with a liberal yet church-going person who would refuse to believe that humans are causing the world to fall apart. The argument here is God created the world for humans and with bountiful resources. So then why would the Earth be heating up and if it is, how could that be bad? It is a common behavior among many conservatives to find holes in climate change like the theories mentioned in your anecdote, but it is extreme and a sign of desperation. I would not give too much importance to it. But what seems to give conservatives and religious individuals reasons to go green is that * Going green increases efficiencies in our consumption of resources * invents new solutions to old problems * and excessive waste corrupts individuals and societies. If climate change activists can beat these three drums more often than waste time telling stories of an Armageddon that may or may not come true, I think we could lead a more healthier march towards green tech.
- charlieflowers 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure that belief in a "young Earth" is not the mainstream Christian belief. I'd guess it's held by a sizable minority (maybe ballpark 30%).
heurist 9y ago
I find this "self-interest" kind of argument very common among conservative friends and family. They also say "follow the money". I have had great difficulty in understanding why they choose to apply these conspiratorial standards to those who promote addressing climate change but not to the massive oil cabal in plain sight that all but controls the global economy.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > I have had great difficulty in understanding... Well, as a thought exercise, imagine that there exist people who apply the "follow the money" standards to military spending, oil cabals, lobbyists, and sugary drink manufacturers but not to green energy companies, abortion providers, unions, etc.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Abortion providers? Really? Who’s getting rich in that space?
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      The Planned Parenthood story about the fetus parts was entirely about monetary incentives. It doesn't have to be about people getting rich necessarily.
      - mikeash 9y ago
        Are you talking about the debunked, misleadingly edited video? If PP’s goal were to make money from abortions, they’d stop offering contraceptives. The fact that essentially nobody argues for abortion but against contraceptives is an easy proof that essentially nobody favors abortion for monetary reasons.
        humanrebar 9y ago
        Sure. Abortion providers have no incentives to make sure abortion is subsidized and lightly regulated. Besides, the inability to entertain the thought experiment is basically my point. The result of the skeptical deliberation is beside the point. Everyone is subject to cognitive dissonance and perverse incentives. Money is just a particularly easy to quantify incentive.
x3iv130f 9y ago
I'm willing to be that many of his family and friends are Conservative, his trusted sources of information are Conservative, and that the famous people and politicians he looks up to are Conservative. All those authority figures in his life are likely unanimous is denying climate change. Then since he self-identifies as Conservative there's a very strong desire to be consistent with those beliefs and community. Being intelligent doesn't mean you're suddenly immune to psychological tricks and ploys. If anything it can be used to make more sophisticated sophistries.
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  >Being intelligent doesn't mean you're suddenly immune to psychological tricks and ploys. If anything it can be used to make more sophisticated sophistries. And yet here you are being extremely presumptuous about some person's background, motivations, and intelligence because they are labeled 'conservative'. Bigotry aside, that's just poor logic. I have to assume you would be equally presumptuous when it comes to interpreting the scope of climate change.
  - Veelox 9y ago
    Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Another way to put it is that it is difficult to get a man to believe something when everyone one he loves and respects does not believe it. I think that was the explication being provided.
deleted 9y ago
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deeg 9y ago
My own opinion after talking with conservative friends and on the 'net is that if climate change is real, the only known option for countering it requires government (or world) regulation. It is hard for people to accept a problem if the only solution violates their strongly held political/moral beliefs. In other words it's easier to deny the problem than admit that your politics has no room for the solution.
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  "the only known option for countering it requires government (or world) regulation." Disagree. The regulation is only neccesary, if the common people/companys don't acknowledge the problem. And even then, I don't think regulation helps much. More likely the opposite. Because if it is just ordered from above, then many just get childish rebellish and do the opposite. This is in my opinion the main problem. Conservative people also like unpolluted citys I believe (side effect of electric cars) - most of them just taken a anti position to the leftish-green-hippi-liberal pro-enviroment stand. So if people wants it, then it will happen. But I believe, we are allready on a good way. It just takes time to change the core of our industry and transport ... it is a huge effort. And will it be too late? That depends. I don't think it will be the end of the world, if the polar bear goes distinct or the netherlands get flooded. And we are allready causing great distruction to nature and people are starving by the millions. And this might get worse, but it is all connected, as the global population numbers are still greatly increasing who all want more things. So I don't see how regulating things down in Europe or US can help with that on a global scale. So we as humanity have big problems, yes, but climate change is only one of them. And the solution to most, in my opinion, is better technology which will supply humanity in a sustainable way. Once people are not hungry anymore and are educated and connected with the rest of the world, then they usually tend to think, before just making more babys - about wheter they really want to raise a child and into what world they want to raise that child ... And back to the topic, if you don't tell the conservatives what to do and think, but just show them how it can be done differently, then they will change, too, I believe.
- roenxi 9y ago
  There is a slightly more subtle point to be made here. Politics is too complicated to generalise, but here is the kernel of the idea for others to mull on. In my view, the part of the government most mobilised to deal with climate change is likely to be aligned to the (hopefully small number of) political actors comfortable with the idea of people getting less energy/more expensive energy/no growth in available energy. I don't want these people in the seat of power under any circumstances. They have views that are a direct threat to my comfort and standard of living. Cheap energy should always be a priority. EDIT Just for reference, focusing only on electricity and ignoring the broader energy market, I have read that South Australia (where Elon Musk is building his big battery) is competitive for world's highest electricity prices. The German energiewende has driven them to top 2 or 3 in Europe for prices paid by consumers. France, who has some of the cheapest and cleanest electricity in the world, runs nuclear. Ironically, in Australia, the most pro-nuclear party is also the anti-climate-change party.
uncle_d 9y ago
There are a number of questions here. Is CO2 rising? Fairly unequivocally, yes. Has the planet warmed? Again, faily clearly yes, since pre-industrial times. Is it still warming? Ok, here we get more contentious. How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, again - e.g. see this book for an argument of how we could explain much if not all of the warming down to various natural cycles: https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-Catastrophe-Independent/dp/1909022241 https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-Catastrophe-I... Is a warming planet a problem? Again, debatable. Rising sea level and ocean acidification scares aside, history suggests that we tend to do better with a warmer climate. This is actually one of the scarier articles I read recently about why rising CO2 is bad - and it's nothing to do with climate: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511 https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrie...
- Malician 9y ago
  That's a subcategory of one of the major arguments about CO2 being bad for as long as I can remember. Namely: the earth will do absolutely fine with rising CO2, but the ecosystem as we know it in the form we rely on will go through a period of unpredictable adaptation which could be catastrophic for us in various ways.
- jjtheblunt 9y ago
  Archeologists regularly are going off shore to see settlements a few thousand years old, in 30 feet of ocean water. What does this say about the warming trend going back a few thousand years pre industrialization?
  - austincheney 9y ago
    That depends on the settlements. There are many Greek settlements far under water, but this has nothing to do with climate. It has everything to do with earthquakes. There is more that changes the world than climate.
  - oldandtired 9y ago
    Archaeologists also regularly go to mountains to see fishing villages that are thousands of feet above sea-level. What does that say about ocean level decreases back over a few thousand years pre-industrialisation? In relation to areas that were once occupied and were just above sea-level, which are now below sea-level or well above it, what are the various known methods to achieve this? Islands have risen out of the sea and other islands have sunk back into the sea even in the 20th century. Investigations at the time established that tectonic or volcanic activity was the likely source of this up-down movement. Don't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the sea level is rising to any significant degree.. One question that is completely ignored is where has the energy been coming from to melt the land-based ice to cause significant ocean level rises in the short periods envisaged. The quantity required is so huge that there would be other effects on the environment before any large scale ice melt would occur. These effects would have long wiped out all life on the planet first.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
