A Crisis like No Other: Understanding and Defeating Global Warming - Second Edition E-Book
Robert De Saro
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- Herausgeber: Bentham Science Publishers
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
A Crisis Like No Other: Understanding and Defeating Global Warming couples engaging and creative storytelling with accurate details to explain global warming. It covers both the technical and human issues of global warming by addressing what's causing global warming, and why people don’t believe it exists. The book tells readers how to convince others that global warming is not only real, but life-threatening, and offers a clearly laid out path to solve it. The book is accurate and carefully researched, drawing on the author's thirty years studying the science of global warming, and the human psyche that surrounds it.
The author breaks down the subject into four parts, which can be thought of as four mini-books in one. The first part covers the psychology of global warming denial, how to defend ourselves against its lies and fake news, and how to convince others of global warming’s grave harm. The second part describes exactly what global warming is. The third answers the question what makes us so sure? Finally, the last part provides a road map showing us how to defeat global warming.
This book is comprehensive, fast paced, and easily accessible to readers from all walks of life. It provides an overview of everything one needs to know about global warming and, as such, is an excellent survey of global warming topics. In addition to being an easy and enjoyable read for the general public, A Crisis Like No Other: Understanding and Defeating Global Warming serves as a handy primer on climate change for environmental science classes.
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Seitenzahl: 513
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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What is the meaning of life?
There is none.
Deal with it.
But my two sons and their families come awfully damn close.
ENDORSEMENTS
A Crisis Like No Other is an excellent discourse on global warming topics that defines the many facets of the problem and covers its solutions as well as the politics involved. The read is a pleasure, with a daring and engaging style, making it useful to inform the reader on this pressing problem. This is an unusually well-written cross-over book that is suitable for the general reader as well as for college students in climate change, sustainability, and environmental science courses.
It covers a multitude of complex topics in an easily accessible manner, no matter the reader’s technical background. For the reader’s benefit, it includes examples, clever stories and anecdotes, and is packed with meticulously researched information as well as relying on the author’s own expertise.
I highly recommend it.
––Carlos Romero, Director, Lehigh University Energy Research Center; and Fellow at Lehigh University
***
Bob De Saro’s analysis of the situation along with suggested pathways to address an existential threat to our planet is refreshing, educational as well as an entertaining read.
A Crisis Like No Other covers all the topics a reader needs to thoroughly understand and take action on global warming. From the psychology of global warming denial and how to see through lies and fake news, to the science of global warming, to what we must do to solve it, and much more.
This alone would make it a valuable read but it is also written in a convincing and entertaining matter, filled with insight and wit. You will not be able to put this book down.
I recommend it for both the general reader and as a collegelevel book on environmental and sustainability science.
––Diran Apelian, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine
What this Book is About
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” and Mother Nature has been scorned, misused, ignored, and insulted for the past 250 years. She is one ticked-off lady.
Why?
Because ours is a world getting hotter. Consider:
• The 1980s was the hottest decade on record.
• Until the 1990s surpassed it.
• And then the 2000s came along and beat the 1990s.
• 2010s? You guessed it. It took the crown.
• Now, our present decade of the 2020s is beating them all.
It’s undeniable that global warming is occurring and we are responsible for it. And it is not good since global warming is causing rising sea levels, bigger storms, hotter temperatures, flooding, and drought. I could go on. All of which affect our well-being and that of our children and theirs, even more.
Still, we can emerge from global warming, maybe not unscathed, but mostly intact. To do so requires understanding what global warming is, how we can defeat it, and the bridges connecting the two.
A Crisis Like No Other: Understanding and Defeating Global Warming provides this understanding. It consists of four parts. The first part covers the psychology of global warming denial, how to defend ourselves against it, and how to convince others of global warming’s grave harm. Part II describes what global warming is. The third part answers the question What makes us so sure? Finally, Part IV provides a road map to defeating it.
Part I. We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us—Pogo
Facts and evidence are not always what they seem. The reason? We all have built-in biases and unswerving beliefs that filter and sometimes distort the truth. For example, why is a refs whistle a travesty when called against our team but deserved punishment when called against our opponent? It’s simple. We see what we wish to see. So it is with global warming. Part I describes how we filter facts, driven chiefly by our subjective beliefs, which then push some of us to deny global warming despite the overwhelming evidence.
With that understanding in hand, part I goes on to discuss how to convince people to take action on global warming. It is surprisingly straightforward. We convince people of global warming’s harm not by overwhelming them with facts but rather by appealing to what they already believe and understand to be common sense. People will listen if our arguments are crafted to fit their beliefs.
But to convince others of global warming and to understand it ourselves, we must first see through the lies and half-truths that come at us every day. Part I concludes by describing how we are built to fall for lies and how to defend ourselves from them. Uncovering the truth is not difficult if we have the proper tools. Ten easy-to-learn and logical techniques are given, along with examples.
Part II. The What’s and How’s of Global Warming
With part I as our foundation, we can now open our minds to understand what global warming is. Part II starts by describing how greenhouse gases are created from burning fuels and how they skew our planet’s energy balance, leading to rising temperatures. The description is clear, accurate, and easy to understand. But global warming is not just about rising temperatures, as important as that is. It is also causing monster storms, droughts, floods, diseases, political instability, food shortages, mass extinctions, and increased violence––all of which are described in this book, with reasons given for each.
