The psychology and sociology of the International Global Warming Debate

[Vox]

The Psychology and Sociology of the International Global Warming Debate.

Climate Change Conversations - NYTimes.com

It seems to me something new is going on here.

 

I remember the old Science Fiction theme of a threat (meteor, contact, aliens etc) from outer-space and how this pulled all the nations of the world together-- to fight the threat, rather than each other.

Now we might need to revise that scenario. Fist there would be the Aliens are not Really Coming Group and The Aliens have Always Come Group . . .etc need I go on.

 

The debate has been politicised and/or hijacked by politicians

Timeline of Climate Change Science and Politics - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

42 to 41: how Abbott squeaked in – Crikey

 

Some say that Internationally we have Armageddon Fatigue.

Climate change and apocalypse fatigue - Management Line - Executive Style - Sydney Morning Herald Blogs

Sick of being told how we're all killing the planet? - National - NZ Herald News

Others feel denialists have lost their way

ABC Unleashed: A letter to your father

 

A new development is the increasing polarisation of the debate.

Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation' - Telegraph

 

 

The recent rise of the net and its influence on opinion is also unique and worth looking at

Whatever you think, the psychology and sociology of this is fascinating, and something we should be researching.

 

Whatever is the threat, mind allways projects that to be outside on me..is that fascinating..any studies of that phenomenon ?..should we study why we do not find the threat which is actually coming from /within us and it is inside in each of us...not just within "bad people"

[Eclipse Now]

Somebody would have quoted New Scientist on Denialism as a mental illness?

 

Kalichman, feels that everyday reasoning alone is not enough to make someone a denialist. “There is some fragility in their thinking that draws them to believe people who are easily exposed as frauds,” he says. “Most of us don’t believe what they say, even if we want to. Understanding why some do may help us find solutions.”

 

He believes the instigators of denialist movements have more serious psychological problems than most of their followers. “They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder”, he says, including anger, intolerance of criticism, and what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance. “Ultimately, their denialism is a mental health problem. That is why these movements all have the same features, especially the underlying conspiracy theory.”

Sign in to read: Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth - opinion - 19 May 2010 - New Scientist

[Michaelangelica]

Unfortunately, we are reluctant to acknowledge the impact of our abuse of air, water and soils, the consequences of our unfettered energy and mineral consumption, and our disregard for the ecosystem.

 

This state of denial is driven by our survival instinct - our natural tendency to expand our species and grow terrain - reinforced by religious and political cultures that consider us masters of the planet rather than merely part of it, coupled with an economic prioritisation of short-term benefit over long-term gain.

 

It's a deadly combination that can make us blind to catastrophes that take a long time to build up, and make us unwilling to take the actions needed to rescue our advanced civilisation from self-induced extinction.

 

As a species, we believe in constant growth: of population, gross domestic product and lifespan. Without changing these expectations, all other efforts are short-term palliatives because growth cannot continue forever in a finite world. Is the current economic downturn a warning sign?

 

How can we reduce systemic growth to a sustainable level without killing it?

. . .

Two courses of action are open to us: to do very little, and wait for the mounting stealth disasters to overwhelm us, or to attempt remediation and conservation as fast as possible.

 

If we do nothing or too little, then future societies will be constrained by the shambles of our misdeeds - the toxic soils and the scarcity of resources, leading to failed cities that future generations may plunder for scarce resources.

 

In either scenario, we need to prepare to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

 

We are now a force of geological proportions affecting the whole planet, and we need to break the collective denial about our effects and institute aggressive procedures to monitor, understand, evaluate, predict and recommend actions for the health of the planet.

Shattered Earth | COSMOS magazine

[Eclipse Now]

Well put!

[Michaelangelica]

Just one small comment in this excellent article /extract.

But when Hansen steps out of the scientific arena and into politics, he starts to stumble.

Politics, after all, is an area of expertise like any other. Just because you are a world-class scientist doesn't automatically make you an authority on how Congress works. Hansen keeps insisting that "special interests" rule Washington, and that lobbyists have weakened the cap-and-trade bill before Congress beyond repair.

