Interesting article discusses the psychology of climate change

[Typhoon Tip]

"...For some, the answer lies in cognitive science. Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, has written about why our inability to deal with climate change is due in part to the way our mind is wired. Gilbert describes four key reasons ranging from the fact that global warming doesn’t take a human form — making it difficult for us to think of it as an enemy — to our brains’ failure to accurately perceive gradual change as opposed to rapid shifts. Climate change has occurred slowly enough for our minds to normalize it, which is precisely what makes it a deadly threat, as Gilbert writes, “because it fails to trip the brain’s alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.”

 

Well put!   One could also have written that homage as, "because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving no siren to cut over the din of all these petty arguments that are born out of denial."   The former metaphor is merely diplomatic, where the latter is a bit closer to what's really going on.

 

Fact of the matter is, it IS a painful subject, to get Humanity to register the fact that what we love (our planet), is also being adversely effected by the way of life we seek (something we equally love).  That's a tough reconciliation for the average brain to compute.  Interesting.

 

Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/08/19/in-denial-about-the-climate-the-psychological-battle-over-global-warming/#ixzz2cWYnqSby

[WXheights]

Yup.  The Narcotic of gradualism leaves some comatose!

[Cory]

I've often wondered why so many people who do acknowledge AGW continue dumping CO2 into the air as if nothing is wrong. It doesn't make any sense to continue burning fossil fuels for the hell of it (non-critical travel, electric from coal plants, etc.) while demanding that someone do something about CO2 emissions, and trashing people who won't acknowledge a problem. 

 

The way I see it, we have two types of deniers running around:

 

1) "There is no problem. AGW is a liberal hoax designed to steal more tax money."

2) "There's a serious problem, but I'm not contributing that much to it--I'll talk more about it when I get back from Europe."

[f2tornado]

1) "There is no problem. AGW is a liberal hoax designed to steal more tax money."

2) "There's a serious problem, but I'm not contributing that much to it--I'll talk more about it when I get back from Europe."

 

That's funny. The article does address point 2.

 

Gifford is reluctant to pick out one barrier as being more powerful or limiting than another. “If I had to name one, I would nominate the lack of perceived behavioral control; ‘I’m only one person, what can I do?’ is certainly a big one.” For many, the first challenge will be in recognizing which dragons they have to deal with before they can overcome them. “If you don’t know what your problem is, you don’t know what the solution is,” says Gifford.

 

This begs the quesion, do these people truly believe in AGW based on the overwhelming consensus or are they just on board because it's the hip thing to do while sipping on some fair trade coffee at the local Starbucks?

 

Overall, I was disappointed with the article. It comes across as people should be alarmed. This is debatable but in fairness to the article, not the point. It's still full of loaded language making it read like a propaganda piece.

 

"difficulty in grasping climate change as a threat"

"if people are prepared to acknowledge that they have a problem"

"climate change, and not mental health, is the biggest psychological problem we face"

“because it fails to trip the brain’s alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.”

 

Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/08/19/in-denial-about-the-climate-the-psychological-battle-over-global-warming/#ixzz2dDqPy0Jr

[Snow_Miser]

I've often wondered why so many people who do acknowledge AGW continue dumping CO2 into the air as if nothing is wrong. It doesn't make any sense to continue burning fossil fuels for the hell of it (non-critical travel, electric from coal plants, etc.) while demanding that someone do something about CO2 emissions, and trashing people who won't acknowledge a problem. 

 

The way I see it, we have two types of deniers running around:

 

1) "There is no problem. AGW is a liberal hoax designed to steal more tax money."

2) "There's a serious problem, but I'm not contributing that much to it--I'll talk more about it when I get back from Europe."

 

I view it as this.

 

Deniers are people who make claims that,

 

-CO2  is not a Greenhouse Gas

-The Greenhouse Effect is false

-We have not warmed

-Humans have not contributed to the warming

-Scientists "manipulate" data to fit an agenda.

-The Urban Heat Island effect accounts for all of the warming.

 

Skeptics are people who make the following claims:

 

-We have warmed

-Not all of the warming is due to mankind.

