The Psychology of Climate Change Denial
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This is an interesting article about how people will deny what is obvious.
Half of all trips made by car in the U.S. are less than 2 miles. My modest proposal is for you to just consider using a humble bicycle every once in a while instead of getting into your car. You may find you like it. Improve your health, save some money, make the world a better place--Go By Bike!
That article is painting everyone who objects to AGW with a rather broad brush. There are only a tiny minority people who deny climate change at all, most simply doubt that human activity has much effect on it. It would be similarly unfair to describe everyone who supports the theory as a communist.
ReplyDeleteWe are finding continuing evidence that the data was manipulated and bad models were developed to support a predetermined conculsion, some of it so blatant that I would have fail any of my thermodynamics students who had done that when I was a TA in grad school. In light of the evidence, I think skepticism is necessary.
We've seen the disasterous results of fixing the intelligence to support a conculsion in the runup to the Iraq War - when people are predicting our imminent doom, the more healthy skepticism, the better.
Good points to be sure. My take away was that in many issues people will seize on any small thing that supports their pre-drawn conclusion to avoid the difficult truth. In all things I believe that skepticism is a good thing. On the other hand, how many smokers will rationalize their bad habit and ignore the science that supports the truth that's obvious to anyone that smoking will make you cough and increases dramatically your chances of dying from lung cancer or heart disease. Regardless of the science, is their really anyone who can deny that not smoking is healthier than smoking? Similarly, with climate change, can anyone really make a case for continuing to burn carbon based fuels unchecked? Is there any science that supports the claim that the dramatic change in the planet's avgerage temperature in such a short period of time is part of the natural cycle? I'm no scientist but I can't think of a single reason not to act as though the climate change is man made. Is there really a down side to controling the amount of CO2 we make? Is there really a downside to preserving the forests that play a major role in the respiratory health of the planet?
ReplyDeleteI agree, people always consider themselves outside the range of expected outcomes. You and I face it all the time with drivers on phones. Most drivers would agree that driving with a phone in hand is less safe than without, but then go on to admit that they do it themselves with some rationalization of how it isn't unsafe in their particular instance.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not the current warming is unprecendented is unclear. We really only have good records for a century or so. Older records, tree rings, ice core samples, and the like, are less reliable (some even indicate that temperature rises precede CO2 rises). I would expect that there a many overlapping climate cycles (like the el Nino cycle, the 30 year cycles that caused predictions of a coming ice age in the 1970s, and the multi-century cycles that we know about from the medieval warm period) are exacerbating the effects of CO2, CH4 and other changes in the atmosphere.
I agree that we should act to mitigate the risk in case it is human action, but the political machinations of climate change are what concern me. I see a lot of opportunism, from politians seeing "carbon debts" as a potential shakedown for cash to support their crooked regimes, to owners of companies making technologies that make little economic sense seeing carbon taxes as a way to make a profit in an otherwise unprofitable business.
It's all very Rube Goldberg-ian to me. We have subsidies and policies that encourage wasteful burning of fossil fuels, and then try to come up with another set of regulations and taxes to reduce the harm of them. I think we'd be much better off just dumping the subsidies for fuel use first. We could start with tolling expressways. The "free" interstates aren't nearly funded with gas taxes (why should a non-driver be taxed to pay for a road he isn't even allowed to use). We could move on to free parking, building codes that require parking for cars. Further on, we could look at farm subsidies that encourage growing petroleum-based fertilizer dependent crops like corn and taxes that force family farms to sell out to developers. Even military spending is a petro subsidy. Let Exxon pay Blackwater defend their own wells & pipelines. Just dumping those would probably achieve any needed reduction in emissions.
Unfortunately the governement and the oil industry are complicit in the enslavement of the working class. While your ideas would certainly simplify things and solve lots of problems, the masters will never allow it! Even without the science it would be pretty easy to predict the end. Selfishness and greed are the partners of ingenuity and idustriousness and while the latter create our world, the former will surely destroy it.
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