I think a large part is that a bunch of separate questions are lumped into a sine question. 1. Is CO2 rising? 2. Is that planet warming? 3. Is CO2 causing the planet warming? 4. Is this due to human caused changes? 5. Will bad stuff happens because of it? 6. Can we actually prevent it? 7. Will mitigation actually be better than prevention? 8. What are actual effective things we can do to prevent it? I think 1-5 is mostly settled, the others are still open questions. However, many people act like it is all just 1 question. This would be akin to somebody supporting a ban on all abortions because it is settled science that a fetus is genetically human and is genetically distinct from the mother, and accusing everyone who disagrees with them of denying genetic science.
- Malician 9y ago
  But the fighting on steps 1-5 was so intense, every step of the way, and the character assassination against the scientists who advocated for them so consistent - I've lost a lot of respect for those responsible, including people close to me. It would be different if they were willing to consider possibilities and work together to find answers and solutions.
  - rpmcmurphy 9y ago
    I more or less cut off contact with several people I used to consider intelligent and open to facts, but they were so blinded by their politics it became pointless to argue with them. I doubt anything will change their minds at this point, which is sad. It's one thing to debate the most appropriate response to this, it is another to deny the underlying physics exist.
- guelo 9y ago
  The denialists have been moving the goalposts on these questions for the last 30 years. At first they strongly denied 1, but slowly they have been conceding on 1-5. Meanwhile their delay tactics have caused 6 to become more and more false. I suspect the 2000 election of Bush over Gore will go down as one of the most consequential elections in human history because every decade of delay will have effects for thousands of years.
- 9y ago
jonmc12 9y ago
Belief systems. When something is not in your sensory environment, and not in your experiential history, you are relying on a belief of what might happen - like, will our crops get rain next week? To illustrate, you might enjoy Joseph Henrich's example of how the Ilahita tribe of Papua New Guinea was able to expand their tribe size beyond the Dunbar number (>300 people). In their case, having a large enough tribe to battle neighboring tribes was a matter of survival against an existential threat. (11:20 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmpSwbtWopM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmpSwbtWopM) What's interesting in the scenario presented was the tribe expanded their religion to a dual moeity system. This introduced new rituals and gods that helped the tribe form economic, social and emotional bonds - ultimately allowing the tribe to expand in size. Its an example of how _belief_ in gods that are contradictory to our modern science provided an organizational fitness function to combat their environment. I'd imagine very few people actually interpret their world through a scientific belief system. Further, what some consider scientific, might not fit the belief system of others who are more rigorous. The lack of widely accepted model for beliefs based on _scientific thinking_ might be the scariest part of our society today. Personally, I blame the short-comings of our language as it is not well suited to communicate scientific knowledge efficiently (ie, for 3rd grade readers) and without ambiguity.
acabal 9y ago
I've thought about this a little too, and ultimately I think it comes down to our culture in the US, and the human individual's tendency to view themselves as inherently good. Most (all?) other countries seem to have accepted climate change as fact, except the US. The culture and way of life of the US is one driven by extreme consumption, sprawl, waste, and cars--the major drivers of climate change. Baby boomers grew up with that way of life, they passed it along to their kids, and (for example) many don't even know what it means to not drive your car to the grocery store. How else would you get food? To step back and say to yourself, "my entire way of life, the only way I've ever known of living, is causing massive destruction" is too much. People can't do it. Individuals all see themselves as inherently good, and to acknowledge that one's very way of life (as opposed to an isolated action, like one day being cranky to a cashier) is causing harm is too self-destructive to the psyche. To accept climate change as real means needing to accept that one's entire way of life has been wrong this entire time. It's much easier to rationalize around reality, than to make serious and sweeping lifestyle and cultural changes. (I can only speak about the US here, though China might possibly have a similar problem; but China acknowledges climate change and their government is taking big steps.) Ultimately this is why I'm growing increasingly pessimistic about climate change. For climate change to be mitigated, the US has to be on board 100%; but the only way we in the US have known how to live since the 20th century started is with unbelievable waste and naked environmental irresponsibility. Changing a whole culture is too slow a process compared to the increasingly fast feedback loops of climate change.
austincheney 9y ago
> I'm led to believe there must be a deeper root cause that prevents someone from objectively looking at data Because almost nobody does this. Most people want to feel smart so they read science journalism, which isn't the research conducted by climate scientists. There is much that gets lost in translation. Consider the following: * "Humans are primarily to blame for global warming". This means the majority of blame falls to humans. Majority is 51% or more but not necessarily 100%. There is more that happens in the world than people driving cars to work. * "The primary cause of the problem is CO2." That doesn't necessarily mean atmospheric composition, but rather a huge host of variables to include feedback mechanisms and cycle durations. You could easily argue humans do more to change the surface of the planet (and oceans) than they do to change the composition of the atmosphere, which in turn dictates the frequency at which feedback mechanisms collect CO2 from the atmosphere. * "CO2 is the worst greenhouse gas." No, the science doesn't indicate this. CO2 is a primary concern because it has the greatest ratio of cyclic duration in the atmosphere to the percentage of atmospheric composition. Water is a more effective greenhouse gas and, in many parts of the world, a larger composition of the atmosphere than CO2. Water's feedback duration is about 8 days (speaking liberally) while CO2 sticks around in the atmosphere closer to 72 days, though. * "A primary cause for alarm is rising oceans." This is a cause for alarm, but one among many and likely not the most important. It is just something clearly visible for simplistic commentary. * "Summers are going to get warmer." This goes without saying, but it isn't complete. Weather will likely become more extreme in many areas, which means warmer summers (actually median average temperatures for most seasons) and likely also cooler winters in temperate areas. Global warming isn't as simple as turning up the house thermostat a degree. --- Bottom line is that most people don't read science. They want to feel informed and smart, but cannot be inconvenienced to decipher facts and analysis written for experienced meteorologists. Most people need the real work dumbed down (substantially), which is what feeds the absolutely unscientific personal belief systems that many people cling too (both for and against).
godelski 9y ago
Arguments from ethos and pathos are stronger than those from logos. In my experience you'll find that these people also tend to believe highly in one authority over another. More so that the other authorities are actually malicious. Which as a scientist I find this funny but frustrating. Because I can say things like "Hey, I've gone through the data myself and checked some of the basic analysis, but I don't see anything that would cause alarm." And I will get responses about how the data is manipulated (even though I have a decent understanding of how it is gathered and that you know, a lot of this data can be pulled from the local airports....). What I find interesting is that these people believe in this grand conspiracy. And personally I think that is where you start looking when trying to understand the root cause. There are definitely a lot of factors involved though. (Not in any order) For one, I think people believe scientists are rich. Which not only couldn't be further from the truth, but that we specifically don't go into it for the money, but the love. I think this comes from the idea of "if you're smart you'll be rich", that is so pervasive. Even just the scientist community is small, and I don't know a single person that knows a person that would purposefully falsify data. Maybe there are some there, but not within a few degrees of freedom. tldr: People think scientists are interested in money. They are, so why aren't scientists? The second part I think is the lack of trust for authority. I think this has to do with the fact that people treat all "science" as equal (and I think we call things science that shouldn't be). An example would be that our certainty in the detection of a gravitational wave is much different than our certainty that having a glass of wine a night is good for you (not going to get into p-values here). The error analysis is completely different. You can't even compare them. One has significantly more variables that contribute to error. Hell, most people think math and engineering is science. tldr: People don't understand basic science or error. The third point is that people do lie. And there definitely is p hacking going on in some of the softer sciences. Combine that with media that use the word scientist as a rubber stamp for credibility, and these people definitely have evidence for "corrupt" (mistakes and naivety aren't malice) researchers. Plus, we definitely are developing an atmosphere of where we are distrustful of authority, especially in politics. So I think when you add all these factors in, it doesn't actually become unreasonable for them to be suspicious. tldr: There is actually reason for them to be suspicious. But how to combat it is an interesting part. From experience I can tell you that going through the data and analysis with these type of people won't get you anywhere. Their eyes glaze over. So you actually have to find a piece that they can understand and agree with. As an example, this guy I drink with has been hard line anti-global warming and hit all three points I mentioned above. Then one day he started to talk to me about how he read about the deforestation for farm animals is changing temperatures. Well from that piece I had my in, and could actually break his barrier and slowly get him to understand. He likes the environment, most people do. But from there I could talk about lack of oxygen production because of deforestation, albedo, carbonation of the oceans and its effect on coral (tie back to oxygen) and other aquatic life, methane production, and other effects. I had his ear because I was talking about what he cared about and eased into it. These topics are easier to understand than CO2 equivalent levels. Because they are right when they say that H2O is a worse greenhouse gas (). Saying things like "100% of scientists agree" or "look at the data" don't mean anything. They've been trained against that. You HAVE to cross the isle. You HAVE to find their interests. tldr: Gain their respect. Talk about easy to understand things that THEY care about the most and ease into the more technical parts. It is human to fight. That when we discuss we tend to more argue. That it is my web of beliefs vs another person's. We really like to be right. So you have to stop arguing and just talk. People LOVE to talk about what they are interested in. DO THAT.
