Denying problems when we don’t like the solutions

A press release from Duke University: There may be a scientific answer for why conservatives and liberals disagree so vehemently over the existence of issues like climate change and specific types of crime. A new study from Duke University finds that people will evaluate scientific evidence based on whether they view its policy implications as politically desirable. If they don't, then they tend to deny the problem even exists.

“Logically, the proposed solution to a problem, such as an increase in government regulation or an extension of the free market, should not influence one’s belief in the problem. However, we find it does,” said co-author Troy Campbell, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke's Fuqua School of Business. “The cure can be more immediately threatening than the problem.”

...The researchers conducted three experiments (with samples ranging from 120 to 188 participants) on three different issues -- climate change, air pollution that harms lungs, and crime. “The goal was to test, in a scientifically controlled manner, the question: Does the desirability of a solution affect beliefs in the existence of the associated problem? In other words, does what we call 'solution aversion' exist?" Campbell said. "We found the answer is yes. And we found it occurs in response to some of the most common solutions for popularly discussed problems."

For climate change, the researchers conducted an experiment to examine why more Republicans than Democrats seem to deny its existence, despite strong scientific evidence that supports it. One explanation, they found, may have more to do with conservatives' general opposition to the most popular solution -- increasing government regulation -- than with any difference in fear of the climate change problem itself, as some have proposed.

Participants in the experiment, including both self-identified Republicans and Democrats, read a statement asserting that global temperatures will rise 3.2 degrees in the 21st century. They were then asked to evaluate a proposed policy solution to address the warming. When the policy solution emphasized a tax on carbon emissions or some other form of government regulation, which is generally opposed by Republican ideology, only 22 percent of Republicans said they believed the temperatures would rise at least as much as indicated by the scientific statement they read. But when the proposed policy solution emphasized the free market, such as with innovative green technology, 55 percent of Republicans agreed with the scientific statement.

...."Recognizing this effect is helpful because it allows researchers to predict not just what problems people will deny, but who will likely deny each problem,” said co-author Aaron Kay, an associate professor at Fuqua. “The more threatening a solution is to a person, the more likely that person is to deny the problem.”...

"Peter's Denial," by A.N. Mironov

Public confused by risk language in IPCC reports

Savita Verma, Joshua Howgego and T.V. Padma in SciDev.net: The phrases used in UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports to convey the probability of extreme events happening due to climate change are often misinterpreted by the general public in many countries, a study says.

As a result, it urges the panel to always give the percentage chance of an event occurring whenever it uses such risk phrases. The confusion arises with phrases such as ‘likely’, ‘very likely’, ‘about as likely as not’ or ‘virtually certain’, which the IPCC uses in its reports to denote the probability of extreme events such as floods arising. The numerical definition of the phrases typically appears in a separate appendix...

The IPCC uses these phrases to denote specific probabilities. But research shows that people worldwide often misunderstand the panel’s intended meaning. The study, published last month in Nature Climate Change (20 April), surveyed more than 10,000 people from 24 countries, asking them what they understood the IPCC’s phrases to mean.

Participants were randomly divided into two groups. One was given the IPCC’s risk phrases, translated into their language. The other saw the same phrases, but the numerical risk was also presented in brackets after the words.

...They found that 27 per cent of those in the first group correctly understood the IPCC’s meaning, but this rose to 40 per cent in the second group. Most people tended to underestimate what was meant by high probabilities of extreme events occurring and overestimate low probabilities....

Economic degrowth compatible with wellbeing if work stability is maintained

AlphaGalileo via Universtat Autonoma de Barcelona: Policies aimed at effectively mitigating climate change through a reduction in economic growth and consumption of fossil fuels would have a monetary impact on the economy, but also an impact on the wellbeing and happiness of individuals. Researchers at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the UAB have taken advantage of the current economic crisis to analyse the impact this situation would have.

Scientists used data from a survey conducted in 2011 to measure the degree of happiness and satisfaction in a sample of 950 inhabitants from Barcelona, in relation to their current levels of income and to how they have evolved in the past five years. The questionnaire included data on their level of education, work status, health, consumption habits, and leisure activities, as well as other variables.

With regard to income levels, “when there is work stability, there is a point of inflection in the co-relation of income and happiness” affirms Dr Filka Sekulova, main author of the research: “up to 1,750 euros we can say that money favours happiness, but after this amount the co-relation we observed is negative”.

Dr Sekulova highlights that the fact that “the reduction in salaries in the two years before the survey, from 1,373 to 1,310 euros monthly in average, did not represent a reduction in the level of happiness. Even in more recent periods, reductions in salary periodically presented a positive relation with a subjective wellbeing.” Researchers consider that the most plausible explanation of this positive relation, albeit the reduction in salary, is that there is also a  reduction in working hours and, therefore, an increase in leisure time. Data show that the happiness of individuals is directly related to the hours they work when measured up to 16 hours a week. In contrast, those working more than 16 hours a week are less happy the more hours they work.