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/politics-and-the-planet

So does it boil down to whether you believe in Liberal or Conservative dogma?

What has that got to do with your personality and social position?

[Knothead]

The Psychology and Sociology of the International Global Warming Debate.

Climate Change Conversations - NYTimes.com

It seems to me something new is going on here.

 

I remember the old Science Fiction theme of a threat (meteor, contact, aliens etc) from outer-space and how this pulled all the nations of the world together-- to fight the threat, rather than each other.

Now we might need to revise that scenario. Fist there would be the Aliens are not Really Coming Group and The Aliens have Always Come Group . . .etc need I go on.

 

The debate has been politicised and/or hijacked by politicians

Timeline of Climate Change Science and Politics - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

42 to 41: how Abbott squeaked in – Crikey

 

Some say that Internationally we have Armageddon Fatigue.

http://blogs.smh.com.au/executive-style/managementline/2009/11/23/climatechange1.html

Sick of being told how we're all killing the planet? - National - NZ Herald News

Others feel denialists have lost their way

ABC Unleashed: A letter to your father

 

A new development is the increasing polarisation of the debate.

Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation' - Telegraph

 

 

The recent rise of the net and its influence on opinion is also unique and worth looking at

Whatever you think, the psychology and sociology of this is fascinating, and something we should be researching.

 

 

Please don't anyone think that my posting in this thread in any way implies that I feel that I'm qualified to post in this thread. I don't. But as you can see, that didn't stop me. :)

 

I have recently been discussing AWG on another site and in the process of searching the internet for information about that, I came upon a term that I hadn't heard before; Mortality salience. I found the idea interesting and I felt that it might be pertinent to some degree in this discussion.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_salience

 

Here is a link to an article about the subject.

 

http://www.celsias.com/article/death-denial/

 

And a Paper on the subject.

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

In 1973, Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist cross-trained in philosophy, sociology, and psychiatry, invoked consciousness of self and the inevitability of death as the primary sources of human anxiety and repression. He proposed that the psychological basis of cooperation, competition, and emotional and mental health is a tendency to hold tightly to anxiety-buffering cultural world views or "immortality projects" that serve as the basis for self-esteem and meaning. Although he focused mainly on social and political outcomes like war, torture, and genocide, he was increasingly aware that materialism, denial of nature, and immortality-striving efforts to control, rather than sanctify, the natural world were problems whose severity was increasing. In this paper I review Becker's ideas and suggest ways in which they illuminate human response to global climate change. Because immortality projects range from belief in technology and materialism to reverence for nature or belief in a celestial god, they act both as barriers to and facilitators of sustainable practices. I propose that Becker’s cross-disciplinary "science of man," and the predictions it generates for proximate-level determinants of social behavior, add significantly to our understanding of and potential for managing the people paradox, i.e., that the very things that bring us symbolic immortality often conflict with our prospects for survival. Analysis of immortality projects as one of the proximate barriers to addressing climate change is both cautionary and hopeful, providing insights that should be included in the cross-disciplinary quest to uncover new pathways toward rational, social change.

 

 

"Despite ample evidence of an inevitable rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide during this century, Dyson (2006:120) argues that "humanity's experience of another difficult 'long' threat—HIV/AIDS—reveals a broadly analogous sequence of human reactions. In short, (i) scientific understanding advances rapidly, but (ii) avoidance, denial, and recrimination characterize the overall societal response, therefore (iii) there is relatively little behavioral change, until (iv) evidence of damage becomes plain." The implication is that only direct experience with adverse outcomes leads to behavioral change, leaving us with the question of why the connection is so flimsy between what we know, what we value, and how we behave."

 

(link to the full paper)

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss1/art34/

 

In reading through this thread, I haven't seen this discussed. Though I didn't follow many links provided. I apologize if this is not relevant.

[HydrogenBond]

Fear is a stronger motivator and can make people become short sighted and irrational.

 

As an example, say I yelled fire in a crowed theater. This will induce fear and the need to act, immediately. Some otherwise rational people, might start to climb over each other trying to escape. The only thing that might matter in that instant of fear, is getting out of there alive, even if you need to step on others.