zeefoo 9y ago
> I'm led to believe there must be a deeper root cause that prevents someone from objectively looking at data and seeing that some change is occurring There is, tribalism, and his tribe's political beliefs have decided it's fake, so he'll rationalize that however he must.
replicatorblog 9y ago
I'm not quite in your friend's boat, but I don't worry at all about Climate Change. I buy that the Earth is warming and that it's likely human-driven. But I'm not convinced addressing it is worth radically regulating global industry. Why? Al Gore lives in a 10,000 square foot mansion that uses more energy in a month than the average American home uses in a year. I have no problem with this. It does make me believe that the catastrophic case he makes in his movies may be overblown. It makes it easy for skeptics or "deniers" to dismiss activism around this issue as moral posturing rather than an urgent, evidence-based call to action. Why? I believe Elon Musk, or someone of his ilk, is more likely to solve the problem with a tech breakthrough, than a treaty drawn up in Brussels. Why? If GW is the existential threat many make it out to be, why is nuclear energy given so little consideration? I understand the risk of meltdown and the solid waste management issues, but those seem like manageable risks in comparison with the scary unknowability that global warming brings. Why? Data seems to show the negative effects of global warming are arriving more slowly than expected. It seems like we'll have the ability to slowly adjust to changes that come, rather than imposing radical sanctions on us today. This may turn out to be a mistaken assumption, but it is what it is.
- brianpgordon 9y ago
  > Al Gore lives in a 10,000 square foot mansion that uses more energy in a month than the average American home uses in a year. I don't know if this is true, but if it is it has no bearing on the truth or urgency of the climate change problem. > I believe Elon Musk, or someone of his ilk, is more likely to solve the problem with a tech breakthrough, than a treaty drawn up in Brussels. This seems unlikely to me. Everyone has an incentive to pollute because they don't have to pay for the externality of destroying the environment. Without regulation factories and plants would be dumping effluent into rivers and belching oceans of smoke into the sky. Governments and international cooperation are the only practical way to pressure everyone to play fair and pay for the negative externalities. > If GW is the existential threat many make it out to be, why is nuclear energy given so little consideration? If GW is the existential threat many make it out to be, why are solutions to GW in general given so little consideration? It's a polarizing issue fraught with political perils. By the way, there is a huge amount of support behind thorium reactor research but it hasn't gained enough traction to compete due to the political environment and people's fears of nuclear. And it's extraordinarily capital-intensive to build a nuclear plant; very few profitable opportunities for one exist in the first place. > Data seems to show the negative effects of global warming are arriving more slowly than expected. It seems like we'll have the ability to slowly adjust to changes that come, rather than imposing radical sanctions on us today. An unfortunate aspect of this problem is that we have to make investments now when the catastrophic effects aren't being felt yet in order to head off disaster in the future. Even if follow the Paris accords we're still a long way off from being projected to weather worldwide environmental disaster. Projections will be adjusted as we gather more data, and those projections may have moved forward in the past, but what the best available data shows now is that we need to start making radical changes now.
tim333 9y ago
There's a style of debating where you split into two teams to argue for and against a proposition and it doesn't really matter what you believe, the winners are the ones making the best argument. For instance the Cambridge Union https://cus.org/members/debating/what-debating https://cus.org/members/debating/what-debating Your friends points sound like he's making arguments against warming because that's the team he's on as it were. There's a bit of a human tendency to split into warring teams rather than all pull together. Blame evolution perhaps.
yters 9y ago
The general tone of those claiming global warming is unconvincing. It is shrill, yet based on handwavy evidence like "concensus" or particular examples, and doesn't effectively address counter arguments. Personally, the biggest issue is CO2 is only a minute part of the greenhouse effect compared to water vapor, and human contributions only a portion of that. When we work it out, human contributions to the greenhouse effect are less than a percentage point, if memory serves. Why should I believe poorly understood feedback cycles will amplify the human contributions into untold catastrophe? Plus, there is the generally poor track record of catastrophic environmental predictions, such as global cooling a half century ago, or global warming predictions in 1920s. The whole enterprise is too shrill and shaky.
- yters 9y ago
  Another point is the only very smart people I know who accept global warming do so because it is intellectually fashionable. They do not offer compelling evidence that global warming is true.
  - notyourday 9y ago
    s/global warming is true/anthropological global warming is true/
  - heurist 9y ago
    When you don't have expertise in a field and don't have time to study it, the wisest decision is to trust the scientific community with expertise in that field (and verify as soon as you are able). Even if they are wrong they are the best informed on the matter, and are probably wrong for good reasons. Siding with non-experts who offer no serious counterarguments to the claims and evidence scientists put forth is not rational. I have met and discussed climate change with climate scientists much smarter than me. These people research at institutes world renowned for ground breaking fundamental research and that I personally highly admire. At this point there is no question of whether it is happening or human-induced. They're now using state of the art techniques to research and predict innovation, technology's future ability to reduce climate change, impact on ecosystems and natural resources, impact on urban economies, technologies and social changes that can reduce emissions, infrastructure changes and policy that could be put in place to prevent catastrophe. I understand most people don't have the opportunity to meet climate change researchers like I have. I don't mean to make an appeal to authority beyond acknowledging that I am not an authority and don't know much about climate science compared to these people. But I do think calling it intellectually fashionable is hugely understating the amount of intellectual and financial resources being out into solving this issue. It's the driving academic force of our time.
gotrythis 9y ago
I think the reason people disagree about this point is pretty simple actually. Yes, there are corporate interests, etc, but I think it boils down to the five stages of grief. The earth as we know it is in serious trouble, everyone knows it, and that's too much to handle, so the vast majority of people are in the first stage of grief, which is denial.
- glorifirdious 9y ago
  Actually, deniers of climate change are in the minority by quite a bit. http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-th...
lxcid 9y ago
When one’s identity is being challenged, cognitive dissonance kicks in… Intelligence have little effect on preventing CD. My opinion is one humility have more (positive) effect.
yellowapple 9y ago
In my experience, it's usually a lack of trust. Sure, we can bombard conservatives with hard data all day long, but they'll just scoff at it because they have no way of validating whether that data is even slightly accurate. The fact that this data then seems to justify stronger federal regulation means that the average conservative will distrust it entirely, treating such research as "propaganda" or "fake news". This is not unique to stereotypical "conservatives", either. For example, a lot of American Indian / First Nations tribes firmly believe - as they always have - that they originate from the Americas. Convincing folks otherwise (i.e. that their ancestors were more likely to have immigrated via Beringia, as current archaeological evidence suggests) is difficult; after centuries of the "white man" lying through their teeth in the name of "science", their skepticism toward some new scientific "fact" is unsurprising and understandable (and unfortunate). Same thing with climate change deniers. They've been conditioned to distrust most outside information already; distrusting the evidence for climate change is thus unsurprising and unfortunate. In my own experience, I've found that convincing folks that climate change is actually happening is the easy part. The hard part is convincing them that humans are causing it.