“If we apply these results to climate change mitigation policies, we see that reducing consumption and salaries as well as working hours, while maintaining workplaces, can have a positive effective on people's wellbeing” researchers affirm. One must bear in mind however that unemployment, unstable jobs and economic vulnerability caused by the crisis have a very important negative effect on the quality of life, and this can also be seen in the survey....

Man reading The Day Michael Collins Was Shot (by Meda Ryan) in Dupont Circle, NW . WDC . Sunday afternoon, 18 September 2005. Te text on the shirt states: Excellent Growth Potential. Shot by Elvert Xavier Barnes, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Extreme weather images in the media cause fear and disengagement with climate change

AlphaGalileo via Taylor & Francis: The paper ‘ Images of Extreme Weather: Symbolising Human Responses to Climate Change’, by Brigitte Nerlich & Rusi Jaspal, published in Science as Culture, reveals that extreme weather images represent human suffering and loss. They are iconic of climate change and are symbols of its natural impacts.

Reporting on extreme weather has increased over the last few years. In the past social scientists, and media and communication analysts have studied how climate change is depicted in the text of media and social media. While researchers have become increasingly interested in climate change images, they have not yet studied them with respect to symbolising certain emotions.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a draft report on extreme weather and climate change adaptation. The report was covered in the news and illustrated with images. Some of these depicted ‘extreme weather’, in particular with relation to floods, droughts and heat waves, hurricanes and ice/sea-level rise.

Researchers studied images published in the news to illustrate their coverage of the IPCC report. They used visual thematic analysis, examining the way they might symbolise certain emotional responses, such as compassion, fear, guilt, vulnerability, helpless, courage or resilience.

...New research has shown that images of extreme weather in the media create negative emotional meanings and might lead to disengagement with the issue of climate change. The images symbolised fear, helplessness and vulnerability and, in some cases, guilt and compassion. Appealing to fear of disaster can lead to denial and paralysis rather than positive behaviour change.

The research confirmed: “There is no indication of victimhood or desperation, but rather a mundane sense of routine. Crucially, these images represent flooding as a distant phenomenon, with which viewers are not invited or necessarily encouraged to identify. For readers in the West such images may not symbolise, or indeed convey, compassion...”....

A 1907 flood in Kofu, Japan 

Cold weather snap fuels misinformation over climate change

Peter Moskowitz in Al Jazeera America: Meteorologists predict record-low temperatures for large swaths of the United States on Sunday and Monday. The cold snap, which comes after snow blanketed much of the northeastern United States last week, has also led to confusion surrounding how weather relates to global warming.

Since the winter weather began, some Americans have taken to blogs, television stations and comment threads, asking (often rhetorically) how the weather can be so cold if the world is supposed to be getting warmer.

...But those who think cold weather disproves climate change may be ignoring a solid and ever-increasing body of evidence. Cold weather is just that -- weather, which is defined by NASA as “conditions of the atmosphere...over a short period of time.”

According to most climate scientists, no weather condition can be linked to climate change. Just as the cold snap can’t necessarily be linked to climate by itself, neither can the unprecedented heat wave currently hitting Australia. (It’s so hot, meteorologists have been forced to add new colors to their heat maps.)

...Scientists warn that as every country in the world starts to grapple with the effects of climate change, the current confusion surrounding the science could have dire consequences. As world leaders attempt to craft climate policy, experts say, it’s important everyone be on the same page, or else the confusion could cause gridlock, and humans could continue to warm the globe at record levels....

Finnish soldiers during the Winter War, 1939-1940, shot by Finnish Army personnel

Mental trauma haunts Philippines typhoon survivors

Terra Daily via AFP: ....As the rescue and emergency phase of helping the survivors winds down, medical and social workers are appealing for trauma experts to counsel typhoon survivors ... But like all other aspects of the response to the disaster, the scale of the psychological needs is overwhelming.

More than 5,200 people have been confirmed killed and another 1,600 are missing after Haiyan tore across some of the country's poorest islands, generating tsunami-like waves that left dozens of towns in ruins. About four million people have been left homeless and 10 million affected, according to the government.

Amid such widespread mental trauma, the Department of Health has been able to deploy just 21 psychiatrists and psychologists, according to Bernardo Vicente, director of the government's National Center for Mental Health. "Definitely, we don't," Vicente told AFP when asked if there were enough professional counsellors available to treat traumatised survivors in the disaster zones.