 

There are others who will also feel the fear, but realize more people will get out of the fire, if we all remain calm and try to escape in an orderly way. Do not panic!!!

 

Some will hear the yell and look for the biggest crowd to see where it goes and follow.

 

Others will hear the yell, but first look around the theatre before acting, to see where the smoke. The best path may be in the other direction.

 

Still others will hear the yell, and will look around to see no smoke. They remain seated.

 

The other side of the equation is the person yelling fire. He is the one who knows there is no fire. He already be near an exist, to escape being trampled. Or may remain seated at little longer so he can watch and enjoy his handy-work. If they don't wish to get caught, they leave with the orderly.

[Michaelangelica]

Corinne Podger: Joseph Reser and Robert Gifford are psychology professors on a mission. They're two of the authors of a landmark report on climate change by the American Psychological Association. The report looks at the psychological barriers that prevent many of us from backing the science or taking personal action.

 

And as the policy focus increasingly shifts from climate change prevention to how we might adapt to a warming world, Joseph Reser argues that psychologists have the expertise we'll need.

 

. . .

 

Corinne Podger: So let's consider an example of how other people shape our environmental behaviour. Composting -- lots of people throw green waste in the bin without thinking twice, but peer pressure counts for a lot, as Canadian psychologist Reuven Sussman is investigating.

 

Reuven Sussman: Why I really like this study is because it is an empirical demonstration that seeing others behave in a pro-environmental way will influence us to do the same thing. When you hear people say, 'be the change you want to see in the world,' or 'lead by example,' this is an empirical study that shows that this is in fact the case and that if we all just behave in a pro-environmental way and talk about it then we might actually effect a greater societal change.

 

. . .

 

Corinne Podger: A lot of the information we get, certainly from government, is designed to scare us. So we have malevolent black balloons filling a room silently. We have images of parched farms, bushfires, cyclones - it gets emotional response which is something you've talked about, but is it effective?

 

Joseph Reser: The classic problem in health psychology and in the disaster field and in risk communications is to get your fear appeal right, because you do need to make people concerned about a very real problem out there. But you don't want to put them over the edge, you know, and that can easily happen. And then as soon as people get too frightened by the message then they engage in protection motivation behaviour and denial and selective attention, tune out. And so it's a serious challenge with respect to climate change because this is truly a frightening scenario.

 

. . .

 

 

Corinne Podger: When you think about risk perception too, one of the main culprits in climate change is carbon emissions which rather unhelpfully are invisible.

 

Joseph Reser: Indeed, even a lot of the psychological research on climate change -- and this research has been going on for 30 years in the context of what's been called the human dimensions of global and environmental change programs -- there's been a lot of international money, a lot of research done in Europe and the United States but the buzz word there is environmentally significant behaviour. Environmentally significant behaviour has to do with CO2 reduction, really, greenhouse gasses and behaviour that doesn't affect greenhouse gasses somehow is not important, not significant.

 

To me as a psychologist that just seems a bit crazy. I think we should be talking about psychologically significant responses, psychologically significant behaviours. And the reality is they work together, if a person engages in a particular behaviour they not only feel good about it but it has other benefits. For example people think that the really meaningful behaviour is recycling but actually recycling doesn't have that much of a consequence in terms of CO2 emissions. And so a person who thinks about environmentally significant behaviour would say well look that's just kind of self therapy, it doesn't really help very much. I'm of the view that any behaviours that are pro-environmental behaviours but that are psychologically meaningful are really important and all of those actions have real benefits.

 

. . .

Robert Gifford: Denial is the outcome of what I call discredence, it starts with just mistrust - I don't really trust those models they make, I don't really trust this politician, I don't trust those experts. And that leads to denial, which is pretty common, maybe 15% to 20% of most Western populations. And then in some cases this leads to what we call reactance, which is you can't control me I'm going to do what I want, I don't want to be pushed around by experts or authorities. And so sometimes it's actually I do something that is climate averse even more than I might have otherwise as a kind of statement of not wanting to be controlled by those authorities or experts.

