How to Think About Global Warming

Ideology can become the sun about which cultural and social issues revolve. Conservatives who beat to their parties drum become unable, at a fundamental level, to think clearly about the issue of global warming because their overriding unconscious concern isn't the merit of the scientific claims; or the value of probabilistic thinking in framing the importance of something; what occupies their mind, subliminally, is whether the required solution is reconcilable with their political biases. Its as if the unconscious has a magnet within it: it senses those things which are attractive and likewise those things which repulse. Since government would be needed to regulate the gas, coal and oil industry, the libertarian unconscious becomes coopted by it's own beliefs: it repels the facts of climate change as a means to maintain cognitive coherence.

How are we to deal with a fact like this^^^^? If the mind doesn't pay attention to it's own processes, if the mind doesn't have a "map" to it's own mind - which requires an in depth knowledge of all the different ways that the unconscious influences thinking - how can we ever hope to save ourselves from the disaster that our children and grandchildren will most likely face?

I have read all sorts of responses to my thread "Cosmos: Global Warming", but I've more or less resisted my impulse to respond. The reason is simple: the people who hold to a contrary view are the type of people described in that first paragraph. If they aren't aware of the pull that ideology has on their reasoning, if they don't see how reality becomes "framed" by the emotions which ride beneath the stream of our conscious thoughts, why would I even bother?

This to me is the underlying issue: how people think. The government of Stephen Harper, in Canada, as well as the finance minister of Australia, both believe global warming is a bunch of hokum. Or at least, they think its exaggerated. The Harper government is antsy to expedite the keystone pipeline - and they will bait and enchant Albertans with the promise of economic prosperity to get it passed. The problem described above is undoubtedly operating within the minds of these sorts of people. The oil sands are being seen by them as a resource. As a politician and businessman, Harper can't help but let his mind become organized in this way. Scientists like James Hansen, and essentially every climate scientist on the planet who understands basic physics, on the other hand, is terrified. And of course, the scientists are right, and the politician is wrong. The politician lacks the humility to be a responsible steward. He sees only the economic promise of the next few years, and not the runaway greenhouse affect that'll likely emerge if human beings do not stop burning fossil fuels. This is what our children and grandchildren - and their children, onwards, will have to deal with.

Were at a point where the science is unequivocal. Only a lack of scientific knowledge - or a superficial cliched repertoire of "facts" - would lead someone to the conclusion that it's all just a hoax, a scheme to impose socialism on the masses.

Even if it were a scheme to impose socialism - and I am personally pro-market - the science is too persuasive to be ignored. Unfortunately, though, clarity of thought is not yet widespread enough to lead to effective action.

A further problem appears to be the abstract nature of the claim. An astroid heading to earth feels more substantial than a geochemical process that takes 100 years to realize its full potential. If we keep dumping Co2 in the atmosphere, the earth may be thrown into a positive feedback loop, where the effects accelerate the causes. Positive feedback is what climate scientists - and any intelligent human being - should be afraid about.

I hope that what I've written, particularly in that first paragraph, has proved enlightening. Self investigation should be a practice children should learn from the earliest years. WHY? Is not asked enough when we hold to a particular belief. We do not consider how my support for A (libertarianism, etc) is compromising my ability to think objectively about B (global warming, etc). And yet, this is a life and death matter. Life is full of these situations. Everyday, people get caught up in transferences and counter-transferences and neither party has an inkling that their responding to non-verbal, imagistic cues observed in the other party.

If humanity is to survive what we've done, it'll involve a complete maker-over of our civilization. Fossil Fuel use is just a symptom of a greater disease: the lust for physical wealth. And the lust for wealth, not ironically, is whats impairing so many minds from objectively assaying the gravity of the threat posed by carbon dioxide concentration to our atmosphere.

What we need is mindfulness. People need to become aware of themselves, of their bodies; of what they feel. They need to see how they work, and how dissociation operates within their inner psyche. Knowledge proceeds from this. So long as people are unaware of how they think, I don't see how were going to prevent a future climate calamity from happening.

Perhaps humanity is in need of psycho therapy on a massive scale?
Maybe we are too nuts to survive?
maybe this is natures way of dumping us in favour of cockroaches....

There were people twenty years ago warning us that something akin to global warming or climate change could occur. Ninety five percent or more of the people ignored these people calling them tree huggers. They were right.

