As I read your VERY erudite recount of your evangelizing encounter and subsequent research, I couldn’t help wondering whether today’s split in consciousness has its roots in the era when ‘ole Thomas Jefferson penned that oft repeated idea that ‘We hold these Truths to be self evident…” while he and his class were simultaneously the financial beneficiaries of 1) the enslavement of a large group of ‘Creator’ created men, women and children; 2) the theft of a continent by genocidal pressure against its native inhabitants and 3) the invalidation of his professed religious foundation through his personal bigamous relationship with the half sister of his legal wife. Somewhere he (‘ole TJ) is quoted as suspecting something like Divine retribution on some people for ALL that behavior. Diggers into the evidences of the past suggest that whole peoples have been suddenly destroyed for exactly the obstinate obtuseness that his looking has uncovered for him. It is, sadly for so many, the way of empires.
On the other hand, if Prof. Hoffman had every been a high achieving contact sport athlete, once he realized that he had been baited & set up, he might have inquired if the gladiator brain had ever been to Mt. Kilimanjaro or the Arctic region of the Polar Bears’ home. Some folks have to see it for themselves for the TRUTH to register. Al Gore??
Dear Andrew.
Very good article and draws out the point about yes it’s happening, no it’s not argument.
I saw this years ago and gave up trying to persuade friends to modify there lifestyles in relation to the evidence that was even 30 years ago accumulating. Now over the past six years I tried a different approach, but to no avail, the vast majority of world citizens have been drugged with the concept of doubt.
You only have to look at the way the British colonialist empire dealt with any of it’s populace, even it’s own citizen during the Victorian period, to see how long this technique has been around for. Entice the people with a cheap and readily avail drug, such as opium, as history from the Opium wars of the 19th century taught us and you the authority or privileged ruling class, can do what you please, hiding behind religious script to justify your actions.
Today that opium takes the form of anything that can tie the population into a financial nose around their neck, so that you have no time to consider anything else, other than earning more to pay off what you owe or would like to acquire. Clearly there are things that are essential such as food, shelter, medicines or the ability to travel to work, but as people are tied into following social trends, they fall into this trap from which there is no escape unless you can, as you say, see the greater picture and understand where this will eventually take society.
Your current presidential election which I follow, as a Scot, I see events in the USA as central to decision making for all counties to which we should take a note of, I understand the importance of this up coming vote, so no surprise when republicans behave as opium drugged Chinese!
But I shall and hopefully you too will battle on as there is no future for any human being if we continue as nothing is wrong.
Two major problems in climate communication are caused by two equivocations:
“climate change” referring to recent global warming versus the natural changes over millions of years; and referring to major “anthropogenic global warming” versus natural CO2 changes dominating over minor anthropogenic contributions.
You presume that majority “science” is right and warming will be harmful.
However, the IPCC’s 0.2 C/decade mean warming prediction is running hotter than 95% of actual temperature trends (> 2 sigma) for the last 32 years of satellite data measurements. I.e. the red corrected OLS trend is 0.138 C/decade [0.083, 0.194]. See Lucia Liljegren, The Blackboard, etc. Recent evidence shows cloud trends could have caused most warming etc. Thus the current “consensus” appears to be an argument from authority or popularity that does not recognize that major physics is missing and that climate sensitivity (feedback) to CO2 has been strongly overestimated.
The strong benefit of CO2 to increasing food production will be very important for feeding the growing world population. Developing countries need fossil fuels to rise out of poverty. Pragmatically, we need to recognize their rapid increase in fossil fuels and that adaptation appears much more cost effective than “mitigation.” In the long run, we will need to transition to sustainable fuels, and use available fossil fuels in the transition.
For balancing views and information, see: The Copenhagen Consensus, The Cornwall Alliance, CO2 Science, and the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). PS The Bangladesh delta is rising with sea level because of Himalayan siltation.
If Global warming is the result of 200 years of industrial activity, and as we have now, by and large, cleaned up our industries, how can we prevent the newly industrialised nations from continuing the pollution? Also we have to stop the elitist politicians from using tax payers money and resources to “reward their friends and punish their enemies” when they give massive and corrupt contracts which seem to end up financing China’s industry, which is far from ‘clean’.
As a midwestern farmer, I read with great interest Mr. Hoffman insightful article. Here on the farm (latitude 40.25n.), our growing seasons have been lenghtening and precipitation totals
increasing. On the surface this would appear to be a good thing,however the volatility that has accompanied these changes is problematic. From an agricultural point of view, it probably makes a big difference whether you are a farmer from north Texas or North Dakota as to how you view global warming/ climate change. There are always winners and losers with any kind of change and it seems to me that it is this reality that is seldom acknowledged. Thanks again for your thoughtful analysis.
To briefly summaries, as shown in the chart below, the AGW sand castle was built by smoothing the GMST oscillation before the 1970s, leaving the warming phase of this oscillation since then untouched, and calling this recent warming man-made. http://bit.ly/OaemsT
Today, there is no doubt that a scientific consensus exists on the issue of climate change. Scientists have documented that anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases are leading to a buildup in the atmosphere, which leads to a general warming of the global climate and an alteration in the statistical distribution of localized weather patterns over long periods of time.
That consensus was obtained by misinterpretation of the data by smoothing the GMST oscillation before the 1970s, leaving the warming phase of this oscillation since then untouched, and calling this recent warming man-made. http://bit.ly/OaemsT
And yet the physical impacts of climate change are already becoming visible in ways that are consistent with scientific modeling, particularly in Greenland, the Arctic, the Antarctic, and low-lying islands.
Not so.
For the USA, in the last 100 years data from NOAA, the most extreme drought occurred in the 1930s (Dust Bowl) and the extreme wet occurred in the 1970s.
Climate Science as Culture War
By Andrew J Hoffman
It is a very well written article that supports your position on what to do to stop man made Global Warming.
Enjoyed reading it.
However, I disagree with your position.
In the following chart, when you look at the global mean temperature data since record begun 162 years ago, there has not been any change in its pattern.
My goal in writing this article is to discuss the social and psychological processes that influence how we process complex scientific information. Overall, I believe that the kinds of value conflicts I describe are embedded within most, if not all, environmental and scientific/technology issues. I had dinner the other night with a medical ethicist who said he saw the same kinds of dynamics I describe in the question over home birthing. They are at play in the questions over environmental issues like whether to drill in ANWR, place restrictions on toxic chemicals like Bisphenol-A or protect endangered species. And they are at play on other scientific/technological questions like the installation of smart meters, the safety of nanotechnology or the question of a link between vaccinations and autism. In the end, the process by which scientists come to conclusions is far different than the process by which society comes to conclusions. Scientists and other interested parties need to recognize and not lament that fact. I have some scientists who feel that this direction of inquiry is a waste of time because it is a debate over “truth.” But, as I teach my MBA students, it is one thing to come up with what you think is the right answer. It is a totally different thing to convince people it is the right thing, and then get them to do something about it.
I appreciate the feedback I have received on this page and more directly. also recommend some very good work by Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis, and The Righteous Mind) on the topic.
In the seventh paragraph of this article, Andrew Hoffman says “The answers to this question can be found, not from the physical sciences, but from the social science disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and others.”.
I would take issue with such an insulting assertion. The primary reason why there is such a large groundswell of questioning, is that the “warmists” have always hijacked the meeting and run off with the agenda before the results are in. In their eagerness to force early conclusions and to grasp the resulting funding, they sweep under the carpet the fact that there is still scientific climate research going on, and a far greater amount of general science research (not necessarily pure climate research) that still awaits to be done.
Society is only just at the beginning of collecting together the list of factors that affect climate; and our understanding of how, and how much, each factor affects climate is still rudimentary.
It is therefore 100% reasonable to object to the loud calling-out of premature and basically unsound conclusions.
And this has nothing to do with anthropology or psychology! It is simply rationalism and “good science”.
Thank you so much for writing this article. I left a Ph.D. program in atmospheric science nearly a decade ago to study human cognition and social values for this exact reason. It is profoundly important that the psychological and cultural drivers of these phenomena become better known.
Back in 2008, I co-authored a paper making the same argument you have presented here. It was published in the Environmental Law Review with the title “Why the Environmental Movement Needs a Cognitive Dimension.” You can download it here:
I would love to speak with you about how our respective works can merge. This is an area of research and emerging practice that I have dedicated my life to. I have worked with many leading researchers and scholars across psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience to build a cogent framework for cultural engagement that I’d love to explore with you.
Very best,
Joe Brewer
Director, Cognitive Policy Works
Seattle, WA
I am an architect living in York County Pennsylvania, across the Susquehanna from Lancaster County. I am co founder of a local land trust which is one of five in the two country region that makes us the #1 ag preservation region in the USA. Among our natural assets a extremely high quality soils combined with generally reliable and abundant rainfall. The UN has designed parts of our region as one of the three greatest naturally irrigated farming areas on the planet.