 

Joseph Reser: If individuals feel they really can't do anything about it but that it's very stressful thinking about what might happen, they tend to shut down a little bit. You know because they feel there's really nothing I can do about it, it's better not to think about it. And in a way that is adaptive, because that allows them to get on with the business of life. And in psychology we also talk about cognitive adaptation all the time, and cognitive adaptation is a way of reframing things so that a threat that's otherwise debilitating doesn't so get in the way of other things that are important for us to do.

 

 

 

 

http://www.abc.net.a...010/2998311.htm

[HydrogenBond]

It is funny how the global warming debate falls down political lines. The question becomes, which political party benefits most by the scare? Ironically, the republican party is the one that tends to go overboard when it comes to national security, with the democratic party usually slacker to perceived threat. Yet the slack party is preparing for an emergency, while the stricter national security party doesn't see the threat in quite the same light.

 

The party that favors global warming, likes big government. The hopeful changes will allow a huge upgrade in government control. The party that like taxes, regulations and fees stands to upgrade that too. The party that like to regulate individual liberties will be able do more of that. The party that hates business stands to interfere in ways that can weaken business requiring government control. The party that will stand by its unethical members, is also the one that has tried to ignore the data fudging scandal using damage control.

 

In a genuine emergency, action would not break down via party lines. If it was not politically motivated ,it would serve all the needs equally so the collective would remain strong.

 

As far the data, all the model are empirical. What that means is data is manpower dependent. The more manpower, the more data. The question becomes, are both sides of the issue given the same manpower to settle the debate in an objective way? Or do we stack the manpower?

 

I would like to see the manpower equal each side of the science debate. Once all the data is balanced, then we decide where the weight of the data is. Then we act in a way that will not favor one political party, since this will not reflect the rational course of action.

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/32912.html

[Michaelangelica]

Interesting new book "Merchants of Doubt" on how free market fundamentalism is the driver for scientific deniers

Just listened to the author here (Yank).

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/default.htm

The audio should be available in a day or two

[Michaelangelica]

An Inconvenient Mind

By ANDREW C. REVKINBehavioral researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that dire descriptions of global warming, in isolation, can cause people to recoil from acceptance of the problem.

 

. . .

 

More broadly, the research, by Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer, reinforces the case that a large part of the climate challenge is not out in the world of eroding glaciers and limited energy choices, but inside the human mind.

 

There’s the “ finite pool of worry” ( Did we pay the rent this month?). There’s “single action bias” ( I changed bulbs; all set.) There are powerful internal filters ( dare I say blinders?) that shape how different people see the same body of information.

 

And of course there’s the hard reality that the risks posed by an unabated rise in greenhouse-gas emissions are still mainly somewhere and someday while our attention, as individuals and communities, is mostly on the here and now.

 

. . .

 

The new Berkeley study of climate and behavior focuses on how descriptions of impending severe climate disruption may violate a deep-rooted human need to perceive the world as being orderly and just.

 

. . .

 

There is an emerging body of literature within sociology that focuses on the collective identity threats and climate change.

 

. . .

 

As Feinberg and Willer describe, messages of climate change catastrophe tend to violate and threaten how individuals who score high on this psychological tendency order and make sense of the world.

 

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/an-inconvenient-mind/

 

 

[Michaelangelica]

http://addictinginfo.org/new/?page_id=531

 

The Right has spent decades slowly eroding the foundations of intellectual America. Where once teachers were respected and scientists idolized, now they are pariahs. Teachers’ Unions are the cause of our failing schools! Educated people are elitists! Intellectuals are Socialists! Scientists are all lying to you about the environment! Except for this small handful of scientists and intellectuals that inexplicably agree with everything we paid them to say, you can trust them.

http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-energy/83196/epa-regulations-congress-inhofe-upton

 

Take Fred Upton, the new chair of the House energy and commerce committee, who is working with Inhofe on the stop-the-EPA bill. Back in his moderate days, Upton called climate change “a serious problem.” But after a thorough lashing by his party's conservative wing, Upton has changed his mind. This week he said at a National Journalevent, “I do not say that [climate change] is man-made.” Surprisingly, he didn't feel the need to explain his new stance—there was no personal conversion story. He recently toldPoliticothat he probably wouldn’t bother to hold climate-science hearings. (Another newly minted GOP skeptic, Illinois’s Mark Kirk, explained his recent about-face by citing “the personal and political collapse of Al Gore.”) At the hearing on Wednesday, Texas Republican Joe Barton was content to quote former EPA economist Alan Carlin saying that the theory that humans were warming the planet failed to “conform with real world data.” (He didn’t trouble himself explaining what real-world data he was referring to. Record temperatures? Dwindling ice caps? Who can say?)

