I admit it, I have underestimated the virulence of the climate change Deniers.
I had thought that they were merely politically motivated, close minded, frightened people egged on by a corporate driven profit agenda.
Increasingly I am convinced (by them) that we are dealing with a hysteric, desperate, terrified mob driven by ideologues.
My post Love, blood and rhetoric really got the Digg Patriots into a froth, so I used the opportunity to see if I could cajole/goad/bait anyone of them into making a single relevant, rational comment about the post. I wasn’t hoping for much, just about anything that referred to what was actually said and responded with something that made any sense would have done.
No luck. Several of the commenters even took took pride in their certainty that what I had written was treasonous, dangerous propaganda despite their not having read a single line of it. Several threatened to (and supposedly did) report me to the FBI/Homeland Security even though they hadn’t actually read the piece. Wow!
Which led me to rereading a Sun Magazine interview with Chip Berlett, and realizing that I had failed to appreciate the full significance of something he said.
“Barsamian: The virulence of language on the Right is acute. Everything is Armageddon, apocalypse, or a “nuclear option.”
Berlet: That’s because it’s portraying the political opposition not as people with whom you disagree but as a force of evil with whom there can be no compromise. How can you compromise with Satan? How can you compromise with the people who want to destroy America?”
Brewing Up Trouble: Chip Berlet On The Tea Party And The Rise Of Right-Wing Populism by David Barsamian
Of course. The obvious lack of logic has a certain twisted logic to it. To them there is absolutely no point in even looking at what I (or anybody) said, or the science etc because it could not possibly be right. It is “known” a priori to be wrong, so what possible reason could there be for looking at it?
Further, to them, I as the author (or presenter) of the piece am not a human who might engage in honest debate, rather I am seen as a hate filled, close minded idealogue who is beyond the pale, so refuting the article would also be a complete waste of time.
In fact, the alleged ‘reasoning’ seems to be that if I were capable of thought at all I would not have authored/presented the piece in the first place, ergo my presenting them with evidence contrary to their beliefs is “proof” that there is no point in even looking at the evidence. To them it is a priori known to be obviously false and anyone who accepts it is clearly incapable of rational thought, hence not open to rational discussion.
If that were not enough, some of the commenters statements suggested that they seemed to believe that even to expose themselves to the kind of blasphemy that the piece obviously was (having been posted at News Junkie Post, IP address 666 . 666 . 666 . 666), would be irrational. Knowing what I had said was not merely irrelevant, it was potentially dangerous. Wow, just wow.
It’s an extreme variant of the “No true Scotsman” logic fallacy. It is taken as an absolute truth that no rational person could accept climate science, so if you accept climate science you are obviously not a rational person quod erat ignoratum, so what possible purpose could be served by talking to you?
The psychology of motivated reasoning was recently explored more fully by Chris Mooney (but you read about it here first 😉 ) and there is little comfort to be found there. For one thing, suffering from the condition not only makes you pretty much impervious to facts and logic, it also makes one incapable of realizing that you’re doing it (as per Dunning Kruger).
Mooney also shares my view that the internet has facilitated the spread of simplistic propaganda such as the climate change Deniers use far more than it has aided the climate science community.
Tweeting “Al Gore is a hypocrite RT plz #idiotsnmorons” is far more likely to get people doing it than “Read this great article on climate sensitivity wrt H2O vpr http://bit.ly/i4$hrGt” will.
He also touches on the problem of social exclusion as a consequence of holding ideas different from the group ie if you don’t chant with the herd you are ostracized. As such many are more motivated to choose social acceptance over sanity when the two are in conflict (as per “Understanding Stupidity“).
In discussing his article with Mooney Andrew Revkin said “My learning curve on cultural cognition has led me to mostly abandon my expectation that better information and communication could change the public debate.”
I agree with Revkin if we add the small conditionality “…expectation that just better information and communication…” Education is still critical, just insufficient, which of course was the main point of the Love, blood and rhetoric post. That being said, there are a few things worth noting.
It’s still a gradient
The demographics of climate change opinion maybe bimodal when plotted as a simple yes/no, but I suspect it is still rather more of a normal bell curve if we were to plot intensity of opinion, or at least a weaker bimodal.
Granted there is a growing gap (yes, it’s getting worse), but we are talking about people here, not whether a coin is heads or tails. That is to say that there are still huge numbers of people who are not so extreme in their views as to be unreachable through reasoned discussion. This is the group we should be talking to about what their concerns are and what is the basis for their doubts about climate science.
What’s a thinking conservative to do?