I…among many others here… have been attuned to the rhythms of nature with our ag tradition, and our strong local food movement. I have also followed the science of Climate Change as a non scientist….reading poplar books by James Hansen and Heidi Cullen. On occasion I have discovered what I had intuited to be true, had scientific support. In an ag area, attention to nature is not something abstract. It’s a matter of business. It’s a matter of both scientific and practical knowledge, it is a matter of politics…and it’s a matter of religion.
I agree with you whole heartedly, that speaking the cultural language of social group is central to moving public consciousness and education. Here, our strong ag preservation movement has caught the imaginations of many disparate groups, who have cooperated to make it happen…from businessmen, to small farmers, to production farmers, to politicians, to bankers, to lawyers, etc. Central to this fact, as corny (sorry) as it might sound, is the idea that the good society is one that values the stewardship of the land. The idea of stewardship is both Biblical AND a scientific one. However if this sense was the only value, our success would have never materialized.
The practical and economic mechanism for stewardship and conservation is legal instrument called the conservation easement. Here landowners GIVE UP development rights to their land. Under any of our five programs, the difference between the development value, and the agricultural value, serves as the basis, of either a direct state subsidy (through cigarette taxes), or a Federal income tax credit. This is something wealthy landowners, small farmers, production farmers, organic farmers, politicians, businessmen, lawyers, etc…all support, as evidenced by their presence on the boards of directors of these non profits. Here, easements can be tailored to different individual economic situations.
We have found a way to integrate many disparate interests, into a soundly based economic system that preserves our agricultural (and natural land) tradition…that is very consistent with the religious idea of stewardship. “Brokers”, as you call them, from many persuasions, were indeed employed to explain and popularize, within groups appropriate to their own experience of life.. Among the most effective with the most powerful elements here, surprisingly to some, were many of the lawyers…..and one architect.
Land preservation is so strong a value here now, that any politician who runs on a platform opposing farm and and natural land preservation will be soundly defeated…as forcefully demonstrated 20 years ago, in very Republican Lancaster.
But there are challenges ahead:
In regard to the dynamic nature of Climate Change, one incident comes to mind. I had heard that our plant hardiness zone was expected to change from a 6 to a 9 (or even 10) in 75 years. Such a change would have a profound impact, not only on the natural environment, but upon our agriculture, and hence our whole human community. I spoke to Dr. Richard Alley, member of the US Academy of Sciences, and Greenland ice core scientist…when he made a presentation to an auditorium full of students at York College, a business oriented school here. Dr. Alley confirmed pretty much what I had heard…saying: “that sounds about right.”.
When you mention existential threats to human society, it’s hard to imagine a more universal and geo-historic one. It also strikes me that those who live and work close to nature, as in places like York and Lancaster, will know from their everyday experience, that something important is changing. This is even more so in the areas of the country that will feel physical changes faster…like the American mid and south west, Florida. I suspect that continuing extreme weather events will eventually make a pure denier position untenable. It will become akin to denying the nose on one’s face.
If that was all there was to this I would be more hopeful, for the other element is time. Dr. Hansen says that we have 8 centuries of heat built into the earth system already. So reducing carbon dioxide, and improving our performance, might not really be enough in itself. He and Dr. Alley also speak of tipping points, and the seven major “positive feedback loops”, that no one knows how much “forcing” will activate. Alley’s science demonstrates is that quite catastrophic changes to the earth climate, occurred, quite often, and most alarmingly, abruptly….as 20 foot ocean rises within 8 years. This would realize Hansen’s “different planet” warning.
Dr. Alley says no one can predict such tipping point scenarios, but there is a clear element of existential risk involved. My point is that this is very serious business..and nature will not take into account the human timetable in realizing its peril. There is not an unlimited amount of time.
As one, now in the alarmist camp, I think your article could not be more important. We have to get started. Thank you.
Have you added together, for each year, both tails of the distribution (unusually wet plus unusually dry) and then calculated a moving average for this data to look for a trend? I would think you could draw a more robust conclusion by doing so rather than visually identifying spikes in the data.
A propos of the article’s theme about appealing to the values of those whom one wants to persuade, I have long been baffled as to why Urgent Mitigationists (my own coinage intended to be more neutral than “alarmists”) have not unified behind a program of greatly increased nuclear power production. James Hansen has advocated this, but the movement in general has clustered behind the twin solutions of 1) massive cutbacks in energy use and 2) “soft” energy sources such as windmills, solar photovoltaics, and biofuels.
There are three reasons related to the theme of this article why this two-pronged approach taken by the UM movement is perverse and counterproductive. First, nuclear power, while more expensive per kilowatt-hour than fossil-fuel sources of electric power, is vastly cheaper than wind or solar, especially when adjusted for availability, reliability, need for backup sources, etc. Studious avoidance of what should be a natural call for expansion of the next-best source of electricity after fossil fuels breeds suspicion among typical American business/engineering types that the agenda of the UMs is not to solve an environmental problem but rather to pursue an ideological green deindustrialization agenda.
Second, nuclear power, as a quintessential “hard” technology, appeals to the Promethean and cornucopian values of pro-capitalism, pro-technology constituencies that are heavily represented among skeptics. Nobody will hear a call for expanded nuclear capacity as some sort of conspiracy by Gaia-worshipping anti-growth fanatics to make us all live as peasants. Rather than a step back from progress it will be perceived as a confirmation of the progressive track of technological civilization. Windmills and solar, by contrast, beyond their economic and technical weaknesses, smack of exactly the kind of call for passivity and surrender to natural forces that many on the political right see as anti-civilizational.
Third, vigorous advocacy of nukes would lend huge credibility to those claiming the mantle of science because it would run contrary to the persistent fear mongering about radiation and nuclear safety promulgated by self-described environmentalists. It’s hard to take seriously people who say that their views are driven by the scientific consensus reported by official bodies when those same people reject the “settled science” behind the risks of radiation, deaths per kilowatt-hour across technologies, the safety of waste disposal and/or reprocessing, etc. In this regard, Urgent Mitigationists ought to have raised a massive hue and cry about the recent decisions by both Germany and Japan to cut back or eliminate nuclear power from their generating bases; their failure to do so again casts suspicion that their real allegiances are to a sentimental nature-worship rather than a pragmatic response to climate risks.
Your use of “logic schism” has filled a lexicographical void for me. It might go a long way to explain why the justices of the Supreme Court can so often come up with those 5 - 4 decisions. If they are approaching an issue from distinct perspectives, how can they be expected to reference the same body of the law in their interpretations. This is the same when people are talking at cross purposes when they have no basis for understanding one another. Logic schism is a failure to be able to understand the other. Entering the enemy’s camp - the social scientist’‘s job - is sometimes necessary and a sign of crossing into understanding is that one leaves the camp somewhat humbled. That is why those on the extremes cannot be effective leaders.
In my earlier comment, I badly erred when I wrote that James Hansen said that there are eight centuries of heat already in the earth system. I meant to say eight centuries to dissipate antropogenic carbon dioxide.
thanks for a very elaborate and detailed article. however, i think this is one of the reasons why people get averse on this issue, as we generate more verbal gibberish than making crisp and factual points. the title is attractive enough, but the points made are very stretched and all encompassing so that we get rounded by all commercial propaganda that shapes everything what we call (very loosely) our culture. We do not need to go very far than check our facts in daily life, the catch is to do that by consciously avoiding traps of commercial propaganda. If we do that we directly appreciate the truth of the matter, be it science, culture, etc.. surrounding the climate change. and more importantly, to talk of crisp point, I would say the concern now on should be described more as ‘human change’ than climate change, because we are causing this change, not nature. If we get this point, without letting our bloated egos coming in the way, we will do good for ourselves and the nature, as always can take care of itself.
thanks
uday
It is important to realize that the principles and practices of deliberative democracy can help to diagnose the problems involved in discussing climate change as well as to provide solutions to the challenge of discussing climate change. Two centers whose work is informed by the social sciences are the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford ( http://cdd.stanford.edu ) and the Program for Deliberative Democracy at Carnegie Mellon ( http://hss.cmu.edu/pdd/ ). Both centers have been actively involved with citizen deliberation.
Recently, the Program for Deliberative Democracy hosted a series of Campus Conversations on Climate Change - See
You make a fundamental mistake in your analogy with the tobacco issue, the tobacco companies were forced to admit the link to lung cancer and other life shortening illnesses in court as the price for being allowed to stay in business. It was not the result of some nebulous public health community’s efforts, but rather plaintiff’s lawyers and state attorney generals jumping on them long after the scientific case was clear.
Your argument fails because what your “donor” and the fossil fuel interests and the Homeland Institutes and the CATO Institute and the Girmas are looking for is affirmation that they should be taken seriously. They should not, and doing so only delays action.
Your argument is not new, it has never worked and unfortunately it is not working today. While confrontation may be polite, it is strenuous even when so, but unfortunately it is necessary.
One of the first questions asked by a speaker was, let’s suppose burning gas and oil and coal IS bad. What are we going to replace it with? Solar panels? Wind? Geothermal?
