Cass Sunstein Wonders Why People Don’t Fear “Climate Change” Enough

I’d hazard a guess that it’s because people, like Sunstein’s former boss, The Man With The Largest Carbon Footprint In The World (41,000 metric tons), refuse to practice what they preach.

(Bloomberg) With respect to the science of climate change, many experts regard the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the world’s authoritative institution. A draft summary of its forthcoming report was leaked last week. It describes the panel’s growing confidence that climate change is real, that it is a result of human action, and that if the world continues on its current course, it will face exceedingly serious losses and threats (including a significant rise in sea levels by century’s end).

While the draft report states these conclusions with unprecedented conviction, they are broadly consistent with the panel’s judgments from the past two decades, which raises an obvious question: Why have so many nations (including China and the U.S., the world’s leading greenhouse-gas emitters) not done more in response?

Perhaps it’s because this authoritarian, er, authoritative body, composed of hysterics, lies, exaggerations, false science, and un-scientific data…oh, and lots and lots of people pushing for more governmental control over people and economies….are also hypocrites. Every year we see thousands descend on some lovely vacation spot in fossil fueled vehicles to tell us that fossil fuels are bad. Remember COP13 in the exotic vacation spot of Bali, where so many private jets were used that they had to dead head (fly without passengers) them to other islands to park them? How about the one in Durban, South Africa, where they held a contest to fly the winner all the way from the west coast of the US to give a 10 minute speech on the evils of fossil fuels?

There are many answers. Skeptics say that the IPCC is biased and wrong. Companies whose economic interests are at stake continue to fight against regulatory controls. The leaders of some nations think that if they acted unilaterally to reduce their emissions, they would impose significant costs on their citizens without doing much to reduce climate change. Especially in a difficult economic period, they don’t think it makes sense to act on their own.

To this extent, the real challenge lies in producing an international agreement. It isn’t easy to obtain a consensus on the timing and expense of reductions, especially because developing nations (including China) insist that developed nations (including the U.S.) are obliged to take the most costly steps toward reducing emissions.

Perhaps it’s that they had an international agree, the Kyoto Protocol, of which most signatory nations failed to fulfill their obligations. The US was not a signatory, as the Democrat led Senate voted unanimously against joining, as it would ruin our economy. President Clinton agreed. Perhaps it’s because every recommended solution leads to more authoritarian government.

All of these positions play a major role. But we should not disregard purely psychological factors. An understanding of what human beings fear — and what they do not — helps to explain why nations haven’t insisted on more significant emissions reductions. (snip)

In a political context, citizens might demand protection against a risk that threatens them today, tomorrow or next month. But if they perceive climate change as mostly a threat to future generations — if significant sea-level rises seem to be decades away — they are unlikely to have a sense of urgency.

Perhaps it’s because the majority of prognostications from Warmists have failed. Perhaps it’s because their computer models cannot predict what happened in the past. Perhaps it’s that they keep making dire predictions of doom and gloom 50-100 years out, more akin to the crazy people who stand on sidewalks yammering about Armageddon and repent now.

In this light, it should not be surprising if people don’t get much exercised by the IPCC’s forthcoming report. All the obstacles are daunting — skepticism about the science, economic self-interest, and the difficulties of designing cost-effective approaches and obtaining an international agreement. But the world is unlikely to make much progress on climate change until the barrier of human psychology is squarely addressed.

Perhaps it’s about all the issues with the previous IPCC reports (way more than what is listed at that Wiki page). Perhaps it’s all the scientists who call the IPCC reports junk science. Perhaps it’s that the AR5 report cites the WWF and Greenpeace, which previously provided more junk science the AR4. Perhaps it’s that since they can’t scientifically account for why there’s been a 17+ year warming pause, they find handy dandy excuses, such as the heat pulling a Where’s Waldo? in the deep oceans. Perhaps it’s that they discount the effects of nature, such as water vapor and the big nuclear furnace in the sky. Perhaps it’s that 4 of the past 5 winters have been brutal around much of the Earth, and many finally experienced spring when summer rolled around. Perhaps it’s that Warmists now blame cold and snow on greenhouse gases. Perhaps it’s that they discount the Urban Heat Island Effect.

Perhaps it’s that people understand a warmer atmosphere is better than a cold one. And perhaps it’s that people see that the prescriptions all seem to be extensions of far left Progressive doctrine, based on un-scientific principles which call for Other People to be forced to change their lives, yet Warmists rarely do anything within their own lives. Warmists apparently don’t fear hotcoldwetdry enough to markedly Do Something themselves, like give up their own fossil fueled travel.

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6 Responses to “Cass Sunstein Wonders Why People Don’t Fear “Climate Change” Enough”

  1. Trish Mac says:

    BRAVO TEACH!

  2. Wicked_Filner_Wednesday says:

    Wait. So, we have a president type person who is getting ready to declare war again against another nation without congressional approval, and the MSM can only wail and moan about “climate awareness”??

    We have a president who sides with terrorists groups and our #1 Enemy who has killed numerous Americans, toppled allies, and yet he wants to help them financially, militarily, and emotionally.

    But,… heaven forbid we don’t walk everywhere, or wash with dirty water and pee, or spend $50,000 for a solar power setup when we live in an Apartment,…..

    They scream that we realists have our priorities screwed up…. but, this clearly points to who’s screwed.

  3. john says:

    Teach still can’t grasp that is the GOP that is the new “warmists”

  4. Malicious_Filner_Monda says:

    Comment by john
    2013-08-28 15:10:50
    Teach still can’t grasp that is the GOP that is the new “warmists”

    What does that even mean?

  5. blick says:

    Environmentalists have not gotten people to fear flood plains or hurricane beach front property, or earth quake faults, or landslide zones. those pose a near threat so a distant threat will not concern people. Shoot, most people cant see any further than the next pay check. Plus nobody follows a hypocrit. Blick

  6. Gail Combs says:

    Perhaps it is all the people in the UK dying of hypothermia and the fact 1/2 of the households are now in “Fuel Poverty’

    Perhaps it is the fact that the UK now has to rely on diesel generators to make up for the fact wind power and solar can’t provide enough electric.

    Perhaps it is the fact Greece has bankrupted and in many countries people in the EU are stealing wood from national forests to heat their homes.

    Perhaps it is the fact the US REAL unemployment figures ar above 22% and the World Bank was using American tax payer dollars to fund the building of COAL PLANTS in India and China so factories could move from the USA to those countries.

    Perhaps it is the fact that biofuel, solar and wind power use more petrochemicals to build transport and run than they actually produce over their live span.

    Perhaps it is because the USA is closing many more coal plants than the government expected and the replacement natural gas plants cost will cost consumers eight times as much!

    Obama’s war on coal hits your electric bill
    “…The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt…. These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level….”

    Pixie Rainbows and Unicorn farts are even worse.

    Charles S. Opalek, Professional Engineer did the calculations

    “…The Energy Returned On Energy Invested for a typical solar panel installation is 0.48.

    An EROEI rating of less than unity (ie: 1.00) means the alternative energy will never return more energy than went into its design, manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance, and decommission.

    Why would you burn two barrels of oil to find one barrel? This is the legacy of solar pv power.

    Wind power is worse. By my calculations the EROEI is 0.29 at best….”

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