There are many conservatives (some of them influential and/or with credential) who accept the reality of climate science; some even blog on it (Tom, you there?). See for example “Confessions of a Climate Change Convert” by D R Tucker which is posted on the Frumm Forum. Another post of his “NH GOP Splinters in Climate Fight” makes my earlier point.
We have a common objective with these conservatives, to restore sanity to the debate. Granted their credibility within the conservative community is tinged by accepting climate science (as per social exclusion above), but nonetheless they are insiders who we should learn from and cooperate with where we have common goals.
Too smart to be dumb
As Mooney notes (and is confirmed in a follow up) those with more education are much more susceptible to propaganda because i) they are much more effective at rationalizing their own contradictions, and ii) they firmly believe that they are far too smart to be dumb.
As such the most entrenched idealogue is much more likely to be a civil engineer or physician than a farmer or labourer.
As I have repeatedly noted, the rural poor are our natural allies despite their general conservatism. Stereotypes aside, they are both more open to rational argument and more likely to be climate victims than the urban professional. We need to be reaching out to them as much as we can in every way that we can.
It’s about values
As Mooney notes, the receptivity to accepting facts is heavily contextual. For example, the Deniers framed Cap and Trade as being about limiting free enterprise. Progressives could have framed it as a system that rewarded the smartest businesses by allowing them to capitalize on their ingenuity. I am not commenting on C&T one way or the other here, merely noting that it could have been presented differently.
Naturally there is the problem that if climate science starts being framed in a way to appeal to moderate conservatives it may start alienating some Progressives. This approach is very nuanced and complex and should only be undertaken after careful thought and discussion. Even so, it is another opportunity to make progress.
Mixed Message
So what we get is a mixed message. Many of those denying climate change are beyond rational discussion and almost certainly always will be. However, they do not represent a majority and what we learn is that there are groups and individuals that we can and must talk to.
Further, I suspect that they are not the ones who will visit climate blogs of any form or any of the standard outlets by which we might seek to engage with them. So where do they go for information that we might reasonably hope to have that dialogue? (not Fox News obviously).
Personally I don’t know. I doubt that there is an easy answer to that question. My suspicion is that we need to get the inert middle talking about the issue and it is those people that the more moderate conservatives may listen to.
Right now I get the sense that the “silent majority” is in conflict avoidance mode with respect to this issue (ie they wish both sides would shut up and go away), which is a theme I hope to explore at much greater length in the near future.
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
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Balancing Rock by Great Beyond
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I’ve been trying to figure out for a long time if it’s possible to have a law against lying to the public if a person is in politics or media. It would be a very difficult piece of legislation to craft, but I actually heard they have something like that in Canada. That could go a ways toward preventing some of the rhetoric from showing up in such visible places like Faux “news” and congress.
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1) People and the media can lie about sorts of things without fear of action.
2) In court or otherwise under oath, this can get you in trouble for perjury.
3) Misleading the US Congress is felony, 18USC1001.
4) And of course, lieing about *people* in a way to damage their reputation can be libel, which of course doesn’t mean that it’s easy to pursue, especially in the US.
In this turf, the early results may well come from lawsuits by Andrew Weaver and a later one by Michael Mann, all handled by a serious lawyer, Roger McConchie, who “wrote the book” on libel law in Canada.
5) I.e., you can say “the moon is made of green cheese” all you like … but if you say “and all the astronauts are liars and criminals for saying otherwise” you might have a problem.
I am of course not a lawyer, but I have talked to a few about this topic…
I’ve often quoted Dawkins;
“[Religion and science] …are deeply opposed. Science is a discipline of investigation and constructive doubt, questing with logic, evidence and reason to draw conclusions. Faith, by stark contrast, demands a positive suspension of critical faculties.‘Sciences proceeds by setting up hypotheses, ideas or models and then attempts to disprove them. So a scientist is constantly asking questions, being sceptical. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”
Or short hand, Tim Minchin;
“Science adjust it’s views based on what’s observed.
Faith is the denial of observation, so that belief can be preserved.”
From early on deniers where calling me a “faither” because I accepted the high likelihood of climate change based on the well understood greenhouse effect and observations and I’ve since, in a number of posts, posed the question; ‘who is the faithful on this topic?’
My main approach has been finding what that faith might be. As the quote suggest above, I’ve based my views on rigorous investigations of the available data, which is obvious in the science lit and from my years at uni. I’ve proposed a few motivators for ‘AWG denial faith’, but I have to say I think you’ve found the better path. Rather than asking what the motivator is (for there are many) you’ve pointed out who rejects evidence to preserve a belief.
rogerthesurf and Pete Ridley used this tactic on me a lot – I’m am a blinkered AGW faither closed minded to “the truth” – to which I wasted so much time trying to explain the science. I should’ve simply pointed out that if my work to “so full of mistakes it would be pointless to dissect”, it’s highly suggestive that they reject it without actually reading / understanding it. I’ve told them that I think such retorts are weak, but I never thought about it from a faith point of view.