This elicited guffaws in the audience and therein, I believe, lies the simple answer. Deniers don’t believe that “renewable” (to the extent it really is renewable, because it isn’t since it is produced with many nonrenewable resources) can ever replace the concentrated power of fossil fuels. And they’re right.
Most climate activists and scientists have no answer for this other than “faith” in technological magic - rather than confronting head-on that in order to make even a dent in the acceleration of global warming, thanks to all those amplifying feedbacks, the developed nations would have to sacrifice by drastically curtailing consumption…and the developing nations would have to drastically curtail population.
Nothing less will do, and as long as the Big Gang Green organizations pretend we will be saved by recycling, and buying local, and giving them donations, the deniers suspect quite rightly that there is no credibility in the environmental movement, and this is what enables them to dismiss the science.
To use your analogy of tobacco use - people had to QUIT. And they had to be tremendously frightened by an existential threat to do so.
This is an interesting subject. I was intrigued how you mentioned someone who evangelized you in the beginning of your article then in the first paragraph of the second section you evangelized to your readers.
I’ll admit that I am a skeptic. I have a strong science background and believe I can identify fuzzy science when it is presented. There are too many questions on cause and effect, tampering with the data, and bullying by the climate science elites. Why does no one in the climate science field call out Al Gore’s false claim of CO2 to temperature correlation in the ice core record? Or when “climategate” broke out and the wagons were circled. When these scientists idly sit back and not condemn these kinds of behavior they show they are not “critical” of their own science.
The IPCC itself is not a scientific body, but rather a political body. The term “denier” is a way to bully people, even though those that do not goose step to the IPCC come in many flavors. And yes there are many top climatologists that think the IPCC is not representative of the science.
However, the bigger question is that you might want to consider your own beliefs and why you believe them before trying to change the minds of others.
I think your post does show some totalitarian tendecies and in addition tendecies for hatred for capitalism and personal immorality and generally far leftism and being part of the cultural divide. As well as hypocricy and dihonesty and a want to mislead people and lack of open mindedness.
AGW is also true by the way.
I ask that you actually examine your own beliefs and whether there are any limitations to them. Maybe upsetting the status quo too much without putting certain boundaries in place could cause more harm than good, social change of great sacrifice that you call necessary (bassically you are a cousin to communists) might come with greater negative consequences than moving forward with capitalistic technological and otherwise inovvations than the impossible goals.
Indeed some of the most misanthropic ecologist enviromentalist visions are more extreme than communism too but that does not mean we should not have any enviromentalism in general. The problem is you keep the door half open to them instead of closed shut in that message of your, showing deep irresponsibility just like Einstein did (you are no Einstein) when he praised the communist regimes of his time.
It might be helpful to examine some retrospectful hypotheticals. Rather than trying to model the future, consider whether the world would be better off or worse off if we had the preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels. What would crop yields be? W ould we be able to feed 7 billion people? How much land would be devoted to agriculture? What would the world ecosystems be—would there be less diversity and more extinctions? Would it be less green? Would there be slower reforestation?
the reason this debate so stimulates and puzzles you, and the reason you’re on the wrong “side” of it, is that you don’t understand HOW SCIENCE WORKS. You can’t even tell pseudoscience from science.
For example:
> Today, there is no doubt that a scientific consensus exists on the issue of climate change.
Consensus in science is meaningless.
It’s got an evidentiary value of zero. Why are you even talking about a “consensus” on a matter of nature?
Oh, that’s right. Because climate science, as a movement, is PSEUDOscientific.
If you had a science PhD you’d know this. It’s not exactly hard to spot when you know what you’re looking for!
> Both the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science use the word “consensus” when describing the state of climate science.
It’s almost like they’re TRYING to tell you it’s pseudoscience.
> And yet a social consensus on climate change does not exist.
Maybe the general public knows more about HOW SCIENCE WORKS than you, Andrew. Ever think of that possibility?
> Surveys show that the American public’s belief in the science of climate change
“belief in the science of…”
Gibberish.
In science the object of belief, disbelief, knowledge, doubt, etc. is the HYPOTHESIS (which may become a THEORY in time). A human being can’t believe or deny something called “the science.” That isn’t English. What do you even picture in your head when you say that?
> Belief declined from 71 percent to 57 percent between April 2008 and October 2009, according to an October 2009 Pew Research Center poll;
Belief IN WHAT?
“The science”? Word salad.
“Climate change”? An unfalsifiable, undefined, uninteresting platitude. EVERYONE believes in climate change, even the people so sick of hearing about it that they tick the “Dismissive” box in the hope people on your “side” will shut up about it.
> beliefs that emerge, not from individual preferences, but from societal norms;
Can you name any other belief about how nature works that arises from “societal norms”? I was under the impression they arose from science books.
> Why is this so? Why do such large numbers of Americans reject the consensus of the scientific community?
You mean the climate-scientific community, and the answer is:
— consensus isn’t worth one iota of evidence, so why SHOULD people agree with it?
— any scientific community that has consensus researchers like Oreskes and Cook… isn’t one. It’s a pathological, post-scientific wasteland. Consensus is meaningless, so why is anyone studying it?
Oh, that’s right: to get rhetorical ammunition for the “Culture War.”
> With upwards of two-thirds of Americans not clearly understanding science or the scientific process
Including “science communicators” like yourself, Andrew!
Sad, isn’t it?
And their understanding is only getting worse the longer you allow them to think “peer review” and “consensus” are scientific concepts. Well done. You’re creating a generation of scientific illiterates.
> How do people interpret and validate the opinions of the scientific community?
How do they USUALLY do that?
Think about it. The answer’s in front of your face.
> To understand the processes by which a social consensus can emerge on climate change, we must understand that people’s opinions on this and other complex scientific issues are based on their prior ideological preferences, personal experience, and values
That’s true, in the absence of an understanding of how science works—a kind of herd/tribe thinking takes over and people align with others like them.
Those of us who know how science works aren’t polarized though.
> “...that the effects of global warming have already begun ...”
Sorry but what is that clause trying to say?
Try putting it in the form of a falsifiable hypothesis if you want buy-in from those of us who know how to have a scientific debate.
> the debate will take the form of what I call a “logic schism,” a breakdown in debate in which opposing sides are talking about completely different cultural issues.4
That’s already happening, but the opposing “sides” aren’t Liberal and Conservative.
They’re the sides identified by CP Snow and Alan Sokal.
Read them and you’ll know why your sentences don’t look like English to me.
> When analyzing complex scientific information, people are “boundedly rational,” to use Nobel Memorial Prize economist Herbert Simon’s phrase;
Oh, by the way, science isn’t rational. Or rather, it’s much more than rational, and all the rationality in the world won’t help unless you know the rules of science, which are NOT intuitive and which you CAN’T know unless someone taught you. (If you think you’ve “guessed” them without formal instruction, think again. Your guess is a fantasy.)
> Yale Law School professor Dan Kahan refers to as “cultural cognition.”
Dan is a good person to speak to on this. Ask him to read your article as a Citizen of the Republic of Science would read it.
> evidence and arguments that support preexisting beliefs, and by expending disproportionate energy trying to refute views or arguments that are contrary to those beliefs.
So there are “evidence and arguments” going both ways, in your view?
This is commendably nuanced—I like it:
> But the chief greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is both man-made and natural. It is not inherently harmful… It is not a toxic waste or a strictly technical problem to be solved. Rather, it is an endemic part of our society and who we are.
> Only in an imbalanced concentration does it become problematic.
There is no such thing as a “balanced concentration.” That has no physical meaning. It sounds like mysticism to me. Is this a spiritual issue for you, Andrew?
> If you accept anthropogenic climate change, then the answer to this question is yes,
No it’s not. I accept AGW but it has no ethical implications.
Try to be rigorous here, Andrew.
(By the way, it’s good that you’re using the phrase “accept anthropogenic climate change”—you’re speaking scientifically-literate English now!)
> differing conceptions of science
You’re telling me! :-D
Sorry to be so harsh on you—notwithstanding your misconceived, Humanities-major image of how science science works, this is otherwise a very well-written and well-thought-through article. That only makes it MORE frustrating that you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about on science. I hope you study it, because you’ll then be just the kind of intelligent and balanced voice this debate SORELY needs.
You write: ” The answer comprises a bell curve of possible outcomes and varying associated probabilities, from low to extreme impact. “
Note that you have assumed, without argument, that the impact is negative. That, in my view, is the weakest part of the current orthodoxy and the part that gets least discussed.
The current climate was not designed for us nor we for it, and humans currently prosper across a range of climates much larger than the shifts projected by the IPCC for the rest of this century. CO2 is an input to photosynthesis, so tends to increase crop production. Warming results in longer growing seasons. Worldwide, low temperatures kill many more people than high temperatures—twenty times as many according to an article published in the Lancet. And, for well understood physical reasons, greenhouse gas warming tends to be larger in cold times and places, where warmth is on the whole a good thing, smaller in hot times and places. Sea level rise on the scale projected by the IPCC for 2100 might, if nobody bothers to dike against it, move the average coastline in by something under a tenth of a mile. Warming in cold areas on the scale projected shifts temperature contours in the northern hemisphere towards the pole by a lot more than that, increasing the amount of land warm enough for human use by orders of magnitude more than sea level rise decreases it.