But to prioritize our actions, we need to know the source of the worst greenhouse gas generators. Mostly it’s carbon dioxide (CO2), but methane and some other bit actors play a role as well. The sources include industry, electric generating plants, and transportation. Oh, and cow burps.
Part III. Why We Believe Global Warming Is Real and Significant
Irrefutable evidence proves global warming is real and threatening. It’s the same as when a thermometer placed under your tongue shows you have a fever. There is no one denying it. In the same way, with global warming, there are myriad measurements, mathematical models, experts from around the world, and much more, all converging onto this one unambiguous truth.
But to believe the evidence, we must also have a sound understanding of how science works, including its triumphs and failures. Science deals exclusively with facts, data, and measurements that either confirm our view of reality or reject it as being untrue. This process is repeated until our understanding of reality matches the evidence and is therefore confirmed. Part III describes more, but the evidence is science’s bedrock and North Star.
However, nothing in life can ever be certain, including science. Part III explains the limits of how accurately we can know anything. Two types of uncertainties are explained: (1) that which is due to our limited but growing knowledge and (2) that which will forever be out of our reach since we are incapable of measuring (and therefore truly understanding) some parts of it. Part III goes on to explain how scientific decisions are made despite these uncertainties.
Still not convinced about global warming? Then ask those who have the most to lose. This part concludes by showing the military’s grave concerns about global warming and its effect on their operations and bases. The military never kids around, and their anxiety about global warming should also be ours. Similarly, the insurance and financial sectors are getting sweaty palms over what could happen to their insured and investments.
Part IV. The Final Verdict
The last part of this book explains how bad the climate crisis is and what we must do to solve it. For instance, there are tipping points lurking out of sight, ready to pounce––ocean acidification, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, and thawing permafrost. But one tipping point that often gets overlooked is the ominous danger to our democracy. Global warming could lead to civil strife, creating opportunities for those wishing to sidestep our Constitution to acquire unlawful powers. We must stay alert to these dangers and add them to our incentives for fighting global warming.
Nevertheless, there is a clear path to solving our climate crisis. Three activities must be undertaken. The first is the technologies we need to deploy. The second is the decisions we must make in choosing our leaders and sidestepping the influencers who have fossil energy hidden agendas. And finally, it’s all about us––the personal actions we need to take.
A Crisis Like No Other starts with the psychology of denial, moves to understand global warming and the science behind it, and wraps up with a road map on what we must do. That’s how we beat global warming.
Mother Nature would approve.
A Few Additional Notes on the Book’s Organization
Each part, indeed each chapter, can be read independently of the others, so you can skip around if you wish. For instance, if you want to get into the meat of what global warming is, then go straight to part II. Or if you are a direct action, no-nonsense sort of person, then go to part IV to get started on what we must do. Besides, you now own this book, so I suppose you can do as you please and never mind what I think.
Except I will need to walk that back a bit––not the owning thing, the jumping around thing. Some of the chapters refer to two or three ideas developed in chapter 1, so maybe it would be best to read that one first (after all, it’s the first chapter for a reason).
For your enjoyment, I end each chapter with an “Afterthought,” which is an engaging and sometimes humorous short take on one of the points in each chapter. But no peeking. Read the chapter first before the Afterthought. Yes, I know. You own the book and you’ll do whatever you very well please. We already established that point. I’m just suggesting, is all.
I also sprinkle in “Asides” throughout the book, which provides interesting tidbits right after a particular concept is developed. You have no choice but to read them in the order I wrote them since I am not going to tell you where they are. I think I won this round. We’re tied at one all.
Bye for now. I’ll see you in chapter 1. Or whichever chapter your fancy takes you to.
Part I. We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us––Pogo
Part I covers the psychology of global warming denial, how to convince others of the crisis, and how to see through the many lies and conspiracy theories that can easily confuse us.
Why We Deny Global Warming
Robert De SaroAbstract
“There is absolute proof.” “They won’t listen. You know why? Because they have certain fixed notions. . . . Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don’t want the truth. They want their traditions.” “We could try.” “We would fail.”––Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky, 1950––American Coal CouncilGlobal warming is happening. It’s happening now. It will continue to happen. And we are responsible for it. These facts are inescapable, and denying them––especially when you consider all that is at stake––is irrational to the point of madness. But deny it people do:
“The science is not settled, and the science is actually going the other way. . . . We may in fact be going into a cooling period.”––Joe Barton, Former Congressman (R-Texas)“Climate scientists deserve to be flogged.”––Marc Morano, ClimateDepot.com“On average, global warming is not going to harm the developing world.”––Bjorn Lomborg, Copenhagen Consensus Center“The Great Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”––Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma)“CO2 plays only a minimal role.”“More CO2 will benefit the World. The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy.”––Michael Halpern, Program Manager, Union of Concerned CitizensDespite these wacky statements, people rarely make illogical decisions. As a species, we have flourished for over two hundred thousand years. Not as good as the dinosaurs, certainly, but not bad at all. Do you think we would still be around if we made reckless decisions not driven by our survival needs? We would not. Throughout our brief history we have always made sound choices, and, outward appearances aside, those choices have been steeped in logic and need. The above statements are no exception.