Flip foreward and look at the irreversible mess we are in. Now everyone is blaming others for the mess and acting as if they did nothing wrong. We all were involved in this mess, well maybe not the Ahmish people, or people living naturally around the world. Basically the industrialized world did or caused this because their wants became their needs. We bought the cars we wanted, the gas guzzling cars with lots of comfort and this became our normal. We built and heated houses bigger than we needed and filled them with new furniture and accessories who's production contributed to global warming. We changed styles often which led to planned obsolescence. We were not satisfied with buying a fridge that would last thirty years, we needed one that we did not need to clean the frost out of, one that ruins food by increasing airflow.

So everyone is to blame because we ignored the warnings because it could negatively impact our lives....except of course the Ahmish and people living more naturally around the world.

Good post. I'm not religious but the story of the snake and apple seems to always be at the root of our problems. "Mindfulness" is not held as an important value as far as I can tell, in truth we seek a "Borgian" collective mind or I should say, we are programmed that way by those who gain from this mindset.I know little factually about the said science of global warming but my gut instinct tells me that even we had not been an event on the planet, the situational report of global warming (in the 21st century) would tell a fairly similar tale to what we have on the table.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Were at a point where the science is unequivocal. Only a lack of scientific knowledge - or a superficial cliched repertoire of "facts" - would lead someone to the conclusion that it's all just a hoax, a scheme to impose socialism on the masses.

I'd love to see some of this unequivocal information. All I've seen is a bunch of hysteria that's changed it's tune numerous times, global warming, climate change, climate chaos, etc.

As I've lived on this planet for many, many decades on multiple continents I honestly have not seen any global warming in any shape or form. Mostly seems to me to be another big scam by TPTB, this time to cash in on the "carbon credits" scam.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Scientists have been "warning" us about global warming for over 100 years! From the point that we first started dumping fossil fuels into the atmosphere, scientists have been warning us of the consequences and potential outcomes.

Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature.

However, as fossil fuels became big business, the "industry" has had much more pull and influence than those scientists that have had the foresight to see this problem on the horizon. I find it funny that, even today as we can measure the effects on the permafrost, ice sheets, and ocean temperatures, it is still the "industry" that pours more money into combating a change in our habits. Big money buys influential talking heads and now it's a bigger political issue than a scientific one.

The main problem is that as a species, we really don't care about the future . . . only about what we can get away with today.

Another problem that allows the fossil fuel industry and their political puppets to con the average person is that most people can't distinguish or just have a general ignorance about what climate actually is.

Climate is not the weather. And, the weather is not the climate. However, every criticism always includes the usual "well, I don't see temps rising" or "the weather seems the same as 20 years ago" or "how can they be right about global warming . . . they can't even get the 10 day forecast accurate".

Weather is chaotic . . . unpredictable. Climate is only observable over many decades or generations.

The evidence is in the past and denotes a trend; but, just like the attitude about changing our behaviors to stave off future problems, people (collectively) can't see past their own faces. So, they simply write off the scientists, as they have since the start of the industrial revolution. This makes the "anti" propaganda so easy to push on an ignorant public and the "industry" has more than enough money to drown out legitimate voices of climatologists.

The global warming/climate change debate will soon become a mute point and here's the reason why.

THE PLANET IS RUNNING OUT OF OIL !!!

It doesn't matter which side of this debate you're on. Because in about 50 years oil production will dramatically decline and prices will sky rocket. In about 200 years there won't be any crude oil left in the ground to extract.

The real issue, we as a society, need to focus on. Is how to transition away from fossil fuel dependence before we actually run out. Because at the rate we're going there really isn't much time left.

I think we humans do have an impact on climate change. But as far as fossil fuels being the culprit. We really won't have that luxury for much longer. One way or another we will be forced to change.

Let's hope that we can recognize it's better to act now and have a smooth transition away from fossil fuel dependence. Rather than a drastic collapse of society as we know it.

I think that it is a shame that the same tired old oppositional politics is involved in your OP - the whole left/right thing is just a pointless distraction and quite inaccurate. It's the same divide and conquer that's separated us and stalled progress quite intentionally for way too long. I know heaps of so-called right wingers who recognise climate change and also loads of so-called left wingers who could not give two hoots about it.

ATS is awash with these partisan politics and it's such a shame, everyone here has the information available to know better, but meh, just sayin'.

a reply to: Bassago

It may be that the fact you have moved around from continent to continent has had an impact on how you view things; for example, from my own point of view (living in the UK for over forty years) i have certainly seen changes over that period - such as the length and placement of the seasons, when the rains and snow come and how long they last, and the level and timing of heat in the spring and summer amongst other things.

