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there are things that we find difficult
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to deal with when it comes to
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uncertainties probabilities complex
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causal relations that psychology has
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been looking at for
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decades there are many aspects of the
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climate debate that make it a really
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kind of diabol iCal problem from the
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perspective of how we process
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information and so the point of the
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paper is really to say look there's this
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literature out there there's this these
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different areas of psychology and here
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is some food for thought really about
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issues you might want to think about
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when you're presenting your
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science one of the key issues here is is
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when people are asked to make a make
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their own judgment about whether or not
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the climate is changing often they
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substitute the word climate for weather
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and so they think about the weather last
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week or the weather earlier in the year
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and they maybe use that as a judgment as
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as the basis for their judgment rather
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than the long-term scale that we should
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be looking at if there is that
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misconception and that confusion and
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that disconnect needs to be
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rectified so recently it's just this a
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way of of saying that things that have
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happened more recently are more likely
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to be retrieved from memory for example
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the very cold winter that they recently
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had in the northern hemisphere can
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create a bias in people's perceptions
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about whether or not the planet is
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warming the media want to make for good
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TV or good radio by having people argue
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with each other and therefore they they
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want to sort of try and portray what
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they see as a as a balanced perspective
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one person who's a quote unquote
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believer and one person who's a quote
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unquote denier and we want to see them
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go at it
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the the problem from the perception of
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people trying to make their own
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judgments about what's happening is that
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there's then a bias in the sample of
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information that they're receiving so if
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they see these debates where it seems
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for all intent and purpose is that that
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there's a 50/50 likelihood going on then
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one possible outcome of that is that the
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person viewing it will think well if the
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experts can't make their own decision
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then my guess is as good as theirs
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it's the training we're trained to put
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statements in terms of probabilities
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likelihoods and uncertainties the
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problem is that that type of language is
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then immediately jumped upon by people
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that want to challenge it so well that
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you don't even
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know when you're talking about numerical
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estimates there's a phenomenon know as
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anchoring or anchoring an insufficient
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adjustment whereby people can if they're
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uncertain about a particular value so
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for example the concentration of carbon
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dioxide in the in the atmosphere and you
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give them some value to to anchor on
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then that can sway their estimations
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about the actual quantity and that can
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also then have an influence on the
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severity of the problems for example if
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I said do you do you think that the
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concentration of carbon dioxide in the
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atmosphere is greater than 100
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ppmv and then I asked you to make an
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estimate versus if I said to you do you
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think it's greater than a th000 ppmv I
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you to make an estimate if you didn't
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really know then the chances are that
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when I gave you that 100 anchor your
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estimate would be lower than if I gave
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you that thousand anchor there's lots of
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research showing that people find it
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easier to reason with numbers if they're
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put into what's called a a frequency
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format if I describe something as 10 out
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of 100 rather than 10% that 10 out of
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100 seems to lead to more kind of
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concrete images of of what I'm talking
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talking about and it's often the case I
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think that the the climate scientists
00:04:05
are obviously going to be typically much
00:04:07
more Adept with the facts the figures
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that they're using and the concepts that
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they're using to the audience that
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they're talking to and so having some
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knowledge about that the fact that
00:04:18
mathematical equivalence is not the same
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as psychological equivalence is
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important well there are different ways
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that you can describe the concentration
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of C 2 in the atmosphere one way is to
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talk about it in terms of its um just
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concentration another way is to think
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about how thick it would be if you
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collapsed it into a single layer and if
