Posted on 03/31/2012 12:09:58 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
This just smacks of the same mentality that inspired climate change activists to say global warming deniers should be purged from meteorology. Kari Mari Norgaard, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon, suggests that resistance to the threat of climate change at individual and societal levels must be “recognized and treated” before real action can be taken to effectively address the problem global warming poses. From a University of Oregon press release:
“Climate change poses a massive threat to our present social, economic and political order. From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to be expected,” she said. “People are individually and collectively habituated to the ways we act and think. This habituation must be recognized and simultaneously addressed at the individual, cultural and societal level — how we think the world works and how we think it should work.” …
At the personal level, climate-change information raises fear about the future, a sense of helplessness and guilt. These emotions clash with individual — and often national — identity, sense of self-efficacy and the need for basic security and survival. In small groups, interactions often subvert political conversations and/or submerge the visibility of climate-change issues. At the macro level, or society at large, the co-authors point to an absence of serious discussion of climate change within U.S. Congressional hearings and in media coverage.
In many discussions in the last 30 years, climate change has been seen as either a hoax or fixable with minimal political or economic intervention, said Norgaard, author of the book “Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life” (2011, MIT Press). “This kind of cultural resistance to very significant social threat is something that we would expect in any society facing a massive threat,” she said. The discussion, she said, is comparable to what happened with challenges to racism or slavery in the U.S. South.
Norgaard clearly assumes that climate change science is settled — but it still isn’t. Just three days ago, for example, Princeton physics professor William Happer wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Global warming models are wrong again.” Here’s a bit of what he had to say:
It is easy to be confused about climate, because we are constantly being warned about the horrible things that will happen or are already happening as a result of mankind’s use of fossil fuels. But these ominous predictions are based on computer models. It is important to distinguish between what the climate is actually doing and what computer models predict. The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with model predictions.
We need high-quality climate science because of the importance of climate to mankind. But we should also remember the description of how science works by the late, great physicist, Richard Feynman:
“In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”
The most important component of climate science is careful, long-term observations of climate-related phenomena, from space, from land, and in the oceans. If observations do not support code predictions—like more extreme weather, or rapidly rising global temperatures—Feynman has told us what conclusions to draw about the theory.
Norgaard is surely right that there are plenty of unscientific reasons to wish to think climate change does not pose the threat some scientists say it does. An acceptance of that hypothesized threat might impose certain obligations — to, say, purchase a low emissions vehicle — that a person might wish to avoid. Yet, there are surely plenty of unscientific reasons to wish to think climate change does pose the threat some scientists say it does. A desire for the power and latitude to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, for example, might motivate some politicians to accept climate science that they would not otherwise.
In charged debates like this one, it’s not helpful to use rhetoric that suggests dissenters are diseased. Far better to patiently engage in respectful discussion.
Oh , LOL, this is the one with the degree in B.S.
Could they just be sent off to re-eduction camps?
Diagnosis: “resistance to the threat of climate change at individual and societal levels must be recognized and treated”
Cure: Reeducation camps.
Kari Mari is a loon.
Gulag Archipelago.
All over again.
Another tenured, tax supported left wing lunatic doing harm.
could not upload her photo
here is a link to it.... seems she may have already been to an education camp
http://www.whitman.edu/content/sociology/faculty/norgaard
Climate-change scepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist
And:
orced Meds? Climate-change skepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist.
This is one stupid bi*ch.
Forced Meds? Climate-change skepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist.
I am tired of reasoning with the unreasonable. They need to be voted out of positions of power and then expelled from the bureaucracy. Any government agency that they have infested to further their agenda needs to be abolished and new ones created with explicit boundaries and safeguards to prevent them from running over Americans.
This ‘Perfesser’ holds views even goofier than did Jimmy Carter. Interestingly, she is as toothy and goofy as Jimmy.
Perhaps Liberalism causes its victims to have more teeth than a ‘possum, the better to take a bite out of our rights and assets.
Agreed...it is happening in Australia...BIGTIME: FR Thread:
There go those gravy trains in Queensland & Victoria ( Carbon Tax Rejected)
She should close her big mouth until she has something intelligent to say.
Very Soviet-like in her suggestion.
Not happening, wench. Suggestions like yours are the reason real students of history own sport utility rifles and lots of ammo. Not going willingly to the re-education camp.
5.56mm
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