A new study called “Apocalypse Soon?” by the psychologists Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer (summarized by the BPS Research Digest) finds that, for people who implicitly believe the world is fair, dire warnings about climate change may make them more skeptical about the concept. The researchers had 97 students read two different articles about climate change, one that described “apocalyptic consequences,” and one that “was more upbeat and described potential technological solutions.” Feinberg and Willer found that “[t]hose participants with stronger just-world beliefs were actually made more sceptical about global warming by the more shocking newspaper article. By contrast, the more upbeat article reduced participants’ scepticism regardless of the strength of their just-world beliefs.” The BPS Research Digest points out that “[t]his is the latest in a string of studies that suggest fear-based messages can backfire if they clash with people’s underlying beliefs.” Yeah, we hear you. [%comments]
Is Climate-Change Hysteria Bad for the Environment?
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Nothing has ever been as bad as a journalist or scientist had said it was going to be. NEVER!
Climate Change has done to science, scientists and lab coat consultants and journalism, what nasty priests did for religion. Scientists produced cruise missiles, cancer causing chemicals, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, cluster bombs, strip mining technology, Y2K, Y2Kyoto, deep sea drilling technology and now climate change. And how ironic is it that up until 25 years ago, scientists were condemned for producing planet killing chemicals and making environmentalism necessary in the first place? Meanwhile, the UN had allowed carbon trading to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 24 years of climate control instead of needed population control.
If you in academia had any credibility you would weed out your criminals.A wave of former believer rage has arrived.
I urge everyone to contact their elected leaders via email to get these criminal fear mongering journalists charged with treason for knowingly leading our country and the entire globe to a Bush-like false war of climate change. We missed getting Bush jailed so lets go after these irresponsible lazy copy and paste journalists and see them all judged by the courts of our country. We owe it to our children to make this CO2 mistake right. We mistakenly condemned our kids to death by CO2 for 25 years because of the lies spewed about a dying planet. Yelling “FIRE” in the theatre was criminal.
System Change, NOT climate change.
Don’t worry. Nobody is going to do anything about climate change or over population until it’s too late,
So, is the lesson here to avoid clashing with people’s underlying beliefs? Even if those beliefs are misguided?
Warming is occurring. It is likely at least somewhat anthropogenic, though I doubt that man is the primary cause. None of it–NONE of it–justifies implementing a world-wide fruitbasket turnover in economic systems and people’s lives just to make the largely developed economy handwringers happy. Right now we are experiencing food shortages in places like Eqypt and the rest of Africa at least in part because Al Gore thought it would be a good idea to put ethanol in our gasoline. Deciding that it is a good idea to burn your food for fuel is as sure a sign as any that your society is overfed and pampered.
We’re doing this so that sea levels don’t rise a whopping 50cm over the next 100 years. In 100 years, people will find a way to cope with that problem by moving inland a few hundred feet. In the meantime, we’ll keep burning our food. Ridiculous.
People uttering crazy nonsense like #1, another anti-climate change tirade? Only in the USA…
Or not, some of these trolls even visit European forums. Never shy to admit that they are from the United States.
History is replete with spurious casi belli. The Maine, Gulf of Tonkin, Iraqi WMD come immediately to mind. In each case the incident was available and overblown as a justification for doing what our leaders honestly thought needed to be done but for reasons that the public was either unable to grasp or unwilling to get behind.
But it is not just justifications for military action that can be overblown in order to get the public to “do the right thing.” This is especially true when it comes to the need to take measure to protect the environment. The scientific nuances explaining why such-n-such situation poses a danger can make the average citizen’s eyes glaze over. On the other hand citing the danger of apocalyptic disasters or the suffering that will accrue to charismatic mega fauna (e.g., polar bears) can get everyone excited, regardless of whether the danger is far fetched or not.
Many in the environmental community, not just bearded latter day Luddites, have been decrying Americans’ irresponsible and greedy usurpation of the world’s natural resources and preaching the gospel of using less energy and living a simpler lifestyle for decades but he American people haven’t bought it. The concept of anthropogenic climate change has been the first message to resonate with the American people that would cause them to embrace the sort of societal changes that the environmentalist have been advocating for so long. Regardless of whether anthropogenic climate change is real, if that’s what it takes to get us to where certain well meaning people think we need to go, don’t be surprised to see them sell it in whatever way works.
“…for people who implicitly believe the world is fair…”
There really are people who believe the world is fair? Do they all live in sheltered housing somewhere?
Janice, you mean in 6 billion more years when the sun swallows the earth? I can barely plan what I’m doing this weekend let alone that far out.
Who believes in a just world? White male first-world healthy employed people, that’s who.
What a surprise — people who bad things don’t happen to don’t think bad things will happen because of climate change! And you know what — they’re right, it will happen to others and not them.