Ideology and Misperception in Energy and Climate

I could write a dissertation on this topic and spend the rest of my life researching and publishing on it.  I will have to settle for a short blog post for now, because my own research is in need of my attention.

People posted a number of tweets and articles on how “Political ideology affects energy-efficiency attitudes and choices“, which is the title of a new PNAS article.  The upshot: ideology trumps the free market.  This isn’t a surprise to me anymore – I’ve studied plenty of cases in the past two years that demonstrate this phenomenon.  In this case, peoples’ purchases of energy-efficient light bulbs were most influenced by what the bulb’s labeling stated.  The study made two stickers available: “Protect the Environment” or blank.  In both cases, the researchers made the same bulb benefits (energy use & cost) available to each potential purchaser.  The only difference was the presence of a blank or pro-environment sticker on the packaging.  With the pro-environmental sticker, conservatives were less likely to purchase the CFL bulb.  Without it, conservatives and liberals were equally likely to purchase the CFL bulb.  That’s not rational, which is a significant assumption of modern economic theory.  The result shows, unsurprisingly, that peoples’ behavior depends on their personal ideology and value system.  This has obvious implications for climate change activists: you have to operate in the value system of your targeted audience if you want them to receive your proposals well.  Beating the same drums harder won’t make conservatives care about climate change.

Climate groups are willfully failing elsewhere.  A new Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication poll demonstrates that increasing numbers of Americans are drawing incorrect conclusions from recent weather events to climate change.  The warmest year on record in the US (2012) was made more severe due to global warming, according to 50% of respondents.  A similar number believe the ongoing US drought is worse due to global warming.  The results go on and on.

Here is the rub: these beliefs have no basis in scientific fact.  2012 US temperatures were largely influenced by natural interannual variability.  It was warmer than 1998 by more than 1°F, which is significant.  But identifying a global warming signal in one year’s temperature data for the US is beyond the current capabilities of science.  We can say more robustly that the 2000s were significantly warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s, etc.  2012′s temperatures were extreme and it had implications that are still being felt by human and ecological systems.  The important point there is this: are existing systems capable of handling today’s weather extremes?  If not, we should do something.

The belief in climate change enhanced drought is also unsupported, as I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  Initial findings from a NOAA-led team were unable to detect a global warming-related signal in either the onset, magnitude, or extent of the extraordinary 2012 drought.  This isn’t particularly surprising when you consider the last two droughts of similar extent and severity occurred in the 1950s and 1930s – prior to much anthropogenic forcing.  Specifically, they found that “The interpretation is of an event resulting largely from internal atmospheric variability having limited long lead predictability.”  Again, this drought is producing effects, but it isn’t directly attributable to climate change.  The question remains: are existing systems capable of handling these types of extreme events?  If they aren’t, we should do something about them, not draw unscientific causal linkages in an effort to build support for change.

The IPCC’s SREX report (Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation), issued just last year, reinforces this message.  There is a detectable global warming signal in a few measurable parameters such as temperature, water vapor, and sea level change.  But the climate system retains a great deal of natural variability which scientists do not fully understand.  Climate conditions will change in the next 90 years, but the likelihood of those changes varies.  Weather conditions may or may not change.  Their inherent transience makes it difficult to ascribe causal factors behind any changes.  Note further that climate projections of the 2090s are not climate conditions of the 2090s or 2010s.  Identifying likely future changes does not translate to detecting those changes today.

Yale and George Mason should digest their poll results along with the latest guidance from scientific peer-reviewed literature to help guide their communication efforts moving forward.  Given the results of this latest poll, they have their work cut out for them.  Framing, whether it is related to selling CFLs to a diverse public or differentiating between weather and climate, is critically important in climate communication.

Financial Crisis: Bush Defends “Free-Market”

Worshippers of the free-market religion have found themselves racing to defend their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence that their “free-market” doesn’t work.

First, the latest economic numbers.  Jobless claims jumped to the highest level since just after the events of 9/11/01.  516,000 claims were made last week.  As corporations try to keep their profits and executives try to keep their obscene compensation flowing, millions of Americans are going unemployed.

Which leads to Americans being unable to afford their homes.  Foreclosures continue to set records.  A couple of statistics bear watching: there were 25% more foreclosures this October compared to last October, which was higher than the October before.  279,500 homes received at least one foreclosure notice last month, 5% higher than those issued in September.  More than 84,000 properties were reposessed last month.  That’s 84,000 families that just lost their homes before the holiday season.  How many of those folks lost their jobs earlier this year because executives wanted their multi-million dollar incomes?  That’s what the “free-market” generates.  Programs are being enacted to help homeowners stay in their homes.  Not surprisingly, it’s been the banks that have initiated those programs.  Bush’s government continues to drag its feet – the “compassionate conservatives” don’t care if thousands of Americans lose their homes.  Their motto: “You’re on your own.”

The “Free Market” Is A Myth

There aren’t many situations that could so clearly demonstrate this than U.S. automakers’ undeniably crappy decisions over the past few decades. While Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda invested in research for more fuel efficient vehicles and brought those vehicles to market despite not making large profits off of them, the big three U.S. automakers instead decided to make overweight monstronsities that as a fleet get the worst mileage in the world.

