May 2008

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needfornews

urls to the latest world news.
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needfornews.com

Mohammad

hello people

I have 4 questins

can some one answer it please as sonn as possible
thanxxx


here

1: whta type of air pollution contribute to climate change?
namee the greenhouse gasses?
200 words?


2: where does this air pollutionf come from?> wht souses?
200 words?

3:how soes air pollition lead to climate change?
(explain the greenhouse effect)
200 words?

4: and wht can be don to reduce/ lesen this air pollutiong?
200 words?

thanxxxx

if u done this?

Steve

I have read State of Fear and am reading Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years.

They are both Highly Recommended

Peter G. Klein

Scott:

I blogged about this very phenomenon some time ago:

http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/04/13/mel-gibson-and-social-category-bias/

How could you have forgotten? :-)

pontus

Only problem; Lomborg is not an economist. He's a political scientist (gone economist though).

Marcin

I only got about 10% of the way up the page before I got bored with all you open minded economists. Yes it's is all economics lectures, that's the secret.

As an engineer I find it quite funny. We call it trade off analysis. But I'm sure mine's not as big/open as yours.

psychology prof

Dear Mr. Adams,

My comment has nothing to do with global warming, Bill Maher, etc. Rather, it is of a more academic nature. I'm not sure how to say this kindly, so I'll just go ahead...with all due respect, your post reveals that you don't understand the principle of cognitive dissonance. Perhaps you should read up a bit.

Branden Berns

Mr. Tauhidi's comment only serves to support the assertation of this column. His point was not that India is a producer of cheap products in contrast to the commenter's view that Indians produce quality products. He simply states that India uses cheap fuels. This statement does not place him on either side of the fence. Another great example of cognitive dissonance.

Syed Ibtisam Tauhidi

What the crap did you say about Indians using cheap fuels? India is not what you imagine. The next time you use a computer software to draw a cartoon or write a blog... remember a part of the software might have been created in India.

davea0511

Those who define "cognitive dissonance" don't have the intelligence to intuitively understand the phrase. It needs no definition, as the meaning is intuitively obvious if you know what the words "cognitive" and "dissonance" mean on their own. Arggg! The idiots run amok. Adam's use of the term if perfectly fitting with the contraction of those two words. Only a simpleton confines the meaning to a narrow subset of what the contraction can be interpreted to mean.

davea0511

Maher is very intelligent, but he is a dim as a 10 Watt bulb. There's a huge difference between intelligent and brilliant and nobody makes this more obvious than Maher himself. He has said, perhaps more than anyone I know, the words "I don't understand it" or "I don't understand them", or "It makes no sense." ... etc.

The true mark of a brilliant person requires the ability to remove yourself from your own perspective and see things through the eyes of another ... something which Maher admittedly is incapable of doing.

This is precisely why he gets so many things wrong - like misunderstanding what Lomborg was saying. This is also why he spews so many complete fabrications - he's either too lazy to put himself in the shoes of another or he's too lazy to take the time to find out if the rumor he heard is correct. If you got a penny for every false rumor he carelessly claimed was a fact then you'd be rich.

Mr. Adams, your further shock me with your disregard of these facts.

TallDave

Trust me, Bill Maher is not brilliant. Above average, at best.

Personal experience.

Joe

Are there two types of economists? One immune to cognitive dissonance (e.g. Bjorn Lomborg)and one suffering from cognitive dissonance (e.g. Partha Das Gupta who recently pointed out why the "Danish economist" was telling a wrong story). The coverage which Lomborg receives demonstrates that in the name of economics one can talk nonsense and get respect!

Joe

Are there two types of economists? One immune to cognitive dissonance (e.g. Bjorn Lomborg)and one suffering from cognitive dissonance (e.g. Partha Das Gupta who recently pointed out why the "Danish economist" was telling a wrong story). The coverage which Lomborg receives demonstrates that in the name of economics one can talk nonsense and get respect!

General Specific

Scott Adams wrote: "Salman Rushdie said, jokingly, that what he heard was "There's no connection between smoking and lung cancer." By that he meant the author was denying that fossil fuels contribute to global warming. (The economist said exactly the opposite, and clearly.)"

First, Lomborg is a Political Scientist with a speciality in statistics (remember the old saying about statistics?). He's not an economist.

Regarding the smoking cancer quote, you interpret it with your own possible bias. What Rushdie could very well mean is that the doctor says "you need to stop smoking" and the smoker's response is "let's do research on alternatives to cigarettes" when in fact the solution is to stop smoking.

People don't want to quit smoking. And they don't want to stop using fossil fuels (One oil production peaks in the next few years and economic problems result from it I think people are going to puff long and hard on whatever form of carbon they can get--but that's a different issue/argument).

Scott Adams wrote: "I think the study of economics makes you relatively immune to cognitive dissonance" and "The primary skill of an economist is identifying all of the explanations for various phenomena."

I actually think physics is a better way to learn about explanations and physicists who have taken at look at economics have found it wanting. Economics, as a social science, tends to be infected with ideological bias.

The problem with Lomborg's approach is that he selectively quotes information in order to make his case. He focuses on Britain when discussing heat deaths versus cold deaths because it looks good for Britain. For the world, heat deaths will swamp the gain from less cold deaths. He doesn't consider the populations that exist on the coastlines now compared to in the twentieth century in order to account for sea rise. He doesn't look at agricultural effects. He selectively quotes the IPCC report, only pulling and using data that supports his case.