Then what gives?
The answer involves understanding how we think, how we make decisions, what subconscious forces drive our decisions, and how they help us survive and thrive. Most importantly, it’s about how we mercilessly discard facts that don’t support our beliefs.
Quick Assessments are Critical for Our Survival
The alien spaceship lands silently and without notice as the planet’s inhabitants bustle about their lives like ants around a crumb of food. From the interior of the metallic ship emerges a robot bristling with sensors for anything it might encounter. But on this run, it has just a single and simple mission: to determine how the denizens of this backwater planet behave.
It surreptitiously records every action people make, including the glucose their brains consume, the decisions they make, their reactions to events, and their brains’ computing power.
After several days it reports to its superiors and it is perplexed. “How can this be? These bimodal creatures walk to their cars, drive them, avoid traffic, play sports, all smoothly and quickly with no conscious thought going into it. And when I measure the energy required by their brains for such activities, it is much too small. It is simply not possible to go through all those calculations with such little energy use. Even these primitive carbon-based life forms know science prohibits such things. And their tiny craniums house a brain too small to accomplish much beyond the minimal chores needed to survive. Yet just the other day, a driver was approaching a truck crossing its path, and he avoided it as deftly as a supercomputer on steroids. It should have taken 320 trillion calculations per second to accomplish this, well beyond the spare computing capacity of these hairless apes. There is no possible way they can be doing this.
“But it gets worse. I challenged them with a series of problems. I watched as they tried to determine the rate of return on an investment. And guess what. Their behavior altered so dramatically that I thought I was examining an altogether different species. Their brain glucose consumption shot up. They did their tasks with intense focus, exertion, and determination, unlike their previous efforts. Plus, they were no longer vigilant and could be easily spooked. I had a prankster pop a paper bag in front of these so-called sapiens while they were deciding on a movie to rent, and they jumped like one of their planet’s marsupials. I would have laughed if I were capable of humor.
“It is as if there are two beings in the one body. One that glides through life as if on a magic carpet with little effort, and the other takes over when faced with a new problem not in its database. And it is seamless. In fact, I am sure these organic creatures don’t suspect the dual nature of their essence––the two beings living inside the one body.”
Our robot interloper is correct, and its unease at us having two beings in a single shell is close to the mark. Daniel Kahneman 1 and Amos Tversky, in a series of clever and amusing experiments, uncovered our dual nature, calling it System 1 when we are on autopilot and System 2 when we are deep in thought. And it is these two intrinsic human qualities that contribute to our global warming confusion.
Just as the extraterrestrial robot had discovered, System 1 is continuously vigilant, always assessing our surroundings instantly and ready to act without hesitation. It is fast, as it must be, to protect us from life’s daily assaults. It cannot have doubt or second guess itself––doubt takes time it does not have. It sees, it assesses, it acts. There is no other possible path for it.
System 1 provides a means to assess any situation quickly with little effort 2, which we use every waking moment. Try walking along a busy street and try thinking about all that is happening around you. You’d never make it; too much information. Instead, you assess the path in front of you and navigate it mindlessly and accurately tossing away extraneous details not needed to achieve your target.
Think back to a time when you lost your temper. Did you think about what your next step would be? Or did you simply give in to your emotions and either lash out or smolder in frustration?
It is the same way driving a car, going through our morning rituals, talking to a friend, and even sitting down for a meal. We don’t think about what we are doing and we go about it effortlessly, almost unconsciously.
System 1 has some tricks up its sleeve to help its host dispatch all of life’s bothersome intrusions. Here are a few.
System 1 is never stumped, even when there are times it should be. Sort of a friend who can’t stop talking. They should, but simply can’t help themselves. Similarly, instead of throwing in the towel and admitting its inability to assess a situation, System 1 just finds a way around the impediment. If a question posed that it cannot answer, it changes the rules of the game and answers a different question in its place. System 1 is nothing if not clever.
Here are some difficult questions with their possible substitutions that make life so easy for us.
Kahneman reported on students being asked how happy they were 3. But if that question was preceded by “How many dates did you have last month?” the results were much different, with Kahneman interpreting this as the students using the first question as a substitute for the second. They substituted the much easier question about their dates for the more difficult one about how happy they were. Most importantly, they didn’t realize they had done so.
We cheat when we can. When we are asked to evaluate an argument or position, we often use peripheral clues in place of true content because it is easier to do. For instance, having a reasonably accurate ability to quickly determine if a stranger poses a threat goes a long way in our survival. Tzvetan Todorov showed that we use only two physical clues to judge if a stranger is safe or not: a person’s chin and whether they are smiling. A square chin, denoting dominance, and a frown trigger our instincts to be wary. We can, at a glance, judge two essentially crucial facts: (1) how dominant a person is and therefore whether they are a threat or not, and (2) how trustworthy they are and therefore whether their intentions are more likely to be friendly or hostile. Even if we are not perfect at picking up the clues, any level of competence gives us a survival advantage and we are more likely to pass on our genes, which means our offspring will inherit the same traits.
But here’s the thing. Todorov also showed that voters use that same mental tool to quickly decide if they will vote for a candidate. Of course, the voters’ intuitive feel has no bearing on the candidate’s abilities; rather it is just an easy way to answer a difficult and maybe an impossible question as to whom to vote for. A great shortcut most of the time, but in this example, it fails us.
