40 ms·

The Psychology of Climate Change Denial

13 points by sleepingbot 17y ago

billswift 17y ago
I don't know about others but I came to doubt AGW because of inconsistencies in their claims and the data they used. And because of their striking similarities in techniques (computer modelling of systems too complex for competent models) and prescriptions (we must suffer and gov't needs more power, MORE POWER) that they shared with other environmentalist claims that have been falsified over the decades. I already knew that they have been fudging the data, from their own reports, long before this leak from CRU.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  Your response is far from unusual; in fact, it's probably a greater example of the psychology of AGW denial than any of the ones cited in the article. There is a pattern of thinking which is common in many areas of expertise, but is especially prevalent in technical professions. It goes like this: the best solution to a complex problem is a simple one, and if the problem is so complex that I can't understand it in ten minutes, then it isn't worth my time. So, for example, rather than taking the time to absorb the myriad complexities of climatology, and rather than reading the emails ourselves and analyzing their content and context, we instead take the "simpler" solution, the shortcut: we say, these emails are evidence of what I always believed all along, that the entire field of climatology is a hoax. And really, that's a beautifully simplistic explanation for a very complicated field. Rather than needing to understand the field, it's much simpler to just say, this thing is a global conspiracy, and then move on to the next simple solution to a complex problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the inconsistencies in claims and data that people love to point to are actually things that have explanations, that can be understood -- if someone takes the time and effort to do it. It's really rather like the Monty Hall Problem. Marliyn vos Savant ended up having mathematics professors -- among others -- writing to her for a long time after she published the correct solution to that problem. The solution they proposed instead -- while much simpler to understand -- was wrong. Understanding the right solution took much more effort, and required abandoning certain preconceived notions. Climatology is much the same in this respect.
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    It's similar to evolution in that regard. Much has been written by advocates of it that is wrong and disagrees with other things written about it. That does not mean one should throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I'd suspect most people don't think as deeply as OP. Most people take a side in this debate based solely on their politics and/or wishful thinking.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > Not to put too fine a point on it, but the inconsistencies in claims and data that people love to point to are actually things that have explanations, that can be understood -- if someone takes the time and effort to do it. Oh really? The procedure that generated the hockey stick graph doesn't generate roughly the same graph almost independent of the input data? Unfortunately for the "it's all okay" theory, the CRU folks keep admitting things that show that it isn't. Today's is that they made up some of the "homogenized" data. The initial dump contained the uncontested statement that they can't explain the last decade's cooling.... And then there's still the data gathering problems. (Stations have been moved to hotter areas and others haven't been maintained in ways that cause them to record higher temps even if nothing actually changes.) > if someone takes the time and effort to do it. And you know this because....
    - thaumaturgy 17y ago
      > The procedure that generated the hockey stick graph doesn't generate roughly the same graph almost independent of the input data? I'll do a little looking, but do you have some more information on this? I'd love to see it. > The initial dump contained the uncontested statement that they can't explain the last decade's cooling.... This one I know off the top of my head. You're almost certainly referring to the now-infamous "trick", roughly related to tree ring datum. There is still apparently some debate among climate scientists over what the differences in tree-ring measurements versus expected measurements actually means. It's going to take a while to sort out. Does it mean that the trees are growing very differently under different climates? Is there some property of tree growth that's been overlooked? But either way, this is only one method of data gathering amongst many. To point to this one thing and say, "A-ha! This proves that the planet is actually cooling and thus this is a field that I don't have to understand" is exactly the same kind of tactic used by those who refuse to accept evolutionary theory for the divergence of species. This is the case, again, with the data stations. I wholeheartedly agree that more effort needs to be put into monitoring them, and from that standpoint at least, the work being put into cataloguing them is important. However, even given all of their differences, and even assuming that there was no other data to go off of, they still would not lead to a dramatically different climate model. The field of climate science is much more complicated than a smattering of weather stations and examinations of tree rings. > And you know this because.... Look at my comment history. I'm a former "AGW denier" who, years ago, was pissed that cans of spray paint stopped working right and was annoyed by emissions control systems in vehicles. However, climatology has remained one of my interests, and I've continued to try to understand it. I know far, far less about the field than any of the scientists actually involved in it, but I've seen enough to convince me that the human species is better off listening to their claims than the claims of those that can't be bothered to try.
patrickgzill 17y ago
The part that is astounding about this article: it was written on December 9th, 2009, well after the CRU email/data dump; it is about climate skepticism; yet, it has NO mention of the CRU email/data dump while discussing said skepticism. (to be fair, perhaps the interview was conducted before the CRU dump and only now is being published; but why didn't the editor catch it?)
- SamAtt 17y ago