I see almost no discussion of any of this. Everyone takes it for granted that if AGW proceeds along the lines projected by the IPCC the results will be not merely bad but catastrophic. When the EPA publishes a piece on the effects of AGW on agriculture, it consists of facts about effects that increase output, plus a lot of “may do this” “might do that” effects that could decrease it.
I agree with you that it’s a culture clash, but I don’t find the orthodox side to be much more admirable than the unorthodox.
If curious you can find a more extensive treatment of these issues on my blog:
Dear Dr. Friedman:
It sounds as though there has been miscommunication. The only comment that I find posted me in this blog is “scientific consensus is a contradiction in terms.” I don’t believe I claimed that ”The answer comprises a bell curve of possible outcomes and varying associated probabilities, from low to extreme impact“ or that “it’s a culture clash.” However, I thank you for taking the time to reply.
Regarding regulation of the climate, this is currently impossible because existing climate models convey no information to policy makers about the outcomes from their policy decisions. That this is so is obscured by repeated applications of the equivocation fallacy on the part of climatologists. I prove this conclusion in the article at http://wmbriggs.com/post/7923/ . As I live 15 minutes from the Stanford campus it would be easy for us to get together to discuss.
Cordially, Terry Oldberg (650-941-0533)
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thing about installing the kitchen grills. For clients,
you can target neighborhoods, communities or even companies.
It’s six years since this article was published. It is still very valuable because the divide between the extremes is now institutionalized via Trump’s administration. A central scientific point not mentioned in the comments I read is that climate science now fully recognizes the reality of the global carbon budget. Greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. The amount of atmospheric carbon we have left to spend (emit from fossil fuel consumption) is going to be exhausted well before 2050 with the goal of achieving the Paris agreement target of less than 2 degrees C warming.
(See Dr. Kevin Anderson, U. of Manchester: http://kevinanderson.info/blog/the-hidden-agenda-how-veiled-techno-utopias-shore-up-the-paris-agreement/ ).
The IPCC, as a political consensus creating international agency, has adopted scientific positions which are not forceful enough to achieve a rapid enough conversion from our fossil fuel based economies to avoid an increase in global average temperature that will be much higher than the Paris goal of less than 2 degrees C.
My point is that we are running out of time much faster than the IPCC thought we would. We are running out of time for consensus building for the physical scientific consensus and for the sociological consensus. The survivalist notion is becoming large. Agriculturists are now creating their consensus that we will not be able to feed our populations when the world gets too hot to continue harvesting grains at the yields needed. That is a potential result that will change all current perceived dynamics of this issue. For many other species on this planet a massive decrease in human populations could be a good thing until remaining human populations eat them. The carbon budget that has been used as their target creating tool by the IPCC will likely be exceeded by 2050, but the IPCC’s range of scenarios for the future usually allow for that budget to get us to around 2100. This seems to be a problem that is unavoidable. Yet it’s not. It requires what some here call a passive industrial future while also requiring a massive commitment to scientific technological advance. Both ends of this spectrum of remedies are required. Pretty much every approach possible that reduces emissions of greenhouse gases will need to be implemented simultaneously. That means more technological change than ever before and it also means making a commitment to the intentional stranding of over half of the fossil fuel assets known to be recoverable. Simple arithmetic. Less is more. Less fossil fuels is more life in the future. This is not a problem as complex as the biochemistry of the human species or the astrophysics of black holes. This is basic high school level science. Read Ruddiman for a broad perspective in Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum. The science is too important not to remain at the forefront and it must be translated to the two thirds of people who don’t understand it. If they vote without understanding at least the validity of the science then we will get more presidents like Trump and we may get Trump for a second term. That would be a disaster on top of the existing disaster that he has proved to be.
Governments of the world all pay the scientists for their scientific data to promote their the theory of climate change. First it was global cooling then on to global warming and finally ended up with climate change. In “Atlas Shrugged” it was the very Science Institutes that stated that Max Reardon’s new metal used in building rails for the railroad didn’t fit into their scientific measures therefore they deemed it unsafe. However fictional the sciences and scientists were wrong because it was the government promoting the results they desired in order to sway people’s opinion. Climate change is being used to control the masses. My carbon footprint (if there is such a thing) is non existent compared to Al Gore the climate whore that built his 7.5 million dollar house on the shore of the Pacific ocean. If he really believed the garbage he promotes his house wouldn’t be where the seas could rise and ultimately swallow up his home. The underlying theme is used to move humans from liberty to tyranny, from mobility to being stationary and therefore easier to control. I haven’t been on this planet a hundred years and neither have any of the so called climate scientists. You can look at all the data you want to but truth is NO ONE knows for certain anything except we will live, die and pay taxes while on earth. The earth has out lived every species known to man and will be in existence after man has perished.
Truth, in science, is not decided by consensus. It is decided on the basis of the evidence. When political pressure is put on scientists to conform to whatever politicians have decided is the truth it distorts the scientific process and makes it more difficult for scientists to be objective.
It is a disgrace for the developed world, but particularly for the USA, that the general level of education is so poor that few people are able to assess the science for themselves, and have to rely on the opinions of experts, or worse, adopt an opinionn due to political and social pressures.
What is more, the people in positions of power that indulge in attempting to shame “climate skeptics” are the very people that have been in a position to do something about it for the last 40 years yet have done precisely nothing that is the tiniest bit effective.
Finally, the way we ought to be living, to ensure the indefinite survival of humanity in a world that is worth living in, are much the same whether there is anthropiogenic global warming or not, so why are the necessary changes not being implemented with the same urgency as resources are mobilised in a large scale war?
So, politicians, media people and anyone else involved in the brainless shaming, blaming and finger pointing, please stop wasting efforts trying to scare everyone with prophecies of doom, and attacking those that disagree with the prevailing consensus on climate chear.
You, politicians and business leaders, are in a position to do something about changing the absurdly stupid way in which we live, that is to say wasting resources, energy and people’s lives in the pursuit of monetary profits, prestige and military power.
Obviously, it’s the pessimistic view that’s playing out all around us.
I’m one of those who sees the "Optimistic Form" as the only realistic way forward, because it would indeed be very hard to obtain acceptance of anything that impedes economic growth.
Of course, it also needs to be added that people probably would be willing to accept having a few less toys in order to deal with an environmental crisis; what is the problem is that they’re expecting more catastrophic (and inequitable) impacts for themselves out of an economic downturn. But reforming the whole economic system must also be accepted as something that won’t happen with the kind of speed we need to address global warming.
However, if no compromise of economic growth or heavy industrial production can be accepted, renewable energy is not going to be seen as sufficient, despite claims that advances in energy storage and conservation can make wind and solar work.
While there have been encouraging recent results with controlled fusion, obviously we can’t wait for that before taking action to reduce fossil fuel use.
Thus, in my opinion, the answer is nuclear power, including breeder reactors and reprocessing. And thorium breeders, unlike fusion, really is just an "engineering problem". Our U-238 and Th-232 resources are enough to get us through until we’re in a position to rely on renewable and longer-term energy sources, even though we may refuse to moderate our energy demands.
This is a very interesting piece that clearly illustrates the idea that this issue is happening and real, the clash of culture with environmental issues.
COMMENTS
BY Muja'hid AbdulBari,MS
ON August 17, 2012 05:45 PM
As I read your VERY erudite recount of your evangelizing encounter and subsequent research, I couldn’t help wondering whether today’s split in consciousness has its roots in the era when ‘ole Thomas Jefferson penned that oft repeated idea that ‘We hold these Truths to be self evident…” while he and his class were simultaneously the financial beneficiaries of 1) the enslavement of a large group of ‘Creator’ created men, women and children; 2) the theft of a continent by genocidal pressure against its native inhabitants and 3) the invalidation of his professed religious foundation through his personal bigamous relationship with the half sister of his legal wife. Somewhere he (‘ole TJ) is quoted as suspecting something like Divine retribution on some people for ALL that behavior. Diggers into the evidences of the past suggest that whole peoples have been suddenly destroyed for exactly the obstinate obtuseness that his looking has uncovered for him. It is, sadly for so many, the way of empires.
On the other hand, if Prof. Hoffman had every been a high achieving contact sport athlete, once he realized that he had been baited & set up, he might have inquired if the gladiator brain had ever been to Mt. Kilimanjaro or the Arctic region of the Polar Bears’ home. Some folks have to see it for themselves for the TRUTH to register. Al Gore??
BY Antony Berretti
ON August 19, 2012 12:26 AM
Dear Andrew.
Very good article and draws out the point about yes it’s happening, no it’s not argument.
I saw this years ago and gave up trying to persuade friends to modify there lifestyles in relation to the evidence that was even 30 years ago accumulating. Now over the past six years I tried a different approach, but to no avail, the vast majority of world citizens have been drugged with the concept of doubt.