In a similar vein, Daniel T. Willingham showed that instead of withholding judgment, we evaluate a speaker on their looks, clothing, mannerisms, accent, and other outward appearances 4. Even though the speaker can twist the results or cite only favorable studies and ignore the ones that refute their position, we still may agree with their position if we identify with their looks. The more they are like us, the more we will agree with them irrespective of what the truth actually is.
As Noel E. Sharkey states, “[System 1] . . . overlooks contradictory information, neglects ambiguity, suppresses doubt, ignores the absence of confirmatory evidence, invents causes and intentions, and conforms to expectations” 5. All to get us through another day.
System 1 is very efficient with our time and effort. And we can arrive at seemingly intuitive opinions on very complex issues in an instant. If System 1 is right most of the time, and if when it is wrong, it does so only in situations that are not critical to our survival, then it is doing a good job. On balance, it provides a valuable benefit.
But what happens when we must figure something out, something truly complex, and we have the time and security to do so? There is no danger, so System 1’s emergency reactions are not needed. Further, we can’t use System 1 to unravel a complex ambiguous situation, as it cannot tolerate doubt and certainly can’t weigh different ideas or choices.
Enter System 2, the analytical and deep thinking part of our being.
System 2 is deliberate, is in no hurry, and uses the full logical and mental skills available to us. For instance, try this simple exercise. Rearrange the following words in alphabetical order.
ZebraCatTelephoneBathMathBookSoldierMickeyCompassionYou could not do it by inspection (System 1), so you called upon System 2 to look at the first letter of each word and compare it to another and iterated until the list was in the correct order.
Here’s another example. Look at the animals in the figure below, and then answer the two questions that follow:
1. What two animals are pictured here?
2. Are there more cats than dogs?
Just visually inspecting the figure with no conscious thought was all you needed to answer the first question. Your System 1 was engaged. Not so with the second. Here you needed to count the cats and the dogs and then compare each. It took effort and focus. If someone interrupted you, you would need to start all over again. That was System 2 at work.
One more example. Answer this question as quickly as you can:
You are running in a race when you pass the second-place runner. What place are you in?
Now answer that same question, but instead of jumping to an answer, draw three stick figures representing three runners moving from left to right on your paper. Label the last one with your name. Next, draw a line from your position to just in front of the second-place runner showing you passing her. Now, what place are you in?
Chances are, the first way you answered this question you used your System 1 and your answer was first place. The second time, using System 2, you got the correct answer, second place. System 1 fooled you, and though it may have been close enough for most purposes, for this one it would have been wrong.
System 2 has significant advantages over System 1. It can accept doubt, and it can weigh two or more opposing concepts for consideration. Essentially, it can think critically and examine issues that would be impossible for System 1.
And it can overrule System 1’s impulsive actions. This is the source of our inhibitions and better decision-making. This is where we exercise constraint and willpower. System 1 will go for the chocolate cake, yearning for instant gratification and calories. System 2 will put the brakes on our impulse, willing to trade instant gratification for long-term health.
System 1 is emotional whereas System 2 uses logic. System 1 is fast, nonverbal, and motivates us effortlessly based on our feelings and without our awareness. System 2 is slow and effortful and is where our willpower resides.
We fall in love using System 1. We pass our math and physics exams with System 2.
But System 2 comes with a boatload of disadvantages. Unlike System 1, which can multitask, System 2 can do only one thing at a time. We can perform multiple tasks simultaneously only if they don’t require deep thought. The first time we learn something new requires all our attention blocking out any other activities. For instance, the first time we tried driving with a stick shift, the car bucked and stalled while we concentrated solely on it. But once it became second nature, we downshifted, listened to the radio, weaved through traffic, all the while drinking our coffee with little effort.
System 2 requires much greater effort and expends much more energy and glucose than does System 1 6. That is why thinking is so hard and why we evolved System 1 to take the load off. In our early world, food was scarce, so limiting System 2’s workload helped us survive.
David DeSteno mentioned another problem using System 2 7. Teenage students using System 2 for better self-control had more success but suffered from increased stress and had premature aging of their immune cells. Wow! This seems a bit much, and suggests we should just abandon our willpower and traipse through life unfettered by responsibilities or social obligations––just live for the moment from day to day. I’m not fully buying into this, but perhaps it raises a more nuanced issue: that the cost of System 2––even if not as dramatic as reported here––still has an effect on us, all the more reason to have System 1 take over whenever it can and when careful deliberation isn’t called for.
System 1 doesn’t operate in our conscious minds; it doesn’t say, “Hey, Joe, turn the wheel now or you’re going to become a pepperoni road pizza.” It works instead by controlling our actions through our brain’s hard wiring and by releasing chemicals into our bodies that force us to act.
System 1 resides in the amygdala part of the brain and intercepts information from the outside world before it gets to the cerebral cortex and into our conscious minds 8. It hides out and hijacks the information while we remain clueless. So much for being the master of our fate.
System 2, on the other hand, is centered on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the brain, which is critical for executive-type decisions. The PFC is the most advanced part of the brain and is what makes us human. It handles higher-order cognitive abilities, is crucial for inhibiting inappropriate behavior, and fosters creativity.