Vicente pointed out there were just 600 registered psychiatrists nationwide, most of whom worked in large city hospitals and unable to abandon their duties to help the typhoon survivors. He said the health department's counsellors had worked only in Tacloban, a city of more than 220,000 people that was among the worst hit and where 1,727 people have been confirmed killed. Health workers in Tacloban say that support is not nearly enough, and the needs will likely grow as the focus of survivors shifts from putting up makeshift shelters and looking for food....

A destroyed house on the outskirts of Tacloban on Leyte island. This region was the worst affected by the typhoon, causing widespread damage and loss of life. Caritas is responding by distributing food, shelter, hygiene kits and cooking utensils. (Photo: Eoghan Rice -  Trocaire / Caritas).  Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mass burials may complicate Philippines Typhoon Haiyan recovery

Amber Hildebrandt in CBC News: Filipino firemen and emergency workers have spent the past few days in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan filling hastily dug trenches with hundreds of decomposing bodies. But aid workers say mass graves can complicate the recovery effort by hindering identification and making it difficult for devastated families to locate possible survivors and grieve.

Mass burials began after officials became overwhelmed with hundreds of bodies — many of them unidentified — piling up near places like Tacloban city hall, triggering fears among some that the corpses could spread diseases.

But that fear is unfounded, proven false by numerous studies — a fact that the world’s most reputable health and relief organizations repeatedly try to publicize during such disasters. "The health risk to the public is negligible," said Catherine Marquis, the Canadian Red Cross’s manager of public health and emergencies. "It is a myth actually. Unfortunately, there’s a misunderstanding about the actual impact of dead bodies after a natural disaster."

If fecal matter leaches into water sources, there’s a small risk of diarrhea, but that can be corrected by disinfecting drinking water andremoving corpses from water bodies, health authorities say.

In fact, Marquis suggests the belief that dead bodies can cause epidemics of infectious diseases is one of the most significant and damaging disaster myths. In this case, not only do the mass burials hinder psychological recovery of survivors, it also complicates recovery efforts because rights to property and assets can't be sorted out without proper identification or a lengthy process to declare a missing person dead....

Philippine civilians walk out of what remains of the Guiuan East Central Elementary School in Guiuan, Philippines, Nov. 17, 2013. US Department of Defense photo

Social sciences must respond to environmental change

Yojana Sharma in SciDev.net: The social and natural sciences must be more closely integrated to respond to the transformation in society due to global environmental change, according to a major report launched today in Paris, France.

Social sciences should more effectively research “human causes, vulnerabilities and impacts” of environmental change given that it affects people’s livelihoods, chances of survival, and ways of life, says the 'World Social Science Report 2013: Changing Global Environments' is produced jointly by UNESCO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). 

“North or South, human behaviour contributes significantly to climate change,” says ISSC president Olive Shisana, in the report's preface. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions “is inextricably linked with human behaviour and the model of development we choose to follow”.

In the North, people want to maintain their lifestyles; in the South, people want similar lifestyles, which “complicates the issue”, she notes.

Despite the role of human behaviour, “the social sciences have remained marginal to global environmental change research”, the report says, warning that “now is not the time to stay on the sidelines” as climate and environmental change create “staggering human-made crises, and as the world struggles to find a path toward a more secure and sustainable future”...

"Dejected," a 2008 painting by Adib.azadeh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

After the storms, a different opinion on climate change

A press release from the Association for Psychological Science: Extreme weather may lead people to think more seriously about climate change, according to new research. In the wake of Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, New Jersey residents were more likely to show support for a politician running on a “green” platform, and expressed a greater belief that climate change is caused by human activity.

This research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that traumatic weather events may have the power to shift people’s automatic attitudes — their first instincts — in favor of environmentally sustainable policies.

Though scientists are in near-unilateral agreement that human activity contributes to climate change, the relationship isn’t as clear to many politicians and citizens. This translates into lackluster support for environmental policies, especially when the short-term consequences amount to higher taxes.

“Americans tend to vote more from a self-interested perspective rather than demand that their government affect change,” says lead researcher Laurie Rudman of Rutgers University.

In 2010, Rudman and her colleagues Meghan McLean and Martin Bunzl surveyed over 250 Rutgers undergraduate students, measuring their attitudes toward two politicians, one who favored and another who opposed environmental policies that involve tax increases. The researchers asked the students whether they believed that humans are causing climate change, and they also had the students complete a test intended to reveal their automatic, instinctual preferences toward the politicians.

Though most students said they preferred the green politician, their automatic preferences suggested otherwise. The automatic-attitudes test indicated that the students tended to prefer the politician who did not want to raise taxes to fund environment-friendly policy initiatives...

Aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Wilma in Cancun, Mexico, shot by Alejandro Aleph, public domain

Mental health an overlooked casualty of disaster

Lucy Westcott via IPS: Although Hurricane Sandy made her final sweep through the Northeastern United States nearly 10 months ago, for many people the stress caused by the storm lingers. In Lower Manhattan, two hotlines, the Disaster Distress Helpline (DDH) and Project Hope, which is part of the New York City-wide helpline Lifenet, and specifically for those affected by Sandy, are at the frontline of disaster counselling, listening to myriad concerns ranging from queries about post-storm open hours of drug rehabilitation programmes to anxious parents reluctantly sending their children back to school in the days after the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting last December. Both programmes are administered by the Mental Health Association of New York City.

As the United Nations launches the world’s first ever survey asking persons with disabilities around the world about their experience preparing for and living with disasters, IPS examines the impact of both natural and human-made disasters for people with disabilities in New York City and worldwide.

Persons with disabilities are often left out of municipal emergency planning meetings, and many believe that their voices fall silent when it comes to preparing for life-or-death situations. Over 80 percent of the world’s disabled population live in developing countries, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and disabled people are more likely to die and become injured than non-disabled people in disasters.

...Building on the phrase used by the disabled community, “Nothing about us without us,” experts from FEMA to Handicap International, as well as those who specialise in emergency management training for disabled people, stress the need for more inclusive planning, and including those very people decisions are being made for in the planning process.

“Typically the kind of disasters that result in a spike of calls at the national level are those that are larger in scale. The impacts tend to be greater in terms of loss of life, loss of property or the potential for psychological distress on a sizeable population,” Christian Burgess, director of the DDH, told IPS.

...“It’s not therapy, it’s not a substitute for therapy. Really, it involves listening,” Burgess says, comparing the helpline to triage for mental health....

Sandy and the aftermath: October 29, 2012 in New York City, shot by JordanBalderas, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Psychological adaptation to urbanization, technology reflected in word usage over last two centuries

A press release from the Association for Psychological Science: New research shows that as culture has evolved over the last two centuries — with increasing urbanization, greater reliance on technology, and widespread availability of formal education — so has human psychology. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “This research shows that there has been a two-century long historical shift towards individualistic psychological functioning adapted to an urban environment and away from psychological functioning adapted to a rural environment,” says psychological scientist Patricia Greenfield of the University of California, Los Angeles, author of the new study.

Greenfield measured culture-wide psychological change over two centuries using the Google Ngram Viewer, examining the frequencies of specific words in a corpus of over 1,160,000 English-language books published in the United States between 1800 and 2000. Drawing on her Theory of Social Change and Human Development, Greenfield hypothesized that the usage of specific words would wax and wane as a reflection of psychological adaptation to sociocultural change. Data from the corpus of books supported her hypothesis.

For example, the words “choose” and “get” — markers of the individualism and materialistic values that are adaptive in wealthier urban settings — rose in frequency between 1800 and 2000. Words that reflect the social responsibilities that are adaptive in rural settings — such as  “obliged” and “give” — declined over the same period. Interestingly, there was a short-term deviation from this overall trend: Usage of “get” declined between 1940 and the 1960s before rising again in the 1970s. Greenfield believes this deviation may reflect a decline in self-interest motivation during World War II and the Civil Rights movement.

Greenfield also observed a gradual rise in the use of “feel” and concomitant decline in the use of “act,” suggesting a turn toward inner mental life and away from outward behavior. The corpus also revealed a growing focus on the self, with the use of “child,” “unique,” “individual,” and “self” increasing from 1800 to 2000. Over the same period, the importance of obedience to authority, social relationships, and religion in everyday life seems to have waned, as reflected in the decline of “obedience,” “authority,” “belong,” and “pray.”...

A crowd outside the New York Stock Exchange after the crash in 1929

Cool heads likely won't prevail in a hotter, wetter world

Morgan Kelly in News at Princeton: Should climate change trigger the upsurge in heat and rainfall that scientists predict, people may face a threat just as perilous and volatile as extreme weather — each other.

Researchers from Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley report in the journal Science that even slight spikes in temperature and precipitation have greatly increased the risk of personal violence and social upheaval throughout human history. Projected onto an Earth that is expected to warm by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, the authors suggest that more human conflict is a likely outcome of climate change.

The researchers analyzed 60 studies from a number of disciplines — including archaeology, criminology, economics and psychology — that have explored the connection between weather and violence in various parts of the world from about 10,000 BCE to the present day. During an 18-month period, the Princeton-Berkeley researchers reviewed those studies' data — and often re-crunched raw numbers — to calculate the risk that violence would rise under hotter and wetter conditions.