You only have to look at the way the British colonialist empire dealt with any of it’s populace, even it’s own citizen during the Victorian period, to see how long this technique has been around for. Entice the people with a cheap and readily avail drug, such as opium, as history from the Opium wars of the 19th century taught us and you the authority or privileged ruling class, can do what you please, hiding behind religious script to justify your actions.
Today that opium takes the form of anything that can tie the population into a financial nose around their neck, so that you have no time to consider anything else, other than earning more to pay off what you owe or would like to acquire. Clearly there are things that are essential such as food, shelter, medicines or the ability to travel to work, but as people are tied into following social trends, they fall into this trap from which there is no escape unless you can, as you say, see the greater picture and understand where this will eventually take society.
Your current presidential election which I follow, as a Scot, I see events in the USA as central to decision making for all counties to which we should take a note of, I understand the importance of this up coming vote, so no surprise when republicans behave as opium drugged Chinese!
But I shall and hopefully you too will battle on as there is no future for any human being if we continue as nothing is wrong.
BY David L. Hagen
ON August 23, 2012 01:14 PM
Andrew
Thanks for grappling with the issues.
Two major problems in climate communication are caused by two equivocations:
“climate change” referring to recent global warming versus the natural changes over millions of years; and referring to major “anthropogenic global warming” versus natural CO2 changes dominating over minor anthropogenic contributions.
You presume that majority “science” is right and warming will be harmful.
However, the IPCC’s 0.2 C/decade mean warming prediction is running hotter than 95% of actual temperature trends (> 2 sigma) for the last 32 years of satellite data measurements. I.e. the red corrected OLS trend is 0.138 C/decade [0.083, 0.194]. See Lucia Liljegren, The Blackboard, etc. Recent evidence shows cloud trends could have caused most warming etc. Thus the current “consensus” appears to be an argument from authority or popularity that does not recognize that major physics is missing and that climate sensitivity (feedback) to CO2 has been strongly overestimated.
The strong benefit of CO2 to increasing food production will be very important for feeding the growing world population. Developing countries need fossil fuels to rise out of poverty. Pragmatically, we need to recognize their rapid increase in fossil fuels and that adaptation appears much more cost effective than “mitigation.” In the long run, we will need to transition to sustainable fuels, and use available fossil fuels in the transition.
For balancing views and information, see: The Copenhagen Consensus, The Cornwall Alliance, CO2 Science, and the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). PS The Bangladesh delta is rising with sea level because of Himalayan siltation.
BY Josee Allen
ON August 24, 2012 09:08 AM
If Global warming is the result of 200 years of industrial activity, and as we have now, by and large, cleaned up our industries, how can we prevent the newly industrialised nations from continuing the pollution? Also we have to stop the elitist politicians from using tax payers money and resources to “reward their friends and punish their enemies” when they give massive and corrupt contracts which seem to end up financing China’s industry, which is far from ‘clean’.
BY Alan Anderson
ON August 24, 2012 11:13 AM
As a midwestern farmer, I read with great interest Mr. Hoffman insightful article. Here on the farm (latitude 40.25n.), our growing seasons have been lenghtening and precipitation totals
increasing. On the surface this would appear to be a good thing,however the volatility that has accompanied these changes is problematic. From an agricultural point of view, it probably makes a big difference whether you are a farmer from north Texas or North Dakota as to how you view global warming/ climate change. There are always winners and losers with any kind of change and it seems to me that it is this reality that is seldom acknowledged. Thanks again for your thoughtful analysis.
BY Girma Orssengo
ON August 25, 2012 03:20 PM
To briefly summaries, as shown in the chart below, the AGW sand castle was built by smoothing the GMST oscillation before the 1970s, leaving the warming phase of this oscillation since then untouched, and calling this recent warming man-made.
http://bit.ly/OaemsT
BY Girma Orssengo
ON August 25, 2012 03:30 PM
Today, there is no doubt that a scientific consensus exists on the issue of climate change. Scientists have documented that anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases are leading to a buildup in the atmosphere, which leads to a general warming of the global climate and an alteration in the statistical distribution of localized weather patterns over long periods of time.
That consensus was obtained by misinterpretation of the data by smoothing the GMST oscillation before the 1970s, leaving the warming phase of this oscillation since then untouched, and calling this recent warming man-made.
http://bit.ly/OaemsT
BY Girma
ON August 25, 2012 04:13 PM
And yet the physical impacts of climate change are already becoming visible in ways that are consistent with scientific modeling, particularly in Greenland, the Arctic, the Antarctic, and low-lying islands.
Not so.
For the USA, in the last 100 years data from NOAA, the most extreme drought occurred in the 1930s (Dust Bowl) and the extreme wet occurred in the 1970s.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/sotc/drought/2012/06/uspa-wet-dry-mod-ext-190001-201206.gif
BY Girma Orssengo
ON August 25, 2012 04:56 PM
Climate Science as Culture War
By Andrew J Hoffman
It is a very well written article that supports your position on what to do to stop man made Global Warming.
Enjoyed reading it.
However, I disagree with your position.
In the following chart, when you look at the global mean temperature data since record begun 162 years ago, there has not been any change in its pattern.
http://bit.ly/Aei4Nd
Its pattern has been on a slight warming trend since the little ice age.
BY Andrew Hoffman
ON August 26, 2012 09:56 AM
My goal in writing this article is to discuss the social and psychological processes that influence how we process complex scientific information. Overall, I believe that the kinds of value conflicts I describe are embedded within most, if not all, environmental and scientific/technology issues. I had dinner the other night with a medical ethicist who said he saw the same kinds of dynamics I describe in the question over home birthing. They are at play in the questions over environmental issues like whether to drill in ANWR, place restrictions on toxic chemicals like Bisphenol-A or protect endangered species. And they are at play on other scientific/technological questions like the installation of smart meters, the safety of nanotechnology or the question of a link between vaccinations and autism. In the end, the process by which scientists come to conclusions is far different than the process by which society comes to conclusions. Scientists and other interested parties need to recognize and not lament that fact. I have some scientists who feel that this direction of inquiry is a waste of time because it is a debate over “truth.” But, as I teach my MBA students, it is one thing to come up with what you think is the right answer. It is a totally different thing to convince people it is the right thing, and then get them to do something about it.
I appreciate the feedback I have received on this page and more directly. also recommend some very good work by Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis, and The Righteous Mind) on the topic.
BY Peter Erskine
ON August 26, 2012 03:30 PM
In the seventh paragraph of this article, Andrew Hoffman says “The answers to this question can be found, not from the physical sciences, but from the social science disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and others.”.
I would take issue with such an insulting assertion. The primary reason why there is such a large groundswell of questioning, is that the “warmists” have always hijacked the meeting and run off with the agenda before the results are in. In their eagerness to force early conclusions and to grasp the resulting funding, they sweep under the carpet the fact that there is still scientific climate research going on, and a far greater amount of general science research (not necessarily pure climate research) that still awaits to be done.
Society is only just at the beginning of collecting together the list of factors that affect climate; and our understanding of how, and how much, each factor affects climate is still rudimentary.
It is therefore 100% reasonable to object to the loud calling-out of premature and basically unsound conclusions.
And this has nothing to do with anthropology or psychology! It is simply rationalism and “good science”.
BY Joe Brewer
ON August 26, 2012 04:55 PM
Hello Andrew,
Thank you so much for writing this article. I left a Ph.D. program in atmospheric science nearly a decade ago to study human cognition and social values for this exact reason. It is profoundly important that the psychological and cultural drivers of these phenomena become better known.
Back in 2008, I co-authored a paper making the same argument you have presented here. It was published in the Environmental Law Review with the title “Why the Environmental Movement Needs a Cognitive Dimension.” You can download it here:
http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/EnvironmentalCognitivePolicy.pdf
I would love to speak with you about how our respective works can merge. This is an area of research and emerging practice that I have dedicated my life to. I have worked with many leading researchers and scholars across psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience to build a cogent framework for cultural engagement that I’d love to explore with you.
Very best,
Joe Brewer
Director, Cognitive Policy Works
Seattle, WA
BY Richard J. Bono
ON August 27, 2012 08:08 AM
I am an architect living in York County Pennsylvania, across the Susquehanna from Lancaster County. I am co founder of a local land trust which is one of five in the two country region that makes us the #1 ag preservation region in the USA. Among our natural assets a extremely high quality soils combined with generally reliable and abundant rainfall. The UN has designed parts of our region as one of the three greatest naturally irrigated farming areas on the planet.
I…among many others here… have been attuned to the rhythms of nature with our ag tradition, and our strong local food movement. I have also followed the science of Climate Change as a non scientist….reading poplar books by James Hansen and Heidi Cullen. On occasion I have discovered what I had intuited to be true, had scientific support. In an ag area, attention to nature is not something abstract. It’s a matter of business. It’s a matter of both scientific and practical knowledge, it is a matter of politics…and it’s a matter of religion.