But Quick Assessments Can Fool Us
Despite System 1’s essential attributes, it can also fool us. When we rely on System 1, we set ourselves up to make quick decisions using just the information at hand with no thought or analysis. We give up critical thinking and we fail to judge the value of the information, instead accepting it unconditionally. And we are impulsive, impatient, and rely on the first answer that comes our way. System 1 prefers the simple to the complex; simple is much easier to process and the complex requires work that we would prefer not to do. System 1 is the teenager in us all.
A large number of experiments clearly demonstrate how System 1 is not always our friend. And taking this a step further, System 1 not only acts without our awareness, but sometimes against our will. Scary but true. Let’s see how.
Kahneman describes an experiment carried out at New York University in which a group of students were told to unscramble a series of five words into coherent sentences. One group had words associated with the elderly (e.g., Florida, forgetful, bald) while the control group had no such words. When asked to walk across the hall, the students primed with the elderly words walked significantly slower than the control group, mimicking the elderly. Further, when questioned later, none of the primed students were aware that the words had an elderly theme and none realized they had walked slowly. However trivial the effect was, they nonetheless were manipulated into acting a certain way and they complied with no awareness they were doing so.
In a similar experiment, students were primed with money words. The primed students were more independent than the control group but were much more selfish as they were less inclined to help a student pretending to be stumped on a different experimental task. Again, the students were unaware their behavior had been intentionally changed.
Kahneman also notes a more insidious use in “Dear Leader” pictures on walls everywhere which primes for obedience and inhibits independent thought. Again, people are manipulated––in this case into obedience––without their knowledge and certainly without their consent.
Our Metabeliefs Organize Everything we Know and Care About
We know the sun rises in the East, where we need to go each morning when we leave the house, where we will stop for our morning coffee, which is our favorite baseball team, who our friends are, that tigers bite and rocks don’t. And as the alien robot noted, we do so as if on a magic carpet, without conscious thought.
Just as we could not survive very long without Systems 1 and 2 operating in their respective kingdoms, we could not survive without our Metabeliefs intact and driving our decisions and actions. How could it be otherwise? It would not be possible to reload all these facts every time we needed them.
Metabeliefs are our GPS in navigating our lives. They are the sum of our knowledge, feelings, emotions, facts, intuitions, instincts, cultural norms, and genetics that constitute the whole of what we understand and believe. We acquire our Metabeliefs throughout life as we experience and evaluate whatever we sense and feel from our environment, friends, relatives, and whatever else impacts us. Mostly we are unaware of this enormous infiltration that shapes who we are and how we act. But not always. We can change our Metabeliefs by letting System 2 critically think about something and absorbing its conclusions into our being. But mostly it is System 1 sculpting our Metabeliefs without our awareness of the transformation taking place over a lifetime. I suspect that in our early years our Metabeliefs are rapidly formed, whereas as we age, we add less and less to our accumulated beliefs.
Asking our brain to process the enormous information available to us is impossible so it must take shortcuts. Our mind filters whatever it sees and what filter can it use? The only one available to it: our Metabeliefs, the mother of all filters. Consequently, what we see, hear, and feel will always be in concert with our Metabeliefs, for good or bad.
And our Metabeliefs must construct a cohesive story, using the available facts, about what is going on so it can take action when needed. And it must do so in milliseconds. And then repeat again, again, and again. The story must be consistent with our own beliefs. It would never provide a scene that was in conflict with our beliefs and our understanding of how the world works and how those near us should behave. It cannot act differently.
The huge benefit of our Metabeliefs is that we can take a very small fraction of what we see and hear and our brains will process that small sample and make a whole picture, filling in what we need and ignoring what is irrelevant to our survival. Anne-Claude Gingras estimates that we can process only 0.0000005 percent of the information our eyes and ears receive 9. That’s like watching a two-hour movie but seeing only 0.004 milliseconds of it. Really tough to get the gist of the plot, but somehow we manage.
Do this experiment. Go somewhere that is visually rich––say, a mall. Slowly scan the stores, the people, the food court, products, colors, the floor, people wearing different clothing, the smells––nearly an infinite amount of detail if you look carefully. Now pick a store and walk toward it with that being your only goal. You will register only the fewest of details, just enough to get by. No more, no less. What happened to those other details that are clearly there? Your mind filtered them out; otherwise it would have blocked your main goal of getting to that specific store.
So it is not so much what we see but what our mind thinks we are seeing by sampling a small part of the external world and quickly and efficiently creating a composite picture. One rule it uses to great effect is that what it already knows about the world must be satisfied by its new construct. If it isn’t, then the brain alters what we see until the view conforms to what is sensible to our Metabelief. It’s imperfect, to be sure, but there is no other way if we are to survive from moment to moment since there is far too much information for us to handle. Players immersed in combat video games, such as Halo, learn this fact quickly. Taking their eyes and focus off the attacking aliens for just a moment, and the player becomes toast.
"As an Aside, this is why eyewitnesses are not always reliable. Most events occur so quickly that the eyewitness has only a brief time to see it, which is a perfect setup for System 1 and Metabeliefs to take over. Unfortunately, this is not an accurate way to assess what is happening when details become crucial. For instance, since 1989, eyewitness testimony that would have resulted in the death penalty for 254 people was overturned by DNA evidence 10".
