Sunday, April 06, 2008

Lowering my awareness...

The universal solution to my troubles - and possibly yours - is to raise the awareness of other people who will then solve our problems. If we have learned nothing else from our enormous and self-justifying public relations industry, it's that self-evident truth.

But it doesn't seem to be working for global warming.
The more you know the less you care – at least that seems to be the case with global warming. A telephone survey of 1,093 Americans by two Texas A&M University political scientists and a former colleague indicates that trend, as explained in their recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Risk Analysis.

“More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming,” states the article, titled “Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA.”

The study showed high levels of confidence in scientists among Americans led to a decreased sense of responsibility for global warming.

The diminished concern and sense of responsibility flies in the face of awareness campaigns about climate change, such as in the movies An Inconvenient Truth and Ice Age: The Meltdown and in the mainstream media’s escalating emphasis on the trend. [More]
So I think the message here is if you want to make the world a better place for future generations...
Blow up your T.V. throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try an find Jesus on your own ...
[John Denver Fan Note: This John Prine song had one of the greatest lines ever for a song, to wit:
"Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve"

[Get it? Topless lady?...something up her sleeve?...(snort)(guffaw)]

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Maybe some of us are developing compassion calluses from simple information overload. If were were less aware, we might be happier, and more effective.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

just for your information, according to the UN, the earth's temp has not risen since 1998. Maybe people are just seeing through the smoke and mirrors. Ever notice that Al Gore will not participate in any debates regarding global warming, oops, golbal climate change (the jargon has changed in the last year just in case it starts to cool).

John Phipps said...

Anon:

The recent cooling trend is just one more point of debate. I recommend my post and link to Climate Debate Daily for climate change information aggregation with what seems to me reasonable even-handedness. The latest wrinkle is more amazing yet.

The interesting thing to me is how anthropogenic global warming opponents rarely express their point of view without open contempt for the millions who hold opposing opinions.

See tomorrow's post. The dialog is moving on...

Anonymous said...

If its interesting to you that "AGW opponents rarely express their point of view without open contempt for th millions who hold opposing views" it must really facinate you when the proponents of AGW compare the skeptics to holocast deniers