They found that while climate is not the sole or primary cause of violence, it undeniably exacerbates existing social and interpersonal tension in all societies, regardless of wealth or stability. They found that 1 standard-deviation shift — the amount of change from the local norm — in heat or rainfall boosts the risk of a riot, civil war or ethnic conflict by an average of 14 percent. There is a 4 percent chance of a similarly sized upward creep in heat or rain sparking person-on-person violence such as rape, murder and assault. The researchers report that climate-change models predict an average of 2 to 4 standard-deviation shifts in global climate conditions by 2050.

..."We think that by collecting all the research together now, we're pretty clearly establishing that there is a causal relationship between the climate and human conflict," Hsiang said. "People have been skeptical up to now of an individual study here or there. But considering the body of work together, we can now show that these patterns are extremely general. It's more of the rule than the exception....

The researchers analyzed 60 studies from a number of disciplines that have explored the connection between weather and violence in various parts of the world, and throughout human history. A sampling of existing results (graphed above) show a correlation between temperature on violent personal crime and rape in the United States (A, B); drought and global civil conflict (H); temperature and the ouster of leaders worldwide (J); deviation from normal rainfall and large-scale violence in Africa (K); and global civil conflict and the intensity of El Niño (L). The darker areas indicate a stronger connection between climate and violence. Panel titles indicate the type of violence studied, the location, the unit of analysis and sample size, and the study citation. (Image by Science/AAAS)

Too much choice leads to riskier decisions, new study finds

University of Warwick News & Events: The more choices people have, the riskier the decisions they make, according to a new study which sheds light on how we behave when faced with large amounts of information. Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Lugano set up a gambling game in which they analysed how decision-making is affected when people are faced with a large number of potential gambles.

They found that a bias in the way people gather information leads them to take more risks when they choose a gamble from a large set of options, a phenomenon which researchers have labelled ‘search-amplified risk’. This means that, when faced with a large number of choices - each having outcomes associated with different probabilities of occurring - people are more likely to overestimate the probabilities of some of the rarest events.

The study, published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, found that with large choice sets, people took riskier gambles based on a flawed perception that there was a higher probability of ‘winning big’ – but in reality they more often went away empty-handed.

Dr Thomas Hills of the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick said: “It’s not that people just give up and make random decis

“People search more when they have many choices, increasing the likelihood that they will encounter rare, risky events. The problem is that they don’t sample any given choice enough to understand its underlying probabilities. This leaves the rare events sticking out like sore thumbs. As a consequence, people choose these riskier gambles more often.”...

ions when faced with a large number of options. “They are making rational decisions, but these decisions are based on faulty information gathering. The problem is with the information search strategies people use when faced with a large number of options...."....

Photo by Ralf Roletschek - Fahrradtechnik und Fotografie, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Scientists play down 'tipping point' theory

Terra Daily via AFP: A doomsday-like scenario of sudden, irreversible change to the Earth's ecology -- a tipping point -- is not supported by science, Australian researchers say.

Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, scientists from the University of Adelaide, along with U.S. and British colleagues, argue that global-scale ecological tipping points are unlikely and that ecological change over large areas seem to follow a more gradual, smooth pattern.

"This is good news because it says that we might avoid the doom-and-gloom scenario of abrupt, irreversible change," Barry Brook, lead author of the paper and Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaide, said. "A focus on planetary tipping points may both distract from the vast ecological transformations that have already occurred, and lead to unjustified fatalism about the catastrophic effects of tipping points."

The scientists say they refute recent efforts to define "planetary tipping points" -- critical levels of biodiversity loss or land-use change that would have global effect -- often presented as fact to policy makers.

"An emphasis on a point of no return is not particularly helpful for bringing about the conservation action we need," Brook said in a university release Thursday...

Sebastien Bourdon's 1657 painting, "The fall of Simon Magus"

Climate change is not an all-or-nothing proposition, researcher says

Pam Frost Gorder in Ohio State University Research and Innovation Communications: An Ohio State University statistician says that the natural human difficulty with grasping probabilities is preventing Americans from dealing with climate change. In a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on Feb. 15, Mark Berliner said that an aversion to statistical thinking and probability is a significant reason that we haven’t enacted strategies to deal with climate change right now.

Berliner, professor and chair of statistics at Ohio State, is the former co-chair of the American Statistical Association’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change Policy, and as such, he spent two years talking with U.S. Congressional staffers about climate change. As a result, he’s come to the conclusion that Americans need to understand that climate change is a range of possible events that are more or less likely. However, the negative impacts of climate change can be reduced by taking some moderate actions today, he said.

“The general public has an understanding of tipping points, the moment beyond which things become inevitable. But as soon as you start thinking of climate change as inevitable, it’s easy to throw up your hands and say, ‘it’s too late, so why bother to do anything?’” Berliner said. “It’s like a two-pack-a-day smoker deciding not to cut back on the cigarettes, because he’s as good as gone.”

