no one sees a practical way forward

showing that is the most important.

Various things must be done, of course, as you know.  However, I suspect that smart grid meters are the whiz bang object that people will experience directly and get the idea that practical change is possible -- or not.

Based upon flipping through internet sites (including DOE and industry newsletters), it seems to me that computer software standards are the key to progress.  Cannot buy stuff until there are standards.

I also suspect that standards can be done right, or wrong, with enormous consequences.

Wish we had a computer science contributor at Grist who could birddog the action (inaction).

ps.  NIST report on computer standards for smart grid was due in December (2007 Energy Bill requirement).  Still no report.  And, frankly, I do not have high hopes for NIST process.

Try connecting the dots to corporate corrupt media, pol's, military, etc., and give the enviro a break for a minute - google "missing forest for trees"

That is the mathematical/scientific concept that is missing in the main stream media/public consciousness.

How to brand exponential GHG climate emergency and tie it to the exponential manner in which human change can ocurr, like political revolution or new product market penetration, that's the challenge.

Exponential climate emergency, ever increasing in velocity due to positive feedback from ice melt/ increased solar absorption and ice melt/methane release from tundra and undersea methane hydrate, must be illustrated clearly enough to come across the cognitive boundary layer.

That will produce alarm.  But that alarm will turn to despair, quietism, and immersion in hedonism... unless...

It can be explained how products, like plugin hybrids for instance, can take over markets at an ever increasing velocity.  The exponential change to plugin hybrids (and other renewable energy and conservation devices) overtaking exponential climate change.

Take classic products like the Frisbee or the Bic lighter as an example.  They start with the first sale then as the word gets around, sales take off like a forest fire.  A forest fire is a good way to explain exponential growth too.

Or how about the internet technology boom?  There's another exponential growth example.

But how do you brand this together?  Exponential climate change danger and exponential renewable energy product growth that could counter it?  

How did the Sherman tank overcome the German Tiger tank in WW II?  Mass production.  It took 10 Shermans to each Tiger to win.  German industry built one tank at a time.

US industry ramped up tank production exponentially with mass production on multiple factory assembley lines.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

or else it leads to mass hysteria, which can just as easily lead to a right-wing lurch as a left-wing one.  Having said that, I think that it is critical to scare the crap out of everybody, because, well, at this rate we're heading towards either the death of billions or even wiping out the human race.  If that's a very real possibility, and I think it is, then that should be said.

The problem is that the scientific community is by nature very conservative about making very big, "wild" claims.  However, there is a lot of scientific evidence that if the tundra, and especially the ocean clathrates evaporate, then we could be headed for a permian extinction event, in other words, almost everything will die.

But that has to be coupled with a believable strategy to prevent this.  Ideally everybody would enjoy the process of getting from here to there.  Since some of it may involve cultural changes (maybe less cars, for exammple), that won't necessarily be easy, but we should be trying to paint pretty pictures of a carbon-free world, nonetheless.

Addressing David's points:

[the problem is dire] Ads and sound bites associating climate change with stronger storms (photos of Katrina), sea level rise (photos of floods), and drought (photos of wildfires eating houses).

[solutions/opportunities] Sound bites like energy independence, energy efficiency = green jobs, green jobs = jobs that can't be outsourced.
Photo juxtaposition: mountaintop removal vs. wind farms, belching factories vs. solar arrays.  

You want to educate?  Educate the kids.  Put ads on Disney and Nick showing kids making the point that electric cars/hybrids are cool, SUVs are SO last year (I'm not sure how to make that ad, but I'm sure it can be done).

Guess I wasn't clear enough.

The main point of raising awareness is NOT to encourage individual voluntary changes.

The main point of raising awareness is to bring about widespread high-level political will to decarbonize.

When the people push, the high-level will moves.

Perhaps if the Artic Icecap completely melts away, that might grab people's attention.

-David Ahlport

David Ahlport,

I continue to be amazed at the willingness to put so many of AGW's eggs in so untested & tentative a basket as the Arctic Ocean icecap.  

Certainly, the Icecap serves well as a media-genic and non-technical climate-proxy by which to focus the public's attention on Global Warming.  However ...

The Arctic Ocean and (especially) it's icecap are a can of worms and a flush of butterflies.  This is a flighty, erratic, chaotic system:  If it was a gaming table in Vegas, the crowd would be standing well back.

And most astounding of all - the icecap has already started showing rather plain signs of recovery.  Yet you, Al Gore and others continue to point to a cooling & regrowing icecap, saying; "Watch it melt!".