  People who believe in AGW don't see anything wrong with those e-mails. They consider it just another part of the "extremely well organized, well funded" PR Campaign. Their argument would be that a bunch of people are taking sentences out of context in order to make standard statistical analysis seem like a cover up. I don't agree with that but I know enough people on the other side to know that's what they think.
  - iterationx 17y ago
    And there are a bunch of AGW people who believe the noble lie, ie. "Since we need to be doing all this green stuff anyway, let's just do it (carbon tax, population reduction) and not argue about these particular emails and let's just have a little faith in the system"
jodrellblank 17y ago
"The Helioculture process utilizes highly-engineered photosynthetic organisms to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and carbon dioxide into transportation fuels and chemicals" - http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5858 http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5858 How long before a future in which we're pumping back into oil fields to get CO2 out of the atmosphere? Out of all of human history, technology at the scale of helping climate change is more likely this century than any other. I haven't seen anyone suggesting we push on towards it full steam ahead, but slowing down isn't enough. We either get such technology at some point or we stop polluting completely, anything else is just a delay tactic and will prolong the problem. Who is to blame doesn't really help anything. Also: Guess who's taking it seriously? "Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes". ""We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden." And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five,"" - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-c... (People in power) can tell me to take it seriously and drive five miles less per week all they like, I'll be more likely to listen when they stop their much more polluting ways.
motters 17y ago
I have doubts about AGW not because I borrowed other people's opinions but instead I went to an original data source - the Global Historical Climatology Network - and plotted the raw (version 2) temperature data, both for different countries and also as a global average. The results show that there are a range of trends going on. Some, like that for Sri Lanka, are clearly related to geothermal activity. Temperatures for Countries such as the UK and Germany have neither increased nor decreased significantly over the last 150 years, and Canada, Russia (Asian sector) and China have been getting colder. I know from examining the raw data that the global temperature graphs typically shown in the media contain significant distortions, which are due to missing temperature data within the series for particular locations. For example, Turkey only has reliable temperatures for the last 50 years or so, and when you add patchy series into the global average it appears to increase or decrease suddenly. If I only plot temperature series which are more than 98% complete over the last 150 years the overall trend looks like a very linear increase in temperature of around 1-2 degrees. It certainly not obvious that there is a significant anthropogenic component.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  Did your data include ocean temperature measurements, ice mass measurements, and atmospheric temperature measurements?
brc 17y ago
Perhaps the simplest explanation for falling belief in the AGW theory is the best - that "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions...] I think what we are seeing is the gradual realisation that the alarms have been ringing a bit too loud, a bit too often, and people are beginning to wonder what all the rush is. If you want an anology it's similar to when people realised that .com companies with massive costs and tiny sales weren't actually ever going to make any money, and started to sell. Remember the quaint term 'new economy'?
nfnaaron 17y ago
1. I resent that skepticism is portrayed as tin-hat denial. 2. "If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future, said Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, when the report was released. This is the defining moment." Really? After billions of years of spinning around the sun, or let's just say hundreds of millions of years with a climate essentially like ours, with ice ages and hot times galore, we have two years or then we're dead? Gimme a break. 3. Related to 2 above, what makes the current climate configuration special? All the ice ages, all the hot times over millions of years, and suddenly when we get a small amount of data, we decide that the climate we find today is the standard from which we deviate at our peril? Perhaps a more rational and practical view would be to recognize that climate does change significantly over time, and we should learn to adapt to that as individuals and nations. Because casually looking back over millions of years (casually is all I'm personally capable of, sorry), it seems that we're going to have to live with warming and cooling at some time (as we already have in the past), even if we turn off every light switch on Earth.
- brazzy 17y ago
  The problem is that the way we humans are living right now is NOT fit to adapt to significant changes in climate, and changing that would be even harder than curtailing our emissions. And it does not matter that there have historically been much greater differences in climate - we're living right now. In the long run (centuries, millenia), yes, finding a way of living that can adapt to climate changes would be better. But that would require a significant smaller population density to have safety margins.
  - nfnaaron 17y ago
    What is it about the way we live right now that's not fit to adapting? Is it population, as you mention in your last sentence? Not asking as a challenge, just clarification. We probably just squeaked through the big ice, and I think low population was a disadvantage for species survival. I think we "adapted" through the recent little ice age pretty well, although it was probably not an align-the-governments scale challenge. Yes, we are living right now. I think we'll make it through.
rmason 17y ago
This is a great example of why Wired hasn't been relevant for years. "Even as the science of global warming gets stronger", where have they been? Perhaps they're in "denial" of ClimateGate? When you bet against the common sense of the American people you are taking a bet with long odds.

