Lethal Heating: 07/06/20

06/07/2020

(AU) Stop Making Sense: Why It's Time To Get Emotional About Climate Change

The Guardian - Rebecca Huntley

The science has been settled to the highest degree, so now the key to progress is understanding our psychological reactions

Rebecca Huntley, an Australian social researcher and expert on social trends, at home in Sydney. Her new book is How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

This article is an edited extract from How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference, by Rebecca Huntley (Murdoch Books, $32.99)

It took me much longer than it should have to realise that educating people about climate change science was not enough. Due perhaps to my personality type (highly rational, don’t talk to me about horoscopes, please) and my background (the well-educated daughter of a high school teacher and an academic), I have grown up accepting the idea that facts persuade and emotions detract from a good argument.

Then again, I’m a social scientist. I study people. I deal mostly in feelings, not facts. A joke I like to tell about myself during speeches is that I’m an expert in the opinions of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Over the 15 years I’ve been a social researcher, I’ve watched with concern the increasing effects of climate change, and also watched as significant chunks of the electorate voted for political parties with terrible climate change policies.

There is clearly a disconnect between what people say they are worried about and want action on and who, when given the chance, they pick to lead their country.

The science behind climate change has been proven correct to the highest degree of certainty the scientific method allows. But climate change is more than just the science. It’s a social phenomenon. And the social dimensions of climate change can make the science look simple – the laws of physics are orderly and neat but people are messy.

A climate protest painted on a bridge over the Avon River in the Gippsland town of Stratford in Victoria. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

When social researchers like me try to analyse how a person responds to climate change messages the way they do, we’re measuring much, much more than just their comprehension (or not) of the climate science. We’re analysing the way they see the world, their politics, values, cultural identity, even their gender identity. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say we’re measuring their psyche, their innermost self.

In his book Why We Disagree About Climate Change, the British professor Mike Hulme argues that this is one of the reasons we argue so much about the issue. “The sources of our disagreement with climate change lie deep within us, in our values and in our sense of identity and purpose,” he writes. “They do not reside ‘out there’, a result of our inability to grasp knowingly some ultimate physical reality.”

It follows that to help resolve, even to some degree, the conflict and disagreement about climate change in the community, we need to understand those different belief systems and the emotional responses and social forces that shape them. And take them into account when we communicate about climate change and what should be done.

This is even more important given how politicised climate change has become, especially in countries like the US and Australia. US research from has shown that reactions to climate change as a topic were becoming increasingly polarised along partisan lines around the late 1990s. He argues that the climate change views of Democrats and Republicans were not significantly different until the Kyoto protocol negotiations of 1997, when policymakers started to explore possible solutions to global warming.

‘Think about where you get your information, how reliable it is and whether you only read the things that agree with what you want to think rather than the actual truth.’ Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

In an article for the academic journal Risk Analysis, the head of Yale’s program on climate change communications, Tony Leiserowitz, showed that in 2003, when respondents were asked in surveys for their first reaction to the phrase “global warming”, only 7% reacted with words like “hoax” or “scam”. By 2010 that had risen to 23%. There was a parallel trend in the UK: between 2003 and 2008, the belief that claims about climate change had been exaggerated almost doubled from 15% to 29%.

The huge success and positive impact of Al Gore’s first documentary, 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth, had the less-than-positive side-effect of strongly associating the issue with the progressive side of politics. Today, as Leiserowitz comments, climate change scepticism and even denial in the US have become part of a cluster of beliefs (along with anti-abortion and anti-immigration) that are obvious markers of Republican allegiance.

In my own social research with Australian voters, I see this politicisation all the time. Nowadays, I don’t even have to ask how someone voted in the last election to hazard a guess about their views on climate change. Sometimes all it takes is for me to ask them how they feel about the role of government (Are you taxed too much? Do you feel there is too much regulation?) and what media they trust the most (blogs and social media or public broadcasters?).

The degree of polarisation in places like Australia and the US is not universal. The esteemed Pew Research Center found in 2015 that in “Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom, followers of conservative parties are much less likely than followers of liberal or green parties to believe they will be harmed by climate change”. But in many other countries there are much less pronounced political differences, and much less public and political interest in contesting the science.

For environmental activists in these less-polarised countries – often countries already feeling serious impacts from climate change but emitting negligible amounts of CO₂ –the endless debate about the truth of the climate science in the big western countries is gobsmacking. Activists have expressed their frustration and disbelief, and it’s contributed not a little to their despair about progress at an international level.

