Note the implicit but potentially false assumption in this paper.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Note to global-warming alarmists: You’re doing it wrong:
The arguments about global warming too often sound more like theology than science. Oh, the word “science” gets thrown around a great deal, but it’s cited as a sacred authority, not a fallible process that staggers only awkwardly and unevenly toward the truth, with frequent lurches in the wrong direction. I cannot count the number of times someone has told me that they believe in “the science,” as if that were the name of some omniscient god who had delivered us final answers written in stone. For those people, there can be only two categories in the debate: believers and unbelievers. Apostles and heretics.
This is, of course, not how science works, and people who treat it this way are not showing their scientific bona fides; they are violating the very thing in which they profess such deep belief. One does not believe in “science” as an answer; science is a way of asking questions. At any given time, that method produces a lot of ideas, some of which are correct, and many of which are false, in part or in whole.
Yup.
[Update Wednesday morning]
The Democrats’ War On Science:
The name-calling, divisive “debate” around climate change is not just bad science and bad public policy making, but as I noted yesterday, it’s not even good political tactics. If either side could point to a lot of progress and say “Yes, it’s unsavory, but it works” — well, I still wouldn’t like it, but I’d have to concede that it was effective.
But throughout decades of increasingly angry delegitimization of the skeptics, decades in which the vilification has actually increased in volume even as most of the skeptics have moved toward the activists on the basic scientific questions, the net result in public policy has been very little.
And hopefully, will continue to be.
The problem with persuasion is that you have to look at things from the perspective of the people you want to persuade. When an AGW alarmist tries persuasion, it comes off as BS, lies, hucksterism, and talking down to people. In other words, it isn’t persuasive.
The author gets there without realizing it. The problem of persuasion is framed as an issue with the audience and not the persuaders. So what is the easiest route? Change the audience not the persuasion tactics.
Instead, perhaps there are other populations who may be easier to reach, and with less gnashing of teeth. A 2014 New York Times/CBS News poll found that 37% of Democrats and 49% of independents thought that the impacts of climate change will not occur until sometime in the future or not at all. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll shows that just 55% of Democrats and 41% of Independents consider climate change to be an important issue for the President and Congress. These are a pool of individuals who may be, at the outset, agnostic on the issue or even in favor of action but not yet mobilized. Moreover, they are less likely to be polarized against the issue and more open to persuasive communication.
Yes, people more inline with your political ideology will be more responsive to your ideological proselytizing. It takes significantly less effort, empathy, understanding, or rational thought, to convince people who already largely agree with you. These are the people who are easiest to push into believing that there is an imminent apocalypse that demands the forceful implementation of preexisting political goals to control all aspects of people’s lives.
The problem with persuasion is that you have to look at things from the perspective of the people you want to persuade. When an AGW alarmist tries persuasion, it comes off as BS, lies, hucksterism, and talking down to people. In other words, it isn’t persuasive.
That cuts both ways, I would be as accurate with:The problem with persuasion is that you have to look at things from the perspective of the people you want to persuade. When an AGW denier tries persuasion, it comes off as BS, lies, hucksterism, and talking down to people. In other words, it isn’t persuasive.
I don’t see either side as really above spouting BS, lies etc.
. . . forceful implementation of preexisting political goals to control all aspects of people’s lives.
I think you might be jumping the shark a bit there.
That cuts both ways,
It certainly does but who is trying to do the persuading here? I guess now the status quo is the belief that the world is ending and apocalypse is nigh, so maybe people who are more level headed should try and use persuasion. How do they deprogram cultists?
I usually go for a geology and anthropology angle. Some people get it but it takes a little education because the time frame that alarmists focus on is so short. Many of them don’t even know about ice ages, climate optimums, ancient religious practices, or how pre-industrial societies lived. Also, reminding people how every apocalyptic prediction has been wrong to date just as all of the climate predictions have been.
I feel that persuading people that there is no climate stasis is a huge victory. It’s a bonus if they can be persuaded that there are uncertainties.
I think you might be jumping the shark a bit there.
I wish I was. In the USA, the AGW alarmists are trying to dictate what you drive, eat, wear, where you live, what you put in your trashcan (even going so far as to search them for food scraps), how energy is generated and used, how land is used, farming practices, work habits, interpersonal interactions, what kind of lighting you can use, constant renovations to meet current green standards, how many children you have, and on and on and on.
They have commercials where people are executed, there is a nationwide effort to criminalize disagreement from individuals, active lawsuits against businesses deemed enemies, efforts to allow the EPA to control everything that happens on private property, blocking some users from public lands, acts of violence from activists isn’t uncommon, and on and on and on some more.
It is more like the AGW alarmists have jumped the shark.
You remember the Kevin Nealon ‘s character Mr. Subliminal? He is a failed account manager in an ad agency, but on account of the subliminal persuasion of words he slips into his speech, they are unable to fire him.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/mr-subliminal/n9456
The real life version of this is the TV sports segment that goes like:
Here we are at opening day of baseball (early spring) where one this fine day (warmest ever) President Obama (Paris Climate Treaty) is going to throw the first (racist fans) pitch.
See the follow-up article by Megan McArdle, the author of the second link, http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-02/a-sad-fact-from-today-s-bag-of-hate-mail. She describes how climate change believers prove her point by their response to her article.
Lot of crazies out there. On pretty much any topic.
OTOH if you jail enough skeptics, or force them into economic hardship through punitive civil actions then there is no reason to proselytize anyone and you can just progress to implementation of your energy quota & rationing scheme for the betterment of all those that are unqualified to consume it.
You can’t go full tyrant on you’re enemies without disarming them first. Which becomes harder if they get the idea that you want to go tyrant on them.