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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The only hysteria I see in the so-called climate change debate is voiced by those like Meme Mine and others convinced of a science-wide conspiracy. Watch the C-Span coverage of the House Hearing on Climate Science last November for further proof.
LS asks and answers, “Who believes in a just world? White male first-world healthy employed people, that’s who.”
Good point but that is who votes in the United States and it is those people who need to be convinced that there is a problem – them and the Communist Party leadership in China — because that is where most of the carbon is coming from and those are the people who will decide whether something needs to be done about it or not. Right now both groups are leaning towards not.
I believe I am an optimist.
But, I always like to point out to people who think scientists understand Global Warming, that gravity is not yet fully understood (satellites move in ways gravity doesn’t predict), nor is magnetism (it is a difficult quantum-mechanical problem), nor is lightning (recently it was discovered that lightning produces focused jets of antimatter…oops….). And electronics is thoroughly misunderstood…and unrolling Scotch tape emits gamma rays and Xrays…yikes.
Now while AGW people are buzy-bees figuring out how AWG really causes deep cold and heavy snowy winters, I read that:
I have also been trying to understand why the fact that sunspots have been decreasing in size AND number, indicating that the Sun is cooling down, is being ignored.
Some scientists propose that the Sun is apparently accumulating dark matter in its core….cooling it off.
Well, if you have religion, you don’t need certainty.
FWIW – whenever I hear someone supporting an argument with strongly emotional warnings and claims I automatically approach the discussion from a visceral starting point of disagreement. It is not that they have no chance to convince me, but the strong emotional reaction makes me much more skeptical. It also typically makes me dislike the person.
Interestingly – I also happen to be an employed, healthy, white male from the 1st world.
So if your doctor said you had lung cancer, you would have to hope your family “believes” in cancer? What a load of nonsense.
Global warming is not a religion any more than diabetes. Both are backed up by evidence.
It doesn’t help that so much of the “apocalyptic consequences” pushed by popular AGW supporters directly contradict what the scientists say– for example, the popular pictures of London flooding, even though that would take some ten times the sea level rise predicted in the IPCC’s worst-case scenario.
Honestly, the commenters here on the NYT, (surprise, surprise) are irrevocably convinced that global warming is an unmitigated, inevitable, planet-wide disaster in the making. I don’t recall the comments being like this before Freakonomics came to the NYT and I suppose that when Freakonomics goes independent again, we will lose many of these folks. Which is too bad; it makes it easy to see how supposedly smart people think. Monolithically, it would appear. Six of the comments here believe that global warming is worthy of alarm and make no allowances for the benefits that would ensue from a warmer climate. Worse, proponents of global warming seem to somehow have the notion that the climate we have now is the ideal climate when nothing in the historical record supports that. To believe that global warming is a bad thing you have to first believe that our current climate is ideal. So, convince me that it is and I will jump on your ethanol-powered bandwagon.
It’s not a zero-sum situation, folks. In fact, a little warming would be a good thing. After all, it’s pretty hard to grow food in a colder world.
As far as I can tell the only people who really understand the effects of climate are the geologists who refer to ancient periods of warming as the Great Optimum and the Lesser Optimum or names to that effect. They measure what conditions were, not a speculation on what will change in a warmer climate. There is plenty of evidence that the earth’s climate has volatility without any human influence. Let’s stop arguing and think about coping strategies.