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Republicans

Yeah.

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Posted on December 10, 2016 8 Comments

This entry was posted in climate change, Global Warming. Bookmark the permalink.

8 responses to “Republicans”

  1. Mike Coday | December 10, 2016 at 6:08 pm |

    so far, so good. Like falling off a building. You have to figure out how to stick the landing without breaking lots of things.

  2. Doc Snow | December 10, 2016 at 7:48 pm |

    And why are they at the helm?

  4. hypergeometric | December 10, 2016 at 10:02 pm |

    Thanks for that link, Doc. Powerful, and useful.

  6. Ralph Snyder | December 11, 2016 at 1:34 am |

    The picture that’s worth a thousand words

  7. Keith McClary | December 14, 2016 at 7:26 am |

    http://phys.org/news/2016-12-environmental-messages-positive-effective-convincing.html

    Their idea is that conservatives tend to take a brighter view of the past than other groups; thus, they might be receptive to arguments regarding global warming couched in more pro-past oriented ways, e.g., “Times were better when you could count on snow for Christmas in northern towns,” or “We planted bulbs in the garden on the same spring day every year.”
    To test this idea, the researchers enlisted the assistance of 1,600 online volunteers who were asked about their political ideology and then to read an environmental statement that was followed by a questionnaire. Volunteers were given different environmental statements to read. Some had dire warnings about future environmental disasters, while others painted a rosy picture of the past and suggested that there might be ways to bring back the “good old days.”
    In analyzing the answers given, the researchers found that those who identified as liberals offered the same levels of environmental concern regardless of which message they received, while those who identified as conservatives and read the pro-past statement rated themselves as more environmentally concerned than those who read the future-oriented message.

    • smallbluemike | December 14, 2016 at 5:19 pm |

      The takeaway from this study is that we get nowhere with conservatives when we talk about the state of the planet we are leaving to our kids and grandkids. We have to talk about how we don’t have the planet that our grandparents had. We used to have healthy forests with enough precipitation to grow trees and make rivers run clean with lots of fish.

      We should talk to conservatives about what we have lost rather than talking about our future concerns. We need to move the narrative so much that a mainstream candidate like Hillary would be seen as a risky choice given the challenge we face with the loss of our healthy environment (note: talking about loss of the healthy environment rather than future global warming and related losses.).

      This study indicates that the graphs showing where we are headed don’t communicate very well to conservatives. We should be talking about the stable environment that our grandparents enjoyed and asking how do we get that back.

      I am starting to process this article and the underlying study. When we fight we might want to consider framing the fight in the terms of returning the environment and the planet to the healthy state that existed in the past.