Thousands of school students from across Sydney attend the global Climate Strike rally at Town Hall in March last year. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

So when it comes to talking to people about climate change, it helps enormously to think about it not just as a scientific question but as a social and political one. But understanding how people’s already existing (and often entrenched) political allegiances influence their response to climate change is only part of the picture. Understanding their emotional reactions is even more important, and that leads us from politics towards psychology.

Viewing the climate change issue through a psychological lens yields endless important insights into why we are where we are. Have a look at the must-watch 2018 Ted Talk by the meteorologist J Marshall Shepherd, on three kinds of bias that shape your worldview. As a self-proclaimed weather geek, he often gets asked if he believes in climate change. He finds the question odd because science isn’t about belief. It’s about proof that things are real or not. He is agog at the chasm between what scientists know to be true and what surveys have shown the US public believes about issues like vaccinations, evolution and, of course, climate change.

This has led the natural scientist to start thinking about psychology, namely what biases shape our perceptions of the world around us. He picks three big ones. The first, and probably the most obvious, is confirmation bias, namely that we zero in on evidence that supports what we already believe. Confirmation bias is even more pronounced in a world where we can use our social media to filter out information we don’t want to absorb and where we follow influencers who reinforce our existing beliefs.

J Marshall Shepherd on stage. Photograph: Ted

The second bias is called Dunning-Kruger, which describes our human tendency to think we know more than we do as well as to underestimate what we don’t know. Again, I see this happen in focus groups all the time, when participants with no scientific credentials or training pick apart the science of climate change.

The third and final bias is cognitive dissonance. When people encounter actions or ideas they cannot reconcile psychologically with their own beliefs, they experience discomfort. They then try to resolve their discomfort by arguing away the new evidence.

Given that climate change is such a discomforting topic, I see this cognitive dissonance all the time in focus groups, where people try to find reasons other than climate change for the events happening around them, even when faced with a strong scientific explanation. They pick it apart because of Dunning-Kruger and then, because of confirmation bias, try to find a blog that states something other than what the scientific evidence shows.

J Marshall Shepherd argues that we need to close the gap between public perception and scientific fact, to create a better future and preserve life as we know it. He challenges us to take an inventory of our biases and of the beliefs we use to prop them up. Think about where you get your information, how reliable it is and whether you only read the things that agree with what you want to think rather than the actual truth. Then share what you’ve learned – about yourself and about the world – with other people.

I’m not saying facts don’t matter or the scientific method should be watered down or we should communicate without facts. What I am saying is that now the climate science has been proven to be true to the highest degree possible, we have to stop being reasonable and start being emotional.

More science isn’t the solution. People are the solution.

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Climate Battles Are Moving Into The Courtroom, And Lawyers Are Getting Creative

Daily Times

Climate change may be having its day in court.

With the slow pace of international climate negotiations, lawyers from Switzerland to San Francisco are increasingly filing lawsuits demanding action.

And they are getting creative — using new legal arguments to challenge companies and governments before a judge.

Two decades ago, only a handful of climate-related lawsuits had ever been filed worldwide. Today, that number is 1,600, including 1,200 lawsuits in the United States alone, according to data reported Friday by the London School of Economics.

“The courts are an increasingly important place for addressing the problem of climate change,” said Hari Osofsky, the dean of Penn State Law and the School of International Affairs.

Already, climate campaigners are seeing glimmers of success.

In the Netherlands in December, the country’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling in favour of the Urgenda campaign group’s demand that the Dutch government move faster to cut carbon emissions.

And in January, a judge in Switzerland acquitted a dozen climate protesters from trespassing charges, filed after the group staged a tennis match within a branch of Credit Suisse in 2018 to draw attention to the bank’s fossil fuel loans. Defence lawyers had argued that the protesters’ actions were necessitated by the “imminent danger” posed by climate change. The ruling was met in court with a standing ovation.

“It was an exceptional ruling,” one of the defence lawyers, Aline Bonard, told Reuters. Given that the protesters admitted to trespassing, “the infraction is undeniable.”

But cases like these suggest a shift in how people are understanding the role of the judiciary in mediating cases related to the warming climate. Now, “there is bound to be a new wave of legal proceedings using a similar line of argument,” Bonard said.

New legal tactics

As rulings that compel governments to cut emissions remain rare, lawyers still see promise in targeting large, polluting companies. Such cases in the past tended to accuse coal-fired power stations or government of failing to limit emissions. Cases now are being fought on arguments such as consumer protections and human rights.

