The ldsfaqs / Climate Change MEGATHREAD

[_Themis]

For those who still deny that the surface atmosphere is warming and that humans are the major cause of the warming since the late 1800s, that’s a heavy blow to their political identity. No amount of evidence will lead them to admit that human activity is the primary cause.

I think there is a heavy religious identity here as well. It's hard to find many who deny climate change that are not also very religiously conservative. I suspect science facts about evolution and age of the earth help to create a negative image of science.

[_Res Ipsa]

For those who still deny that the surface atmosphere is warming and that humans are the major cause of the warming since the late 1800s, that’s a heavy blow to their political identity. No amount of evidence will lead them to admit that human activity is the primary cause.

I think there is a heavy religious identity here as well. It's hard to find many who deny climate change that are not also very religiously conservative. I suspect science facts about evolution and age of the earth help to create a negative image of science.

I think that’s true for a certain flavor of religious folks. For some, the notion that mere mortals can destroy or save humanity challenges their notion of God.

[_EAllusion]

I think Cam has it right. The opposition to the facts of climate change has nothing to do with the actual facts — it is strongly tied to identity. It requires an admission that the free market can lead to the destruction of civilization, that government intervention can not only be good, but also be necessary, and that the US must cooperate with other nations to avoid disaster. It Also requires an admission that the labs can be right.

For those who still deny that the surface atmosphere is warming and that humans are the major cause of the warming since the late 1800s, that’s a heavy blow to their political identity. No amount of evidence will lead them to admit that human activity is the primary cause.

I think this is a yes and no situation. I think Cam is right that a skeptical position on global warming is wrapped up for a lot of people with their personal identity, with ldsfaqs being an obvious case in point. But political identities do shift, sometimes rapidly, and this doesn't tell us why global warming denialism persists. Opposition to torture once was a cog in Republican identity - our lack of it is something that made us better than the communists - until almost overnight that shifted. What caused the shift is a Republican president was found out to be torturing people and this cohered with "tough guy" cultural posturing Republican culture had been developing over the preceding decades.

So we can rephrase the question in a way that Cam's response doesn't quite get at. Why isn't an identity shift happening? One of the wild things about current global warming denialism is that we're now in observerable rapid temperature increase with significant and observerable negative consequences being caused by that and denialist rhetoric still largely focuses on a taunting about "alarmist" predictions that are never going to happen. The future is now. Why didn't that jolt the culture? It's an interesting question. One way to think about it is to note that Republicans used to be much more environmentalism friendly. Conservationism held sway in Republican circles. The EPA was founded under a Republican president. It's well-documented why and when that faded, but there's no inherent ideological reason why it has to be this way.

[_EAllusion]

I think Cam has it right. The opposition to the facts of climate change has nothing to do with the actual facts — it is strongly tied to identity.

I believe I heard this from Sam Harris (and someone might have said it before him). You can take a sample of unrelated issues such as global warming, gun control, abortion, gay rights, Trump's border wall, capital punishment, etc. and if you ask someone their position on just one of those issues, you can predict their position on all of the other issues to a very high degree of certainty.

Sam Harris has made this point before, but it's in the context of the argument that therefore it's unlikely that these predictable packages of beliefs are either all correct or all wrong. This is used to posture an "above it all" stance for someone like himself who takes some from column A and some from column B.

To Harris's point, Harris himself holds a very predictable set of beliefs once you key in on his "alt-light" demographic. Just because the Sam Harris's and Jordan Peterson's of the world don't hold the exact same views as a party platform, that doesn't mean you can't make sound predictions about what they think about some issues by knowing their positions and rhetoric on others. Sam Harris is quite predictable.

That said, his point isn't even accurate. If you look at polling on what people think about various issues, there's a ton of ideological heterodoxy in the public. People really don't line up in these boxes. You know who does? Ideologues. Ideologues like Harris. Those are the people Harris is most familiar interacting with and he significantly overrrepresents them in his assessment of how people think about political topics. The people who fall in those neat boxes are actually a relatively small % of the population, though. If you look at polls where people are asked their views on 10 different political topics, the amount of people who come out as orthodox mainstream liberal (or conservative) on every last one is relatively small. That's one reason why it's dumb for liberal activists to demand ideological purity out of their candidates.

Finally, and most annoyingly to me, it is entirely possible for a political group to line up on the wrong side of a series of discrete issues for ideological reasons. People can indeed self-sort into groups where one side is wrong and one side is not. It's possible that only a tiny fringe minority of the intellectual class are social conservatives because arguments for a range of social conservative views are intellectually deficient, for instance.

(As it happens. I'm 99.999999999% confident the reason that academics are overwhelmingly liberal or libertarianish conservatives is because social conservatism is dumb and being well-educated tends to correlate with openness and provides tools to help one see this more easily.)

[_canpakes]

Hey, I have a question for faqs (mikwut, please also feel free to give your opinion) ...

Clearly, the Administration is not friendly to the topic of climate change, to the point that they will do their best to underfund/defund research, toss scientist advocates to the curb and suppress reports or opinion regarding the otherwise prevailing view amongst the scientific community.

So, what is the supposed advantage of any researcher or scientist in holding the idea that anthropogenic climate effects exist? Surely it isn’t because there’s any guarantee of work or fame for holding that opinion.

If the scientific community was so motivated by a conspiratorial drive to merely ‘make money’, as denialists claim, why wouldn’t they be streaming out of the doors of the institutions that they work for to instead seek better, more reliable work and pay with the fossil fuels industry or that industry’s advocates in Washington?

[_Gunnar]

If the scientific community was so motivated by a conspiratorial drive to merely ‘make money’, as denialists claim, why wouldn’t they be streaming out of the doors of the institutions that they work for to instead seek better, more reliable work and pay with the fossil fuels industry or that industry’s advocates in Washington?