For me, those changes cannot be disputed as i have observed them over my life-time. Obviously people may disagree as to the causes, but when you only experience a climate for a handfull of years or so, do you really have an opportunity to make a balanced judgement?

The northern hemisphere is still not as warm as it was in Roman times, hardly any glaciation in Norway, bumper food crops, (free bread to one million Roman city citizens) yet to-day, there is speculation that the ice still on lake Superior, might not melt!
I actually agree with climate change, but I think that it is NOT manmade, with all the different cycles the world goes through, and the sun cycles, I feel there is still a lot to learn, just as I am still learning.

So you are saying that it's our mindset that is the cause for Global Warming . I had thought it was co2 ! We have been being hammered daily by MSM over the past ,telling us this chicken little story but reality tells me something different . Being limited to fully understand all the mechanisms that happen within our solar system and on our earth that causes things to happen , it would seem the scientist ,although much better informed and equipped with computers to know ,don't ! If they did and could predict the future then why have their models failed so badly ? I could go and get a list of their predictions and we could compare the present scientific data to check and see if they got them correct or if they even got them close . If I did that though it would reveal that the pro-AGW guys would be shown to be false prophets along with their computer models .

It would seem that the most people that don't like the heat can move or live where it's cooler. It will cost you more for heat though .If people live where it rains alot and don't like it , they have the option to move .We humans live all around this planet in varying climates and have for thousands of years .We have experienced droughts , floods , and all kinds of weather patterns . The chicken little cry of we must stop climate change seems a unrealistic thing .Do you really think that stopping the climate from changing would be a good thing even if we could ? What would your utopia world look like ? What temperature would you set the thermostat at ? Would you have any clouds ? How about lightning storms ? We have a good record of past climate , so if you could turn the clock back to a time,what year would you and the AGW crowd pick as the optimal year ?

Maybe I have asked too many questions for you to respond .You did say that you didn't respond in your other thread .Scientist are supposed to use observations .Create data and try and put it on a chart or graph .They actually are good at collecting history .They are terrible at predicting weather and worse at predicting climate ...peace a reply to: Astrocyte

A professor I know has said the whole thing is nuts. Why? Because ice ages, famine, volcanic eruptions, cold spells, heat waves for centuries, tsunamis, plate shifting tectonics, long periods without much day or sunlight...all this is normal changes for the Earth. It is what it does. Its supposed to do this.

These are dynamic Earth changes that create and form the world we live in. He has said that its just US that make it a big deal because now the Earth population is large enough to notice the changes when they happen.

To make his point, he gave a good example. If we could hover over the Earth for say 200,000 years and look down...we'd see it go through many such changes, many times over. Up a degree, down 20 degrees, cold, hot, volcanic, tectonic.

Its just "what Earth does". Not any big deal. Just to us....so there is no real issue with the term "global warming" becasue its jsut one of many changes the Earth goes through periodically.

Climate Change is real. That statement is undeniable. What is up for debate is if humans are accelerating it or helping to change it.

My biggest problems with the science behind man-made climate change is that its all done to push a single answer, carbon credits for the US. That's it. What about China or India? Why taxes? Why do we have to pay more to use the same amount of oil? It's not like carbon credits will REDUCE the amount of oil consumed. With the government's answer to global warming, I cannot get behind their rhetoric. Maybe if their solution wasn't so nefarious sounding and actually, you know DID something to curb carbon output worldwide, I could more readily believe their stance. But until then, it all looks like a huge political stunt to fleece the public out of more money.

ETA: One more thing, if it turns out I'm wrong, my disbelief was unfounded, and that man-made climate change is real, I am ready to accept the consequences. But here's the thing. Man-made or not, we aren't going to stop it. If it isn't man-made then there is nothing we can do. If it is man-made, the only way to stop it would be to immediately cease ALL pollution world-wide and that may not even be enough. So really, just sit back for the ride. If we go down in a blaze of glory, at least we won't be cold.

Thanks, but I don't need anyone to tell me how to think...

...on any subject.

a reply to: Bassago

It's always been called climate change, first of all. The first united nations gathering to discuss climate - in 1992 - was called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

I always hear deniers using this as proof. Do they bother investigating? Nope. This is one of those "cliched responses" that deniers resort to without recognizing the paucity of their knowledge.