-Climate Sensitivity is still uncertain since many important feedbacks still are unknown.

-Future Warming is uncertain.

-Global Warming will have some positives, and some negatives.

-Attributing Climate Change to factors like Extreme Weather and Violence remains tenuous at best.

 

This is the way I see it. Skeptics are not the same thing as deniers.

[Cory]

I view it as this.

 

Deniers are people who make claims that,

 

-CO2  is not a Greenhouse Gas

-The Greenhouse Effect is false

-We have not warmed

-Humans have not contributed to the warming

-Scientists "manipulate" data to fit an agenda.

-The Urban Heat Island effect accounts for all of the warming.

 

Skeptics are people who make the following claims:

 

-We have warmed

-Not all of the warming is due to mankind.

-Climate Sensitivity is still uncertain since many important feedbacks still are unknown.

-Future Warming is uncertain.

-Global Warming will have some positives, and some negatives.

-Attributing Climate Change to factors like Extreme Weather and Violence remains tenuous at best.

 

This is the way I see it. Skeptics are not the same thing as deniers.

 

I agree with that, but the catastrophe lunatics aren't prepared to make that distinction. If you disagree with them, you're scum. 

[SnoSki14]

I've noticed major weather events definitely spike up the interest in climate change. I took a climate course last fall and they were discussing the arctic sea ice minimum record and what not, but nobody really was talking about climate change until Sandy happened. After Sandy, then everybody was on board that climate change may be very significant and the events of Sandy were often discussed in the course. 

 

Now I'd imagine because it affected those directly that it's why it played such a major role in the belief of AGW/climate change, which is another aspect of climate change. If something affects you on a local level than your perceptions are much greater than those who were unaffected by a major weather event for example. 

[Snow_Miser]

I agree with that, but the catastrophe lunatics aren't prepared to make that distinction. If you disagree with them, you're scum. 

 

Yeah. They tend to lump many people with different viewpoints into one category. It's an "us" versus "them" type situation.  

[Snow_Miser]

I've noticed major weather events definitely spike up the interest in climate change. I took a climate course last fall and they were discussing the arctic sea ice minimum record and what not, but nobody really was talking about climate change until Sandy happened. After Sandy, then everybody was on board that climate change may be very significant and the events of Sandy were often discussed in the course. 

 

Did they mention the record high Antarctic Sea Ice extent in that course, since it occurred at around the same time the Arctic Sea Ice hit record lows? If so, did they give an explanation with regard to why such an event occurred? If not, why do you think they only focused on one polar region while ignoring the other?

[SnoSki14]

Did they mention the record high Antarctic Sea Ice extent in that course, since it occurred at around the same time the Arctic Sea Ice hit record lows? If so, did they give an explanation with regard to why such an event occurred? If not, why do you think they only focused on one polar region while ignoring the other?

 

No actually they didn't, which I found surprising because I did research on both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. Although I've read that supposedly the Antarctic is seeing an increase an ice extent because of warming as well and that the ice is sort of spreading outward as warming increases, which is resulting in higher ice extent. 

[f2tornado]

1) "There is no problem. AGW is a liberal hoax designed to steal more tax money."

 

 

"Cap and Trade" and the hockey stick is what led to this type of silly statement. Obama's "energy prices will necessarily skyrocket" comentary didn't help matters. That said, it is highly likely some politicians see a pot of gold or would simply love to sock it to the Exxons of the world in the name of populism. The unfortunate legacy of this proposed legislation is a sizable segment of the population now really does think AGW is some concocted liberal hoax, or at least the magnitude of such. That's what they get for having Al Gore as a mascot, the fraud who roams in his jet heating his 10,000 square foot house but stating he offsets this energy use by buying carbon credits... in his own company. I really think if the politicians got off the taxation aspect they might actually be able to make some progess toward a greener economy. We'll get some junk legistlation like the current corn ethanol mandates but there are more positive things like tax incentives for wind/solar/tidal/etc. Some states already have percent renewable target dates in place. Pure free market types are not fans of this kind of intervention but it's an easier pill to swallow than cap and trade.