I'll take you up on it.  Let's indeed watch the Arctic Icecap closely through the summer of 2009.  We will surely have lots of company.

Regarding point 2, human beings are wired differently and their responses to change vary significantly. For those who are inherently receptive to change, it's relatively easy to see the many positive opportunities presented by a fundamental re-shaping of our energy delivery, transportation, and other systems as we de-carbonize our economy. I suspect most of the posters on Grist fall into this category.

Unfortunately, given the rate and magnitude of cultural change needed to address the climate crisis, those with a high receptivity to change represent a relatively small minority of our population. Because we are a democracy and because we have entrenched and powerful special interests that benefit from the status quo, rapid and fundamental societal change is difficult. It seems imperative to develop appropriate messaging to reach and motivate those who are moderately receptive to change because, absent a very near-term catastrophe clearly tied to climate chaos, we need political support from these folks to achieve needed cultural change.

Expanding the winner's circle so that the moderately receptive to change see themselves comfortably within it seems like a good strategy. I'm not sure whether emphasizing impending catastrophe is as helpful. The middle group certainly needs to feel that change is necessary and urgent, but messaging to this group should be empowering and not cause it to despair. Environmental groups with resources should find the sweet spot and devote their messaging to this group specifically. Perhaps tying messages of looming disaster to moral concepts such as intergenerational equity along with political empowerment (simple and practical ways to organize and become involved in ways that make a difference) will work.

Finally, as the run of the mill blogosphere comments from delayers and deniers regularly indicate, those who are inherently unreceptive to change are a lost cause. More science is clearly not the answer. We waste a lot of time and energy in the false hope that the latest peer-reviewed science or the most brilliantly conceived policy paper will win these folks over. Instead, their views need to be labeled as representing special interests or a small minority of the policy and scientific communities and they need to be marginalized politically. As Jared Diamond has shown, some cultures will choose societal collapse over change. The unreceptive to change folks favor collapse. We cannot let the small minority of the population they represent delay or prevent needed change until it is too late.

We all saw the headlines last year, trying to avoid acknowledging that the icecap had partially recovered from its previous losses.  

The Soviet Union and Pravda used this trick for years, going to athletic meets with only two national entries, then when they got trounced loudly proclaiming "Hurrah!  We came in second!".  They were whupped, and came in last.

"Second greatest loss" of ice coverage means the ice is on the march.

Because the winter of 2008-9 is proving to be quite cold, it is likely that the summer of 2009 will see so much ice remaining on the Arctic that the spin-effort will be dropped.  "Whoa, look at all the new ice!"

Could it be a passing bit of climate-'noise', and not an indication of a cold-trend?  Yes, you're right, that could be.  But that would only underscores my point that placing bets on the Arctic icecap is not a wise gambling-move.

Because of the dramatic down-shift events in Solar behavior & activity, I think it behooves any prognosticator to hedge their bet, on the chance of a sustained declining temperature regime in the far north - and elsewhere.

David, my point isn't that the Icecap isn't interesting & important - it is! - but that going out on a limb to make predictions about what it will do is very risky.  

The Arctic has been embarrassing (not to say, killing) people for generations. The difficulty of predicting it is pretty dramatic.  And folks are today saying the ice will melt (Al Gore - ice-free summers in 5 years!), when objectively it looks more likely to grow & thicken.

If the Arctic Ocean is white & hard come summer '09, the AGW message will take an important public relations hit, and no amount of journal references will stop the loss of credibility.

Has it occurred to any of you geniuses that the public just doesn't find your "evidence" compelling?  That they just don't swallow the shrill hype and predictions of Armageddon?  That skepticism amongst real scientists is becoming greater not less?  That the more people question your "climate science", the more shrill and apocalyptic your predictions get?   That not everyone who questions the assumptions behind the predictions is a conservative, a moron, or in the pocket of big oil/coal?  That "the debate is over" and ad hominem attacks are inadequate responses to legitimate questions, concerns, and criticism?  That people like James Hansen are recognized for what the are: ideologues with an agenda that cancels any claim to objectivity?
It is only too fitting that the climate change religion is led by Al Gore, a former theology major.  And it is a great irony that on the 150th anniversary of the publication of "On the Origin of Species", the insights of Darwin and Wallace - confirmed in all aspects of biology - are still labeled dismissively as a theory; whereas Gorism, at about 20 years of age, is accepted so widely and uncritically.

 
The relevant realm is not the sociopolitical; it is the psychological. You give 2 questions that the public supposedly asks, about real threats, then prove that those questions are largely irrelevant to the public with the example of evolution--no threat at all, but a question of authority.  