But Our Metabeliefs will Fool us as Well
But there is a rub. For our Metabeliefs to operate quickly and efficiently, they must sometimes falsely manipulate information the way a crooked tax accountant will claim our dog as a dependent. It does so innocently enough, since dawdling over what appears to it as unimportant details will derail its efforts to keep us physically and mentally whole. It is simply a shortcut that evolved over many years, and it works remarkably well.
Mostly our Metabeliefs are correct. Mostly.
Road rage is an example of Metabeliefs gone nuclear. A perceived slight from another driver leads to an aggressive counter, not because there was a physical threat but because the offended person feels his beliefs about who he is are being challenged. His ancient instincts about his social status inappropriately kick in, as the slight would threaten his group standing and therefore his ability to acquire food and mates, which demands a quick and violent response. It overreacts because it knows no other way.
Here are some examples of how Metabeliefs can affect our opinions on global warming:
• People’s understanding of religion is a Metabelief that can make it difficult to believe in evolution or global warming.i To do so would put their religious beliefs in jeopardy. “Nature is God’s exclusive handiwork and it is arrogant to believe we can upset His work.” And there is the belief that God has given humanity dominion over the earth, to exploit as we wish.
• Global warming contradicts America’s heroic image of itself and the belief that we will inexorably become more prosperous. The fear that global warming will arrest our nation’s progress and show that America is not omnipotent is too difficult for some to accept.
• The belief that the world is just and innocent people do not deserve to suffer due to global warming. I fell victim to this one. There was a period in my life when I stopped reviewing the global warming literature because it was too depressing.
• Some people resist authority, especially academic or intellectual authority.
• Global warming resistance is often a proxy for the real issue––we don’t want government interference or additional costs. This is especially true for people who feel they have been marginalized and have lost economic ground compared to their expectations.
• California farmers are worried more about climate policy than climate change 11. They are not skeptics of global warming but rather skeptics of regulations that will affect their livelihood: “We can adapt to climate change but not regulations.” They don’t care if the world ends in one hundred years if regulations effectively end their world in the next one.
People’s Metabeliefs include their political affiliations to such an extent that their membership becomes more important than what the group stands for 12. Republicans are proud they are not Democrats just as Democrats are proud they are not Republicans. This pushes them to accept the beliefs of their group without having to evaluate its truth. So merely being a Republican pushes us to deny global warming whereas being a Democrat pushes us to accept it.
Psychologist Asheley R. Landrum states, “People with more knowledge only accept science when it doesn’t conflict with their preexisting beliefs and values” 13. Landrum produced experimental evidence for this effect. She had people read articles that linked the disease Zika to either global warming or immigration. When connected to global warming, there was an increase in concern about Zika from Democrats and a decrease from Republicans. And the opposite occurred when it was linked to immigration. People’s beliefs have less to do with what they know and more with who they believe they are.
The fact is, global warming denial is not about being uninformed 14. Global warming issues are getting more press than the Kardashians so you would need to be living under a rock to miss it. No, it is about what our Metabeliefs choose to do with the information.
Equally Importantly, The Groups We Belong To Help Shape Our Metabeliefs
Would you rather walk down a dark alley in a strange city alone or with a group of friends? Easy choice. Survival and good fortune depend on being part of a group and sticking together. A group provides the cohesion and the shared beliefs that lead to coordinated action, which not only increases the survival of any individual but also allows the individuals to flourish beyond what they could do on their own. And the stronger the cohesion, the more effective the group and the more benefits to its members. Of course, we can go too far, which allows charismatic leaders with bad intentions to control us, as evidenced by the Jonestown Massacre 15. But on the whole, if the group has the right balance of adhesion and commitment, it will do well.
Groups provide much more than physical protection. They also affirm our identity and how we view ourselves. They provide us with values that are reinforced by other members. They prescribe how we should behave, think, and how to make sense of the world 16. They remove uncertainty in how we go through life and they organize us to achieve much. Imagine trying to build the pyramids or land an astronaut on the moon without deep group adhesion and member acceptance.
But it comes with a price. We lessen our independent thinking and replace it with groupthink. We become less critical of our positions and suspicious of other ideas since they represent an attack on our group that jeopardizes the benefits we receive. Maybe we don’t consciously think of it this way, but our System 1 is certainly pushing our actions in that direction. In fact, experiments have shown that when people conform to group ideas, their prefrontal cortex is suppressed, which is where System 2 resides.
So when global warming statements threaten to upend a group’s beliefs, they get tossed into the waste bin because they attack what are most important to the group’s members. Sure, you can argue that global warming will hinder our breeding, at least in the long term, so shouldn’t that be just as important to the group? No. First, people react to immediate threats, not future ones, especially when their needs for food and sex are here and now. Second, global warming is everyone’s problem, so let someone else take care of it: “I’ll hold on to my current gains and let others handle the long-term stuff. Better they pay the price than me.” Third, “global warming cannot be real if it conflicts with my beliefs and it disadvantages my group and therefore what I gain from group membership. After all, it does me no good to fight global warming if it destroys my group and I am left with nothing. I’d rather die than face that.”