I also agree with the rural communities – they should play a larger role in discussions of how we meet the challenges of the coming century.
There’s a strong correlations between creationism and the rejection of AGW. This always gets overlooked but it’s important because for many people it’s the root cause. Not everyone believes that the world is governed by physical laws. These people can’t be persuaded by better and repeated parsing of the scientific argument. They need a religious and moral justification of the case for action that is consistent with their beliefs and values. Some evangelical groups have begun to do that, stressing that mankind has a responsibility to be stewards of creation and that science isn’t opposed to but the lack of recognition on the other side of the argument is galling.
Nobody comes out saying that they disagree with AGW because of their religion in the first instance. Although apparently several people ultimately confessed such motivations to the Twitter AGW chatbot. Instead they put forward false objections which is the equivalent of a single man telling a salesman that he can’t make a purchase without consulting his nonexistant wife first. It’s a way of saying that I don’t want to be persuaded so I’ll put forward a tar baby for you to wrestle with. If you wrestle all the tar babies to submission you get treated to the “actually that’s all irrelevant the real reason why I’m against AGW is because God blah blah blah”. So after you’re covered in tar you get treated to a shower of feathers for your efforts.
The creationist dogma motivation needs to be highlighted and circumvented from a secular perspective. We’ve done this with evolution. Even in the United States which is predominately creationist such beliefs are not allowed to shape policy on health, disease control and education. There is no creationist backlash to health agencies using the findings of evolutionary biology to inform their policies on handling pathogens for instance. We need to get to that same place with environmental policy. And getting there involves more than just converting people.
People don’t want to embarass their religions. They don’t want their beliefs to be seen as standing in the way of the common good. That’s why the citizens of Kansas threw out the school board trustees who tried to bring in Intelligent Design into their classrooms. Not because they disagreed with them but because they had embarassed their beliefs and made them look backward to the rest of the country. The ID proponents were made to look ridiculous in court and across the country and christians in Kansas decided that they didn’t want ID quacks to be the ambassadors of their religious beliefs. We have an oppurtunity to do the same on the environment and renewable energy.
So assuming my analysis carries water the most fruitful ways forward would be:
Exposing industry lobbying. Corporations don’t like the attention. And media outlets don’t like having their coverage criticized. Corporations are powerful but ulimtately risk adverse and cowardly institutions. They don’t like having spotlights shown on them.
Acknowledging religions role in the debate, even if religious people rather it not be mentioned but doing so in a way that isn’t insulting to believers.
Repeatedly pointing home how climate and energy is effecting people’s lives now and how such impacts will get worse in the future. It’s important here to counter the false narratives that are already being constructed to blame the high cost of oil on the environmental movement.
Lastly and least importantly: Continuing to debunk denier talking points.
jose,
I think your analysis is insightful at all levels and emphasizes some aspects (the corporate lobby, the role of religions, personal narrative) that have been largely missing from communication.
Just on the first point, since there is much to discuss about all your points…
The policy delays resulting from funded denialism has been an outrageous situation. Since deniers don’t disclose funding sources, can’t prove what they say, and are very much aware they are fabricating lies about scientists and the science, and acting in bad faith – both ethically and legally – the move to demand legal accountability has been late in coming but is often a crucial aspect of the democratic process in the United States.
The legal discovery process is a serious problem for the funded deniers (both individuals and groups or thinktanks) and puts the spolight not only on the target but on others that get their funding, and their climate change denial, from industry. John’s absolutely right, they don’t like that.
To be sure, deniers have effectively catered to a certain sector and exploited the fragmented nature of American media and the internet. The political culture in America is so disconnected that the reaction to current attempts to quickly ‘educate’ now feels like management – which it is. Citizens can’t take the time to fully participate in the necessary decision-making and the public and governments of other countries have moved forward with unilateral and multi-lateral agreements. Since the American public is used to seeing itself as autonomous, and their country as a world leader, it’s messy.
A serious loss of freedom has actually been occurring for the past 20 years, namely, since the Republicans first started aggressively spinning ‘uncertainty’ in climate science and began heavily funding attacks on science and environment. The last thing that American political culture can easily relate to is what is now happening, namely, that everyone either has to work together or be told what to do. Or some combination of both.
