http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233562/Emails-rocked-climate-change-campaign-leaked-Siberian-closed-city-university-built-KGB.html

There is a bitter irony here. It looks as if all those good folks so eager to expose a grand conspiracy on the part of climate scientists have in fact been playing the part of (very willing, albeit unwitting) accomplices in one of the cleverest pieces of black propaganda of recent years. It seems increasingly probable that the whole exercise has been masterminded by the Russian security services – formerly known as the KGB – who have a proud track record in this respect.

Vladimir Putin, a former KGB man himself, must be delighted at the ease with which effective action to place curbs on the fossil fuel industry has been sabotaged.

If someone follows this thread I would very much appreciate if they could attach the responses to Mr. Marshall’s opinion essay in the New Scientist. I do not have and can not afford a subscription to that publication but I would really like to read the skeptics response that George talked of.

From the policy perspective, the culture of climate change appears as an extension of the development-nexus. United Nations and World Bank programs that funnel cash, line pockets, and produce (perhaps we can hope) some advances in green house gas reductions or adaptive capacities.

But there are so many glaring inconsistencies. So much cognitive dissonance.

Your point about people choosing their beliefs and choosing stories by which they live is powerful. We have to remember though that these stories function as much to paper over cognitive dissonance as to resolve it. No where is culture, or the stories cultures tell themselves, purely rational.

National and international policy has much to do with creating powerful over-arching narratives and it is this battle that pits climate scientists against Inhofe & company.

But even powerfule green over-arching narratives are not panaceas. As much I want the green policies to win out, I can’t help but wince at the inadequate, inconsistent, dissonant policy processes and remedies.

A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to livestock….however recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang co-authors of “Livestock and Climate Change” in the latest issue of World Watch magazine found that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions!

http://www.51percent.org

The main sources of GHGs from animal agriculture are: (1) Deforestation of the rainforests to grow feed for livestock. (2) Methane from manure waste. – Methane is 72 times more potent as a global warming gas than CO2 (3) Refrigeration and transport of meat around the world. (4) Raising, processing and slaughtering of the animal.

Meat production also uses a massive amount of water and other resources which would be better used to feed the world’s hungry and provide water to those in need.

Based on their research, Goodland and Anhang conclude that replacing livestock products with soy-based and other alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change. They say “This approach would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their atmospheric concentrations-and thus on the rate the climate is warming-than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

The fact is that we are being informed of the dangerous path we are on by depending greatly on animal flesh for human consumption. We still have the opportunity to make the most effective steps in saving ourselves and this planet. By simply choosing a plant based diet we can reduce our carbon foot print by a huge amount.

We are gambling with our lives and with those of our future generations to come. It’s madness to know we are fully aware of the possible consequences but yet are failing to act.

Promoting a plant based diet to the public is would be the most effective way to curb deforestation, we hope this will be adopted as a significant measure to save the rainforests and protect the delicate ecology.

Thank you for your consideration.

‘Flying’ is just the bloody example: what about the main issue – information and science demonstrably have not brought about the necessary changes in behaviour. We need to get wiser and do something more/different. Soon. Not just ’something’; lots of things. Big ones.
How do we get our culture to become comfortable, quickly, with mortality?
How do we accelerate from ‘one-step-at-a-time’ to celebration of goalposts that constantly shift?
Important not to end with questions – conviction is as infectious as doubt.
Better believe it!

I’m based in Delhi. Just opened a place with something like your politics. Would love to have you stop by sometime. http://www.greenlightdhaba.org
warmly,
Hari

http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/hypermobilityforRSA.pdf presents a somewhat disturbing argument which suggests that there is a less obvious but equally damaging problem with ‘hypermobility’.

“Stabilising climate to avoid dangerous climate change — a summary of relevant research at the Hadley Centre January 2005

What constitutes ‘dangerous’ climate change, in the context of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, remains open to debate.

Once we decide what degree of (for example) temperature rise the world can tolerate, we then have to estimate what greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere should be limited to, and how quickly they should be allowed to change.