13 points by sleepingbot 17y ago

I don't know about others but I came to doubt AGW because of inconsistencies in their claims and the data they used. And because of their striking similarities in techniques (computer modelling of systems too complex for competent models) and prescriptions (we must suffer and gov't needs more power, MORE POWER) that they shared with other environmentalist claims that have been falsified over the decades. I already knew that they have been fudging the data, from their own reports, long before this leak from CRU.

thaumaturgy 17y ago
Your response is far from unusual; in fact, it's probably a greater example of the psychology of AGW denial than any of the ones cited in the article. There is a pattern of thinking which is common in many areas of expertise, but is especially prevalent in technical professions. It goes like this: the best solution to a complex problem is a simple one, and if the problem is so complex that I can't understand it in ten minutes, then it isn't worth my time. So, for example, rather than taking the time to absorb the myriad complexities of climatology, and rather than reading the emails ourselves and analyzing their content and context, we instead take the "simpler" solution, the shortcut: we say, these emails are evidence of what I always believed all along, that the entire field of climatology is a hoax. And really, that's a beautifully simplistic explanation for a very complicated field. Rather than needing to understand the field, it's much simpler to just say, this thing is a global conspiracy, and then move on to the next simple solution to a complex problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the inconsistencies in claims and data that people love to point to are actually things that have explanations, that can be understood -- if someone takes the time and effort to do it. It's really rather like the Monty Hall Problem. Marliyn vos Savant ended up having mathematics professors -- among others -- writing to her for a long time after she published the correct solution to that problem. The solution they proposed instead -- while much simpler to understand -- was wrong. Understanding the right solution took much more effort, and required abandoning certain preconceived notions. Climatology is much the same in this respect.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  It's similar to evolution in that regard. Much has been written by advocates of it that is wrong and disagrees with other things written about it. That does not mean one should throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I'd suspect most people don't think as deeply as OP. Most people take a side in this debate based solely on their politics and/or wishful thinking.
- anamax 17y ago
  > Not to put too fine a point on it, but the inconsistencies in claims and data that people love to point to are actually things that have explanations, that can be understood -- if someone takes the time and effort to do it. Oh really? The procedure that generated the hockey stick graph doesn't generate roughly the same graph almost independent of the input data? Unfortunately for the "it's all okay" theory, the CRU folks keep admitting things that show that it isn't. Today's is that they made up some of the "homogenized" data. The initial dump contained the uncontested statement that they can't explain the last decade's cooling.... And then there's still the data gathering problems. (Stations have been moved to hotter areas and others haven't been maintained in ways that cause them to record higher temps even if nothing actually changes.) > if someone takes the time and effort to do it. And you know this because....
  - thaumaturgy 17y ago
    > The procedure that generated the hockey stick graph doesn't generate roughly the same graph almost independent of the input data? I'll do a little looking, but do you have some more information on this? I'd love to see it. > The initial dump contained the uncontested statement that they can't explain the last decade's cooling.... This one I know off the top of my head. You're almost certainly referring to the now-infamous "trick", roughly related to tree ring datum. There is still apparently some debate among climate scientists over what the differences in tree-ring measurements versus expected measurements actually means. It's going to take a while to sort out. Does it mean that the trees are growing very differently under different climates? Is there some property of tree growth that's been overlooked? But either way, this is only one method of data gathering amongst many. To point to this one thing and say, "A-ha! This proves that the planet is actually cooling and thus this is a field that I don't have to understand" is exactly the same kind of tactic used by those who refuse to accept evolutionary theory for the divergence of species. This is the case, again, with the data stations. I wholeheartedly agree that more effort needs to be put into monitoring them, and from that standpoint at least, the work being put into cataloguing them is important. However, even given all of their differences, and even assuming that there was no other data to go off of, they still would not lead to a dramatically different climate model. The field of climate science is much more complicated than a smattering of weather stations and examinations of tree rings. > And you know this because.... Look at my comment history. I'm a former "AGW denier" who, years ago, was pissed that cans of spray paint stopped working right and was annoyed by emissions control systems in vehicles. However, climatology has remained one of my interests, and I've continued to try to understand it. I know far, far less about the field than any of the scientists actually involved in it, but I've seen enough to convince me that the human species is better off listening to their claims than the claims of those that can't be bothered to try.

patrickgzill 17y ago

The part that is astounding about this article: it was written on December 9th, 2009, well after the CRU email/data dump; it is about climate skepticism; yet, it has NO mention of the CRU email/data dump while discussing said skepticism. (to be fair, perhaps the interview was conducted before the CRU dump and only now is being published; but why didn't the editor catch it?)