I need to think about the rest of your analysis at length, especially the religion part and the part about personal narratives.
Also Moth’s comments. And rural communities. And…
🙂
I think it is time to remind people on the much broader anti-science goals of creationist groups such as the Discovery Institute.
Time to re-read their Wedge Strategy and make sure we are ready to rebut any of their efforts to distort science and how it is performed:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/idt/wedge.html
Oops, ant-science should of course be anti-science.
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I’d disagree with Dawkins that religion and science are deeply opposed. However, the religious stereotype that Dawkins has in mind (probably similar to the stereotype most of us have) is opposed. Dawkins made the mistake of taking a very complex and broad idea and simplifying it based on the most vocal and willfully ignorant and obtuse members who espouse a caricature of that idea.
I think most religions around the world either modify their beliefs to meet the evidence, or their beliefs do not conflict with any evidence in the first place. Those in science who have some type of religious belief have no difficulty in adapting beliefs to evidence, whether those beliefs involve a spaghetti monster or a general belief/feeling that there’s another dimension that exists which they may or may not call supernatural. And there is also, in faith, the difference between a hope and a belief too which Dawkins (and most people) completely overlook–it makes a very big difference from a philosophical/theological point of view, and people end up arguing past each other not realizing they’re using different assumptions and different definitions for the same word.
But that’s off-topic and not something I’m much interested in talking about anyway. So, back on topic…
I wonder how many of those people who flamed Greenfyre for his article have also advocated action against the current government? E.g. another tea party, civil disobedience because Obama isn’t American born and therefore not the president, etc. How many of them nod in agreement when Limbaugh or Beck tell them to hold onto their guns, to attack climate scientists, to commit what are basically acts of terrorism (not that L or B would use that word)?
Have more thoughts, but this already is tl;dr post.
From the outside it seems a strange cognitive dissonance.
I was more or less borrowing his quote for a broad use of how the “faithful” (be it whatever ideology) can reject science where it goes against their beliefs – as per the post above.
Of course many individuals with looser adherence to certain dogma are able to keep it in check when faced with conflicting evidence, but the more zealous are whom Dawkins was referring to and how I felt it applied to the article above.
I don’t think a discussion about religion is merited on this post and I’m somewhat apologetic to Greenfyre for leading to it.
Please, can we focus here?
[…] Greenfyre’s perspective: it seems that few people read Greenfyre, but it is representative of the genre and more literate and entertaining than most. […]
RE: What the Russians Say about Climate Change.
You should obtain the following ref’s which show the earth has a ca 60 yr climate cycle.
“Climate Change and Long-term Fluctuations of Commercial Catches: The Possibilty of Forecasting” by K.B. Klyashtorin
FAO Fisheries Technical Report. No. 410. Rome, FAO. 2001
Available at:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e00.pdf.
By analyzing climate data and fish catch data, Klashtorin found the earth has a general climate cycle of 55-60 years.
Note date of publication. Was this report passed onto the IPCC?
“Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity” by K.B. Klashtorin and A.A. Lyubshin, which you can download for free thru this link:
http://alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes__and_Fish_Productivity.pdf?
NB: This mongraph is 224 pages. This book is not about climate science. The Russian edition was published in 2005. The English translation was published in 2007 and was edited by Gary D Sharp.
By analyzing a number of phenomena influenced by climate, they found that the earth has global climate cycles of 50-70 years, the average being about 60 years, which have cool and warm phases of 30 years each. They summerize most of the studies thru early 2005 that show how this cycle influences fish catches in the major fisheries.
The last warm phase began in ca 1970-75 (aka the Great Shift) and ended in ca 2000. The global warming from ca 1975 is due in part to this warm phase. A cool phase started in 2000, and their stochastic model projects that it should last about 30 years. See Fig 2.23 p 54.
See also Fig. 2.22 (p. 52) and Table 2 (p. 53). They show that increasing world fuel consumption (i.e., increasing CO2 emission) does not correlate with cool and warm phases of the 60 year global climate cycle. That is to say, they show that increasing CO2 concentration in the air does cause global warming.
Was the IPCC aware of this seminal monograph and the climate projections made by the authors that are in conflict with their projections of warming?
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Harold, look for the trend, not the variation around the trend. You might actually have learned something when you start realising that you, just like the authors, are completely ignoring the trend.
I must also say that the simplistic analysis of the authors (WFC versus T increase) is beyond naive.
FYI, the “code of conduct” link has regrettably broken, for the moment at least; you can find the blogpost here (link)
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[…] perspective: it seems that few people read Greenfyre, but it is representative of the genre and more literate […]