“The situation is not hopeless. Instead of taking an extreme all-or-nothing view about climate change, we can think of it as a spectrum of possible problems, and look for a spectrum of practical solutions that will do the most good,” he said. From his own career in climate research, Berliner sees climate change as a collection of possible events: some extreme disasters that are unlikely to happen, but still possible; and less extreme events that are much more likely.

It’s the difference, he said, between the low possibility that a coastal town will flood permanently, versus the high possibility that high tides and periodic floods will force the town to close its beaches for more days during the year—a loss to valuable tourism.

It’s human nature to abhor uncertainty, he said, and climate research, like all research, is full of uncertainty. He hopes that opinion leaders will help the public understand the nature of science, and the idea that uncertainties diminish as data accumulates. There will never be a single right answer to the question “what will happen to Earth’s climate?”

“One of the criticisms of climate change research is that different computer models give different answers,” Berliner said. “But the key is not to pick the right climate model, but to pick the right elements out of each of the models.”

As he calculates the effectiveness of potential climate change mitigation strategies, Berliner has determined one thing for sure. “Compromise—if it leads to doing something—is better than doing nothing,” he said....

From 1767, Claude Joseph Vernet's "A storm on the Mediterranean coast"

Conservatives can be persuaded to care more about the environment, study finds

Yasmin Anwar in the UC Berkeley News Center: When it comes to climate change, deforestation and toxic waste, the assumption has been that conservative views on these topics are intractable. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that such viewpoints can be changed after all, when the messages about the need to be better stewards of the land are couched in terms of fending off threats to the “purity” and “sanctity” of Earth and our bodies.

A UC Berkeley study has found that while people who identified themselves as conservatives tend to be less concerned about the environment than their liberal counterparts, their motivation increased significantly when they read articles that stressed the need to “protect the purity of the environment” and were shown such repellant images as a person drinking dirty water, a forest filled with garbage, and a city under a cloud of smog.

Published today (Dec. 10)  in the online issue of the journal Psychological Science, the findings indicate that reframing pro-environmental rhetoric according to values that resonate strongly with conservatives can reduce partisan polarization on ecological matters.

“These findings offer the prospect of pro-environmental persuasion across party lines,” said Robb Willer, a UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of the study. “Reaching out to conservatives in a respectful and persuasive way is critical, because large numbers of Americans will need to support significant environment reforms if we are going to deal effectively with climate change, in particular.”

Researchers conducted a content analysis of more than 200 op-eds published in such newspapers as The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and found the pro-environmental arguments were most often pitched in terms of moral obligations to care about the natural environment and protect it from harm, a theme that resonates more powerfully with liberals, they added, than with conservatives....

Dirty water spilling from a jug, shot by Ildar Sagdejev (Specious), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Blowing hot and cold: US belief in climate change shifts with weather

AlphaGalileo via Springer: Being exposed to climate variations - temperature fluctuations in particular - can influence our opinions about climate change, according to a new study by Simon Donner and Jeremy McDaniels from the University of British Columbia in Canada. Their work shows that a cold snap may lead to skepticism over climate change, whereas a particularly hot spell may increase concern over climate change. Their work is published online in Springer's journal, Climatic Change.

Over the past 20 years, public opinion about human-caused climate change has varied in the United States. Individual attitudes to climate change are thought to be influenced by many factors, including personal values, political views, the media environment and personal experience. Donner and McDaniels' work explores the role of climate itself on their attitudes to climate change. Can the weather over the past few months influence public opinion about climate change and their willingness to change behavior or support climate policy?

The researchers used 1990-2010 data from national public opinion polls and a detailed analysis of opinion articles from major US newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.. They evaluated the relationship between average national temperatures and both the 'belief in' and 'worry about' climate change expressed in the polls, as well as attitudes to climate change expressed in editorial and opinion articles.

They found that climate variability may be one of the factors driving differences in opinion about climate change in the US. During seasons when average temperatures were warmer than normal, Americans tended to be more convinced and more worried about human-caused climate change. The researchers also suggest that headline-making weather strongly influences climate beliefs of individuals without strong convictions for or against climate change. In addition, the major newspapers tended to publish more opinion articles expressing either support for the scientific consensus on climate change, concern about climate change, or arguments for climate action.

Prof. Donner says, "Our findings help to explain some of the significant fluctuations and inconsistencies in U.S. public opinion on climate change. The study demonstrates just how much local weather can influence people's opinions on global warming. We find that, unfortunately, a cold winter is enough to make some people, including many newspaper editors and opinion leaders, doubt the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue."...

NOAA graphic of the formation of a heat wave

Are we heading for 6° temperature rise?

