

The Psychology of Climate Change Denial - sleepingbot
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/climate-psychology/

======
billswift
I don't know about others but I came to doubt AGW because of inconsistencies
in their claims and the data they used. And because of their striking
similarities in techniques (computer modelling of systems too complex for
competent models) and prescriptions (we must suffer and gov't needs more
power, MORE POWER) that they shared with other environmentalist claims that
have been falsified over the decades. I already knew that they have been
fudging the data, from their own reports, long before this leak from CRU.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Your response is far from unusual; in fact, it's probably a greater example of
the psychology of AGW denial than any of the ones cited in the article.

There is a pattern of thinking which is common in many areas of expertise, but
is especially prevalent in technical professions. It goes like this: the best
solution to a complex problem is a simple one, and if the problem is so
complex that I can't understand it in ten minutes, then it isn't worth my
time.

So, for example, rather than taking the time to absorb the myriad complexities
of climatology, and rather than reading the emails ourselves and analyzing
their content and context, we instead take the "simpler" solution, the
shortcut: we say, these emails are evidence of what I always believed all
along, that the entire field of climatology is a hoax.

And really, that's a beautifully simplistic explanation for a very complicated
field. Rather than needing to understand the field, it's much simpler to just
say, this thing is a global conspiracy, and then move on to the next simple
solution to a complex problem.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the inconsistencies in claims and data
that people love to point to are actually things that have explanations, that
can be understood -- if someone takes the time and effort to do it.

It's really rather like the Monty Hall Problem. Marliyn vos Savant ended up
having mathematics professors -- among others -- writing to her for a long
time after she published the correct solution to that problem. The solution
they proposed instead -- while much simpler to understand -- was wrong.

Understanding the right solution took much more effort, and required
abandoning certain preconceived notions.

Climatology is much the same in this respect.

~~~
brc
I think you've answered the question for the wrong side. Climatology is an
incredibly complex field and working out what the climate is requires
multivariate modelling in order to try and work out what has happened and what
will happen.

However, to try and simplify the theory for the man on the street, the AGW
theory proponents have watered down the complexities to one villain : CO2.
They are saying that, despite the complexities, despite the many variables, an
increase in one of the least significant greenhouse gases will cause
catastrophic (the word is everywhere - cue the screaming girl) warming.

The rational thinkers don't think the field of climate science is a hoax or
conspiracy. What they think is that a small group of influential scientists is
doing poor science and going to any length to keep a lid on it. A hoax implies
forethought and planning. The reality is that they are caught up in the
populuarity of the theory and the fame and fortune that it brings, and so are
(probably) indulging in a good old 'us and them' groupthink session.

~~~
jbooth
"a small group of influential scientists is doing poor science and going to
any length to keep a lid on it"

That is in fact the definition of a hoax.

Tell you what. Why don't you publish your competing theory which explains
global warming in a more convincing fashion.

You do have a competing, more plausible theory, right?

BTW -- the theory of evolution has poor explanations for several things in the
natural kingdom. Does that mean it's a fraud, being perpetuated by a small
group of scientists who are keeping a lid on more plausible explanations?

EDIT: Downrated? So, in response to an article talking about how people shut
down their brains and respond emotionally, you start downrating people you
disagree with rather than responding intellectually?

~~~
brc
"a small group of influential scientists is doing poor science and going to
any length to keep a lid on it"

No, a hoax is when people deliberately create a plan to deceive others, and
know they are lying the whole time. It's different to when people fervently
believe in something and get involved in groupthink, ignoring dissenting
opinions and developing an 'us and them' mindset.

"You do have a competing, more plausible theory, right?" No, I don't. But then
I'm not asking anyone to give me their money, either. The Earths climate has
always been changing, and the causes have never been fully understood. Why did
the medieval warming period occur? Why the little ice age after that? It's not
up to sceptics of a theory to provide a competing theory that's better. The
burden of proof is on the proponent of a theory to prove it is true. Something
many people believe has not yet been achieved with the AGW theory.

~~~
jbooth
The scientists aren't asking for anyone's money, either. They're simply giving
their best forecast.

Here's the thing, (and mind you 95% of the people who've studied this for
longer than 5 minutes on cable news commercial breaks agree on it), the carbon
theory makes sense and there's a lot of correlation. If they're wrong, then
all we'll have done is get off of fossil fuels, which we have to do anyways,
and leave cleaner air for our children.