poke111 9y ago

It's because of the way the issue has been politicized. In people's mind it's a binary issue: either you agree that warming is happening, we are causing it, it is likely to be catastrophic, we can substantially improve the outcome by acting now, and the cost/benefit of this intervention makes sense, or you don't. In reality the basic science is but one small piece, and reasonable people can disagree about the economics or politics of it. But the tribalism of politics make most people boil it down to only two possibilities.

r00fus 9y ago
All part and parcel of the anti-climate-change coalition's efforts to poison the well. As long as people are divided, they can continue to pollute the planet while reaping windfall profits. Meanwhile, wind/solar will get killed with new congressional tax plan and state/local legislation that makes them infeasible. Ironically I think only China will have global power to do something about climate change because their air (Beijing) is so damn dirty.

dinoleif 9y ago

Among the conservatives/libertarians/etc in my life, who I broadly consider among the smartest people I know, there is a broad unwillingness to have a real discussion for fear of being shamed. The climate debate has become more about moral posturing and smearing people who disagree as "deniers", which has made it impossible to convince anyone who's not already convinced. It has also deprived climate activists of substantive critiques that could help them move past their own biases (which are substantial).

llamataboot 9y ago
Reasonable people can disagree about what our course of action should be and what sort of incentives we should use to bring it about. Reasonable people cannot disagree about the science, which is overwhelmingly on the side of possibly catastrophic climate change that has been brought about by human activities. They are /right/ to be shunned as science deniers, just as we "smear" anti-vaxxers, etc.
- xupybd 9y ago
  I'd like to point out that yes there is evidence of the possibly of catastrophic climate change. But we do not know enough to have any certainty on probability of catastrophe, we also don't know enough to be sure we could properly mitigate the current changes. Or that any mitigation will have a net positive effect on life on earth. There are very dogmatic people involved in this argument that want to put in place very expensive measures to avoid a catastrophe but we have to be careful. We could drive our global economy into the ground if we go to far. The cost to the environment would be far worse. Industry gets very dirty when people go into survival mode. Clean technologies could alter the balance, but they're only going to get developed if we have the money to invest in them.
  - stuaxo 9y ago
    That sounds like something that could be tackled further down the line. I see people against any changes. Even if global warming wasn't a thing reducing pollution is worth investing in for all sorts of reasons.