Liz Kalaugher in Environmental Research Web: Climate scientist Kevin Anderson believes scientists at the interface of climate and policy may have used naive assumptions when modelling for a 2°C target.

They say never judge a book by its cover, but chances are a lecture entitled "Real clothes for the emperor: facing the challenges of climate change" will be fairly down-to-earth. That proved to be the case when Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, UK, gave the Cabot Annual Lecture 2012 in Bristol, UK, in November 2012.

In response to an audience member who commented that most climate scientists were simply trying to pay their bills, Anderson said "I don't think it's OK to walk past a mugging on the way to pay the mortgage. Climate scientists need to be good citizens too. Our science tells us we are killing people in poor parts of the world by putting our lights on and we need to make people think about that. Scientists need to start standing up for what they believe in. By staying quiet we are legitimizing it."

Back in 2011, Anderson published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A on how he felt today's integrated assessment models, which combine climate data with economic data, are dangerously flawed. Why? Because they are based on "naive" assumptions for factors such as emission growth rates and the date of emission peaks, they limit annual energy-emission reduction rates to between 2 and 4%, and assume uptake of geoengineering as well as a high penetration of nuclear power alongside untested carbon-capture and storage technologies.

"Because integrated assessment models typically use similar and inappropriate sets of assumptions, they repeatedly come up with the same narrow and fundamentally flawed answers," Anderson told environmentalresearchweb at the time. In his November talk, on the topic of emission growth rates used in models that were lower than real-world growth rates, he said "We've always underplayed everything we possibly can – we've done exactly what the sceptics said but in reverse."

..."With few exceptions the scenarios out there hide or massage historical emissions and emission trends," said Anderson. "So they change the framing of where we are today. They underestimate short-term growth out to the peak of emissions. The peak choice is Machiavellian at best. No-one thinks that we're going to peak in 2016 and yet virtually every model will peak in 2016, which gives you a nice answer for your policymaker."...

This map shows the average of a set of climate model experiments projecting changes in surface temperature for the period 2050-2059, relative to the period from 1971-1999. Future greenhouse gas emissions were fed into the climate models to project future temperature changes. In this temperature projection, emissions are based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's emissions scenario "A2" (see Special Report on Emissions Scenarios for more information on the A2 scenario). Public domain

When Cassandra is an optimist -- a Carbon Based original

    According to the myth, Cassandra was a royal beauty of Troy.  To woo her, Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy. But she spurned his divine advances, and he cursed her so that everyone would sneer at her predictions and dismiss her as a wafting lunatic. Bad luck for Troy, when she warned of its imminent destruction. Enemies hidden in a wooden horse -- sheer fantasy.

    Modern day Cassandras don't even need the appearance of insanity to be discredited. Their market-besotted critics hurl charges of playing to the media, or simply hating America. Apollo's curse is still working perfectly.

    Cassandra bubbled up in my memory when our corporate masters gathered in Davos recently at the World Economic Forum. Among speakers was Nicholas Stern, the lead author of the 2006 Stern Review of the Economic Effects of Climate Change, a 700-pager on global warming's impact on the world economy. Stern's words at Davos drew some attention because he declared that recent events are worse than the scenarios in his earlier published view.

    In 2006, Stern labeled climate change the largest market failure of all time. According to Stern's first estimate, climate change will cost 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) every year, if no action is taken. The Review proposed that we invest one percent (later raised to two percent) of global GDP per annum to avoid the worst effects of climate change.  The Stern team concluded that benefits of decisive, early action on climate change surpass the cost of cutting carbon emissions, and far outweigh the costs of inaction.

    In an echo of Apollo's curse, conservatives deemed Stern a Cassandra. After all, his Review accepted the IPCC assessment reports, and a large portion of the commentariat doubted the veracity of this international climate body.  Stern's an eco-fundamentalist, said some.  Bjorn Lomborg, the go-to guy for climate confusion and delay, played his customary tune, exaggerating the expense of cutting emissions and downplaying the impacts of business as usual.  He tut-tutted at Stern for "fear mongering" and described the Stern team's work as "sensationalized."   Surely the market will allow us to innovate our way out of the problem.

    The denialists' fellow travelers among economists also attacked the 2006 Review.  Many pilloried Stern for his supposedly flawed methodology, such as a discount rate that's lower than the financial world would like.  A low discount rate means that present generations are not favored over future generations.  Other scholars disliked Stern's doubts about cost-benefit analysis as a guide to climate action.

    Now, even after all that bluster, Stern has actually reinforced his dire prophetic credentials. In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos (as covered by the Guardian), Stern said: "Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then."

    Had he foreseen the situation would evolve, he says, "I think I would have been a bit more blunt. I would have been much more strong about the risks of a four- or five-degree rise. This is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one? These risks for many people are existential."