In the past 2 years or so, it has become … let’s say challenging for the U.S. “Big 3″ to sell their inferior products in a market that is even skewed by our conservative government to help them instead of allowing a level playing field for all manufacturers’ products. Their profits have dried up and their stocks have sunk, in some cases to century-old lows. If it were up to economic forces, like those that the right-wing likes to tout, the market would force them to either change their behavior or fail. Bad businesses fail, correct? Socialism is only for dirty commie liberals, correct? Well, not if those “free-market” loving conservatives and their corporatist Democratic allies have anything to do about it.

You see, while profits from the automakers were always kept private when times were good, those “free-marketeers” are singing a different tune now that the automakers executives’ long history of bad decisions are catching up to them. The losses that those corporations are now facing? Yeah, those losses should be socialized, as automaker lobbyists are now arguing. The automakers want the federal government to bail them out from their self-inflicted misery to the tune of $25 billion, and that’s likely just the beginning. By the way, those loans would be issued at 4.5% interest and the government would have the option of deferring any payment at all for up to five years.

Wow. Those are some really awesome terms. Do you have the same opportunity from banks for your loans? No? You must have the wrong kind of lobbyist. The interest on those loans will be one-third what the corporations are currently paying to borrow. Where is the money coming from? Taxpayers, of course. We get to bail out another inefficient, corporate welfare abusing industry because automakers have donated more money to our elected officials than we have.

It is obvious that conservatives don’t have the courage of their convictions on any number of issues. But few cases are as crystal clear as conservatives’ assertion that the market is “free” and should be as unregulated as possible. If the Big 3 made fundamental business mistakes, shouldn’t they have to live with their actions? It’s what conservatives say any time a person applies for help from the government. Do conservatives want smaller government or don’t they? If corporations get to keep all their profits private while utilizing the commons that we’ve paid for, why should government at any level be forced to give them tax breaks or be pressured to bail corporations out? How is that not interference in the market? No. Conservatives love government when they can squeeze it for more money to cover for their awful decisions. Hypocrites.

Quick Hits & 1 Long Hit 5/6/08

The Climate Security Act needs to be strengthened. You can use the League of Conservation Voter’s action page to request your Senators to do so.

Oil hit $122 per barrel in trading today. That’s double what it was one year ago. That’s more pressure exerted on families’ budgets.

Buyout billionaire Henry Kravis saved $96 million through tax loopholes in 2006 alone. That’s just one buyout billionaire, in one year, making use of one loophole (tax evasion scheme)! Just think how much these private equity crooks are costing taxpayers who are already battling financial hardships and home foreclosures. BraveNewFilms has a video about this and a request for the presidential candidates to close the buyout industry’s tax evasion scheme.

The Bush “administration” has lost 400 employee laptops that conduct delicate, often secret, diplomatic relations with foreign countries, an internal audit has found.

Ironically, the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program is administered by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS), which is responsible for the security of the department’s computer networks and sensitive equipment, including laptops, among other duties.

These are the same idiots who want to convince Americans they can responsibly handle access to information about the lives of Americans while demanding no Congressional oversight. HAHAHAHAHA! I don’t know what’s worse though: the above or the fact that Rep. Steny Hoyer and others are still willing to grant retroactive immunity to proven lawbreaking telecommunications corporations.

Analysts are reportedly torn over what an energy windfall profits tax would do. A few things here: corporations were given tax breaks by President Bush and Congress. Now that Democrats want the breaks to expire, what are Republicans and corporations calling the action? That’s correct: a tax increase. They’re spinning it like the tax was never before applied and woe to the poor corporations that are earning profits in the billions every quarter.

Re-applying fair taxes on the oil corporations could provide long-overdue dollars to renewable energy research and development. There needs to be a much larger focus on the development side of things. Technologies exist to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions – we need to help drive them into the marketplace more efficiently.

If oil corporations raise gas prices to regenerate their ridiculous profits, a majority of consumers will not blame the government. It would be clear at that point which entity was really responsible for excessive prices.

Pro-corporate analysts in the article bring up the fact that Google has a profit margin of 25% while oil corporations have profit margins closer to 10% and nobody is recommending a windfall profits tax on Google. Can you point to an example of how you or your family is paying more for goods because of Google? Oil corporations are directing more of their profits to buying back their stock, enriching stock holders. They should be directing that money to developing refining capacity. They’ve ignored refineries for decades and we’re paying the price for that short-sightedness at the pump.

Of course, the ultimate ideological argument has to be presented: government shouldn’t force movement of monies to R&D, the “free-market” should. The Heritage Foundation gets a nod in the article, with David Kreutzer asking if the government could take this capital and do a better job investing it than shareholders can. David and others aren’t willing to recognize that shareholders haven’t been able to make the correct decisions in the past generation. They’re only interested in further enriching themselves and the rest of us get to suffer for it: high gas prices, geopolitical instability and occupying the Middle East are only a few examples.

I, for one, have no more patience for these greedy vampires. The “free-market” has been unable to act in the interests of our society’s citizens. Taxes need to be reapplied to oil corporations and the richest Americans. They need to invest their fair share into our nation’s infrastructure and long-term interests.