oarla 9y ago

My guess is that most people who deny climate change, may actually mean that humans are not the primary reason for climate change. Since this topic has been politicized a lot, it has shifted the meaning of what people mean when they deny climate change. Regarding the data, it's not very conclusive. Given the scale of time over which data has been collected, is it sufficient to create a reliable model and predict the future changes in climate? Even if we were to assume that everyone agreed that human activities are the cause of climate change, it would still require huge amount of participation and co-operation among countries across the globe to fix it. That is impossible.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Then how did things like the Paris accord come to exist in the first place? It's strange, somehow the world manages to cooperate on things like the internet, international banking, and all sorts of other stuff - not perfectly, but substantively - and yet the notion of cooperation on this one issue is 'impossible.' It seems tome that no amount of evidence will ever be sufficient for folks such as yourself, no matter how many predictive milestones are passed.
- oarla 9y ago
  Paris accord hasn't been around for long enough to see if it'll actually produce meaningful results. Kyoto Protocol was around longer, and would you call it a success? If it was, then why have a Paris accord? The examples you have listed are things where the benefits are pretty immediate, not a couple of generations away. To get to the level of co-operation needed, a significant investment needs to made in educating people of all mindsets, about the benefits of this co-operation. That itself is going to take a couple of generations.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    I didn't say it was easy, but dismissing it as impossible doesn't do anything to accelerate that process because it drains people's morale at the beginning of the task.
- 9y ago

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crispinb 9y ago

> Yet, I have no idea what that root cause could be. Any ideas? I don't know, and haven't read anything remotely convincing yet. Accounts based on individual psychology (cognitive biases etc) don't do the job, as this form of irrationalism is peculiarly concentrated in parts of the Anglosphere (notably the US, Australia, and the UK). An explanation can only emerge from the domain of history and/or culture: what has made these regions so distinctly dysfunctional?

oldboyFX 9y ago
Are you trying to argue that the US, Australia and the UK are the most irrational and dysfunctional countries in the world?
- crispinb 9y ago
  No. Not 'most irrational/dysfunctional' in any sense beyond the topic at hand: > this form of irrationalism Nor 'most in the world': > is peculiarly concentrated

danjoc 9y ago

Asking a skeptic how to change their mind, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc Asking a believer? "The science is settled!" http://thecommonroomblog.com/2010/02/who-said-the-science-is-settled.html http://thecommonroomblog.com/2010/02/who-said-the-science-is... I think that's the main problem.

gyokuro 9y ago

I had an eye-opening conversation with a co-worker recently, who unexpectedly disagreed with me about the fact that CO2 was causing global warming. She is an intelligent mechanical engineer, who seems to be very progressive otherwise. Eventually she revealed that the reason that she feels this way is because she is a pretty serious Christian who is trying to reconcile her creationist upbringing with modern science. Since historical CO2 levels are obtained from a "fossil record" of arctic ice cores and geological samples, the evidence for the historical correlation between global warming and CO2 presupposes a certain age and history of the earth which contradicts the creationist myths. I am sure that this is a common issue among such people, since if such a person is to accept the geological evidence for anthropogenic global warming, they have to face a deep contradiction to a long-held worldview and belief system (a contradiction that is actually tangential to the issue of global warming.)

nashashmi 9y ago
I also had a conversation with a liberal yet church-going person who would refuse to believe that humans are causing the world to fall apart. The argument here is God created the world for humans and with bountiful resources. So then why would the Earth be heating up and if it is, how could that be bad? It is a common behavior among many conservatives to find holes in climate change like the theories mentioned in your anecdote, but it is extreme and a sign of desperation. I would not give too much importance to it. But what seems to give conservatives and religious individuals reasons to go green is that * Going green increases efficiencies in our consumption of resources * invents new solutions to old problems * and excessive waste corrupts individuals and societies. If climate change activists can beat these three drums more often than waste time telling stories of an Armageddon that may or may not come true, I think we could lead a more healthier march towards green tech.
charlieflowers 9y ago
I'm pretty sure that belief in a "young Earth" is not the mainstream Christian belief. I'd guess it's held by a sizable minority (maybe ballpark 30%).

heurist 9y ago

I find this "self-interest" kind of argument very common among conservative friends and family. They also say "follow the money". I have had great difficulty in understanding why they choose to apply these conspiratorial standards to those who promote addressing climate change but not to the massive oil cabal in plain sight that all but controls the global economy.

humanrebar 9y ago
> I have had great difficulty in understanding... Well, as a thought exercise, imagine that there exist people who apply the "follow the money" standards to military spending, oil cabals, lobbyists, and sugary drink manufacturers but not to green energy companies, abortion providers, unions, etc.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Abortion providers? Really? Who’s getting rich in that space?
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    The Planned Parenthood story about the fetus parts was entirely about monetary incentives. It doesn't have to be about people getting rich necessarily.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Are you talking about the debunked, misleadingly edited video? If PP’s goal were to make money from abortions, they’d stop offering contraceptives. The fact that essentially nobody argues for abortion but against contraceptives is an easy proof that essentially nobody favors abortion for monetary reasons.
      - humanrebar 9y ago
        Sure. Abortion providers have no incentives to make sure abortion is subsidized and lightly regulated. Besides, the inability to entertain the thought experiment is basically my point. The result of the skeptical deliberation is beside the point. Everyone is subject to cognitive dissonance and perverse incentives. Money is just a particularly easy to quantify incentive.

x3iv130f 9y ago

I'm willing to be that many of his family and friends are Conservative, his trusted sources of information are Conservative, and that the famous people and politicians he looks up to are Conservative. All those authority figures in his life are likely unanimous is denying climate change. Then since he self-identifies as Conservative there's a very strong desire to be consistent with those beliefs and community. Being intelligent doesn't mean you're suddenly immune to psychological tricks and ploys. If anything it can be used to make more sophisticated sophistries.

creaghpatr 9y ago
>Being intelligent doesn't mean you're suddenly immune to psychological tricks and ploys. If anything it can be used to make more sophisticated sophistries. And yet here you are being extremely presumptuous about some person's background, motivations, and intelligence because they are labeled 'conservative'. Bigotry aside, that's just poor logic. I have to assume you would be equally presumptuous when it comes to interpreting the scope of climate change.
- Veelox 9y ago
  Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Another way to put it is that it is difficult to get a man to believe something when everyone one he loves and respects does not believe it. I think that was the explication being provided.

deleted 9y ago

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deeg 9y ago

My own opinion after talking with conservative friends and on the 'net is that if climate change is real, the only known option for countering it requires government (or world) regulation. It is hard for people to accept a problem if the only solution violates their strongly held political/moral beliefs. In other words it's easier to deny the problem than admit that your politics has no room for the solution.