    Stern isn't the only Cassandra.  Many scientists involved in drafting official climate science publications, such as the IPCC doorstops (next one due out next year) or the Stern Review struggle with the Cassandra accusation.  Even as they write their reports, they take care not to overstate the probabilities lest they alienate their audience, and cringe when people cry "doomsayer!" As a result, they eventually wind up saying something akin to Stern -- the dangers are worse than we thought even a short time ago.

    It's hard to explain the dire facts about climate change to people who object strenuously to anything other than the best-case scenario.  If you believe in only smooth sailing and upbeat projections into the future, climate change threatens your vision of reality.

    Stern as well as the climate consensus actually follows the mainstream scientific view of assessing dangers, in which we revise probabilities in the light of more recent experience. After all, a doctor examines a patient who comes in for an annual check-up by noting what's changed.  If the man has recently gained a lot of weight, has much higher blood pressure than previously and recently started smoking, any sane doctor knows that plenty has changed.   The same sort of steady revision is ongoing in climate research.

    Why doubt Cassandra? Her perfectly sane warnings were true --the Trojan horse really did signal their doom.  But as long as the Koch Brothers have Apollo on their payroll, Cassandra cannot convince her audience.

Evelyn de Morgan's 1898 painting, "Cassandra"

The day the dam broke--a Carbon Based original

    On December 26 in a local church, a neighbor read several stories by James Thurber.  One of these was "The Day the Dam Broke," which recounts a stretch of two hours in 1913 when sudden rumors of a failed dam in Columbus, Ohio, provoked a mass panic.  Thurber says, "The fact that we were all as safe as kittens under a cook stove did not, however, assuage in the least the fine despair and the grotesque desperation which seized upon the residents of the East Side when the cry spread like a grass fire that the dam had given way." 

    To comic effect, Thurber dwells on the terror that erupts instantly and the citizens' shamefaced return to their lives when no waters appear.  (Actually, a similar theme crops up in a number of Thurber stories, such as, "The Night the Bed Fell Down.")

    Residents fled east to avoid the rushing waters of the Scioto River. There were none. Authorities worsened the alarm.  Soldiers patrolling the streets announced that the dam had NOT failed.  Everyone heard as, "The dam has NOW failed.

    But were the citizens of Columbus so irrational to flee? Dams do break, and it's usually disastrous when they do.  In fact, in a real dam break, everyone downstream must act quickly to reach higher ground.  Thurber observes that everybody ran because the starting the cars of that era required a crank, and presumably that took too much time with an inundation gushing at one's heels.  

    The irrational part lay in not bothering to check for water, even after some minutes.  But coastal dwellers today, if they heard a tsunami warning, would remember the horrifying YouTube videos of the Aceh tidal wave coming ashore in 2010.  They would flee in an instant. I know I would.

    Nothing in Thurber's story considers the dam's soundness and its state of repair, or the quality of its management.  But presumably, after the panic of 1913, the leaders of Columbus probably checked the dam and made inquiries into what they could do to prepare for an actual dam break.  But that's a much less amusing story.

    This is how everyone wants climate change to turn out -- a hasty alarm that we slink away from when its foolishness is revealed. But of course, that doesn't fit the climate change pattern.  Evidence from direct observations, the paleoclimate record, and climate models all corroborate anthropogenic global warming.   This means intensified water cycles, more weather-related disasters, and a variety of other effects.

    What's more pertinent is speed. Climate change as a whole does not suddenly appear full blown. It builds slowly and on any given day doesn't impinge on people's minds or their lives. A catastrophe right in front of us grabs all our attention, but sorting out the climate signal it contains is not so obvious, nor is it the most pressing task when the waters are rising. 

    The analogy between Thurber's story and climate change would be even better if there were a well-funded movement in Columbus whose goal was to stop any effort to maintain the dam. Actually, something similar has happened to infrastructure in the United States, as state and local governments have allowed bridges, roads, dams, water treatment plants, and so on to fall into disrepair.  Decades of skimped maintenance has resulted in degraded service and outright failures.  The American Society of Civil Engineers gives US infrastructure a "D," and estimates a five-year investment of $2.2 trillion will be necessary to bring everything into good repair.

    We have time to prepare for slow-moving risks.  The cry of denialists notwithstanding, it's worth spending money today to avoid a catastrophe tomorrow.  Of course, we've already lost decades in the battle against climate change, thanks to fossil fuel industry's propaganda onslaught.  But there is still plenty we could do, and we will need to spend decades at it.

    Not long after our neighbor finished his Thurber reading, a sleeting snowstorm began, and was still underway a day later.  But everyone returned to their homes in an orderly way.

Thurber's own illustration for "The Day the Dam Broke"