Further, we are social learners 17. Our beliefs come from those we trust: teachers, friends, relatives, and people we consider part of our group. This often works well, but not always. For instance, it fails miserably when anti-vaxxers trust evidence from their friends and others in their orbit more than evidence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other impartial medical organizations. An amplifying problem is that we are also conformists. We wish to get along with our group members and avoid rocking the boat. In most matters, such as outside threats, that is the only way to survive. But when the group gets it wrong, it leads to poor choices with consequences beyond the group. When information challenges one’s Metabeliefs, and therefore the group itself, people are forced to “vigorously defend their values, identities, and attitude at the expense of factual accuracy” 18.
Our Metabeliefs also compel us to look upon other groups as deficient or evil because they are different from ours, which threatens our self-identity and well-being. If it is different, it must be feared and therefore hated.
Let’s do a thought experiment.ii Build a red robot with superb artificial intelligence capable of quickly learning any skills you care to teach it. Put it in the woods and teach it how to hunt game, live off the land, protect itself from predators, interact with similar-looking red robots, and defend its group from other bands of robots. It doesn’t always go smoothly. Occasionally the robot gets trashed by a wild animal, so you bring it back to your lab, repair it, and change the software part that didn’t work but retain the rest. You then put it back into the wild, now that it can better deal with that particular danger. And this is a continual process. As time goes by, the robot gets better at surviving and thriving and you need to fix it less and less often. Sure, occasionally a random event happens––a tree branch falls on it or a large rock from space smashes into it, but by and large it does well enough to keep on ticking. It took a while and you had to fix a lot of mistakes, but it finally reaches a point of competence in the environment you placed it in.
Now comes the challenge. Take the red robot, put a tie on it, and turn it loose in an urban city with a suite of new challenges. The robot is confronted with problems different from those you painstakingly trained it for over so many years. It will put problems it encounters into imperfectly fitting pigeonholes according to what it previously learned. Its behavior will appear erratic and illogical at times but only because it is using software developed for a different environment.
It will encounter green robots that are clearly different from it and that have different ideas about how the world works. So what will our red robot do? The only thing it can: it will fall back on its training, what it knows and what has worked over so many years, and it will defend red robots at the expense of the green ones. It will distrust green robots, dislike them, and maybe attack them, even if such actions are not called for. Given what the red robot knows, how can we possibly expect it to act any differently?
We are not much different from the red robot, as our survival instincts and ways of dealing with problems were developed in an environment much different from the high-tech world we now inhabit.
Don’t believe me? Then try this experiment. Pick a group of friends who share a common bond with you––say, a sports team. Do something contrary, such as wearing a jersey from a competing team. What happens? It will certainly be noticed and you may be ribbed over it, in good nature I am sure, but there will be undercurrents of hostility simmering just out of sight. What have you done? You have gone against your group, and by doing so you have threatened their values, at least on this topic.
A young woman I know does not believe global warming is occurring, not because she carefully studied the issue but rather because her friends and family don’t believe it. In her mind it would be a waste of time to investigate something her group already has, and since they have been correct so many times in the past, there is no reason to believe they are wrong now. Her group is tight-knit, and to go against the wisdom of the group would expend social capital she would rather save. To have a dissenter within the group would stress it, which could lead to damages greater than the single issue of global warming. For instance, dinners might become less fun, and trading business contacts might become less frequent or might end altogether. The social and economic penalties could easily outweigh this single issue, so she takes the sensible path and falls in step with her elders and peers. Many of us would.
My young acquaintance cannot articulate or consciously think of it in this fashion, nor is she even aware of the decision she is making. No need to. Her Metabeliefs do it for her.
Confirmational Bias Aids in the Subterfuge
How do we protect our Metabeliefs from factual assaults that don’t jive with its core foundation? We eliminate the offending fact the way a dictator eliminates his opposition. Not surprisingly, System 1 is ideal for such a role. It is forever lurking beyond our vision ready to pounce on anything that makes us uncomfortable by either changing what it is or deleting it altogether. And by so doing, it keeps System 2 totally in the dark about what just occurred. There are two related techniques System 1 employs: cognitive dissonance and confirmational bias.
Cognitive dissonance is the setup man. It is the name given to our inability to hold two opposing ideas at once 19, especially when one of them conflicts with our Metabeliefs. For instance, when people drive gas guzzlers knowing it contributes to global warming, they are in a state of cognitive dissonance due to the two conflicting feelings they have: the first one is they enjoy driving big SUVs, and the second is they are worried about how global warming will affect their children’s future. This produces a mental conflict that makes them uncomfortable and no one likes that. And since System 1 seeks always to be right—it has no time for ambiguity—it will interpret facts to fall within our Metabeliefs. Don’t blame System 1. It’s just doing its job.
Next, confirmational bias takes over to close out the problem. Confirmational bias stops information reaching us that opposes our Metabeliefs and warmly welcomes facts that support our beliefs. Our SUV driver above might use this tool any number of ways. She might limit reading about global warming, or eagerly embrace sales brochures that tout the improved gas mileage of SUVs, or decide global warming really isn’t all that bad. There are a multitude of paths her System 1 can take to release the tension.