This shift been especially pronounced in the United States, where more than a dozen cases filed by states, cities and other parties are challenging the fossil fuel industry for its role in causing climate change and not informing the public of its harms. (Reuters Insight)

Last month, both Minnesota state and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits alleging that oil majors had misled consumers on how using their products involved releasing carbon emissions and contributing to climate change.

Those cases followed another filed in October by Massachusetts, which also used consumer protection arguments in suing Exxon Mobil Corp. All three accused the oil companies of engaging in deceptive practices and false advertising.

“As awareness of climate change grew in the general public to the extent that their disinformation campaigns were no longer acceptable, there was a pivot to greenwashing,” Kate Konopka, Washington D.C.’s deputy attorney general, told Reuters.

In each case, most of the companies denied the allegations. BP Plc declined to comment.

Exxon said the Washington D.C. lawsuit was part of a “coordinated, politically motivated” campaign against energy companies and was without merit. Chevron Corp also dismissed the D.C. case, saying the litigation “distracts” from its efforts to address climate change.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc said it was “committed to playing our part” in addressing climate change, but that lawsuits “impede the collaboration needed for meaningful change.”

But companies appear to be worried. The National Association of Manufacturers formed a group in 2017 to push back against “activist lawyers” for trying to scapegoat energy manufacturers.

The group, called the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project, applauded a December ruling in New York clearing Exxon Mobil of securities fraud charges, after it was accused of failing to inform investors about what it knew about climate change.

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Climate Crisis: Thawing Arctic Permafrost Could Release Deadly Waves Of Ancient Diseases, Scientists Suggest

The Independent - Harry Cockburn

Researchers have reactivated 30,000-year-old RNA viruses from tundra

The permafrost is now thawing for the first time since before the last ice age ( Getty ).

Disturbing things are happening in the Arctic.

In the last fortnight a devastating heatwave has seen temperatures in Siberia reach a record 38C (100.4F), meanwhile, vast fires are burning, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and dramatically illustrating the vicious circle of climate breakdown.

As climate scientists ponder whether these extremes portend the dawn of a terrifying new era of supercharged heat in the Arctic, the planet also remains gripped by the coronavirus pandemic.

It is at this pivotal moment a startling new risk could also be unleashed upon the world – one which binds together both the implications of an overheating planet and the tragedy of a highly contagious disease.

Scientists have said the rapidly warming climate in the far north risks exposing long-dormant viruses, which may be tens or even hundreds of thousands of years old, and have been frozen in the permafrost in the Arctic.

Due to the rapid heating – the Arctic is warming up at least twice as fast as the rest of the world – the permafrost is now thawing for the first time since before the last ice age, potentially freeing pathogens the like of which modern humans have never before grappled with.

Jean Michel Claverie, a virologist at Aix-Marseille University, told Greenpeace’s investigative journalism outfit Unearthed: “The idea that bacteria can survive for very long I think is definitely accepted. The remaining debate is for how long? Is it a million years? 500,000 years? Is it 50,000 years?”

He added: “There are extremely good papers that say yes, you can revive bacteria from deep permafrost.”

Dr Chantal Abergel, also a virologist at the same institution, added: “We are able to revive viruses out of ancient permafrost samples. So far we have not been able to go up to 30,000 years, but it may come at some point.”

So far researchers have been able to successfully reactivate ancient DNA viruses, but not the more fragile RNA viruses.

RNA viruses include diseases such as Spanish flu and the coronavirus responsible for the current pandemic.

DNA viruses include the now practically eradicated disease smallpox.

Another threat is from bacteria – in 2016 an outbreak of anthrax killed thousands of reindeer.

Climate change triggers Great Barrier Reef bleaching in 2020

Dr Claverie said the risk was not only due to the thawing permafrost, but also due to the increased human and animal activity in areas which have long been very sparsely populated.

He said: “This is a recipe for disaster because you have humans here and you have the virus when it is fresh. When viruses are released from the permafrost in nature, what happens? They fall into the river. They are exposed to oxygen, which is bad for viruses. They are exposed to light, which is also bad for viruses. And so they will not be revived for very long if they don’t find a host very quickly.”

He added: “If [the viruses] come into contact with a proper host then they will reactivate. So if you put a human in a place with frozen viruses associated with pandemic, then those humans could be infected and replicate the virus and start a new pandemic.”

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