If you're wrong? I mean, do you buy homeowner's insurance or flood insurance?
Why not earth insurance?

Lastly, to revisit the original point, regarding groupthink and dissenting
opinions -- if you don't have an alternative model that makes more sense, you
don't have a dissenting opinion. You're just getting sucked into the politics
of the situation.

The earth is definitely warming, ice is definitely melting, and atmospheric
CO2 definitely causes at _least_ ocean acidification which is massively
disruptive itself. That's just basic chemistry. It also seems to be the most
likely candidate for the cause of global warming, based on what we know.

So why are you so invested in making sure we don't act on it?

If we already had clean energy, hypothetically.. would you be willing to take
on all of the risks of global warming in order to be 2% richer? Honest answer.

~~~
brc
I don't recall ever downrating a comment or a story in HN. If someone is
downrating your comments, it's not me.

"If we already had clean energy, hypothetically.. would you be willing to take
on all of the risks of global warming in order to be 2% richer? Honest
answer." No, of course not. None of my posts indicate a dislike for clean
renewable energy. I am an enthusiast of electric cars, passionate about ocean
pollution, believer in locally based sustainability. It would be my ideal to
have a self sufficient home with no fossil fuels providing energy. Hopefully
I'll see that in my lifetime.

However, I stop at correlation=causation, I distrust any non-testable computer
models intensely (be they of the economic or climatic type) I'm also dubious
about the 2% - it's also based on computer modelling and government forecasts,
none of which I place the slightest faith in.

The scientists are asking for peoples money - that's the whole point. Directly
through more research grants and funding. Indirectly by asking for wealth
transfers from people.

"if you don't have an alternative model that makes more sense, you don't have
a dissenting opinion. You're just getting sucked into the politics of the
situation."

I completely reject that statement. I don't have to have an alternative view
on any theory. Any theory on anything is completely rejectable without coming
up with an alternative. It's perfectly logical to say "I don't have a better
explanation, but you've failed to convince me".

~~~
jbooth
Well, clearly several people are doing it, and I'd wager that they're also
Republican voters, if we're going to play the statistics. That sort of rating
seems to be abusive to me, and against the HN ethos, particularly if you can't
be bothered to form a cogent response.

Regarding not being convinced -- fine. But what's your incentive to go so far
out of your way to discredit them? Correlation doesn't equal causation but
when we have a plausible theory, correlation, and no other theories that come
even close as far as the smell test, well, you've gotta do better than
crossing your arms and proclaiming yourself unconvinced to be credible.

Given that you agree that we should move to clean and renewable energy, what's
your investment in tarring the scientific community? You try to bring it to
grants.. what's that, a few dozen million worldwide for the whole climatology
community? I'd think anyone who labels themselves intellectual would be proud
to sponsor pure research.

Basically, where's your beef come from, if it's not politics? Why aren't you
trying to poke holes in the theory of evolution? You don't need an alternative
to be unconvinced, right? That'd be easier than the warming one, frankly.

~~~
brc
My beef is pretty simple : they're not doing good science. I always thought of
them as well-meaning but misdirected researchers. Since the emails came out, I
don't think they are that well meaning anymore. My problem with the whole
thing is that to me, from day one in the late 1980's, the man-made global
warming hypothesis has been full of contradicting information, alarmist
predictions and became a political football. I don't believe the ends justify
the means. I also don't like the money and 'public thought' that has been
diverted from real, immediate environmental problems like ocean and air
pollution, things that can be solved for a fraction of the price and will make
real difference to people straight away.

------
nfnaaron
1\. I resent that skepticism is portrayed as tin-hat denial.

2\. "If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next
two to three years will determine our future, said Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC
chairman, when the report was released. This is the defining moment."

Really? After billions of years of spinning around the sun, or let's just say
hundreds of millions of years with a climate essentially like ours, with ice
ages and hot times galore, we have two years or then we're dead? Gimme a
break.

3\. Related to 2 above, what makes the current climate configuration special?
All the ice ages, all the hot times over millions of years, and suddenly when
we get a small amount of data, we decide that the climate we find today is the
standard from which we deviate at our peril?

Perhaps a more rational and practical view would be to recognize that climate
does change significantly over time, and we should learn to adapt to that as
individuals and nations. Because casually looking back over millions of years
(casually is all I'm personally capable of, sorry), it seems that we're going
to have to live with warming and cooling at some time (as we already have in
the past), even if we turn off every light switch on Earth.