Climate Change and Global Warming are synonymous concepts. They're just two different terms meant to highlight DIFFERENT aspects of the same phenomena. For example, 'global warming' connotes temperature change; where 'climate change' would include ideas like precipitation, temperature, migration of species, etc.

Now the real question is, will you be able to integrate this fact? Now that you've learned that climate change has been a term in usage for over 25 years, will you change your habit of noting "a change in rhetoric; first it was global warming, now it's climate change"? Or will you continue using it?

This is what this thread is referring to: the unconscious processes which bias and undermine objective thought.

Of course, no one can operate without some minuscule bias, but it is possible to reduce these biases by becoming aware of them and turning the lens of attention on your own thinking processes and how prior beliefs and allegiances may be affecting your understanding of what you're reading. For example, what are you giving greater emphasis to? Am I searching for explanations to justify my belief that climate change is a hoax?

a reply to: Krazysh0t

What you wrote was intensely idiotic. I'm sorry. But people like you are a fungus on the body of humanity. That you can think and speak so blithely about the end of our species - and of most other species - as if it were nothing important not only bespeaks the degree to which you are dissociated from the awesomeness of life, but actually sickens me. If you said that in front of me, I would have been tempted to kick you in the face.

If the problem were your body, and you were told that your continuation of a negative lifestyle will lead to a heart-attack - would you challenge the opinion of medical professionals and arrogantly imagine that skepticism was warranted?

You, of course, are entitled to mindlessly resign yourself to the inevitability of a heart attack; but a wise and PROACTIVE person would realize that he NEEDS to stifle that insane desire within that utter fatalistic lies if he is going to MAXIMIZE his chance of survival.

Maximizing our chance of survival entails CHANGING OUR DIET! It means understanding the science and rationale; understanding how scientists have come to believe what they believe, for example, the models that they build which predict future climate changes (which is crucial to understand!), and then asking yourself, with a scientific and objective maturity, what should we do about this? Only an insane nihilist would recommend what you just did. No. A sane person will assume an approach parallel to that taken by someone on the road to a heart attack. Yes, it'll be painful changing habits; it'll cost more money eating differently (or desisting from using fossil fuels), but in the end I'll be better off.

There is nothing more contemptible to me than the type of apathy that you just showed. People like you have no respect for the phenomena of life. That you would be willing to risk the collapse our species and civilization, let alone all life on this planet, is dumbfounding. If I were you, I would be WORRIED about myself. I would ask myself "why the hell did I say that? Why do I think this way?"

a reply to: Astrocyte

You forgot the whole, IMO part, in response to the above post. It's merely a product of what you value, that registers his post as idiotic. People have different values, and you're essentially doing the same as you state in the OP, instead of being blinded to political ideals, you're blinded to your own personal ideals.

If you are to kick every individual who is okay to accept the consequences of our collective actions, even if that means death, you'll have to go through me, and millions of others, though do realize you'll be trampled before your rampage finishes!

Being okay with oblivion is merely a product of high self-awareness. Are you aware that the US registered a near 1c rise in the days following 9/11, when the planes were grounded? Are you aware recent reports put the end of carbon emissions globally to an increase of 1.2c, on top of the already .85c? That's crossing the supposedly dangerous 2c mark already. Are you aware that this is a political mark, and not scientific? That many have claimed 1c is the true threshold, and yet already over a dozen positive feedbacks have been triggered and reported? How about the literature saying our one supposed saving grace, geo-engineering, is far too risky and will cause more harm than good?

We're going to destroy this planet, and the majority are going to be left here when civilization collapses. We don't have 50 years to wait for net peak energy (which already seems to be a reality), or 200 years before all the fossil fuels are burned up as another poster was speaking of. Are you aware that there's a 30-40 year lag in effect of emissions from original emittance? That means we're seeing the effects (specifically from carbon only) from the 70s-80s. Lots of industry since then, globally.

We've already passed the point of no return. We're doing everything we can, which is keep the sheeple fighting over nonsense, keep civilization a-going, look for a "new earth", and continue to develop exotic tech related to the needed mission to get a lucky bit of us onto humanity 2.0. Maybe your high ideals will be applicable there, but it's balls to the walls on Terra until it all comes crashing down.

Can you hang? Something tells me you're not that big of a person to be kicking people in the face. Might wanna toughen up a bit, the next few decades are going to test us all to the extreme.

The NAS and even skeptics have confirmed AGW (through BEST, which they funded).