What, Me Worry? (Part 2 of 2)

We’re all puppets controlled by the winds of social conformity.

~ Dr. Joe Hanson, host, It’s Okay to be Smart

Last time we looked at equality bias and its role in climate change denial.  Here are two more reasons that rational arguments alone won’t convince people.    

2.    The way our brains are wired

The American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) Digital Studios has a nifty channel on YouTube called It’s Okay to be Smart.  I featured their segment, Climate Change: What you need to know, in my Global Warming 101 post. 

In his short video (below), host Joe Hanson talks about our wiring, among other things.  He talks about PAIN, the role of uncertainty, and how a need to belong shapes our beliefs:

So you can see that a number of subtle influences disrupt our objectivity.  Still, after equality bias and our wiring, a third contributor to climate change denial is our posse.  I have a great pun to insert here, but out of respect for Jay Heinrichs and my denialist friends, I shall restrain myself. 

3.    Our Tribe

Who’s your tribe?  Who are your homeys?  This is big. 

Climate change denial isn’t not knowing, or refusing to know. It’s about choosing not to notice or talk about it, so they don’t rock the in-group boat. 

~ Stanley Cohen, sociologist

Jay Heinrichs has written a ground-breaking, masterful, and entertaining book on rhetoric that is being used widely in universities like Harvard and elsewhere.  Thank You for Arguing will teach you the art of persuasion and make you laugh while you learn.  Jay has consulted with NASA, the US Department of Defense, Harvard, Walmart (don't hold that against him), Southwest Airlines, and more. 

Jay, who is the big brother of my childhood friend, has launched a video channel on YouTube called ArgueLab.  ArgueLab is a video forum in which “rhetorician Jay Heinrichs, and YouTube star Christina Fox, reveal the secrets of rhetoric, the art of persuasion.”  Its short videos offer entertaining tools for talking. 

In a recent segment, Jay talks about tribal identity using the anti-vaccination movement as a backdrop.  The parallel to climate science is exact. 

Equality bias, our brain’s wiring and tribal identity all work to muddle the facts.  You can't blame it on your brain though, because now you know.  In future posts we'll look at positive feedback loops, and how bad will be it anyway?  

Next time:  When Positive Feedback is a Bad Thing 

  

Denialists: What, Me Worry? (Part 1 of 2)

Here are three reasons why facts alone aren’t enough. 

We can look at science all day, but many folks – a LOT of folks, especially Americans, continue to deny climate science.  We might look at the disproportionate way in which big American money is funding the climate denial movement, much the way the tobacco industry resisted health warnings on cigarette boxes, and sought to raise doubt about health risks. 

The politics of denial is a topic for another time.  Right now, we’re just looking at the individual as part of a group, and the psychology, sociology and biology of it if you will.  So in the next two posts we’ll look at three contributing factors to denialism. 

1.      Equality Bias

I once worked with someone who was (still is) the nicest guy in the world.  He really is.  Brilliant too.  The problem was that whenever we leaders sat around our table solving the problems of the universe (or of the organization, at least), he’d always take a middle ground position, no matter how hair-brained someone on one side of the issue was being.  He is a gentle man and probably did this to protect feelings.  It seems reasonable.  It appears fair.  Even when someone is a crackpot. 

Chris Mooney, in his Washington Post column, The science of protecting people’s feelings: why we pretend all opinions are equal, details this very phenomenon.  Apparently it is a thing, it has a name, and it’s called equality bias.

 [Psychologists have] shown that people have an “equality bias” when it comes to competence or expertise, such that even when it’s very clear that one person in a group is more skilled, expert, or competent (and the other less), they are nonetheless inclined to seek out a middle ground in determining how correct different viewpoints are.

Chris Mooney

The study is recent, multi-national, and shows similar results across cultures.  You can read the study here.

Mooney describes in accessible terms how the study was conducted.  The bottom line is this:

[H]uman groups (especially in the United States) err much more in the direction of giving everybody a say than in the direction of deferring too much to experts. And that’s quite obviously harmful on any number of issues, especially in science, where what experts know really matters and lives or the world depend on it — like vaccinations or climate change. 

It’s only “fair,” right?  We see it in interviews, where one climate change believer (often Bill Nye the Science Guy), is juxtaposed with a single denier, when the reality is that 97% of scientists agree human-caused climate change is real and an immediate threat.  John Oliver illustrated this humourously in a video I featured last time. 

Next time: The other two reasons why facts are not enough: 2) our wiring and 3) our tribe 

Global Warming 101

The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth. And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.

The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. A third of the living creatures in the sea died...

Revelation 8

When I cite sources, wherever possible I will cite diverse, original, scholarly, independent sources. You get what you pay for, and here at There’s More in You, everything’s free (charges by your internet services provider may vary), so how much time do you have? 

Have 6 minutes?  Watch this clever video by the US-based Public Broadcasting System published in December 2014: 

Have half an hour?  The following twenty-six minute video, Climate Change: Lines of Evidence, produced in 2012 by the Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Research Council and the Academy of Natural Sciences gives a succinct overview. 

Overwhelmed by despair?  Needing a smile?  I give you four and a half minutes of John Oliver.  NOTE:  F Bomb warning.  

Next time: The Psychology of Denial  

A Journey

Swath of forest destroyed by the pine beetle 

I grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s.  I always liked fishing, and after my parents split up I became interested in wilderness survival.  Maybe emotionally, I was surviving.  I backpacked, studied ecology, and even got a college degree in forestry.  I became a Christian, and embraced a positive, environmentally friendly, stewardship view of humanity’s role in creation.  