I agree with you whole heartedly, that speaking the cultural language of social group is central to moving public consciousness and education. Here, our strong ag preservation movement has caught the imaginations of many disparate groups, who have cooperated to make it happen…from businessmen, to small farmers, to production farmers, to politicians, to bankers, to lawyers, etc. Central to this fact, as corny (sorry) as it might sound, is the idea that the good society is one that values the stewardship of the land. The idea of stewardship is both Biblical AND a scientific one. However if this sense was the only value, our success would have never materialized.
The practical and economic mechanism for stewardship and conservation is legal instrument called the conservation easement. Here landowners GIVE UP development rights to their land. Under any of our five programs, the difference between the development value, and the agricultural value, serves as the basis, of either a direct state subsidy (through cigarette taxes), or a Federal income tax credit. This is something wealthy landowners, small farmers, production farmers, organic farmers, politicians, businessmen, lawyers, etc…all support, as evidenced by their presence on the boards of directors of these non profits. Here, easements can be tailored to different individual economic situations.
We have found a way to integrate many disparate interests, into a soundly based economic system that preserves our agricultural (and natural land) tradition…that is very consistent with the religious idea of stewardship. “Brokers”, as you call them, from many persuasions, were indeed employed to explain and popularize, within groups appropriate to their own experience of life.. Among the most effective with the most powerful elements here, surprisingly to some, were many of the lawyers…..and one architect.
Land preservation is so strong a value here now, that any politician who runs on a platform opposing farm and and natural land preservation will be soundly defeated…as forcefully demonstrated 20 years ago, in very Republican Lancaster.
But there are challenges ahead:
In regard to the dynamic nature of Climate Change, one incident comes to mind. I had heard that our plant hardiness zone was expected to change from a 6 to a 9 (or even 10) in 75 years. Such a change would have a profound impact, not only on the natural environment, but upon our agriculture, and hence our whole human community. I spoke to Dr. Richard Alley, member of the US Academy of Sciences, and Greenland ice core scientist…when he made a presentation to an auditorium full of students at York College, a business oriented school here. Dr. Alley confirmed pretty much what I had heard…saying: “that sounds about right.”.
When you mention existential threats to human society, it’s hard to imagine a more universal and geo-historic one. It also strikes me that those who live and work close to nature, as in places like York and Lancaster, will know from their everyday experience, that something important is changing. This is even more so in the areas of the country that will feel physical changes faster…like the American mid and south west, Florida. I suspect that continuing extreme weather events will eventually make a pure denier position untenable. It will become akin to denying the nose on one’s face.
If that was all there was to this I would be more hopeful, for the other element is time. Dr. Hansen says that we have 8 centuries of heat built into the earth system already. So reducing carbon dioxide, and improving our performance, might not really be enough in itself. He and Dr. Alley also speak of tipping points, and the seven major “positive feedback loops”, that no one knows how much “forcing” will activate. Alley’s science demonstrates is that quite catastrophic changes to the earth climate, occurred, quite often, and most alarmingly, abruptly….as 20 foot ocean rises within 8 years. This would realize Hansen’s “different planet” warning.
Dr. Alley says no one can predict such tipping point scenarios, but there is a clear element of existential risk involved. My point is that this is very serious business..and nature will not take into account the human timetable in realizing its peril. There is not an unlimited amount of time.
As one, now in the alarmist camp, I think your article could not be more important. We have to get started. Thank you.
BY Paul
ON August 27, 2012 12:36 PM
@ Girma
Have you added together, for each year, both tails of the distribution (unusually wet plus unusually dry) and then calculated a moving average for this data to look for a trend? I would think you could draw a more robust conclusion by doing so rather than visually identifying spikes in the data.
BY Paul
ON August 27, 2012 12:39 PM
Very insightful article by the way.
BY srp
ON August 28, 2012 05:22 PM
A propos of the article’s theme about appealing to the values of those whom one wants to persuade, I have long been baffled as to why Urgent Mitigationists (my own coinage intended to be more neutral than “alarmists”) have not unified behind a program of greatly increased nuclear power production. James Hansen has advocated this, but the movement in general has clustered behind the twin solutions of 1) massive cutbacks in energy use and 2) “soft” energy sources such as windmills, solar photovoltaics, and biofuels.
There are three reasons related to the theme of this article why this two-pronged approach taken by the UM movement is perverse and counterproductive. First, nuclear power, while more expensive per kilowatt-hour than fossil-fuel sources of electric power, is vastly cheaper than wind or solar, especially when adjusted for availability, reliability, need for backup sources, etc. Studious avoidance of what should be a natural call for expansion of the next-best source of electricity after fossil fuels breeds suspicion among typical American business/engineering types that the agenda of the UMs is not to solve an environmental problem but rather to pursue an ideological green deindustrialization agenda.
Second, nuclear power, as a quintessential “hard” technology, appeals to the Promethean and cornucopian values of pro-capitalism, pro-technology constituencies that are heavily represented among skeptics. Nobody will hear a call for expanded nuclear capacity as some sort of conspiracy by Gaia-worshipping anti-growth fanatics to make us all live as peasants. Rather than a step back from progress it will be perceived as a confirmation of the progressive track of technological civilization. Windmills and solar, by contrast, beyond their economic and technical weaknesses, smack of exactly the kind of call for passivity and surrender to natural forces that many on the political right see as anti-civilizational.
Third, vigorous advocacy of nukes would lend huge credibility to those claiming the mantle of science because it would run contrary to the persistent fear mongering about radiation and nuclear safety promulgated by self-described environmentalists. It’s hard to take seriously people who say that their views are driven by the scientific consensus reported by official bodies when those same people reject the “settled science” behind the risks of radiation, deaths per kilowatt-hour across technologies, the safety of waste disposal and/or reprocessing, etc. In this regard, Urgent Mitigationists ought to have raised a massive hue and cry about the recent decisions by both Germany and Japan to cut back or eliminate nuclear power from their generating bases; their failure to do so again casts suspicion that their real allegiances are to a sentimental nature-worship rather than a pragmatic response to climate risks.
BY Stephen Scanlon
ON August 28, 2012 07:04 PM
Your use of “logic schism” has filled a lexicographical void for me. It might go a long way to explain why the justices of the Supreme Court can so often come up with those 5 - 4 decisions. If they are approaching an issue from distinct perspectives, how can they be expected to reference the same body of the law in their interpretations. This is the same when people are talking at cross purposes when they have no basis for understanding one another. Logic schism is a failure to be able to understand the other. Entering the enemy’s camp - the social scientist’‘s job - is sometimes necessary and a sign of crossing into understanding is that one leaves the camp somewhat humbled. That is why those on the extremes cannot be effective leaders.
BY Richard J. Bono
ON August 29, 2012 06:31 AM
In my earlier comment, I badly erred when I wrote that James Hansen said that there are eight centuries of heat already in the earth system. I meant to say eight centuries to dissipate antropogenic carbon dioxide.
BY Uday Bhaskar
ON September 13, 2012 08:35 PM
Dear Andrew,
thanks for a very elaborate and detailed article. however, i think this is one of the reasons why people get averse on this issue, as we generate more verbal gibberish than making crisp and factual points. the title is attractive enough, but the points made are very stretched and all encompassing so that we get rounded by all commercial propaganda that shapes everything what we call (very loosely) our culture. We do not need to go very far than check our facts in daily life, the catch is to do that by consciously avoiding traps of commercial propaganda. If we do that we directly appreciate the truth of the matter, be it science, culture, etc.. surrounding the climate change. and more importantly, to talk of crisp point, I would say the concern now on should be described more as ‘human change’ than climate change, because we are causing this change, not nature. If we get this point, without letting our bloated egos coming in the way, we will do good for ourselves and the nature, as always can take care of itself.
thanks
uday
BY Robert Cavalier
ON October 10, 2012 06:02 AM
It is important to realize that the principles and practices of deliberative democracy can help to diagnose the problems involved in discussing climate change as well as to provide solutions to the challenge of discussing climate change. Two centers whose work is informed by the social sciences are the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford ( http://cdd.stanford.edu ) and the Program for Deliberative Democracy at Carnegie Mellon ( http://hss.cmu.edu/pdd/ ). Both centers have been actively involved with citizen deliberation.
Recently, the Program for Deliberative Democracy hosted a series of Campus Conversations on Climate Change - See
http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/environment/2012/fall/climate-change-conversation.shtml
and http://hss.cmu.edu/pdd/polls/climate/campus/pgh.html
BY Eli Rabett
ON November 12, 2012 07:22 PM
You make a fundamental mistake in your analogy with the tobacco issue, the tobacco companies were forced to admit the link to lung cancer and other life shortening illnesses in court as the price for being allowed to stay in business. It was not the result of some nebulous public health community’s efforts, but rather plaintiff’s lawyers and state attorney generals jumping on them long after the scientific case was clear.
Your argument fails because what your “donor” and the fossil fuel interests and the Homeland Institutes and the CATO Institute and the Girmas are looking for is affirmation that they should be taken seriously. They should not, and doing so only delays action.
Your argument is not new, it has never worked and unfortunately it is not working today. While confrontation may be polite, it is strenuous even when so, but unfortunately it is necessary.