Excellent question! Atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe told an amusing story about how at one of her presentations to an audience of oil company employees about the urgency of mitigating climate change, a high ranking petroleum geologist with a six figure salary stood up and angrily accused her, "you're just doing it for the money!" Classic projection!

[_SteelHead]

Well with the rollbacks to the clean water act, y'all better learn to drink light sweet crude.

https://images.app.goo.gl/tQG7yQDPtF84jsHJ9

[_Some Schmo]

Sam Harris has made this point before, but it's in the context of the argument that therefore it's unlikely that these predictable packages of beliefs are either all correct or all wrong. This is used to posture an "above it all" stance for someone like himself who takes some from column A and some from column B.

I'm having a hard time articulating why this made me laugh so much.

[_EAllusion]

Sam Harris has made this point before, but it's in the context of the argument that therefore it's unlikely that these predictable packages of beliefs are either all correct or all wrong. This is used to posture an "above it all" stance for someone like himself who takes some from column A and some from column B.

I'm having a hard time articulating why this made me laugh so much.

What are the odds that anthropogenic climate change is a serious threat, evolutionary theory is broadly correct, and there is little evidence that women in aggregate are inherently inferior at math? Riddle me that poindexter. Can't all be the case.

[_mikwut]

Hi Res and E, (canpakes I will address you question in just a bit)

I apologize for questioning and running. This is a very interesting topic and I appreciated the answers to my question I posed. I will get back to that shortly, but at first I need to give my value standard approach to this issue. Others have different value positions on this I understand, but I feel it is important to begin to address this issue from that place. This issue is a scientific issue but it is also a value issue and everyone should be right up front about what value position they take. I agree with the (I know horrible guy) value position of Alex Epstein. I believe human life, thriving, and flourishing, indeed even human happiness is the fundamental value that I approach this issue from. This is a basic and primary value position. I don't know how to convince anyone to accept this value scientifically because it isn't scientific. I simply believe from a basic and primary moral position that human life and its flourishing is primary. I'm certainly biased here I am human right? But it is an embedded moral position for me that I simply have a hard time apologizing for in any way.

I think Cam has it right. The opposition to the facts of climate change has nothing to do with the actual facts — it is strongly tied to identity. It requires an admission that the free market can lead to the destruction of civilization, that government intervention can not only be good, but also be necessary, and that the US must cooperate with other nations to avoid disaster. It Also requires an admission that the labs can be right.

For those who still deny that the surface atmosphere is warming and that humans are the major cause of the warming since the late 1800s, that’s a heavy blow to their political identity. No amount of evidence will lead them to admit that human activity is the primary cause.

Ok. So I am a science believer and I have stated my moral position above. So, the surface atmosphere is warming. Very little warming occurred in the 1800s when the industrial revolution was getting into gear, from 1850 to around 1880 there was a rise of approx. .3 degrees celsius, then the temperature cooled from 1880 to 1910 by approx. .4 degrees celsius. The temperature then began to rise again between 1910 to 1940 by approx. .5 degrees celsius. Then between 1940 and the 1970s there was a cooling of approx. .4 degrees celsius. It has been rising since this cooling with controversial interpretations of exactly how much due to el nino in the late 1990s and later in the 21st century. I understand the cooling in the late 1800s was largely due to volcanic activity and sulfate aerosols and volcanic activity were contributing factors to the cooling in the middle of the 20th century. I understand those that are skeptical of CO2 being the primary cause from humans point to the cooling periods as not consistent with that hypothesis.

So I agree wholeheartedly with not denying the data that the surface atmosphere is warming. I approach the position from here with a value position of human life flourishing as my value position. As Alex Epstein points out in his argument for fossil fuels over the last 100 years deaths of humans related to climate has fallen 98 percent. In fact, climate related deaths are almost non-existent to in industrialized countries. With such a rapid increase in population and CO2 emmissions that is remarkable. So I really don't die on a hill of are humans mildly responsible, partly responsible, half responsible, or primarily responsible for the warming. I say be that question as whatever it may we have greatly increased not only human lives, but the flourishing and the thriving of human life over that same period of time of CO2 increase by burning fossil fuels. So I am grateful, I am grateful that my life has been emboldened but such fantastic growth and stimilus. I have had a life that has mainly been one of thinking by practicing law. That has been increased by a great degree because we have sheltered ourselves from the ravages of climate. If that is a political identity that I just can't get rid of due to science denying I don't yet see it in myself. But I know I have changed my position on many deep seated and embedded wrong ideas such as Mormonism so I know I am capable and I like to side my mind as best as humanly possible with reality.

So our disagreement probably falls with your statement of the destruction of civilization. You stated the free market would lead to this. I can only assume that you mean the continued burning of fossil fuels by the free market rather than government intervention by I suppose green alternatives. I need you to be more specific. Also what E said here:

One of the wild things about current global warming denialism is that we're now in observerable rapid temperature increase with significant and observeable negative consequences being caused by that

First, I define negative consequences as human flourishing or human non flourishing. So I can't accept any alarming observable negative consequences. I see the opposite an incredible rising out of poverty, human conditions increases and being better at an enormous rate during the time period in question until present. So I would need those statements made more specific by you or E for me to dig into our disagreements on this further.

Second, I believe I would be the one in the position to more justifiably be granted science as my ally and support for. All of that growth and flourishing of human life from the burning of fossil fuels came from mind, science. It is my position that whatever negative consequences or the destruction of civilization you and E are talking about either come from a failure to continue to have faith in mind and science or from a different value position you and E take. You both would have to elaborate for me.

mikwut