As an adult, I became a faithful, card carrying member of the religious right, an ordained minister in fact.  I had the theological and political pedigree.  And like many of my evangelical friends, I was reading Fox News because I trusted it. 

It was the early 2000s, and reports about a warming planet were becoming more frequent.  I’d hear something, and was always relieved to find something in Fox News obfuscating, casting doubt on the climate science.  But the reports continued, and I started checking sources.  Time and again, Fox’s reporting would cite sources from unelected think tank interest groups like the Koch brothers’ Cato Institute, or the (ironically named) Heartland Institute, with its ties to the oil industry. 

We moved to Canada in 2004.  Here, I saw firsthand proof of the devastation of British Columbia lodgepole pine forests because of pine beetle infestation.  A university professor attending my church, as well as a naturalist friend, explained to me that winters used to be colder, and would kill off pine beetle larvae.  But winters are no longer as cold, pine beetles spread north, and BC’s pine forests were being devastated.[1]   

A scientist (who also attended my church and) who worked at a Canadian research facility contributed to work included with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.  He affirmed his belief in global warming.  I reviewed the IPCC reports.  I watched An Inconvenient Truth.  Another individual (connected to the Alberta oil industry) scoffed at climate change and challenged me to watch The Great Global Warming Swindle.  I already had, eager as I was to find contrary views. I challenged him to read the wiki article exposing Swindle as a fraud. 

In western Canada, I have seen receding glaciers firsthand.  I read NASA data about declining sea ice.  My convictions on climate change have only grown deeper.  Barring some outside the box, human, planetary intervention – or a miracle – it may already be too late.  And so,

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly...

1 Peter 4:7-8

Next time: Global Warming 101

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[1] In western North America, the current outbreak of the mountain pine beetle and its microbial associates has destroyed wide areas of lodgepole pine forest, including more than 16 million of the 55 million hectares of forest in British Columbia... It may be the largest forest insect blight ever seen in North America. Climate change has contributed to the size and severity of the outbreak, and the outbreak itself may, with similar infestations, have significant effects on the capability of northern forests to remove greenhouse gas (CO2) from the atmosphere. (Wiki) 

The Shift

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly...

1 Peter 4:7-8

I’ve never been much of a “last days” fan.  Ever since Hal Lindsay’s 1970 book, The Late Great Planet Earth, I’ve been skeptical of too-certain predictions about the End Times and the return of Jesus. 

There’s a rabbinic saying that it is not wise to look too closely either at the beginning (origins) or the end.  Anytime anyone has said, “These are the last days!  Just look at the headlines!” I’ve suggested to them that these have been the “last days” since the first Pentecost, right after Jesus, when the disciple Peter explained in the book of Acts about the gospel miraculously being preached in the languages of visitors from all over the Roman world. 

But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh…

And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Acts 2:14-21

I’ve redirected people to the upshot of it all – present day living – and Peter’s admonition following his apocalyptic predictions of a fiery end to things. 

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God…

~ 2 Peter 3:11-13

Over the last fifteen years or so I have slowly and reluctantly grown to be convinced about anthropogenic global warming.  It is the most politically incorrect thing I’ve ever done in my church denomination, and I [correctly] expect it to contribute to my early retirement from gospel ministry. 

I’m less interested in convincing anyone of my views than in equipping everyone to live courageously in the time remaining.  It comes down to present day living: how shall we live today?  Savor each day, love each other deeply, and use your gifts.  So whether I’m right or wrong about global warming – and I hope to God I’m wrong – the upshot’s the same. 

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.  Above all, keep loving one another earnestly...

1 Peter 4:7-8

On Mental Illness

The other day I Facebook-posted this article, and the positive benefits that being in nature has on brain chemistry.  I know firsthand that my trail running not only gets my cardio going and releases endorphins, but the simple act of being in the deep green rain forests of British Columbia itself helps mental and emotional health. 

From the article, How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain: 

"Brooding, which is known among cognitive scientists as morbid rumination, is a mental state familiar to most of us, in which we can’t seem to stop chewing over the ways in which things are wrong with ourselves and our lives. This broken-record fretting is not healthy or helpful..."

Many of my (often Christian) friends who live with depression, bipolar disorder, or are just prone to introspection get stuck in exactly this place and struggle to change their way of thinking. 

A couple of my Christian Facebook friends just wanted to throw a little Jesus at the problem thinking it will all go away.  “That's what Jesus came to set us free from! In a nut shell he has come to set us free from ourselves!”  True dat. 

But it’s not that simple. 

Ray Dillard used to say that to every difficult question, there is a simple, wrong answer. 

It’s not as simple as adding Jesus, taking the Jesus pill, just having more faith, finding a deeper repentance. 

We’re “fearfully and wonderfully made,” alright.  God appointed the means as well as the ends. And there are times when depression, bipolar disorder and other forms of mental illness require treatment that may include hospitalization and medication, sometimes for life. 

Personally, I hate meds.  I am prescription medication averse.  I am a MayoClinic junkie, and I will always seek natural and alternative treatments before trying pharmaceuticals.  The average 50 year old American male is on four medications.  I’m well into my fifties and am medication free, despite my doctor suggesting a couple of non-essential prescriptions for minor matters.  No thanks.  I eat right, exercise a bunch, I practice (secular) yoga, use acupuncture, massage therapy and recycle. 

But don’t tell the person living with mental illness who is praying their heart out for a sound mind they just need more Jesus.  There’s a time and a place for pharmaceuticals, for psych unit hospitalization, and for patience, love and acceptance by the Christian community.