These are very uncertain because we do not know exactly how the climate system responds to greenhouse gases.

The next stage is to calculate what emissions of greenhouse gases would be allowable, in order to keep below the limit of greenhouse gas concentrations.

This is even more uncertain, thanks to our imperfect understanding of the carbon cycle (and chemical cycles) and how this feeds back into the climate system.”

This is quite astounding when the science is so certain and has been so since 1988 and earlier.

More disturbing comments from the Tyndall Centre:

“The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change” Tyndall Centre working document 58, September 2004.

“Global warming (or climate change) is, without elaboration, a much debated and contested issue. Not only is it contested among scientists, but also among all those with vested interests.

We suggest that, in the realm of the public, forces act to maintain or denounce a perceived reality which has already been constructed. That is, an issue introduced by science (or media for that matter) needs continual expression of confirmation if it is to be maintained as an issue.

In this paper, we explore under what conditions belief in global warming or climate change, as identified and defined by experience, science and the media, can be maintained in the public’s perception.

As the science itself is contested, needless to say, so are the potential policy changes. So how then do people make sense or construct a reality of something that they can never experience in its totality (climate) and a reality that has not yet manifest (i.e. climate change)?

To endorse policy change people must ‘believe’ that global warming will become a reality some time in the future.

Only the experience of positive temperature anomalies will be registered as indication of change if the issue is framed as global warming.

Both positive and negative temperature anomalies will be registered in experience as indication of change if the issue is framed as climate change.

We propose that in those countries where climate change has become the predominant popular term for the phenomenon, unseasonably cold temperatures, for example, are also interpreted to reflect climate change/global warming.”

How can we get the message across when there are these doubters in the Climate Science establishment?

We already know that the government aren’t really onside, but this makes things really difficult for us:

The Institute for Public Policy Research, Labour’s favourite think tank, for whom David Miliband once worked, had this advice for public agencies interfacing with the public.

“Treating climate change as beyond argument”: Warm Words, IPPR August 2006.
..it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won.

This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective.

The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.

The certainty of the Government’s new climate-change slogan – ‘Together this generation will tackle climate change’ (Defra 2006) – gives an example of this approach. It constructs, rather than claims, its own factuality.”

These sort of comments are problematic when trying to push the certainty of the science on global warming.

George, you must be much more expert than I am on this topic, but it seems to me that the matter of personal decision making is at the heart of what you are saying here.

So, my little knowledge says:

We receive a stimulus (see something, hear something, feel,smell or taste something) and that sets our deductive logic brain spinning working out alternative actions.

Next, we get an emotional reaction to the alternatives, and the emotion leads us to decide what to do.

Fight or flight? etc, etc, etc

Without the emotion, NO DECISION CAN BE MADE, but the emotion comes from combining the alternatives with our deeply held beliefs: and the deeply held beliefs come from our conditioning, that is all our experiences but especially our childhood.

If you want to change the decision, you do have to change the emotions generated: and to do that, you have to change the beliefs: but most people have no idea how to change their thinking. For those who want something that works,and can be done self help, Cognitive Behavior Therapy is a good starting point.

All of us are kidding ourselves if we think we are immune from all this. However, the denier contributions to your “New Scientist” article really make horrible reading, reflecting as they do the size of the problem faced.Mind you some of the pro comments are pretty self righteous also, including I guess mine here (I really am pro, but I really do want to make a difference to greenhouse gas emissions quickly, and I know how hard it is to get people to change their thinking).

Changing peoples thinking about the whole of the way they live their life is a big ask, especially if it threatens their employment. On the other hand, if you ask them to sacrifice a little of their time for the good of humanity, you may tap in to another set of beliefs and get a positive response: and that is why I advocate long hauls be replaced by multiple legs of ~1750 miles.Believe me, that will be hard enough to sell, but IT COULD BE SOLD. Stopping flying overnight is not sell-able even if you had the advertising budget of Virgin and Ryanair combined.

But no matter what, unless people change their beliefs they will not change their decisions, for they will not change their emotions that allow them to decide anything. And that is science.