~~~
brazzy
The problem is that the way we humans are living right now is NOT fit to adapt
to significant changes in climate, and changing that would be even harder than
curtailing our emissions. And it does not matter that there have historically
been much greater differences in climate - we're living right now.

In the long run (centuries, millenia), yes, finding a way of living that can
adapt to climate changes would be better. But that would require a significant
smaller population density to have safety margins.

~~~
nfnaaron
What is it about the way we live right now that's not fit to adapting? Is it
population, as you mention in your last sentence? Not asking as a challenge,
just clarification.

We probably just squeaked through the big ice, and I think low population was
a disadvantage for species survival. I think we "adapted" through the recent
little ice age pretty well, although it was probably not an align-the-
governments scale challenge.

Yes, we are living right now. I think we'll make it through.

------
patrickgzill
The part that is astounding about this article: it was written on December
9th, 2009, well after the CRU email/data dump; it is about climate skepticism;
yet, it has NO mention of the CRU email/data dump while discussing said
skepticism.

(to be fair, perhaps the interview was conducted before the CRU dump and only
now is being published; but why didn't the editor catch it?)

~~~
SamAtt
People who believe in AGW don't see anything wrong with those e-mails. They
consider it just another part of the "extremely well organized, well funded"
PR Campaign. Their argument would be that a bunch of people are taking
sentences out of context in order to make standard statistical analysis seem
like a cover up.

I don't agree with that but I know enough people on the other side to know
that's what they think.

~~~
iterationx
And there are a bunch of AGW people who believe the noble lie, ie. "Since we
need to be doing all this green stuff anyway, let's just do it (carbon tax,
population reduction) and not argue about these particular emails and let's
just have a little faith in the system"

------
motters
I have doubts about AGW not because I borrowed other people's opinions but
instead I went to an original data source - the Global Historical Climatology
Network - and plotted the raw (version 2) temperature data, both for different
countries and also as a global average. The results show that there are a
range of trends going on. Some, like that for Sri Lanka, are clearly related
to geothermal activity. Temperatures for Countries such as the UK and Germany
have neither increased nor decreased significantly over the last 150 years,
and Canada, Russia (Asian sector) and China have been getting colder.

I know from examining the raw data that the global temperature graphs
typically shown in the media contain significant distortions, which are due to
missing temperature data within the series for particular locations. For
example, Turkey only has reliable temperatures for the last 50 years or so,
and when you add patchy series into the global average it appears to increase
or decrease suddenly.

If I only plot temperature series which are more than 98% complete over the
last 150 years the overall trend looks like a very linear increase in
temperature of around 1-2 degrees. It certainly not obvious that there is a
significant anthropogenic component.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Did your data include ocean temperature measurements, ice mass measurements,
and atmospheric temperature measurements?

------
brc
Perhaps the simplest explanation for falling belief in the AGW theory is the
best - that "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that
they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by
one."
[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds)]

I think what we are seeing is the gradual realisation that the alarms have
been ringing a bit too loud, a bit too often, and people are beginning to
wonder what all the rush is.

If you want an anology it's similar to when people realised that .com
companies with massive costs and tiny sales weren't actually ever going to
make any money, and started to sell. Remember the quaint term 'new economy'?

------
rmason
This is a great example of why Wired hasn't been relevant for years.

"Even as the science of global warming gets stronger", where have they been?
Perhaps they're in "denial" of ClimateGate?

When you bet against the common sense of the American people you are taking a
bet with long odds.

------
jodrellblank
"The Helioculture process utilizes highly-engineered photosynthetic organisms
to catalyze the conversion of sunlight and carbon dioxide into transportation
fuels and chemicals" -
<http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5858>

How long before a future in which we're pumping back _into_ oil fields to get
CO2 out of the atmosphere?

Out of all of human history, technology at the scale of helping climate change
is more likely this century than any other. I haven't seen anyone suggesting
we push on towards it full steam ahead, but slowing down isn't enough. We
either get such technology at some point or we stop polluting _completely_ ,
anything else is just a delay tactic and will prolong the problem. Who is to
blame doesn't really help anything.

Also:

Guess who's taking it seriously? "Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140
private planes". ""We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the
demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from
Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five,"" -
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-
change-c...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-
confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-
caviar-wedges.html)

(People in power) can tell me to take it seriously and drive five miles less
per week all they like, I'll be more likely to listen when they stop their
much more polluting ways.