BY Gail Zawacki
ON November 27, 2012 11:12 AM
Dear Professor Hoffman,
I actually did attend a Heartland Conference (uninvited!) because I wanted to understand what enables professional deniers to be so convincing. (original blog post and photos here: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/07/beware-banality-of-evil-heartless-at.html)
One of the first questions asked by a speaker was, let’s suppose burning gas and oil and coal IS bad. What are we going to replace it with? Solar panels? Wind? Geothermal?
This elicited guffaws in the audience and therein, I believe, lies the simple answer. Deniers don’t believe that “renewable” (to the extent it really is renewable, because it isn’t since it is produced with many nonrenewable resources) can ever replace the concentrated power of fossil fuels. And they’re right.
Most climate activists and scientists have no answer for this other than “faith” in technological magic - rather than confronting head-on that in order to make even a dent in the acceleration of global warming, thanks to all those amplifying feedbacks, the developed nations would have to sacrifice by drastically curtailing consumption…and the developing nations would have to drastically curtail population.
Nothing less will do, and as long as the Big Gang Green organizations pretend we will be saved by recycling, and buying local, and giving them donations, the deniers suspect quite rightly that there is no credibility in the environmental movement, and this is what enables them to dismiss the science.
To use your analogy of tobacco use - people had to QUIT. And they had to be tremendously frightened by an existential threat to do so.
BY peter kenneth
ON December 28, 2012 11:30 PM
Thank you for penning down such a great thought. I think there is a need to take initiative in order to save our earth.
BY nursing ceu
ON February 1, 2013 09:06 PM
Very insightful post, Thank you so much for writing this article and sharing your thought to save our earth.
BY bill from Arizona
ON March 29, 2013 03:07 PM
This is an interesting subject. I was intrigued how you mentioned someone who evangelized you in the beginning of your article then in the first paragraph of the second section you evangelized to your readers.
I’ll admit that I am a skeptic. I have a strong science background and believe I can identify fuzzy science when it is presented. There are too many questions on cause and effect, tampering with the data, and bullying by the climate science elites. Why does no one in the climate science field call out Al Gore’s false claim of CO2 to temperature correlation in the ice core record? Or when “climategate” broke out and the wagons were circled. When these scientists idly sit back and not condemn these kinds of behavior they show they are not “critical” of their own science.
The IPCC itself is not a scientific body, but rather a political body. The term “denier” is a way to bully people, even though those that do not goose step to the IPCC come in many flavors. And yes there are many top climatologists that think the IPCC is not representative of the science.
However, the bigger question is that you might want to consider your own beliefs and why you believe them before trying to change the minds of others.
BY Richard
ON September 25, 2013 08:18 PM
I think your post does show some totalitarian tendecies and in addition tendecies for hatred for capitalism and personal immorality and generally far leftism and being part of the cultural divide. As well as hypocricy and dihonesty and a want to mislead people and lack of open mindedness.
AGW is also true by the way.
I ask that you actually examine your own beliefs and whether there are any limitations to them. Maybe upsetting the status quo too much without putting certain boundaries in place could cause more harm than good, social change of great sacrifice that you call necessary (bassically you are a cousin to communists) might come with greater negative consequences than moving forward with capitalistic technological and otherwise inovvations than the impossible goals.
Indeed some of the most misanthropic ecologist enviromentalist visions are more extreme than communism too but that does not mean we should not have any enviromentalism in general. The problem is you keep the door half open to them instead of closed shut in that message of your, showing deep irresponsibility just like Einstein did (you are no Einstein) when he praised the communist regimes of his time.
BY aed939
ON April 7, 2014 04:04 PM
It might be helpful to examine some retrospectful hypotheticals. Rather than trying to model the future, consider whether the world would be better off or worse off if we had the preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels. What would crop yields be? W ould we be able to feed 7 billion people? How much land would be devoted to agriculture? What would the world ecosystems be—would there be less diversity and more extinctions? Would it be less green? Would there be slower reforestation?
BY Brad Keyes
ON April 19, 2014 03:10 PM
Andrew,
the reason this debate so stimulates and puzzles you, and the reason you’re on the wrong “side” of it, is that you don’t understand HOW SCIENCE WORKS. You can’t even tell pseudoscience from science.
For example:
> Today, there is no doubt that a scientific consensus exists on the issue of climate change.
Consensus in science is meaningless.
It’s got an evidentiary value of zero. Why are you even talking about a “consensus” on a matter of nature?
Oh, that’s right. Because climate science, as a movement, is PSEUDOscientific.
If you had a science PhD you’d know this. It’s not exactly hard to spot when you know what you’re looking for!
> Both the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science use the word “consensus” when describing the state of climate science.
It’s almost like they’re TRYING to tell you it’s pseudoscience.
> And yet a social consensus on climate change does not exist.
Maybe the general public knows more about HOW SCIENCE WORKS than you, Andrew. Ever think of that possibility?
> Surveys show that the American public’s belief in the science of climate change
“belief in the science of…”
Gibberish.
In science the object of belief, disbelief, knowledge, doubt, etc. is the HYPOTHESIS (which may become a THEORY in time). A human being can’t believe or deny something called “the science.” That isn’t English. What do you even picture in your head when you say that?
> Belief declined from 71 percent to 57 percent between April 2008 and October 2009, according to an October 2009 Pew Research Center poll;
Belief IN WHAT?
“The science”? Word salad.
“Climate change”? An unfalsifiable, undefined, uninteresting platitude. EVERYONE believes in climate change, even the people so sick of hearing about it that they tick the “Dismissive” box in the hope people on your “side” will shut up about it.
> beliefs that emerge, not from individual preferences, but from societal norms;
Can you name any other belief about how nature works that arises from “societal norms”? I was under the impression they arose from science books.
> Why is this so? Why do such large numbers of Americans reject the consensus of the scientific community?
You mean the climate-scientific community, and the answer is:
— consensus isn’t worth one iota of evidence, so why SHOULD people agree with it?
— any scientific community that has consensus researchers like Oreskes and Cook… isn’t one. It’s a pathological, post-scientific wasteland. Consensus is meaningless, so why is anyone studying it?
Oh, that’s right: to get rhetorical ammunition for the “Culture War.”
> With upwards of two-thirds of Americans not clearly understanding science or the scientific process
Including “science communicators” like yourself, Andrew!
Sad, isn’t it?
And their understanding is only getting worse the longer you allow them to think “peer review” and “consensus” are scientific concepts. Well done. You’re creating a generation of scientific illiterates.
> How do people interpret and validate the opinions of the scientific community?
How do they USUALLY do that?
Think about it. The answer’s in front of your face.
> To understand the processes by which a social consensus can emerge on climate change, we must understand that people’s opinions on this and other complex scientific issues are based on their prior ideological preferences, personal experience, and values
That’s true, in the absence of an understanding of how science works—a kind of herd/tribe thinking takes over and people align with others like them.
Those of us who know how science works aren’t polarized though.
> “...that the effects of global warming have already begun ...”
Sorry but what is that clause trying to say?
Try putting it in the form of a falsifiable hypothesis if you want buy-in from those of us who know how to have a scientific debate.
> the debate will take the form of what I call a “logic schism,” a breakdown in debate in which opposing sides are talking about completely different cultural issues.4
That’s already happening, but the opposing “sides” aren’t Liberal and Conservative.
They’re the sides identified by CP Snow and Alan Sokal.
Read them and you’ll know why your sentences don’t look like English to me.
> When analyzing complex scientific information, people are “boundedly rational,” to use Nobel Memorial Prize economist Herbert Simon’s phrase;
Oh, by the way, science isn’t rational. Or rather, it’s much more than rational, and all the rationality in the world won’t help unless you know the rules of science, which are NOT intuitive and which you CAN’T know unless someone taught you. (If you think you’ve “guessed” them without formal instruction, think again. Your guess is a fantasy.)
> Yale Law School professor Dan Kahan refers to as “cultural cognition.”
Dan is a good person to speak to on this. Ask him to read your article as a Citizen of the Republic of Science would read it.
> evidence and arguments that support preexisting beliefs, and by expending disproportionate energy trying to refute views or arguments that are contrary to those beliefs.
So there are “evidence and arguments” going both ways, in your view?
This is commendably nuanced—I like it:
> But the chief greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is both man-made and natural. It is not inherently harmful… It is not a toxic waste or a strictly technical problem to be solved. Rather, it is an endemic part of our society and who we are.
> Only in an imbalanced concentration does it become problematic.
There is no such thing as a “balanced concentration.” That has no physical meaning. It sounds like mysticism to me. Is this a spiritual issue for you, Andrew?
> If you accept anthropogenic climate change, then the answer to this question is yes,
No it’s not. I accept AGW but it has no ethical implications.
Try to be rigorous here, Andrew.
(By the way, it’s good that you’re using the phrase “accept anthropogenic climate change”—you’re speaking scientifically-literate English now!)
> differing conceptions of science
You’re telling me! :-D
Sorry to be so harsh on you—notwithstanding your misconceived, Humanities-major image of how science science works, this is otherwise a very well-written and well-thought-through article. That only makes it MORE frustrating that you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about on science. I hope you study it, because you’ll then be just the kind of intelligent and balanced voice this debate SORELY needs.
