
Not just the weather: climate change acceptance nosedives with the economy - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/its-not-just-the-weather-acceptance-of-climate-change-nosedives-with-the-economy.ars
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rvkennedy
It's an old truth: most people choose their own facts to make themselves feel
better, then hunt down the justifications they need a posteriori.

When people are worried about jobs and imagine that helping the environment
would take extra effort that could be spent on the economy, they will convince
themselves that the environment isn't that big of a deal. To realize that
alleviating climate change would actually create new work, even new
industries, takes more mental effort than the casual observer is prepared to
expend.

That's normal people - the hacker set will generally seek out the unvarnished
truth in more of an evidence-based way.

~~~
kbutler
It's an even older truth that people believe those who disagree with them are
wrong (and less intelligent, less careful, misled, etc.).

It's far too easy to fool yourself and then believe others are the fools.

See Feynman's discussion of confirmation bias in the measurement of the charge
of the electron: <http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm> and remember
that this is scientists doing experiments and publishing results.

~~~
moldbug
I'm always kind of astounded that HNers reflexively believe Michael Mann over
Steve McIntyre. Of course it's simply because they don't know. And where would
they find the time?

What we call "science" is what Washington calls "science." If Washington
funded astrology and laughed at astronomy, astrology would be "science" and
astronomy would be for crazy people on the Internets. Mind always submits to
power.

~~~
rvkennedy
What I call "science" is the corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific
method over the history of knowledge since Francis Bacon. There's nothing
reflexive about believing Mann over Steve McIntyre - as with all such
judgments we look at who's saying what, who they are, where they're coming
from and why, and make a call. Within limitations, we also look at the
evidence.

Why do we believe Hubble (expanding universe) over Hoyle (it's static)? Hoyle
is a much more impressive figure than McIntyre, but his ideas have been tested
over and over in many different ways, and found wanting. You could say that
the expanding universe is just a theory, that it's unproven, because you could
construct an elaborate static universe model that creates the red shift in
some arbitrary manner, and causes distant stars to dim sufficiently that space
is black and not white, and so on. You could create an elaborate theory that
explains why things fall to earth but rejects both Newton and General
Relativity. But it seems to me that the reason this doesn't happen is that it
doesn't affect the bottom line of well-capitalized companies in the energy
sector.

You are correct that we appeal to authority for most of what we know of
science. But it's not Washington that's the authority, it's the corpus. And we
trust it because it's constantly subjected to self-scrutiny. Voices like
McIntyre's are heard, and either the whole of one single branch of science is
engaged in a massive conspiracy to not listen, or he's probably wrong.

But we keep our minds open.

~~~
moldbug
It's not a conspiracy. It's simply a bureaucracy. Don't be looking for
conspiracy theories. Be looking for bureaucracy theories. I know this
bureaucracy - my mother worked for it. (To be exact, she worked for Joe Romm
at DOE.)

Your vision of what "science" is dates to the pre-World War II era, when
"science" was actually a bazaar. You can't have a "conspiracy" in a bazaar,
because there are no coordination mechanisms. So bazaars can err, but tend to
converge on the truth. Why was science a bazaar? Distributed effort,
distributed reputation systems, distributed funding sources. The last being
the most important.

"Science" today is a government program. It's not a bazaar. It's a cathedral.
You don't have to read a lot of the climate emails to see the coordination
mechanisms. For instance, editors who accept dissenting papers are rapidly
drummed out of their positions or even professions. The de Freitas case is a
good example: <http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/2683.txt>.

Think about Soviet science for a minute. Soviet science was a branch of
Western science. Soviet scientists would no doubt describe their work as "the
corpus of knowledge accumulated by the scientific method over the history of
knowledge since Francis Bacon." I would describe their work as: "a government
program supervised by the Politburo." For Politburo read NSF, DOE, DOD, etc,
etc.

And yet, there was good science in the Soviet Union. There's good science at
Harvard. You're not advised to trust it unconditionally, however, just because
it comes with the impressive logos "science" and "Harvard." They're just
brands - they mean whatever they mean today, not whatever they may have meant
in the past.

~~~
rvkennedy
You seem to be quite keen to tell me, and others here, what we _really_ think.
I laid out my position above, but your case is that actually I accept
unquestioningly the facts and opinions approved by the scientific
establishment. On the contrary, I am a sceptic, in the original (non climate-
related) sense.

If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not
have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and
every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that
consensus exists. I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de
Freitas in a positive light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed
through peer review, I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much
more so if that work contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the
editor in question some kind of victim.

You have one good point though - money, be it from government or corporations,
distorts the process. The procedures for the allocation of fund lead to too
much being done in some areas, not enough in others. The academic economics
profession has been a particular victim of this. The trouble with the idea
that climate science has fallen victim to a grand counterfactual groupthink
(if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the numbers, the physics, and the
reasoned opinions of the vast majority of apolitical observers support the
climate consensus.

As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of _false_
science that you're aware of? Not in the peer reviewed journals, to any great
extent I know of. What would be the point? That's peer review in action. But
who's trusting anything unconditionally here? As I said, we keep an open mind.