SamAtt 17y ago
People who believe in AGW don't see anything wrong with those e-mails. They consider it just another part of the "extremely well organized, well funded" PR Campaign. Their argument would be that a bunch of people are taking sentences out of context in order to make standard statistical analysis seem like a cover up. I don't agree with that but I know enough people on the other side to know that's what they think.
- iterationx 17y ago
  And there are a bunch of AGW people who believe the noble lie, ie. "Since we need to be doing all this green stuff anyway, let's just do it (carbon tax, population reduction) and not argue about these particular emails and let's just have a little faith in the system"

jodrellblank 17y ago

"The Helioculture process utilizes highly-engineered photosynthetic organisms to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and carbon dioxide into transportation fuels and chemicals" - http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5858 http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5858 How long before a future in which we're pumping back into oil fields to get CO2 out of the atmosphere? Out of all of human history, technology at the scale of helping climate change is more likely this century than any other. I haven't seen anyone suggesting we push on towards it full steam ahead, but slowing down isn't enough. We either get such technology at some point or we stop polluting completely, anything else is just a delay tactic and will prolong the problem. Who is to blame doesn't really help anything. Also: Guess who's taking it seriously? "Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes". ""We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden." And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five,"" - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-c... (People in power) can tell me to take it seriously and drive five miles less per week all they like, I'll be more likely to listen when they stop their much more polluting ways.

motters 17y ago

I have doubts about AGW not because I borrowed other people's opinions but instead I went to an original data source - the Global Historical Climatology Network - and plotted the raw (version 2) temperature data, both for different countries and also as a global average. The results show that there are a range of trends going on. Some, like that for Sri Lanka, are clearly related to geothermal activity. Temperatures for Countries such as the UK and Germany have neither increased nor decreased significantly over the last 150 years, and Canada, Russia (Asian sector) and China have been getting colder. I know from examining the raw data that the global temperature graphs typically shown in the media contain significant distortions, which are due to missing temperature data within the series for particular locations. For example, Turkey only has reliable temperatures for the last 50 years or so, and when you add patchy series into the global average it appears to increase or decrease suddenly. If I only plot temperature series which are more than 98% complete over the last 150 years the overall trend looks like a very linear increase in temperature of around 1-2 degrees. It certainly not obvious that there is a significant anthropogenic component.

thaumaturgy 17y ago
Did your data include ocean temperature measurements, ice mass measurements, and atmospheric temperature measurements?

brc 17y ago

Perhaps the simplest explanation for falling belief in the AGW theory is the best - that "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions...] I think what we are seeing is the gradual realisation that the alarms have been ringing a bit too loud, a bit too often, and people are beginning to wonder what all the rush is. If you want an anology it's similar to when people realised that .com companies with massive costs and tiny sales weren't actually ever going to make any money, and started to sell. Remember the quaint term 'new economy'?

nfnaaron 17y ago

1. I resent that skepticism is portrayed as tin-hat denial. 2. "If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future, said Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, when the report was released. This is the defining moment." Really? After billions of years of spinning around the sun, or let's just say hundreds of millions of years with a climate essentially like ours, with ice ages and hot times galore, we have two years or then we're dead? Gimme a break. 3. Related to 2 above, what makes the current climate configuration special? All the ice ages, all the hot times over millions of years, and suddenly when we get a small amount of data, we decide that the climate we find today is the standard from which we deviate at our peril? Perhaps a more rational and practical view would be to recognize that climate does change significantly over time, and we should learn to adapt to that as individuals and nations. Because casually looking back over millions of years (casually is all I'm personally capable of, sorry), it seems that we're going to have to live with warming and cooling at some time (as we already have in the past), even if we turn off every light switch on Earth.

brazzy 17y ago
The problem is that the way we humans are living right now is NOT fit to adapt to significant changes in climate, and changing that would be even harder than curtailing our emissions. And it does not matter that there have historically been much greater differences in climate - we're living right now. In the long run (centuries, millenia), yes, finding a way of living that can adapt to climate changes would be better. But that would require a significant smaller population density to have safety margins.
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  What is it about the way we live right now that's not fit to adapting? Is it population, as you mention in your last sentence? Not asking as a challenge, just clarification. We probably just squeaked through the big ice, and I think low population was a disadvantage for species survival. I think we "adapted" through the recent little ice age pretty well, although it was probably not an align-the-governments scale challenge. Yes, we are living right now. I think we'll make it through.

rmason 17y ago

This is a great example of why Wired hasn't been relevant for years. "Even as the science of global warming gets stronger", where have they been? Perhaps they're in "denial" of ClimateGate? When you bet against the common sense of the American people you are taking a bet with long odds.