Brad
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BY Terry Oldberg
ON May 4, 2015 09:43 PM
“scientific consensus” is a contradiction in terms.
BY DavidFriedman
ON June 5, 2015 03:51 PM
You write: ” The answer comprises a bell curve of possible outcomes and varying associated probabilities, from low to extreme impact. “
Note that you have assumed, without argument, that the impact is negative. That, in my view, is the weakest part of the current orthodoxy and the part that gets least discussed.
The current climate was not designed for us nor we for it, and humans currently prosper across a range of climates much larger than the shifts projected by the IPCC for the rest of this century. CO2 is an input to photosynthesis, so tends to increase crop production. Warming results in longer growing seasons. Worldwide, low temperatures kill many more people than high temperatures—twenty times as many according to an article published in the Lancet. And, for well understood physical reasons, greenhouse gas warming tends to be larger in cold times and places, where warmth is on the whole a good thing, smaller in hot times and places. Sea level rise on the scale projected by the IPCC for 2100 might, if nobody bothers to dike against it, move the average coastline in by something under a tenth of a mile. Warming in cold areas on the scale projected shifts temperature contours in the northern hemisphere towards the pole by a lot more than that, increasing the amount of land warm enough for human use by orders of magnitude more than sea level rise decreases it.
I see almost no discussion of any of this. Everyone takes it for granted that if AGW proceeds along the lines projected by the IPCC the results will be not merely bad but catastrophic. When the EPA publishes a piece on the effects of AGW on agriculture, it consists of facts about effects that increase output, plus a lot of “may do this” “might do that” effects that could decrease it.
I agree with you that it’s a culture clash, but I don’t find the orthodox side to be much more admirable than the unorthodox.
If curious you can find a more extensive treatment of these issues on my blog:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/search?q=warming
And, in particular:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-wrong-with-global-warming.html
BY Terry Oldberg
ON June 5, 2015 04:37 PM
Dear Dr. Friedman:
It sounds as though there has been miscommunication. The only comment that I find posted me in this blog is “scientific consensus is a contradiction in terms.” I don’t believe I claimed that ”The answer comprises a bell curve of possible outcomes and varying associated probabilities, from low to extreme impact“ or that “it’s a culture clash.” However, I thank you for taking the time to reply.
Regarding regulation of the climate, this is currently impossible because existing climate models convey no information to policy makers about the outcomes from their policy decisions. That this is so is obscured by repeated applications of the equivocation fallacy on the part of climatologists. I prove this conclusion in the article at http://wmbriggs.com/post/7923/ . As I live 15 minutes from the Stanford campus it would be easy for us to get together to discuss.
Cordially, Terry Oldberg (650-941-0533)
BY Ethan Ellis
ON July 22, 2015 05:24 PM
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BY Howard Christiansen
ON September 11, 2018 10:36 AM
It’s six years since this article was published. It is still very valuable because the divide between the extremes is now institutionalized via Trump’s administration. A central scientific point not mentioned in the comments I read is that climate science now fully recognizes the reality of the global carbon budget. Greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere. The amount of atmospheric carbon we have left to spend (emit from fossil fuel consumption) is going to be exhausted well before 2050 with the goal of achieving the Paris agreement target of less than 2 degrees C warming.
(See Dr. Kevin Anderson, U. of Manchester: http://kevinanderson.info/blog/the-hidden-agenda-how-veiled-techno-utopias-shore-up-the-paris-agreement/ ).
The IPCC, as a political consensus creating international agency, has adopted scientific positions which are not forceful enough to achieve a rapid enough conversion from our fossil fuel based economies to avoid an increase in global average temperature that will be much higher than the Paris goal of less than 2 degrees C.
My point is that we are running out of time much faster than the IPCC thought we would. We are running out of time for consensus building for the physical scientific consensus and for the sociological consensus. The survivalist notion is becoming large. Agriculturists are now creating their consensus that we will not be able to feed our populations when the world gets too hot to continue harvesting grains at the yields needed. That is a potential result that will change all current perceived dynamics of this issue. For many other species on this planet a massive decrease in human populations could be a good thing until remaining human populations eat them. The carbon budget that has been used as their target creating tool by the IPCC will likely be exceeded by 2050, but the IPCC’s range of scenarios for the future usually allow for that budget to get us to around 2100. This seems to be a problem that is unavoidable. Yet it’s not. It requires what some here call a passive industrial future while also requiring a massive commitment to scientific technological advance. Both ends of this spectrum of remedies are required. Pretty much every approach possible that reduces emissions of greenhouse gases will need to be implemented simultaneously. That means more technological change than ever before and it also means making a commitment to the intentional stranding of over half of the fossil fuel assets known to be recoverable. Simple arithmetic. Less is more. Less fossil fuels is more life in the future. This is not a problem as complex as the biochemistry of the human species or the astrophysics of black holes. This is basic high school level science. Read Ruddiman for a broad perspective in Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum. The science is too important not to remain at the forefront and it must be translated to the two thirds of people who don’t understand it. If they vote without understanding at least the validity of the science then we will get more presidents like Trump and we may get Trump for a second term. That would be a disaster on top of the existing disaster that he has proved to be.
BY Tammy
ON November 13, 2018 09:35 AM
Governments of the world all pay the scientists for their scientific data to promote their the theory of climate change. First it was global cooling then on to global warming and finally ended up with climate change. In “Atlas Shrugged” it was the very Science Institutes that stated that Max Reardon’s new metal used in building rails for the railroad didn’t fit into their scientific measures therefore they deemed it unsafe. However fictional the sciences and scientists were wrong because it was the government promoting the results they desired in order to sway people’s opinion. Climate change is being used to control the masses. My carbon footprint (if there is such a thing) is non existent compared to Al Gore the climate whore that built his 7.5 million dollar house on the shore of the Pacific ocean. If he really believed the garbage he promotes his house wouldn’t be where the seas could rise and ultimately swallow up his home. The underlying theme is used to move humans from liberty to tyranny, from mobility to being stationary and therefore easier to control. I haven’t been on this planet a hundred years and neither have any of the so called climate scientists. You can look at all the data you want to but truth is NO ONE knows for certain anything except we will live, die and pay taxes while on earth. The earth has out lived every species known to man and will be in existence after man has perished.
BY Tom Rose
ON January 6, 2020 12:37 AM
Truth, in science, is not decided by consensus. It is decided on the basis of the evidence. When political pressure is put on scientists to conform to whatever politicians have decided is the truth it distorts the scientific process and makes it more difficult for scientists to be objective.
It is a disgrace for the developed world, but particularly for the USA, that the general level of education is so poor that few people are able to assess the science for themselves, and have to rely on the opinions of experts, or worse, adopt an opinionn due to political and social pressures.
What is more, the people in positions of power that indulge in attempting to shame “climate skeptics” are the very people that have been in a position to do something about it for the last 40 years yet have done precisely nothing that is the tiniest bit effective.
Finally, the way we ought to be living, to ensure the indefinite survival of humanity in a world that is worth living in, are much the same whether there is anthropiogenic global warming or not, so why are the necessary changes not being implemented with the same urgency as resources are mobilised in a large scale war?
So, politicians, media people and anyone else involved in the brainless shaming, blaming and finger pointing, please stop wasting efforts trying to scare everyone with prophecies of doom, and attacking those that disagree with the prevailing consensus on climate chear.
You, politicians and business leaders, are in a position to do something about changing the absurdly stupid way in which we live, that is to say wasting resources, energy and people’s lives in the pursuit of monetary profits, prestige and military power.
So BLOODY WELL DO SOMETHING.
BY John Savard
ON July 2, 2021 08:30 AM
Obviously, it’s the pessimistic view that’s playing out all around us.
I’m one of those who sees the "Optimistic Form" as the only realistic way forward, because it would indeed be very hard to obtain acceptance of anything that impedes economic growth.
Of course, it also needs to be added that people probably would be willing to accept having a few less toys in order to deal with an environmental crisis; what is the problem is that they’re expecting more catastrophic (and inequitable) impacts for themselves out of an economic downturn. But reforming the whole economic system must also be accepted as something that won’t happen with the kind of speed we need to address global warming.
However, if no compromise of economic growth or heavy industrial production can be accepted, renewable energy is not going to be seen as sufficient, despite claims that advances in energy storage and conservation can make wind and solar work.
While there have been encouraging recent results with controlled fusion, obviously we can’t wait for that before taking action to reduce fossil fuel use.
Thus, in my opinion, the answer is nuclear power, including breeder reactors and reprocessing. And thorium breeders, unlike fusion, really is just an "engineering problem". Our U-238 and Th-232 resources are enough to get us through until we’re in a position to rely on renewable and longer-term energy sources, even though we may refuse to moderate our energy demands.
BY Our Endangered World
ON November 9, 2021 12:56 PM
This is a very interesting piece that clearly illustrates the idea that this issue is happening and real, the clash of culture with environmental issues.