A sad example of this is a news story about a mom who took her young daughter to a quack doctor. The young girl died in his care, and as a result the doctor was prosecuted for malpractice. The mom vigorously defended the doctor, claiming he did no wrong despite substantial evidence to the contrary, which she refused to see. Why would she defend the doctor? Because she couldn’t accept that she may have contributed to her daughter’s death by taking her to him. To preserve her sanity, she had no choice. Confirmational bias was doing its job of protecting her.
Other examples of ignoring evidence: smokers rationalize that only heavy smokers get lung disease. Shopaholics rationalize that they are getting good deals. Anti-vaxxers rationalize that they are wresting control back from the government or that their religious beliefs are in peril. Some will view hot spells as confirming global warming is happening while others view cold spells as confirming the opposite. All of which lead to bad outcomes.
Commitment bias is a form of confirmational bias that we have all experienced. It occurs when we are unwilling to retract a position we have committed to, even when there is clear contrary evidence 20. Backing off a publicly stated position displays weakness and would take us down a notch in our perceived social pecking order. That is why it is never a good idea to put an opponent in a corner. Unless you are capable and intend to annihilate them, it is best to give them a face-saving way of changing their position.
Mind you, we possess confirmational bias and cognitive dissonance because they help us survive; otherwise they would have been evolved out of us. And they are a very efficient way to operate since life is littered with inconsistencies and unexplainable stuff. Usually, these factoid blips are of no consequence and it would be a waste of time and glucose to try to figure them out. And while we were, a predator might just sneak up from behind, putting an unfortunate end to our deliberations. They also help System 1 move us through life unimpeded and protect our Metabeliefs from unpleasant and contrary facts as well as promote harmony in our groups.
So it is really important that we have confirmational bias working for us when we need it.
But no asset can ever be perfect and errors will always occur as we use these tools. Further, as with our red robot thought experiment, we evolved these traits in a world much different from the one we now live in, so it is not surprising that errors occur. And to add fuel to the fire, according to Sara E. Gorman 21, when we confirm facts as true, we get a dopamine rush similar to eating chocolate, having sex, or falling in love. Who knew. Though I suspect the effect is quite a bit less.
"As an Aside, confirmational bias is how stereotypes are created. We remember aspects that reinforce the stereotype but forget or don’t see ones that oppose it. For instance, a common stereotype is that athletes are inarticulate. We see the ones who stumble when interviewed on TV, ignoring, of course, the stress and fatigue they are under having just completed a tortuous 3½ hour game. Yet it doesn’t register that some of the most articulate sports announcers––Dan Dierdorf, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, and Brandi Chastain, for instance––were once athletes".
Both liberals and conservatives are equally prone to confirmational bias, but on different topics. A common theme is that liberals tend to promote government regulations, regardless of the science quality, whereas conservatives (and libertarians) reject what they believe is liberal agenda-driven science and tend to oppose regulations even when the science is sound 22.
Liberals and conservatives also have their own global warming denial paths. Conservatives deny that global warming is happening or that we are responsible for it. They do so because they believe global warming actions will change their way of life, which they view as sacred, an unthinkable situation 23. Liberals accept global warming facts but live in a fantasy world about how easy it will be to solve it. In this sense, conservatives come closer to the truth than liberals since they understand how difficult global warming solutions will be, but both bury their heads in the sand, leading to the same bleak outlook.
Now add a sprinkling of science distrust and voila—you have discredence, a willingness to disbelieve. And to make it long-lasting, add social acceptance and the echo chamber effect, in which one specific idea is repeated so often that it is assumed to be true just by virtue of the repetition. Mix and stir using Metabeliefs, System 1, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and discredence and you have a fine cocktail potent enough to derail the truth of global warming by anyone so inclined.
Why the Poor Remain Poor
Our System 2 burns through glucose, so what happens when there isn’t enough or when it gets fatigued? We unconsciously default to System 1 to make our decisions, which is not always the best option. A worrisome example of this is a study that followed Israeli parole judges and their decisions before and after meals 24. Right after a meal they approved 65 percent of the applicants. But then their approval steadily dropped, reaching zero just before their next meal. Their decisions had less to do with the merits of each applicant and more to do with the judges themselves and how fatigued and hungry they were. Immediately before a meal, their System 2 was exhausted, so their System 1 automatically took over and went with the fast, easy decision to deny parole. This was not a conscious act. They were not deliberately trying to sabotage the judiciary. They were just victims of their genes driving their System 1 to act.
"As an aside, this is one reason to take your clients out to dinner. If you want a favorable decision, be sure your clients are not hungry and are in a good mood so they will not default to the easy answer of no. As another Aside within an Aside, this is also a sales technique known as the reciprocity theory, in which the client feels the need to reciprocate for the free meal".
Mental exhaustion also works against the poor which helps explain why it is difficult to pull oneself up by the bootstraps and out of poverty. Self-control is critical in achieving goals such as improving one’s finances. Because the poor have less money and other resources, and are often overwhelmed with day-to-day problems, they need to restrain themselves more often than wealthy people. Thus, their willpower becomes depleted and they are less able to resist unhealthy and unwise choices 25.
Silvia Maier used brain images and showed that stressed individuals had more activity in the part of the brain involved in reward circuits and less activity in parts of the brain involving self-control 26