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you think about it in terms of its
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concentration it comes out as a very
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gimal small sounding number but if you
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think of how thick that makes it in a
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layer then it it suggests that it's 8 m
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deep and an 8 m deep layer of CO2 some
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somehow has a bit more impact than just
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thinking about this very small perent
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percentage the classic ways of of
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thinking about how people make judgments
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and how people make decisions is to take
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a rational model but of course we're not
00:05:12
just pure number crunches when it comes
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to these sorts of decisions and emotions
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play a very strong role and in a complex
00:05:19
issue like climate change emotional
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appeals if you like can have some
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important
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influences and this again gets back to
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the analogy getting using kind of
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emotive imagery to try and display what
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the possible outcomes of climate change
00:05:37
are and to try and make those again more
00:05:39
concrete try and get people to to to use
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the images to which then can feed into
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the the affect the emotion that they
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then put into their decision important
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caveat here though I think is that
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there's there's research showing that
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people have a what's called a kind of
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finite pool of worry so that you don't
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want to overload them with these
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catastrophic outcomes because then
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there's a there's a real danger that
00:06:05
people will just throw their hands up
00:06:06
and say well it's too
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late another issue that that that comes
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up in a lot of the research that's
00:06:15
that's out there looking at the
00:06:16
connections between psychology and
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climate change is this notion of
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temporal conrol or temporal discounting
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so how we think about decisions and
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impacts of things in the near future
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versus the distant future so if you
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think about the possibility of sea level
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rises in 50 years then you have the kind
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of abstract idea of what that might be
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but if you think about the possibility
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that the river near your house is going
00:06:41
to break its banks on Saturday then you
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might have a very concrete image of what
00:06:46
that will do to your living room carpet
00:06:48
for example and so this overcoming this
00:06:52
tendency to to Discount the future is a
00:06:54
key problem in communicating the signs
00:06:57
of climate change because a lot of the
00:06:58
impacts that being talked about and a
00:07:00
lot of the the sort of targets that are
00:07:03
being discussed are in terms of things
00:07:05
in 50 hundred years time so tying things
00:07:08
into more concrete outcomes or giving
00:07:11
some kind of image that people can hang
00:07:14
on to um to make those outcomes less
00:07:17
abstract and more concrete is an
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important part of the the job I
00:07:23
think one of the key insights from work
00:07:27
looking at people's decisions under
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uncertainty and and choices made under
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under risk or in this case you know the
00:07:35
uncertainty of what's happening to the
00:07:36
climate is that people are much more
00:07:39
affected by loss than they are by
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equivalent gains the pain associated
00:07:45
with losing $500 is much more than the
00:07:49
pleasure associated with receiving the
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same amount one way to try and get
00:07:54
across the importance of turning lights
00:07:57
off and recycling
00:07:59
is rather than thinking about the the
00:08:02
incremental gains is to emphasize that
00:08:05
if you don't do these things there are
00:08:07
going to be some serious losses I think
00:08:09
the one that is perhaps beginning to get
00:08:11
through to people is that that their
00:08:13
electricity bills are going to go up and
00:08:15
they're going to go up by a lot and
00:08:17
that's going to be a big loss and that
00:08:20
loss is going to be
00:08:22
felt psychologically a lot more than the
00:08:26
gain that you getting in Saving there's
00:08:29
a whole literature on whether you frame
00:08:32
problems in terms of losses or whether
00:08:33
you frame problems in terms of
00:08:35
equivalent gains and it and it shows
00:08:37
that there's this loss aversion people
00:08:39
don't like losing
00:08:42
money if you take an analogy of of
00:08:45
smoking and lung cancer so for most of
00:08:47
us our mental model if you like of the
00:08:50
or or causal model if you like of the
00:08:52
relations between putting a cigarette in
00:08:55
your mouth and inhaling smoke and what
00:08:58
that may Happ have the effect that that
00:09:00
may have on your lungs and therefore
00:09:02
your likelihood of getting lung cancer
00:09:04
in terms of how well they're bolted
00:09:06
together we may not need to know the
00:09:08
specific Links at every point but if if
00:09:11
you ask people to if you like sketch out
00:09:14
on a bit of paper well how does putting
00:09:16
a cigarette in your mouth inhaling smoke
00:09:18
lead to cancer then they could at least
00:09:21
draw the appropriate arrows between the
00:09:23
links if you like if you do the same
00:09:25
thing for climate change I'm not as
00:09:28
confident that people will be able to
00:09:31
understand how lots of different things
00:09:34
contribute to the amount of carbon
00:09:36
dioxide in in the atmosphere I think it
00:09:38
is important to try and not Bolt the
00:09:41
whole thing together in the way that
00:09:43
that emminent climate SST would be able
00:09:45
to draw such a diagram but at least get
00:09:48
some basic understanding of of how our
00:09:51
emissions are going up what we need to
00:09:53
do to reduce them and how we can try to
00:09:56
increase our chances that the globe is
00:09:58
not going to warm to a dangerous
00:10:01
level one of the things we discuss in
00:10:04
the paper is this term group think which
00:10:05
has become a a kind of catch all label
00:10:09
really for defective decision- making
00:10:11
that that comes out of this
00:10:12
dysfunctional groups now the climate
00:10:15
Community is in no way guilty of group
00:10:18
thing but the problem is that the
00:10:21
because of the way the debate is often
00:10:23
portrayed in the media I the the the
00:10:25
climate gate non total non Scandal is a
00:10:28
good example
00:10:30
um
00:10:32
of the idea that they're not listening
00:10:34
to anyone else that they know the
00:10:36
answers already and that they're not
00:10:37
listening and that's symptomatic of this
00:10:40
group think idea and so although I'm not
00:10:44
saying that the climate commit climate
00:10:45
scientists are actually in that
00:10:47
situation the perception that they might
00:10:49
be because of the way things are
00:10:51
portrayed is is is a possibility and
00:10:53
it's made the possibilities increased if
00:10:57
people engage in the divisive kind of Us
00:10:59
and Them Believers
00:11:02
deniers there's some interesting work on
00:11:05
the way that sort of skepticism and and
00:11:07
the the den culture has developed in
00:11:09
other situations and how eventually the
00:11:12
fact that the arguments that the
00:11:13
Skeptics are holding become increasingly
00:11:15
untenable as the evidence mounts against
00:11:17
them and and eventually they they drop
00:11:19
away and then things have to start
00:11:21
moving and and I think that you know
00:11:24
that the idea that the weight of the
00:11:26
their own inconsistencies in arguments
00:11:29
will be the be the ruin of them in the
00:11:32
end whether it's going to happen quick
00:11:34
enough is another question