~~~
moldbug
_If the US government ran the scientific community, that community would not
have its strong consensus on climate change, because half of congress, and
every other president, is committed to at least equivocating on whether that
consensus exists._

You fail to realize how the USG operates. Elected officials are not the ones
in charge:

[http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-
employm...](http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employment/)

Congress and the President could not turn off the climate science machine or
even redirect it, even if they wanted to. Sure, their signatures are scribbled
underneath its annual funding. That doesn't mean they have actual power over
it.

 _I'm afraid the link you posted does not cast Chris de Freitas in a positive
light. If I knew of sloppy science that had been passed through peer review,
I'd expect the person responsible to be excoriated, much more so if that work
contradicted my own. This would not make me wrong, or the editor in question
some kind of victim._

It sure doesn't! That's because the emails are written by his enemies - who
are in the process of purging him. Here's some context, if you're comfortable
reading "deniers:"

[http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/the-tribalistic-
corrup...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/the-tribalistic-corruption-
of-peer-review-the-chris-de-freitas-incident/)

If the "scientific community" was a bazaar, de Freitas' enemies would not have
the power to purge him. It's a cathedral, though, so they do (and did).

 _The trouble with the idea that climate science has fallen victim to a grand
counterfactual groupthink (if you don't like the 'c' word) is that the
numbers, the physics, and the reasoned opinions of the vast majority of
apolitical observers support the climate consensus._

You have considerable confidence in your ability, I see, to identify an
"apolitical" observer. (Everyone wants to be apolitical these days - it's as
if they didn't believe in democracy, or something.) The normal meaning of
"apolitical" is "bureaucratic" - see above.

You also may not be talking to the same physicists as me. What I've heard is
that there's a lot of concern about being bureaucratically identified with
this scam. But no point in coming out against it, except to ruin your career.

It's true that the physics of the greenhouse effect _per se_ are valid -
though I'd lay even odds that no one's informed you that CO2 forcing is _O(log
n)_. There is a considerable distance between this and believing that climate
models have any predictive power, which IMHO is _prima facie_ absurd.

Here's a brief discussion of why:

[http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-
not...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/02/why-cagw-theory-is-not-settled-
science/)

The author is a denier, I'll admit (or he wouldn't be posting on a denier
blog), but he's also a physics professor at Duke.

 _As for Soviet science: did the Soviet Union promulgate any kind of false
science that you're aware of?_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko>

------
naner
I wish the political discussion wasn't framed around climate change, but
instead was just framed around reducing pollution, improving energy
independence and (eventually) improving efficiency. That is easier for the
public to understand, a much more palatable claim (instead of a "the sky is
falling" _An Inconvenient Truth_ -type claim), and difficult for anyone to
oppose ideologically.

Any time there is a change in models or predictions discussed in the news
regarding climate science, you see conservatives mocking it and at the same
time almost praising oil drilling and fracking. It is just so bizarre. And I
imagine all this politicization has to have a negative consequences for the
field (not to mention the planet and the things living on it).

------
j_baker
I recall a study concluding that difficult economic times leads people to
support more extreme political candidates. This effect could be related to
that.

------
BasLeijdekkers
It seems to me that this is another case where association does not equal
causation. Just because both the economy is bad and climate change acceptance
is low, does not mean that one is causing the other, no matter how strong the
association.

~~~
njharman
Just because it is morning and sun is rising, does not mean that one is
causing the other, no matter how strong the association.

But, it does mean that there is a statistically high correlation between it
being morning and the sun rising. Just like in the OA going back however far
OA said the economy and belief in climate change had inverse relationship.

No one but you claimed one caused the other. correlation != cause & effect.

~~~
BasLeijdekkers
Sorry, I can't tell if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me. My position is
that the study authors are suggesting a cause and effect relationship which is
not supported by the evidence. From the article: "Based on their statistical
analysis, the authors conclude the economy is the strongest influence on the
public's acceptance of climate science". They only found a correlation and
like you say correlation != cause & effect.

