Peak Oil News and Message Boards

How about melting Arctic ice? Nope; Congress is dismantling a satellite that was supposed to update the aging monitor network. Climate change? Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, doesn’t think human beings cause it and, more importantly, doesn’t really think you can measure anything to find out. The weather? Forget it; the National Weather Service is coming apart at the seams. How many people live in the United States, data critical to determining political representation and funding priorities? Yeah, no—the 2020 Census is shaping up to be an epic disaster.

It’s hard to imagine a good argument for knowing less—about anything, really, but especially about difficult problems with profound policy implications. The government is supposed to base policy on the best data possible, along with political concerns, budget concerns, social priorities ... the usual warp and weft of running a country.

Yet the Trump administration is running in the other direction. Any data that has even the faintest whiff of potential contradiction goes right out the window. Of course, these folks aren't the first people in power to succumb to a fear of data. They do, however, seem to have found a profound expertise in the practice of eliminating it. Dataphobia chills them to the bone, I suspect because they hope to undermine not only some truths but all truth. David Roberts at Vox has written about what he calls an epistemic crisis in America, the idea that certain rulers and rich people hope to take away the basic idea of knowledge. If nobody can know anything, why bother to try to regulate anything? It’s government-by-ignorance—a shrugocracy.

Assaults on data have come before. “It’s the same reason an oil company doesn’t want research on climate change or a tobacco company doesn’t want research on the relationship between tobacco and cancer,” Vernick says. “Maybe they argue those researchers have an agenda and that’ll allow them to cook the books, but that’s an absurd argument. The worst thing you can do is cook the books. That is the way to guarantee the science is not used as part of policymaking.”

dohboi wrote:Mass Shootings, Climate, Discrimination: Why Government's Fear of Data Threatens Us All

https://www.wired.com/story/mass-shooti ... ns-us-all/

How about melting Arctic ice? Nope; Congress is dismantling a satellite that was supposed to update the aging monitor network. Climate change? Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, doesn’t think human beings cause it and, more importantly, doesn’t really think you can measure anything to find out. The weather? Forget it; the National Weather Service is coming apart at the seams. How many people live in the United States, data critical to determining political representation and funding priorities? Yeah, no—the 2020 Census is shaping up to be an epic disaster.

It’s hard to imagine a good argument for knowing less—about anything, really, but especially about difficult problems with profound policy implications. The government is supposed to base policy on the best data possible, along with political concerns, budget concerns, social priorities ... the usual warp and weft of running a country.

Yet the Trump administration is running in the other direction. Any data that has even the faintest whiff of potential contradiction goes right out the window. Of course, these folks aren't the first people in power to succumb to a fear of data....”

http://www.TinyURL.com/DifferentDay

Episode 803: Nudge, Nudge, Nobel

Economists used to assume that people were, overall, rational. They may make mistakes now and then, but, if reasonably informed, they do the right thing. Then came Richard Thaler, who, in October, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.

While Thaler was teaching at the University of Rochester, he had a side gig. Not a lot of people knew about it or took it seriously. He would catalog ways people behaved irrationally. And Thaler thought, there must be a way to make sense of this behavior, to understand it and to predict it.

...Today on the show, how Thaler's work went from a side hustle to winning a Nobel Prize.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017 ... udge-nobel

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

...“Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”

...The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. It isn’t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who’s followed the research—or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today—knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational...

...One way to look at science is as a system that corrects for people’s natural inclinations. In a well-run laboratory, there’s no room for myside bias; the results have to be reproducible in other laboratories, by researchers who have no motive to con!rm them. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful...

...the gap between what science tells us and what we tell ourselves. Their concern is with those persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false but also potentially deadly...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017 ... -our-minds

phaster wrote:

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

...“Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”

...The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. It isn’t any longer. Thousands of subsequent experiments have confirmed (and elaborated on) this finding. As everyone who’s followed the research—or even occasionally picked up a copy of Psychology Today—knows, any graduate student with a clipboard can demonstrate that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational...

...One way to look at science is as a system that corrects for people’s natural inclinations. In a well-run laboratory, there’s no room for myside bias; the results have to be reproducible in other laboratories, by researchers who have no motive to con!rm them. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful...

...the gap between what science tells us and what we tell ourselves. Their concern is with those persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false but also potentially deadly...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017 ... -our-minds

Newfie wrote:Yes good link.

Yale has this “6 Americas” study on American Climate Change attitudes. If you dig into the demographics it’s easy to see the denialist profile: white, older, well educated, home owner, relatively affluent. These are the folks who have the most invested in the status who, it has done them well.

I’m active on a cruising forum. Many cruisers are of the same cohort. Simply mention climate change and a few deniers will storm the ramparts and cast stones and boiling oil upon your heathen heads. It’s really disheartening.

What’s more disheartening is understanding that congress and business leaders are all of the same cohort.

That article explains a lot.

Tanada wrote:
Kind of puts a lot of holes in the whole 'higher education is vital for future generations' theory doesn't it? When the Plumber and the Roofer can see climate changing around them and grasp it on a gut level the 'educated' folks are sitting in their temperature and humidity controlled high rise office towers and are totally oblivious to the climate changes all around them.

asg70 wrote:Don't buy it. The red-state rednecks put Trump in office and they're the ones who deny AGW the most and are rolling coal on Prius drivers.

Plantagenet wrote:Rs want to pretend that climate change isn't a problem, while Ds want to pretend that the Paris Accords have fixed the climate change problem.

The bottom line is that neither the Ds or Rs are willing to do anything serious about climate change.

Cheers!

GHung wrote:
Most Democrats I know never expected the Paris Accords to "fix" climate change. They think that it is an acknowledgment, a necessary step.

Plantagenet wrote:

GHung wrote:
Most Democrats I know never expected the Paris Accords to "fix" climate change. They think that it is an acknowledgment, a necessary step.

Obama and the others who put the Paris Accords together engaged in classic "magic thinking" when they crafted and signed an Accord that "limited" global T increases to 2°C but did nothing to reduce global emissions of CO2, CH4 and other greenhouse gases. You can't stop global warming without reducing CO2 emissions---no matter how many times you "acknowledge" climate change.

We've already had 30 years of global "acknowledgement" of the dangers of climate change when the UN set up the UN climate treaty process 30 years ago. Since then there's been 30 years of work and dozens of international conferences on this issue through the UN, including the failed Kyoto Accords. After 30 years we need more than another acknowledgement of climate change now---we need some action.

What we need is a treaty that mandates reductions in global CO2 production---which the Paris Accords does't do.

Cheers!

GHung wrote:What we need is for individuals to stop burning fossil fuels for discretionary purposes. I'm sure you are on board with that.

dohboi wrote:Denying that it even exists is, in its way, a pretty 'serious' and radical stance (radically anti-factual, that is).

asg70 wrote:Don't buy it. The red-state rednecks put Trump in office and they're the ones who deny AGW the most and are rolling coal on Prius drivers.

Ibon wrote:

dohboi wrote:Denying that it even exists is, in its way, a pretty 'serious' and radical stance (radically anti-factual, that is).

Denying still is an indication of somehow being in relationship with the topic. There is something worse than denial. And that is simply ignoring the topic completely. I think there is a lot of that actually out there. Folks not denying but rather ignoring the issue. There is an important difference between denying and ignoring.