RE: [geo] Good luck adapting to climate change

[markcapron]

Greg,At least people are starting to estimate the cost of repair and disruption.  I've only been casually watching but haven't seen lost opportunity costs.  For example, uncertainty will prevent orchard farming because the odds of a tree killing drought or heat wave are less well known then in the past.  There are many projects and forms of infrastructure which are prevented by uncertainty.  People and businesses hate to commit to anything if they don't know what will happen.Seawalls are a sure bet.  Orchards are not.Mark E. Capron, PEVentura, Californiawww.PODenergy.org


 Original Message 
Subject: [geo] Good luck adapting to climate change
From: Greg Rau 
Date: Fri, March 07, 2014 9:54 am
To: Geoengineering 

Those advocating that we can be resilient to or adapt our way out of climate change might want to read this article:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/climate-change-effects_n_4914116.htmlQuote:"A central theme of the report is that vulnerabilities and impacts are issues beyond physical infrastructures themselves. The concern is with the value of services provided by infrastructures, where the true consequences of impacts and disruptions involve not only the costs associated with the cleanup, repair, and/or replacement of affected infrastructures but also economic, social, and environmental effects as supply chains are disrupted, economic activities are suspended, and/or social well-being is threatened."The article ends with this familiar plea:"What we really need is some innovative thinking about financing."How about financing prevention? Wouldn't it be (have been) a whole lot cheaper and easier to avoid AGW in the first place?  Meantime, anyone up for some real geoengineering - starting a seawall construction business?Greg  --  You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. 





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Re: [geo] Re: Geoengineering and Climate Change Polarization: Testing a Two-channel Model of Science Communication, Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci.

[John Nissen]

Dear Dan,

Views of nature

I've read through the Thompson paper of 2003 (Chapter 8) and your paper of
2012, attached to the email sent by Jesse Reynolds a few days ago.  Neither
paper tackles geoengineering, but both help to define four camps rather
than the two I had assumed in my last email.  Of particular interest to me
was the figure 1 in the Thompson paper, where the four camps are defined in
a quadrant.  Each has a different view of nature, represented by a ball
perched on a line.  If the line is concave, then nature is inherently
stable.  If the line is convex, then nature is "ephemeral".  If the line is
straight, then nature is "fickle and untrustworthy".  If the line is
concave with humps on each side, then nature is tolerant up to a certain
discoverable threshold.

Strength of emotional response

Because of feelings of solidarity, people tend to be polarised into one of
the four camps (where we had two before).  Anything which conflicts with
the view of nature of the group is rejected, regardless of scientific
evidence.  This is your assertion, and I can believe it.  The strength of
rejection is remarkable in my experience, even from top scientists who one
would expect to be objective in their judgement.  Thus climate models are
often accepted in preference to observations, if these observations
conflict with deeply held views of the Earth System (as you might call
nature).  In particular, if the observations suggest the system is past a
threshold or "tipping point", such a conclusion can be totally rejected by
spurious argument and reliance on models showing no such threshold.  The
views of their particular camp will then reinforce this rejection (and the
spurious arguments for it) in what one might consider group denial.

Subject of discourse

Battle lines are set in concrete.  The discourse of the papers is about
global warming and how each camp reacts to proposed policies for CO2
emissions reduction.  But CO2 emissions reduction, however drastic, will
not halt global warming and will have little effect in the Arctic, where
warming is accelerating.  This restriction of discourse makes it extremely
difficult to discuss any interventions other than CO2 emissions reduction,
with its related topics of clean energy, sustainable lifestyle, etc.

The problem of facing the real world

What does the scientist do when he finds that real-world observations of
the Earth System show that it is beyond the threshold where CO2 reduction
alone could prevent a catastrophe?  Suppose the "discoverable threshold"
has already been passed.  None of the camps (except perhaps the fatalists)
will accept this, because it conflicts with their world view of nature.
Geoengineering is the only solution, but is rejected by the three main
camps, because they don't believe, reject or ignore the scientific
evidence.  (The so-called fatalists in the fourth camp are inherently
defeatist, so they see no point in trying geoengineering, but at least they
are tolerant of the idea, since the evidence for a geoengineering
requirement fits with their world view.)

The way forward

Scientists in this position have no large camp to join.  They are isolated
except in their solidarity on shared scientific opinion.  Yet, if the
people in the various camps could have sufficient self-awareness to counter
their natural feelings against geoengineering, then there could be
meaningful collaboration between people in all camps to tackle the
real-world problem that these scientists present.  It is in the interests
of everyone on the planet that the climate problem is sorted.  And nobody
need suffer as a result of the kind of interventions being proposed:
removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and cloud cooling techniques to cool the
Arctic.  With careful management they should be entirely beneficial.

Could a psychologist help to solve a real-world problem of climate change
by releasing people from the restricted view of nature held by their own
camp?

Cheers,

John



On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Rau, Greg  wrote:

>  John,
> Yes "buck up" = "cheer up" over here, sorry or the cowboy colloquialism.
> Psychology is indeed at the root of behavior, a little detail they didn't
> teach us in Earth Science grad school. That's why we need the professionals
> in human behavior on our side - Madison Ave, Mark Zuckerberg, etc  ;-)
> Greg
>  --
> *From:* John Nissen [johnnissen2...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Thursday, March 06, 2014 3:21 PM
> *To:* Rau, Greg
>
> *Cc:* dmorr...@gmail.com; geoengineering@googlegroups.com;
> dan.ka...@yale.edu; John Nissen
> *Subject:* Re: [geo] Re: Geoengineering and Climate Change Polarization:
> Testing a Two-channel Model of Science Communication, Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. &
> Soc. Sci.
>
>Hi Greg,
>
>  Having researched the meaning of "buck up", I realise that your meaning
> is to do with cheering me up, rather than speeding me up.
>
>  It is cheering to have a meaningful discussion on the popular rejecti