 

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/politics-and-the-planet

[Michaelangelica]

A bit of fun?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFqGdK3bSX0

 

 

[Michaelangelica]

http://articles.boston.com/2010-07-11/bostonglobe/29324096_1_facts-misinformation-beliefs

Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite.

‎"And it doesn't matter what the ideology is, fundamentalist religion, or free-market extremism. The psychological literature shows quite consistently that a threat to one's worldview is more than likely met by a dismissal of facts, however strong the evidence. Indeed, the stronger the evidence, the greater the threat—and hence the greater the denial."

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/266186.html

[Essay]

http://articles.boston.com/2010-07-11/bostonglobe/29324096_1_facts-misinformation-beliefs

Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite.

‎"And it doesn't matter what the ideology is, fundamentalist religion, or free-market extremism. The psychological literature shows quite consistently that a threat to one's worldview is more than likely met by a dismissal of facts, however strong the evidence. Indeed, the stronger the evidence, the greater the threat—and hence the greater the denial."

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/266186.html

Yep! ...from your first link:

 

http://articles.boston.com/2010-07-11/bostonglobe/29324096_1_facts-misinformation-beliefs

 

...it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions. ...&... The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire.

 

...rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.

 

This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are.

 

This effect is only heightened by the information [or misinformation] glut, which offers — alongside an unprecedented amount of good information — endless rumors, misinformation, and questionable variations on the truth. In other words, it’s never been easier for people to be wrong, and at the same time feel more certain that they’re right.

 

~ :shrug:

 

p.s. ~my emphasis and bracketed comment.

[Michaelangelica]

useful definition is to split it up into three sorts of denial;

1. literal denial, which is like your denial industry funded by fossil fuel companies and there are lots of people who have written about that.
2. Then there is interpretive denial, which is what we know better as spin, which governments tend to use, much the same as where you talk about collateral damage instead of massacring civilians.
3. And then there is what we became most fascinated with, or I did in writing this section, is implicatory denial, which is the denial...something makes us afraid, if it conflicts with our self image and we have the ability to flick a switch in our brains and deny it. And that's why the science is getting more and more certain but we have dropped at least 20% in Australia in terms of the people who believe climate change is real.
4. non-denial denial, so you get people who are saying yes, we accept climate change is happening, however when we look at all the things we should be solving around the world, whether it's malaria or HIV or the suggestion that you are going to focus with adaptation, well, if you are living in Bangladesh where 20% of the population could go under with a one-metre or two-metre sea level rise, then they are not going to be able to adapt very effectively. Or if you are looking at 35% of the world's species probably being in danger of extinction, or as James Hansen has pointed out, to talk of 16 of the world's major cities on sea level, to talk about adapting to what could be a five-metre sea level rise in the next couple of centuries is insanity because you can't adapt to that, it is an economically huge impost we are talking about. So yes, it is easy to talk about adaptation, but it's a way of allowing business as usual to continue as long as possible.

Haydn Washington: Well, it's a delusion, so it's a lie in regard to reality, yes, it's hiding from reality. And one of the chapters asks 'do we let denial prosper?' and we look at various things, like the fear of change, the failure in values, ignorance of ecology, gambling on the future. The media itself has what is being called balances bias where you have all the climate scientists in the world on one side and someone from a right-wing think tank who is into denial are given equal prominence.

Haydn Washington: Media loves controversy, and of course most of the media is owned by conservative interests also, and Naomi Oreskes has shown very convincingly through a great deal of research that there is an ideological bent where conservatives believe the market represents liberty, and if you were going to regulate the market due to climate change to try and fix things you are attacking liberty, and therefore these people are opposing denial.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3216474.htm