hutzlibu 9y ago
"the only known option for countering it requires government (or world) regulation." Disagree. The regulation is only neccesary, if the common people/companys don't acknowledge the problem. And even then, I don't think regulation helps much. More likely the opposite. Because if it is just ordered from above, then many just get childish rebellish and do the opposite. This is in my opinion the main problem. Conservative people also like unpolluted citys I believe (side effect of electric cars) - most of them just taken a anti position to the leftish-green-hippi-liberal pro-enviroment stand. So if people wants it, then it will happen. But I believe, we are allready on a good way. It just takes time to change the core of our industry and transport ... it is a huge effort. And will it be too late? That depends. I don't think it will be the end of the world, if the polar bear goes distinct or the netherlands get flooded. And we are allready causing great distruction to nature and people are starving by the millions. And this might get worse, but it is all connected, as the global population numbers are still greatly increasing who all want more things. So I don't see how regulating things down in Europe or US can help with that on a global scale. So we as humanity have big problems, yes, but climate change is only one of them. And the solution to most, in my opinion, is better technology which will supply humanity in a sustainable way. Once people are not hungry anymore and are educated and connected with the rest of the world, then they usually tend to think, before just making more babys - about wheter they really want to raise a child and into what world they want to raise that child ... And back to the topic, if you don't tell the conservatives what to do and think, but just show them how it can be done differently, then they will change, too, I believe.
roenxi 9y ago
There is a slightly more subtle point to be made here. Politics is too complicated to generalise, but here is the kernel of the idea for others to mull on. In my view, the part of the government most mobilised to deal with climate change is likely to be aligned to the (hopefully small number of) political actors comfortable with the idea of people getting less energy/more expensive energy/no growth in available energy. I don't want these people in the seat of power under any circumstances. They have views that are a direct threat to my comfort and standard of living. Cheap energy should always be a priority. EDIT Just for reference, focusing only on electricity and ignoring the broader energy market, I have read that South Australia (where Elon Musk is building his big battery) is competitive for world's highest electricity prices. The German energiewende has driven them to top 2 or 3 in Europe for prices paid by consumers. France, who has some of the cheapest and cleanest electricity in the world, runs nuclear. Ironically, in Australia, the most pro-nuclear party is also the anti-climate-change party.

uncle_d 9y ago

There are a number of questions here. Is CO2 rising? Fairly unequivocally, yes. Has the planet warmed? Again, faily clearly yes, since pre-industrial times. Is it still warming? Ok, here we get more contentious. How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, again - e.g. see this book for an argument of how we could explain much if not all of the warming down to various natural cycles: https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-Catastrophe-Independent/dp/1909022241 https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-Catastrophe-I... Is a warming planet a problem? Again, debatable. Rising sea level and ocean acidification scares aside, history suggests that we tend to do better with a warmer climate. This is actually one of the scarier articles I read recently about why rising CO2 is bad - and it's nothing to do with climate: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511 https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrie...

Malician 9y ago
That's a subcategory of one of the major arguments about CO2 being bad for as long as I can remember. Namely: the earth will do absolutely fine with rising CO2, but the ecosystem as we know it in the form we rely on will go through a period of unpredictable adaptation which could be catastrophic for us in various ways.
jjtheblunt 9y ago
Archeologists regularly are going off shore to see settlements a few thousand years old, in 30 feet of ocean water. What does this say about the warming trend going back a few thousand years pre industrialization?
- austincheney 9y ago
  That depends on the settlements. There are many Greek settlements far under water, but this has nothing to do with climate. It has everything to do with earthquakes. There is more that changes the world than climate.
- oldandtired 9y ago
  Archaeologists also regularly go to mountains to see fishing villages that are thousands of feet above sea-level. What does that say about ocean level decreases back over a few thousand years pre-industrialisation? In relation to areas that were once occupied and were just above sea-level, which are now below sea-level or well above it, what are the various known methods to achieve this? Islands have risen out of the sea and other islands have sunk back into the sea even in the 20th century. Investigations at the time established that tectonic or volcanic activity was the likely source of this up-down movement. Don't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that the sea level is rising to any significant degree.. One question that is completely ignored is where has the energy been coming from to melt the land-based ice to cause significant ocean level rises in the short periods envisaged. The quantity required is so huge that there would be other effects on the environment before any large scale ice melt would occur. These effects would have long wiped out all life on the planet first.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

I think a large part is that a bunch of separate questions are lumped into a sine question. 1. Is CO2 rising? 2. Is that planet warming? 3. Is CO2 causing the planet warming? 4. Is this due to human caused changes? 5. Will bad stuff happens because of it? 6. Can we actually prevent it? 7. Will mitigation actually be better than prevention? 8. What are actual effective things we can do to prevent it? I think 1-5 is mostly settled, the others are still open questions. However, many people act like it is all just 1 question. This would be akin to somebody supporting a ban on all abortions because it is settled science that a fetus is genetically human and is genetically distinct from the mother, and accusing everyone who disagrees with them of denying genetic science.

Malician 9y ago
But the fighting on steps 1-5 was so intense, every step of the way, and the character assassination against the scientists who advocated for them so consistent - I've lost a lot of respect for those responsible, including people close to me. It would be different if they were willing to consider possibilities and work together to find answers and solutions.
- rpmcmurphy 9y ago
  I more or less cut off contact with several people I used to consider intelligent and open to facts, but they were so blinded by their politics it became pointless to argue with them. I doubt anything will change their minds at this point, which is sad. It's one thing to debate the most appropriate response to this, it is another to deny the underlying physics exist.
guelo 9y ago
The denialists have been moving the goalposts on these questions for the last 30 years. At first they strongly denied 1, but slowly they have been conceding on 1-5. Meanwhile their delay tactics have caused 6 to become more and more false. I suspect the 2000 election of Bush over Gore will go down as one of the most consequential elections in human history because every decade of delay will have effects for thousands of years.
9y ago

jonmc12 9y ago

Belief systems. When something is not in your sensory environment, and not in your experiential history, you are relying on a belief of what might happen - like, will our crops get rain next week? To illustrate, you might enjoy Joseph Henrich's example of how the Ilahita tribe of Papua New Guinea was able to expand their tribe size beyond the Dunbar number (>300 people). In their case, having a large enough tribe to battle neighboring tribes was a matter of survival against an existential threat. (11:20 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmpSwbtWopM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmpSwbtWopM) What's interesting in the scenario presented was the tribe expanded their religion to a dual moeity system. This introduced new rituals and gods that helped the tribe form economic, social and emotional bonds - ultimately allowing the tribe to expand in size. Its an example of how _belief_ in gods that are contradictory to our modern science provided an organizational fitness function to combat their environment. I'd imagine very few people actually interpret their world through a scientific belief system. Further, what some consider scientific, might not fit the belief system of others who are more rigorous. The lack of widely accepted model for beliefs based on _scientific thinking_ might be the scariest part of our society today. Personally, I blame the short-comings of our language as it is not well suited to communicate scientific knowledge efficiently (ie, for 3rd grade readers) and without ambiguity.

