Re: Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age!

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:18:37 -0800 (PST), Matt Browne SFW
<matt.h.browne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 26, 7:32 am, MURS radios <horsesh...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=332289

- Stewart (San Diego Minuteman)

I found this quite interesting:

Have you ever been in a situation where you're talking with friends
and the conversation turns to global warming? It's hard to be an
expert. Sometimes it's hard to even show the slightest bit of concern
without being met with with skepticism.

Compiled here are some of the most commonly heard myths explained.

"The current warming cycle is natural; the earth has been warming and
cooling for millions of years."

What we are experiencing today is not natural. It's true the earth
goes through long cycles of warm and cold periods due to small
variations in the planet's tilt and rotation. But science tells us the
climate change we are experiencing does not fit the planetary cycle.
We are beyond anything the planetary cycle would account for.

Your response to that one is only slightly less an oversimplification
than the original myth. And the same for the rest, but that's not
really important.

What's important is, the people you're talking to, don't believe you
when you say it. Apparently, this frustrates the hell out of you.

Want to know why they don't believe you?


First, the "truth" you are telling them, is not self-evident. Which
is to say, easily derived from the application of basic logic to common
knowledge and universally accepted postulates. Some truths are, and
if you happen to have a self-evident truth and an audience that somehow
hasn't yet stumbled across it themselves, it will suffice to simply tell
them the truth.

But if the truth you're trying to tell is based on obscure knowledge,
expert analysis, arbitrary value judgements, or some combination thereof,
then it is externally indistinguishable from a competently-engineered lie.
So why should anyone believe you're telling the truth?


Second, the debate is not over. If someone whose opinion you care about
enough to try and sway, doesn't agree with you, then *the debate is not
over*. Period. That the people you acknowledge as experts, all agree
with you, does not end the debate unless those are the only people whose
opinions you care about - in which case, why are you discussing the matter
with your non-expert friends?

And if the debate is not over, telling the undecided that the debate is
over, that only the stupidheads don't agree with your side, is unlikely
to win them over.


Third, reputation. Arguing the reality and importance of anthropogenic
global warning, puts you in the virtual company of a group of people with
a long and well-earned reputation for crying "Wolf!". Or, at least, for
crying "Huge pack of rabid wolves!" when there was really just a scrawny
coyote or two.

It will help if you have a personal reputation for accuracy to help with
that. But, *accuracy*. It isn't sufficient that your friends trust you
not to actually lie to them. They also, insofar as this is a quantitative
debate, have to trust you not to exaggerate the truth. They have to trust
you to *know* the truth, even in a complex field that is outside your
personal or professional expertise. And they have to trust you not to
have been fooled by other people's lies.

A reputation that solid, doesn't come automatically with mere friendship,
and very few people ever manage to earn it. Are you really one of them?


Fourth, details and sources. If your friends trusted you absolutely,
then you wouldn't need to be arguing the details like natural climate
cycles and hockey sticks - they'd have just taken your word for it when
you said "Anthropogenic global warming is Real and it's Bad!".

Since they apparently don't, the best you can do is to convince them to
look into themselves. The easier it is for them to do this, the more
likely you are to prevail. So *make* it easy, by telling them where to
look. And carefully consider the source; as noted above, reputation
matters, and anything of the form, "Arguments to convivce your friends
that [X]", is really only going to convince your friends that you are
a mouthpiece of the [X] lobby, er, grass-roots movement.

And you face pretty long odds on this one becase...


Fifth, rational ignorance. Unless someone has a friend that they actually
do trust to provide accurate information about complex and controversial
subjects, it's going to take a lot of work for them to figure this out to
their satisfaction. And unless they have an inordinate ammount of real
power, what good does that knowledge do them? Nothing that they can do
with the knoweldge will offer them the slightest actual benefit, except
maybe the smug sense of superiority that comes from Being Right and Doing
The Right Thing and Hanging Out With Other Right-Thinking People.

Except, you don't actually have to *be* Right, to get all that. Mostly,
you just have to minimize the number of times you change your mind.


Sixth, solutions. People tend to care more about things they believe
they can *do* something about. And while the "here's how to convince
yoru friends..." rags are full of things you can try to convince your
friends to do, they don't meet two critical requirements: They have to
be things your friends can do at what they feel is a reasonable cost,
and they have to be things they believe will actually make a difference.

Telling your friend with the 2.3 kids and the house in the suburbs and
all that, to trade in the SUV for a Prius and/or vote for the politician
who promises a dollar-a-gallon carbon surtax on gasoline, is not going
to meet his definition of "reasonable". And even if you cross that
hurdle, it's not going to meet the "effective" test. Oh, you can
sometimes get people to take personal-scale action on the basis of,
"if everyone did it...", but only if there's some actual chance of that
happening. Most people are politically savvy enough to realize that,
for most of the proposed anti-global-warming actions, that's just not
going to happen.

If, OTOH, they believe that anthropogenic global warming is a myth, then
there's a very simple and effective thing they can do about it - ignore
and/or ridicule the people who are trying to exploit the "myth" to their
own ends.


This is the important stuff you need to understand, if you want to have
a chance in hell of convincing your friends of anything. Not the list
of facts vs. myths, but the reasons your friends are likely to believe
you are peddling myths to their facts. Possibly you can now find a way
to present your truths in a more effective fashion.

But it won't really matter, because I rather suspect that most of your
friends are Americans and/or Europeans. And that's the biggest Global
Warming myth of all: that American and Europe can solve the problem;
that anything that happens in America and Europe even matters.

Though I suppose you could try to convince your friends that Global
Warming demands they vote for the politician who promises to nuke the
Chinese...


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*John.Schilling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Global warming test!
    ... truth if you gave 'em a truth enema. ... Not on warming he doesn't. ... If you wanna sink into a Hen3ry-like "I hate Al Gore, so Global Warming ... by the scientists wanting to solidify their theories. ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: Antarctica not immune to warming
    ... The wingers & repubs have been claiming that it's not warming & ... They don't say there's no global warming. ... SO stop trying to grey the truth! ...
    (alt.machines.cnc)
  • Re: Global warming test!
    ... truth if you gave 'em a truth enema. ... Not on warming he doesn't. ... If you wanna sink into a Hen3ry-like "I hate Al Gore, so Global Warming ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Pure Reason -- slouching slowly toward "Plonk"
    ... It's not what I say you're not facing up to, Engineer. ... flesh and not spirit. ... get all offended and thus avoid the truth you felt in what I ... practice of Friends, about all that stuff you have so far just laughed off ...
    (soc.religion.quaker)
  • WENDEEN ELOIS DA TROOF!!
    ... EVERYTHING to do with the raids. ... There was a point in time where I thought Wendeen and I were friends, ... poker periodicals during the raids, and also employed by Mark and Tina ... I'm the devil, or whatever, but the truth will always prevail. ...
    (rec.gambling.poker)