Last time I checked the global temperature was dropping over this decade by one degree after rising a degree during the 90's. Things are never as simple as changing one parameter (eg CO2). For example CO2 holds solar energy while smoke reflects solar energy. These models act as if only one parameter is changing on earth and that is CO2 when in fact there is much more to pollution than just CO2.
One thing I know is that our environment changes. It never stays the same. It has not throughout history. Money would be better spent learning how to adapt to changes. I beleive that over the next couple years as the actual data shows temperatures dropping we will be back to worrying about the new ice age like they were back in the 1970's when temperatures dropped.
People just aren't going to quit driving or eating meat. Even Al Gore still eats meat even though he knows methane pollution is slightly worse in percent warming than CO2. If you are still worried about global warming then peak oil may save you by crashing the economy.
Sorry, but in my humble opinion global warming is just as much bullshit as this contrived swine flu crisis.
Doc
The psychology of climate change
Organisers of a youth rally told me earlier this year that climate change was the activist issue for their generation and that young people would turn out to protest in record numbers.
When hundreds of young people showed up on the anointed day I thought - where are the rest? If this is the issue, where is the mass demonstration of dissent?
You know that public movements must be struggling when incumbent politicians are forced to urge them on. UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, and his brother, Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, have both called for more public mobilisation on climate change, although the UK government has also used anti-terror powers against some climate activists as I described in this blog last week.
Former US vice-president, Nobel Laureate and prominent global warming activist, Al Gore, has called for young people to engage in civil disobedience over the issue.
Now in his new book, Our Choice - A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis, Mr Gore devotes a chapter to analysing why climate change has failed to prompt a greater public outcry.
In it he asks "Why is it that humanity is failing to confront this unprecedented mortal threat? What is it about the way we human beings process information and make choices that promotes global procrastination?"
I suspect the chapter is part therapy for Mr Gore who must be hurting after years of relentless presentations around the world which, despite warning of the possible demise of human civilisation, have failed to ignite the collective action he'd hoped for.
I've heard exasperated climate scientists similarly ponder what they regard as bewildering inaction.
CSIRO's former climate director, Dr Graeme Pearman, suffered a personal crisis after confronting this question before deciding to study psychology, which he describes as the new frontier in climate change:
"Behavioural issues are likely to be much more important than the development of improved descriptions of exactly what happens or might happen to the climate. These are the main barriers to the actions that are needed."
Mr Gore says he conducted 30 "solutions summits" with leading international experts to discuss how to design the multi-faceted battle plan in his book. They included brain scientists who told him the climate threat seemed too remote and unprecedented to trigger survival reflexes. In short, primordial human wiring is tuned to the likes of carnivorous predators, lightning strikes and blood-curdling rival clansmen.
Harvard University's Daniel Gilbert has provided a sharply amusing account of how global warming challenges our evolutionary psychology - if it doesn't make us duck or twitch or even feel repulsed, can it really be so bad?
Behavioural scientists also told him that "Simply laying out the facts won't work … The barrage of negative, even terrifying, information can trigger denial or paralysis or, at the very least, procrastination." Sounds like a bad rap for his Academy Award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, which helped raise global awareness of the issue.
But scientists told Mr Gore that the human brain can commit to multigenerational goals although this can be undermined by constant stress and excessive distraction, both of which abound in modern society.
"The primary users of the new brain research are the marketers and advertisers of goods and services … the average American now sees an average of 3,000 advertising messages per day … material consumption in our society has reached absurd levels." We have lots and lots more stuff even though there's been no measured increase in well-being and happiness. Maybe it also means we're less able to focus on long-term sustainability because we're too busy shopping. It's exceedingly difficult for reason to challenge the powerful forces of habit," he writes.
But Mr Gore remains optimistic that gorging on short-term gratification "can be … overridden by an innate and powerful desire to do right by those to whom we feel some connection." Like our kids and grandkids.
To deliver a more effective message, proponents must "… strengthen the linkage between solutions to global warming and solutions to other challenges (economic, strategic and social) that seem more immediate and are more likely to induce a desire to make the necessary changes."
A recent report released by the American Psychological Association suggests a series of practical approaches. For instance, most people want to fit in and some researchers found that people will cut their electricity use immediately if told their neighbours use less than they do. Other researchers found that people respond in the same way to future environmental decisions as they do to financial ones. Thus, schemes providing up-front cash for home insulation are more effective than promising long-term savings.
"Messages are more effective if framed to warn people that they will lose $500 over 10 years if they don't follow a particular course of action to limit climate change, than if they are told they'll be $500 better off if they do take action," the report says.
But is our psychology the only reason why climate change is slipping down our 'To Do' list? Does lack of political and economic leadership, inaccessible science (how many people have really read the 2007 IPCC report?), aggressive vested industrial interests and extremist greenies all combine to dilute the collective will Mr Gore is trying to summon on this epic issue? Another one of his chapters analyses the political obstacles.
David Spratt, an Australian climate activist and co-author of Climate Code Red, blames apathy on "a systemic political under-estimation of the seriousness of the problem … Because governments are not honest with themselves about the size and urgency of the problem, they necessarily transmit a shallow view of the problem to the electorate, who follow suit in seeing climate as an incremental problem. Voters are sold a show-bag of dinky policy actions on climate as 'solving the problem', and they reasonably conclude the problem can't be all that serious. Much of the climate advocacy lobby is guilty of the same incapacity."
But a recent public campaign by the UK Government prompted complaints that its TV ad on climate change was too scary. Have a look and see what you think.