acabal 9y ago

I've thought about this a little too, and ultimately I think it comes down to our culture in the US, and the human individual's tendency to view themselves as inherently good. Most (all?) other countries seem to have accepted climate change as fact, except the US. The culture and way of life of the US is one driven by extreme consumption, sprawl, waste, and cars--the major drivers of climate change. Baby boomers grew up with that way of life, they passed it along to their kids, and (for example) many don't even know what it means to not drive your car to the grocery store. How else would you get food? To step back and say to yourself, "my entire way of life, the only way I've ever known of living, is causing massive destruction" is too much. People can't do it. Individuals all see themselves as inherently good, and to acknowledge that one's very way of life (as opposed to an isolated action, like one day being cranky to a cashier) is causing harm is too self-destructive to the psyche. To accept climate change as real means needing to accept that one's entire way of life has been wrong this entire time. It's much easier to rationalize around reality, than to make serious and sweeping lifestyle and cultural changes. (I can only speak about the US here, though China might possibly have a similar problem; but China acknowledges climate change and their government is taking big steps.) Ultimately this is why I'm growing increasingly pessimistic about climate change. For climate change to be mitigated, the US has to be on board 100%; but the only way we in the US have known how to live since the 20th century started is with unbelievable waste and naked environmental irresponsibility. Changing a whole culture is too slow a process compared to the increasingly fast feedback loops of climate change.

austincheney 9y ago

> I'm led to believe there must be a deeper root cause that prevents someone from objectively looking at data Because almost nobody does this. Most people want to feel smart so they read science journalism, which isn't the research conducted by climate scientists. There is much that gets lost in translation. Consider the following: * "Humans are primarily to blame for global warming". This means the majority of blame falls to humans. Majority is 51% or more but not necessarily 100%. There is more that happens in the world than people driving cars to work. * "The primary cause of the problem is CO2." That doesn't necessarily mean atmospheric composition, but rather a huge host of variables to include feedback mechanisms and cycle durations. You could easily argue humans do more to change the surface of the planet (and oceans) than they do to change the composition of the atmosphere, which in turn dictates the frequency at which feedback mechanisms collect CO2 from the atmosphere. * "CO2 is the worst greenhouse gas." No, the science doesn't indicate this. CO2 is a primary concern because it has the greatest ratio of cyclic duration in the atmosphere to the percentage of atmospheric composition. Water is a more effective greenhouse gas and, in many parts of the world, a larger composition of the atmosphere than CO2. Water's feedback duration is about 8 days (speaking liberally) while CO2 sticks around in the atmosphere closer to 72 days, though. * "A primary cause for alarm is rising oceans." This is a cause for alarm, but one among many and likely not the most important. It is just something clearly visible for simplistic commentary. * "Summers are going to get warmer." This goes without saying, but it isn't complete. Weather will likely become more extreme in many areas, which means warmer summers (actually median average temperatures for most seasons) and likely also cooler winters in temperate areas. Global warming isn't as simple as turning up the house thermostat a degree. --- Bottom line is that most people don't read science. They want to feel informed and smart, but cannot be inconvenienced to decipher facts and analysis written for experienced meteorologists. Most people need the real work dumbed down (substantially), which is what feeds the absolutely unscientific personal belief systems that many people cling too (both for and against).

godelski 9y ago

Arguments from ethos and pathos are stronger than those from logos. In my experience you'll find that these people also tend to believe highly in one authority over another. More so that the other authorities are actually malicious. Which as a scientist I find this funny but frustrating. Because I can say things like "Hey, I've gone through the data myself and checked some of the basic analysis, but I don't see anything that would cause alarm." And I will get responses about how the data is manipulated (even though I have a decent understanding of how it is gathered and that you know, a lot of this data can be pulled from the local airports....). What I find interesting is that these people believe in this grand conspiracy. And personally I think that is where you start looking when trying to understand the root cause. There are definitely a lot of factors involved though. (Not in any order) For one, I think people believe scientists are rich. Which not only couldn't be further from the truth, but that we specifically don't go into it for the money, but the love. I think this comes from the idea of "if you're smart you'll be rich", that is so pervasive. Even just the scientist community is small, and I don't know a single person that knows a person that would purposefully falsify data. Maybe there are some there, but not within a few degrees of freedom. tldr: People think scientists are interested in money. They are, so why aren't scientists? The second part I think is the lack of trust for authority. I think this has to do with the fact that people treat all "science" as equal (and I think we call things science that shouldn't be). An example would be that our certainty in the detection of a gravitational wave is much different than our certainty that having a glass of wine a night is good for you (not going to get into p-values here). The error analysis is completely different. You can't even compare them. One has significantly more variables that contribute to error. Hell, most people think math and engineering is science. tldr: People don't understand basic science or error. The third point is that people do lie. And there definitely is p hacking going on in some of the softer sciences. Combine that with media that use the word scientist as a rubber stamp for credibility, and these people definitely have evidence for "corrupt" (mistakes and naivety aren't malice) researchers. Plus, we definitely are developing an atmosphere of where we are distrustful of authority, especially in politics. So I think when you add all these factors in, it doesn't actually become unreasonable for them to be suspicious. tldr: There is actually reason for them to be suspicious. But how to combat it is an interesting part. From experience I can tell you that going through the data and analysis with these type of people won't get you anywhere. Their eyes glaze over. So you actually have to find a piece that they can understand and agree with. As an example, this guy I drink with has been hard line anti-global warming and hit all three points I mentioned above. Then one day he started to talk to me about how he read about the deforestation for farm animals is changing temperatures. Well from that piece I had my in, and could actually break his barrier and slowly get him to understand. He likes the environment, most people do. But from there I could talk about lack of oxygen production because of deforestation, albedo, carbonation of the oceans and its effect on coral (tie back to oxygen) and other aquatic life, methane production, and other effects. I had his ear because I was talking about what he cared about and eased into it. These topics are easier to understand than CO2 equivalent levels. Because they are right when they say that H2O is a worse greenhouse gas (). Saying things like "100% of scientists agree" or "look at the data" don't mean anything. They've been trained against that. You HAVE to cross the isle. You HAVE to find their interests. tldr: Gain their respect. Talk about easy to understand things that THEY care about the most and ease into the more technical parts. It is human to fight. That when we discuss we tend to more argue. That it is my web of beliefs vs another person's. We really like to be right. So you have to stop arguing and just talk. People LOVE to talk about what they are interested in. DO THAT.

zeefoo 9y ago

> I'm led to believe there must be a deeper root cause that prevents someone from objectively looking at data and seeing that some change is occurring There is, tribalism, and his tribe's political beliefs have decided it's fake, so he'll rationalize that however he must.