 

Yeah. They tend to lump many people with different viewpoints into one category. It's an "us" versus "them" type situation.  

 

This is very true and very strange. Even the most skeptical scientists believe there is some AGW taking place. Bill Grey of hurricane fame is perhaps one of the biggest of all and he is on board. Watts is on board. It's now a big pissing match between "it's getting warmer" and "it's getting a lot warmer". Why is this? Ego? Ideology? Fame? Funding? Group think?

[The_Global_Warmer]

I want to get some solar panels.  But I am afraid the technology changes so fast I will get ripped off vs waiting.

 

 

I would pay a fair amount for a 2x3ft panel to be able to give me 500W on a sunny day in the Spring/Summer.  Two of them would be enough to power my home without something on that is gobbling energy.

[Snow_Miser]

 

This is very true and very strange. Even the most skeptical scientists believe there is some AGW taking place. Bill Grey of hurricane fame is perhaps one of the biggest of all and he is on board. Watts is on board. It's now a big pissing match between "it's getting warmer" and "it's getting a lot warmer". Why is this? Ego? Ideology? Fame? Funding? Group think?

 

The debate has become so polarized, that many people involved in the Climate Debate are looking for things to disagree with, rather than things to agree with. This has sparked the controversy that plagues the debate today. Both sides agree that neither CO2  nor natural factors are responsible for all of the warming. Skeptics generally argue that the degree of contribution from anthropogenic sources is either unknown or is less than natural sources over the last 100 years. Advocates of large amounts of future Global Warming argue that the human contribution is well quantified and is much larger than the natural forcings over the last 100 years.

 

There have been many studies that have been coming out which have been finding a much larger role for natural variability in the late-20th Century. Since this is the timeframe where much of the increase in anthropogenic forcing took place, the resulting sensitivity to anthropogenic forcing is thus lowered, since not all of the warming over the late-20th Century can be ascribed to the anthropogenic forcing.

[Snow_Miser]

No actually they didn't, which I found surprising because I did research on both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. Although I've read that supposedly the Antarctic is seeing an increase an ice extent because of warming as well and that the ice is sort of spreading outward as warming increases, which is resulting in higher ice extent. 

 

There is a lot of talk about why Antarctic Sea Ice is increasing in the Antarctic Sea Ice thread. The one thing most posters could agree on is that it's not due to the warming of the Southern Ocean, since the Ocean has actually cooled.

 

[skierinvermont]

A denier is anybody who does not acknowledge the scientific consensus that climate sensitivity is between 1.5 and 4.5C and the evidence in support of that. Or anybody that does not acknowledge the evidence that warming anywhere in that range would be somewhere between extremely costly and catastrophic. 

 

I do not see the utility of the word "skeptic." All of science is skeptical.

[Snow_Miser]

A 1.5 Degree C sensitivity would imply that a 40% increase in CO2 would yield an equilibrium response of 0.6 Degrees C. This would mean that future increases in CO2 reaching equivalent to a doubling of CO2 relative to the preindustrial era would produce an equilibrium response that would be less than a Degree C. The TCR is very likely lower than the ECS, thus with a 1.5 Degree C sensitivity we may see less warming in the 21st Century than just extrapolating based off of the ECS value of 1.5 Degrees C.

 

However, a 4.5 Degree C sensitivity would be detremental and would likely have some serious negative consequences. I would argue that the "lower" sensitivity values in the 1.5-4.5 Degree C range that skier quoted may actually be more beneficial than harmful, and will likely be adaptable.

 

With only the Water Vapor Feedback, Lapse Rate Feedback and Surface Albedo feedbacks, the ECS in the GCMs is 1.9 Degrees C. If the Cloud Feedback is strongly negative, the resulting ECS could be lower than 1.5 Degrees C. If it's strongly positive, like it is in the GCMs, then it could act as a strong amplifier, and the GCMs have an ECS of 3.2 Degrees C as a result.

 

Are you ready to concede that there are multiple peer reviewed papers documenting that the vertical amplification of warming was exaggerated Skier?