The problem with Lomborg is that he really doesn't have a proposal. He's just telling the smoker to keep smoking and hopefully research and development might make a difference someday.

Kymbos

I'm not sure I agree with you on this. I studied economics and politics, and I'm now a practicing economist. I find that as long as a viewpoint fits within the economic paradigm, it can be readily accepted by economists. Where a viewpoint cannot be assessed numerically (for example), it is rejected out of hand. This leads to the rejection of solutions to problems which are less easily quantifiably assessed.

On the other hand, it's a rigorous and transparent approach

Krzysztof Wiszniewski

Actually I had a rather similiar discussion with my former boss a while back. He was vehemently for reducing carbon emissions. This took place in a room with no less than three computers running. He had just returned from a business meeting. In his car.

I wonder how much power it takes to get Bill Maher into your TV set. I wonder if HE knows. I wonder if he cares. Surprisingly enough, I don't see many people in favour of austerity riding around on bicycles. The general attitude seems to be: someone should do something about it!

My call to them: Reduce atmospheric CO2! Stop breathing!

Dick King

I was about ready to give up on Bill Maher, but on two shows that took place about a month ago, rather than mouthing the liberal canon when a so-called environmentalist came on, he called the "environmentalist" to task for opposing expansion of nuclear power in the United States while continuing to blather about global warming.

However ...

In the 2006-07 season he had a panel with two lefties and one reasonably articulate conservative. However, with the new season he seems to have given up on that. Now, as previous posters have said, it's a circle jerk.

-dk

edh

Part of the problem is that Maher's show has devolved, sadly, into a very predictable circle-jerk of the like-minded.

There is no more balance on his "flat-table" discussion panel. It's a non-stop Bush-bash.

When Lomborg's comments wouldn't process through the Bush-bash consensus alogorithm, the panel reminded me of the Lost in Space robot when overloaded, he begins to belch smoke and repeats: "Does not compute. Does not compute."

Julia

Understanding cognitive disonance is quite useful to buy in a supermarket.

Get a light chocolate cake with tons of chocolate chips inside covered with chocolate and made with real butter.

Light??!!!??¿¿¿

Jacqueline

"I don’t know about Rob Thomas, but he looks bright enough."

So, tall with good hair?

Phillip

Josh's statement prior was pretty accurate with what I've been taught of cognitive dissonance, which is dissonance arising between ones own thoughts/beliefs and ones actions. I think this is a much simpler case of the straw man distortion of Lomborg's argument, arising from the fact that Lomborg doesn't conform to the same exact perspective that Maher has on Global warming. As a result of groupthink, they suppress the actual statements made and see only what they want to see. Same thing we all have a tendency to do and must be aware of in order to avoid such fallacies. Maher's content is generally brilliant though, I agree.

Sean

Look, Scott, refusal to acknowledge facts is one possible result of cognitive dissonance. But it may also be caused by many other psychological effects. You keep throwing out this term "cognitive dissonance" but what you're describing is more about information bias and selective attention. I know it makes you sound smarter, but your misuse of the term is really starting to get old.

Cognitive dissonance is what happens when someone's view of themself is threatened. For instance, someone believes, "I am a nice person." You might then point out, "But you just beat a hobo with a stick of salami." This causes a threat to their self-view of them being a nice person. Confronted with evidence to the contrary of *how they define themselves* (the crux of cognitive dissonance you keep seeming to miss) they feel threatened. They must resolve the discomfort. They either accept the new information OR engage in cognitive dissonance. An example would be them replying, "Well, he was looking at me funny, and besides, Salami doesn't hurt that much." The answer doesn't quite address the problem, but it lets them explain away the discomfort.

Every time a person refuses to acknowledge information or fails to see things from a logical perspective isn't necessarily a case of cognitive dissonance. There are many other terms that better explain what is going on.

So stop getting it wrong.

(Now, the question is, will the fact that I'm pointing out your use of your favorite term is incorrect lead to you accepting this information, or will it lead to real, bonafide cognitive dissonance?)

BioMaxi

"If I say the evidence for evolution that is available to me personally, as a non-expert, looks sketchy, it is interpreted as an argument for creationism."

You're wrong. We just say that that is one of the arguments creationists use. And to them (and therefore to you too) the answer always is the same: that means you don't know enough. The evidence available to me, personally, as an expert, looks appallingly overwhelming.

César

All this theory that you are trying to develop in this splendid topic was ALREADY developed by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman in his heuristic studies. Harvard has an entire book and class topics based in it. I base my entire comprehension of complex adult society and economy on this Nobel winning theory. I´m a doctor, I have already attended psychiatry in medical school, and I´m really sorry for not having enough time to further develop this comment here, today, but I would be content or fortunate if you want to discuss this. I have exactly the same problem of yours. I´m a rheumatologist, already participated in stem cell transplantation (yes, some rheumatologists do stem cell transplantation and chemotherapy). Because of this, I have to study ALL point of views, ALL expert opinion and ALL alternatives to save lives, and people frequently do not understand that multiple point of view. They simply adopt "a cause" and follow it. This is "heuristics of availability" (Kahneman´s explanation). Please, enter in contact (for free, of course) to discuss this topic and some health topics, if you want. There are serious media studies showing that health issues raise the audience in any kind of program or newspaper report. With respect, César.

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