Science is a democratic institution; relatively, no respecter of father-figures, while religion and right wing politics call upon multiple levels of fathers--god, priest/minister, business-warlord, and abusive president (the only kind many people are familiar with and will therefore follow). There is also deep anti-intellectualism in the US, maybe caused by manipulation of the very young by parents, etc. So it is easy for demagogic right wing politicians to turn people away from science. And if some of that sounds illogical, it is. We're dealing with the irrational unconscious here, and with ignorance of psychology, which would explain such things--if there were room here.

This as well as biodiversist's comment ("If America can be convinced that giant armored gas guzzling station wagons are coveted status symbols by calling them Sport Utility Vehicles in ads, then we should be able to make super high mileage cars and zero energy  homes cool also.") are good illustrations that ignorance of psychology is what is holding us back. Giant gas-guzzling SUVs appeal because they compensate for lack of feelings of personal power and safety. So far, despite the facts, there is little indication that the same people can be made to feel powerful with high mileage cars and zero energy homes--although many of the rest of us respond differently. Rationality has no power here; we are dealing with the unconscious desires of an immature and traumatized people and society.

Unless we use psychologically sound strategies, we will fail to reach about half the people. Traumatizing people more by saying over and over how bad and dangerous things are only drives conservative-oriented people farther into the arms of the strict father, who tells them to put their faith in the faith-based (faith in the father) rather than fact-based, realm. Meanwhile, alarmism drives liberals into despair and inaction, which gives us what we've had for 40 years: a frightened, disorganized and paralyzed left and a united, fascist-like right.

There are other factors--rage on both sides, eg. and it's much more complex than I've said here, but until we address this issue we will not be nearly as effective as we could be.

Your 'Freudian' angle has more going for it than most other attempts at explaining the current liberal-conservative social dynamic, though we differ on several points.

Science isn't into democracy.  Truth & understanding don't come out of a ballot-box.  Authority in science is a matter of demonstrated superior science.  The assertion that science is democratic of course resembles the current "consensus" talking-point.  Consensus can come into play, on the pragmatic level, but like democracy it isn't at the core of what science is, or how it comes to produce what it contributes.  No, science & knowledge-discovery are tyrannies of meritocracy.

While many religious people are conservatives, it should not be much of a reminder to say that actually, a large swath of the religious community are indeed liberal-progressive ... who shun Fundamentalists, Evangelists, and other objects of their embarrassment ... who are in fact your allies. Tarring 'em all with the same brush is yet another example of self-inflicted damage.

At the same time, many conservatives are only trivially into religion.  Religion simply lacks a meaningful driving force in the lives of many garden-variety conservative folks ... on par with say their commitment to Budweiser.  (Not that they won't trade black eyes & bloody noses over a Bud...)

Trying to explain Religion & Conservatism in terms of one another is not going to help opponents of those subcultures prevail, because it involves telling oneself too many fairy tales about their opponent.  The importance of knowing the enemy - for real, not as straw-men or whipping-boys - is too key to success.

Speaking of your fascist-like right, you and all like-minded folks should know that the perceived fascist-like behavior of environmentalists, lefties, etc, is really what is losing you status with the pubic, overall.

The spotted owl forestry shutdown, for example, is seen as  a contrived ploy, a deliberate distortion of science, intended mainly to harm the industries & communities of the Pacific Northwest.  And indeed, 20 years economic devastation in the region have been of no noticeable benefit to the owl.

Likewise, the 'science' in having polar bears declared endangered, when its population is in fact robust & vigorous, hurts the environmental movement, stands as evidence to 10s of millions of citizen ... "Yeah, check it out - words are nothing but tools to get what they want - use 'em any that works, no matter how twisted!"

The Green movement gained a few scraps of tactical ground with the polar bear, but at the cost of damage to their strategic position.  (Or as my Aunt puts it, "Feed 'em all the rope they want...")

I do think, though I preface myself with criticisms, that your slant & interpretation on things enviro & leftist ranks as among the more real & reliable that we're likely to run into.  

I like to see one Party in the White House, and the other in Congress.  It works slower that way, but the results are less nerve-wracking, less extreme.  It's the same thing on the popular level.  It's best when both the Liberal views and the Conservative views are well-enough armed & forceful that they each command a healthy respect from the other.

However, my sense is that the absolute insistence that they know for sure what is really & truly going to happen with the climate, has genuinely run the liberal-enviro community out onto a treacherous social limb.  If climate-events now deviate for their doom-dealing predictions, their precipitous decline could lead to the kind of power imbalance that I don't like to see in the White House & Congress - on the popular level.

