One angle to approach the “fundamental psychological problem” is from the risk perception literature, and cognitive heuristics.

As a starting point Slovic gives a nice precis on the *affect* heuristic, which is suggested to allow an individual to perceive less dread from a risk if the perceived benefits are high enough.

Slovic, P. (2001) The Perception of Risk Earthscan, London.

I quote

“Alhakami and Slovic…observed that the inverse relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit was linked to an individual’s general affective evaluation of a hazard. If an activity was ‘liked’ [driving an SUV?] people tended to judge its benefits as high and its risks as low. If the activity was ‘disliked’ [not driving an SUV?], the judgements were opposite-low benefit high risk” (p. xxxii comments added)

Conceptually transferrable to include the possible perceptions of the proposed behavioral changes needed to mitigate global warming at an individual level wouldn’t you say??

H

So 2005 has turned out to be the warmest year on record according to the NASA GISS numbers. (Note that there are a few ways to do the calculation so this should not be considered a definitive answer, but it…

Kevin Vranes, “Can you give some links to these studies? I’m not a social scientist and so am unfamiliar with the lit, but I’d like to read them….”

Here’s a highly technical article:

http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1086&context=are_ucb

Some “money quotes” (no pun intended):

“Second, discounting at a non-negligible rate makes the present value of future damages small.
The effects of greenhouse gasses might not be felt for a century (if ever). At an annual discount rate of 1% we would invest 37 cents today to avoid a dollar’s worth of damages in a century, and at a discount rate of 4% that amount falls to 1.8 cents.”

“It seems reasonable to apply a non-negligible discount to the future, but using a constant and
non-negligible discount rate makes us callous toward the far-distant future.”

I’ve just skimmed the paper, but the authors don’t seem to further explain, “…makes us callous toward the far-distant future.”

“Callous?”

Can you give some links to these studies? I’m not a social scientist and so am unfamiliar with the lit, but I’d like to read them….

My prediction is that the world will segway smoothly from wringing our collective hands and saying ‘we must do something’ to wringing our collective hands and saying ‘we should’ve done something’!

I’m planning for personal adaptation. Let’s just hope that the WAIS doesn’t melt – an outcome that would be difficult to adapt to!

“The main problem with an international carbon tax is that it would work (very effectively), but it will never happen. So, as a solution to the problem, it’s a bit moribund. That doesn’t necessarily differentiate it from other proposed solutions. From a pragmatic point of view, none are likely to have much effect.”

. . . then the problem perhaps out to be thought of as an adaptation problem rather than prevention problems as posed by the FCCC, which gets us right back to where I started this conversation. The FCCC deempahsizes adaptation, so not only does it misframe the problem, but creates an obstacles to impementation of the policy strategy that may be most needed and most effective for dealing with climate impacts!

I’ve read through Rayner (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/EAC%20memo%20fin.doc), and can’t see where he advocates abandoning targets. He advocates carbon taxes with trading, which of course most observers agree would be a Very Good Thing. But implementation of such an approach requires a simplification of the science – you need to set a premium to the traded items.

The main problem with an international carbon tax is that it would work (very effectively), but it will never happen. So, as a solution to the problem, it’s a bit moribund. That doesn’t necessarily differentiate it from other proposed solutions. From a pragmatic point of view, none are likely to have much effect. It just seems odd that Prof Rayner (like so many others) is weded to an idea that will not work

Thanks, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. Any time that you have a continuous function, whether the impacts of heart disease or climate impacts and you choose to introduce a threshold approach to intervention, you are making a decision to implement a policy that is out of step with how the world works. In principle, why wouldn’t a continuous function of impact require a contuous funtion in response? (By the way speed limits in may places are enforced this way with greater fines for greater speeds above the limit).

Well, the reasons for why thresholds make sense are obvious, such as, the complexity of implementing a continuous function in response versus the simplicity of a threshold approach, benefits exceeding costs of adopting a threshold approach, clarity of decision rules in plementation, unambiguous metrics of performance, etc. etc.

As has been pointed out setting a threshold for action, and the selection of the variables to be considered as triggers, in any context are based on values. But so too is the decision to frame a problem as a threshold problem rather than as a some other sort of problem. In the case of climate change, it seems pretty clear to date that the performance of international climate policy with respect to its own stated goals strongly suggests that either the threshold was chosen poorly (DAI) or that the problem was fundamentally misconceived to begin with (a la Rayner). Excuses why performance hasn’t been better than it has underscore this point.

When people start providing empirical evidence that the current approach is working based on ANY relevant metrics, I will be open to changing my mind. But so far all I here is theoretical arguments aboout why the climate problem is properly framed in theory. That doesn’t get us very far in the real world. I continue to be amazed at how people (in general) who claim to be concerned about climate change are so wedded to a policy framework that has not, can not, and will not work.

Thanks!

Similarly, if you are concerned about global warming, then you have a number of options (you can set targets for individual effectors, you can set targets for overall effectors by converting them into equivalents, you can set a target for temperature change (either global or regional) or you can set a target for impacts. All of these have pros and cons, none of them require the science to be misrepresented.(e.g. see http://www.cicero.uio.no/publications/detail.asp?publication_id=2776 )

The Kyoto Protocol went for option B. There is some justification for this, since research before and since indicates that the climate impact of a variety of factors is largely independent of their nature (a major exception being land use changes). Now, that may or may not be the best metric. But a metric is necessary.

I don’t know much about Senator Inofe, but I suspect the problem here is something different. By the sound of it, he’s forumating policy on the basis of an simplified awareness of the science. That’s a different thing from formulating a policy target(s) based on a detailed awareness of the science.

Edward Teller.