replicatorblog 9y ago

I'm not quite in your friend's boat, but I don't worry at all about Climate Change. I buy that the Earth is warming and that it's likely human-driven. But I'm not convinced addressing it is worth radically regulating global industry. Why? Al Gore lives in a 10,000 square foot mansion that uses more energy in a month than the average American home uses in a year. I have no problem with this. It does make me believe that the catastrophic case he makes in his movies may be overblown. It makes it easy for skeptics or "deniers" to dismiss activism around this issue as moral posturing rather than an urgent, evidence-based call to action. Why? I believe Elon Musk, or someone of his ilk, is more likely to solve the problem with a tech breakthrough, than a treaty drawn up in Brussels. Why? If GW is the existential threat many make it out to be, why is nuclear energy given so little consideration? I understand the risk of meltdown and the solid waste management issues, but those seem like manageable risks in comparison with the scary unknowability that global warming brings. Why? Data seems to show the negative effects of global warming are arriving more slowly than expected. It seems like we'll have the ability to slowly adjust to changes that come, rather than imposing radical sanctions on us today. This may turn out to be a mistaken assumption, but it is what it is.

brianpgordon 9y ago
> Al Gore lives in a 10,000 square foot mansion that uses more energy in a month than the average American home uses in a year. I don't know if this is true, but if it is it has no bearing on the truth or urgency of the climate change problem. > I believe Elon Musk, or someone of his ilk, is more likely to solve the problem with a tech breakthrough, than a treaty drawn up in Brussels. This seems unlikely to me. Everyone has an incentive to pollute because they don't have to pay for the externality of destroying the environment. Without regulation factories and plants would be dumping effluent into rivers and belching oceans of smoke into the sky. Governments and international cooperation are the only practical way to pressure everyone to play fair and pay for the negative externalities. > If GW is the existential threat many make it out to be, why is nuclear energy given so little consideration? If GW is the existential threat many make it out to be, why are solutions to GW in general given so little consideration? It's a polarizing issue fraught with political perils. By the way, there is a huge amount of support behind thorium reactor research but it hasn't gained enough traction to compete due to the political environment and people's fears of nuclear. And it's extraordinarily capital-intensive to build a nuclear plant; very few profitable opportunities for one exist in the first place. > Data seems to show the negative effects of global warming are arriving more slowly than expected. It seems like we'll have the ability to slowly adjust to changes that come, rather than imposing radical sanctions on us today. An unfortunate aspect of this problem is that we have to make investments now when the catastrophic effects aren't being felt yet in order to head off disaster in the future. Even if follow the Paris accords we're still a long way off from being projected to weather worldwide environmental disaster. Projections will be adjusted as we gather more data, and those projections may have moved forward in the past, but what the best available data shows now is that we need to start making radical changes now.

tim333 9y ago

There's a style of debating where you split into two teams to argue for and against a proposition and it doesn't really matter what you believe, the winners are the ones making the best argument. For instance the Cambridge Union https://cus.org/members/debating/what-debating https://cus.org/members/debating/what-debating Your friends points sound like he's making arguments against warming because that's the team he's on as it were. There's a bit of a human tendency to split into warring teams rather than all pull together. Blame evolution perhaps.

yters 9y ago

The general tone of those claiming global warming is unconvincing. It is shrill, yet based on handwavy evidence like "concensus" or particular examples, and doesn't effectively address counter arguments. Personally, the biggest issue is CO2 is only a minute part of the greenhouse effect compared to water vapor, and human contributions only a portion of that. When we work it out, human contributions to the greenhouse effect are less than a percentage point, if memory serves. Why should I believe poorly understood feedback cycles will amplify the human contributions into untold catastrophe? Plus, there is the generally poor track record of catastrophic environmental predictions, such as global cooling a half century ago, or global warming predictions in 1920s. The whole enterprise is too shrill and shaky.

yters 9y ago
Another point is the only very smart people I know who accept global warming do so because it is intellectually fashionable. They do not offer compelling evidence that global warming is true.
- notyourday 9y ago
  s/global warming is true/anthropological global warming is true/
- heurist 9y ago
  When you don't have expertise in a field and don't have time to study it, the wisest decision is to trust the scientific community with expertise in that field (and verify as soon as you are able). Even if they are wrong they are the best informed on the matter, and are probably wrong for good reasons. Siding with non-experts who offer no serious counterarguments to the claims and evidence scientists put forth is not rational. I have met and discussed climate change with climate scientists much smarter than me. These people research at institutes world renowned for ground breaking fundamental research and that I personally highly admire. At this point there is no question of whether it is happening or human-induced. They're now using state of the art techniques to research and predict innovation, technology's future ability to reduce climate change, impact on ecosystems and natural resources, impact on urban economies, technologies and social changes that can reduce emissions, infrastructure changes and policy that could be put in place to prevent catastrophe. I understand most people don't have the opportunity to meet climate change researchers like I have. I don't mean to make an appeal to authority beyond acknowledging that I am not an authority and don't know much about climate science compared to these people. But I do think calling it intellectually fashionable is hugely understating the amount of intellectual and financial resources being out into solving this issue. It's the driving academic force of our time.

gotrythis 9y ago

I think the reason people disagree about this point is pretty simple actually. Yes, there are corporate interests, etc, but I think it boils down to the five stages of grief. The earth as we know it is in serious trouble, everyone knows it, and that's too much to handle, so the vast majority of people are in the first stage of grief, which is denial.

glorifirdious 9y ago
Actually, deniers of climate change are in the minority by quite a bit. http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-th...

lxcid 9y ago

When one’s identity is being challenged, cognitive dissonance kicks in… Intelligence have little effect on preventing CD. My opinion is one humility have more (positive) effect.

yellowapple 9y ago

In my experience, it's usually a lack of trust. Sure, we can bombard conservatives with hard data all day long, but they'll just scoff at it because they have no way of validating whether that data is even slightly accurate. The fact that this data then seems to justify stronger federal regulation means that the average conservative will distrust it entirely, treating such research as "propaganda" or "fake news". This is not unique to stereotypical "conservatives", either. For example, a lot of American Indian / First Nations tribes firmly believe - as they always have - that they originate from the Americas. Convincing folks otherwise (i.e. that their ancestors were more likely to have immigrated via Beringia, as current archaeological evidence suggests) is difficult; after centuries of the "white man" lying through their teeth in the name of "science", their skepticism toward some new scientific "fact" is unsurprising and understandable (and unfortunate). Same thing with climate change deniers. They've been conditioned to distrust most outside information already; distrusting the evidence for climate change is thus unsurprising and unfortunate. In my own experience, I've found that convincing folks that climate change is actually happening is the easy part. The hard part is convincing them that humans are causing it.