It is not in our collective interest that those who are committed to the Anthropogenic Global Warming scenario overplay their social hand, and then end up severely discredited & diminished in the mind of the public - and themselves.

But I must say, they appear to be setting themselves up for exactly that.

While I'll contest & argue points with you, I agree that the overall reality of what is going on in the climate-movement is for sure highly - and unstably - 'Freudian'.  

I didn't mean science is democracy; only that compared to warlord religion, business and government it sees authority in many different sources rather than one, or a few in a patriarchal hierarchy. We are never completely equal, as in (theoretical, ideal) balloting; but authority is derived from perceived ability to see truth, which is available in theory to everyone, and to be respected in everyone, not a priori to some via a position in a family-reproducing structure. It is because we are not certain that science must be democratic, i.e. open to all, and respectful. The many amateur and semi-pro scientists who have contributed to scientific advancement are evidence of that--from Mendel to the Brahe/Bruno/Copernicus/Galileo revolution to the work of Faraday and Lorenzo Langstroth.

The work of George Lakoff (with some psychological refinements) is relevant--the conservative view is `people are bad' and alone, the world is dangerous and we need to be disciplined and protected by daddy. The liberal view is `people are good' or with potential to be good if nurtured (especially physio-psychologically), which leads to the belief in deep connection to others, including non-humans. Of course it's more complicated and people and all institutions are mixes and have other things going on. Religious liberals tend to be involved with democratic religions, where each person is, to various degrees depending on religion, his/her own authority in relation to god. Not an either/or but a continuum, with the other end putting all authority in a book, person or hierarchy as the interpreter of god. Those conservatives who are not religious believers tend to project the same authority into business, government...or even a hierarchical "science".

Science is neither democracy nor consensus, since consensus is a specific agreement on a particular way to make decisions in a defined group, and good science never does come to one agreed-on truth. ("As soon as you say `I understand' you cut yourself off from understanding."--Frank Herbert) Science depends on freedom of speech--allowing all views into the public forum--which it does imperfectly, obviously. To the extent that it is `democratic' and not hierarchical and father-oriented it is still science and not `religion', to use the term very broadly.

Yes, out of the differences come disagreements on what freedom is, and how we should rule; the perceived fascist-like behavior of the left is the following of science, reason and connection, while conservatives currently see that as an encroachment on what they see as their individuality (and what I think of as their maladaptive aloneness--an attachment disorder from childhood. And again--way, way more complicated than this can say. Issues and positions shift and meld and reverse in quite bizarre ways. Just look at how much of their otherwise absent compassion for children some conservatives project into fetuses, while many liberals don't. Contradictions for both, but perfectly consistent with the complexities of psychology. Everybody splits. Everybody responds to their unconscious desires. Polar bear numbers may or may not reflect immediate short-term danger of extinction but their position near the North Pole makes them vulnerable, and liberals' concern for them is a 1. reflection of connection to them, 2. projection into cute cuddly things, and 3. projected fear for ourselves--deserved fear at that.

Of course one can never be sure of another's motives--we can hardly be sure of our own, at least until extensive self-investigation has been done. While we shouldn't be saying we are sure, since we're not, the more people understand climate science the more time pressure and direness they feel, and the more strident they become. Our own maladaptive neurosis. Which was my point about not causing despair...

Decades of economic devastation have been caused not by ecological protections (of ecosystems, not owls--another example of seeing things not as separate but in webs of connection); they've been caused by neoconservative policies valuing license over freedom--the unfettered allowance of accumulation, by a few supposedly-deserving people, of the interchangeable commodities money and power. They're the ways conservatives try to get relief from the fear, grief and rage they feel at being so alone.

Of course, that's only theory. I don't know for sure. Unfortunately, our lack of drive for money and power means we have a hard time getting our version of the truth out to the public, and even when we do it's, as we agree, the wrong message. Certainty is counterproductive; we need to say `if things go this way... this is what will happen...' not `this is what will happen'.

I worry about how little time we have left to save everything, with parties splitting power, sabotaging each other, lying and demagoging and deadlocking progress. For one thing, what happens if we're just successful enough to delay the most obvious, visible and memorable things we've predicted without actually stopping the process? It's a way to keep the debate going right up to the end.

I certainly don't mean to pathologize conservatives and apologize for liberals. We have our own pathologies. And until we heal ours, allowing us to help them heal theirs, we will continue to act out of our respective unconsciousness and cause the world continued pain and destruction.

PS: Not much of a Freud fan; more of a Jungianesque neo-Reichian.

A nice & quite interesting response - thanks!