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[WeatherRusty]

Have you ever lived paycheck to paycheck?

Absolutely, but I have always been environmentally aware and held an appreciation for the fact that actions carry consequences. There is no such thing as a free lunch in the natural world, in order for there to be winners there must be losers. It's the ultimated zero sum game.

Early to mid adulthood was not easy street for my wife and I. We both come from lower middle class upbringings, and definitely not born with silver spoons in our mouths. We worked hard, got lucky in a few areas, made several wise financial decisions...very conservative financially...and benefited by frugality, hard work, solid investments and not living above our means.

So, now I sit comfortably at 61 yoa..I retired at age 59 1/2.

I have earned most everything the hard way, made some smart choices along the way and am now able to reap the rewards. I don't really have to worry about the price at the pump these days.

I feel I have done things the right way. I think I'm one of the good guys who made free market capitalism work to my advantage. I have two wonderful grandchildren, aged 7 and 9. All I hope for is for them to enjoy the same opportunities I had along life's path, they are starting out from a point much greater advantaged than I did yet I feel their long term future prospects are dimming due to global financial conditions, failing infrastructure, natural resource depletion, over population and yes, climate change....not necessarily in that order.

[TerryM]

I've wondered if part of the problem of getting people to accept the science is the result of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. From the Wikipedia article:

The

Dunning–Kruger effect

is a

cognitive bias

in which unskilled individuals suffer from

illusory superiority

, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a

metacognitive

inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

^[1]

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others"

I believe we see the D-K Effect in action at both extremes of the AGW discussion. Certainly in this forum we have posters who simply cannot see the errors in their positions. But there are approaches to mitigating the effect. The primary one is by educating the unskilled person to the point where they can appreciate the complexity of the subject and how much they still have to learn before they are truly expert.

The DK effect is new to me, and important enough to deserve some study - at least on my part. I wrote an article a year ago attempting to explain why extremely bright people were often taken in by scams that the 'average Joe' would walk away from. Illusitory superiority, when acting outside ones realm of knowledge makes intuitive sense.

Thanks for the post.

Terry

[ben4vols]

Also, the anti-science crowd has brought knives to the fight while those promoting the scientific conclusions have been relying on societal integrity, logical discourse, a public steeped in common sense and respect for science. Sadly that strategy has been loosing ground. It's time for those representing science to bring in the heavy artillery and fight fire with fire. It's going to become a knife fight.

Who in your mind is the anti-science crowd? Also, are you referring to the AGW folks when you say, "relying on societal integrity, logical discourse, a public steeped in common sense and respect for science"? If so that is pretty dang funny.

[WeatherRusty]

Who in your mind is the anti-science crowd? Also, are you referring to the AGW folks when you say, "relying on societal integrity, logical discourse, a public steeped in common sense and respect for science"? If so that is pretty dang funny.

Do you deny the existence of a significant portion of society which does not find credence in the science based theory of biological evolution? They are an example of the anti-science crowd. Science has been fighting this war over logic versus irrationality for many hundreds of years. Galileo was persecuted for pushing science based observations against the church based dogma of the time. The same basic ideology which promotes denial of biological evolution is at work denying anthropogenic global warming and has been for decades.

[LocoAko]

I'm not denying anything do i believe that natural cycles may play more of a role then you may think yes. But again flooding drought heatwaves etc has always happened and will continue only thing new would be sea level rise and that will be a slow process so again average person will not see the difference.

Please, go on and tell us more about why you think this.