Comments on: Role-playing urgency: bridging climate change knowledge and action?

By: Adam Fleischmann

Adam Fleischmann — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 16:51:56 +0000

In reply to John McCreery. Thanks for sharing, John. That's interesting, in my experience with this game there was a sort of uniting force for both those who already cared and others who were just coming to realize the gravity of it all.

By: Lee Drummond

Lee Drummond — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 03:24:08 +0000

Adam presents a disturbing argument for accepting that climate change is a major threat to civilization: Since climatological models are complex and hard to understand, simply accept that they are accurate. He takes this argument directly from an advocacy publication article by the popular science writer Michael Barnard: “Believe in Climate Change the Way You Do in Gravity.” Noting that our understanding of gravity is usually rudimentary while the phenomenon itself is complex, Barnard asks, “So what do we do?” And answers his question, “Well, don’t demand that people understand it all, just ask that they accept it.”
Embracing that argument, Adam writes:

“The scientific consensus, such that such a thing can exist, for anthropogenic climate change has now been deemed statistically and figuratively equivalent to the consensus for gravity! Isn’t that wild? What theories, if any, in, say, the paleo-sciences have an equal amount of consensus as gravity? Are they still considered valid until the next best alternative comes along? What about gravity?”

What about gravity? Wild, indeed. Validating climate change on the basis of scientific knowledge of gravity is perhaps the worst analogy one could possibly make, since a scientific “consensus for gravity” is non-existent. In fact, the nature of gravity is a fundamental and vitally important issue. As the astrophysicist Ethan Siegel writes in “The Greatest Unsolved Problem In Theoretical Physics: Why Gravity Is So Weak,”

“That’s a description of the way our Universe works, but we don’t understand why. Why is gravity so much weaker than all the other forces? Why is the “gravitational charge” (i.e., mass) so much weaker than the electric or color charge, or even than the weak charge, for that matter? That’s what the Hierarchy Problem is, and that problem is by many measures the greatest unsolved problem in physics. We don’t know the answer, but we’re not completely in the dark on this.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2015/12/11/the-greatest-unsolved-problem-in-theoretical-physics-why-gravity-is-so-weak/#54a110271826

Searching for an answer takes us into the thickest weeds of astrophysics, where completing solutions invoke a parallel universe, string theory, super symmetry. Faced with these formidable choices, asking us to “believe in gravity” is nonsensical.
As if that were not enough, gravity lends itself to prediction only in special cases. One such case is the solar system: astronomers can predict the more-or-less exact position of the planets hundreds of years in the future. But that’s only because the sun is so massive that its gravity overwhelms, cancels out that of the planets. But what if three comparably sized massive bodies interact gravitationally? Or ten or twenty? Well, then we have the three-body problem or the n-body problem. And there prediction is impossible. Wild!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
Concluding thought: climate change is an n-body problem.
Please note: <500 words

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 11:37:34 +0000

Adam, my pleasure. Happy Holidays. When I asked about selection bias, I wasn’t denying the power of the game+model for participants in the exercise. I was remembering the years when I was an international officer of the Democratic Party Committee Abroad (DPCA), the U.S. Democratic Party’s overseas branch. The post involved attending several international meetings and three national conventions. All were events that combined careful choreography with intense competition and conflict. The organizational issues heatedly debated at the DPCA meetings (by-laws, delegate selection plans, relations with our parent organization, the Democratic National Committee (DNC)) were of little meaning or interest to the grassroots members of our country committees. The National Conventions were Durkheimian efflorescence to the max. The one in 1996 was followed by the election of Bill Clinton to a second term. The ones in 2000 and 2004 were followed by the defeats of Al Gore and John Kerry. Excitement at the events reinforced the commitment of participants but also sharpened temporarily suppressed divisions and aggravated old wounds. In 2000 and 2004 the election outcome was not what the shouts and applause on the floor anticipated.

By: Adam Fleischmann

Adam Fleischmann — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 23:04:17 +0000

Hi John, thanks for the comment. First, couldn’t agree with your old prof more. There are certainly times when anthropologist-as-translator, -interpreter, -advocate or -witness is not an appropriate role to play, too.
The Cathedral asked CI and GreenFaith to come run the simulation during the Summit. I worked under the assumption that most were members of that faith community, though I know a handful, like myself, were not. That being said, I don’t want to understate the contentiousness among opinions in the room during the simulation, even among that group.
Others, CI staff, developers, volunteers world over, including Eduardo Fracassi, a co-author of Rooney Varga et al. 2018, have much more experience than I and have stories of what the game+model are capable among all sorts of folks and room energies. There were certainly skeptical voices in the room at the beginning when I observed Sterman run the simulation at MIT. I think you’d be interested in taking a look at Rooney Varga et al. (2018)—I’ve updated the references to reflect the correct, now-published source—which is a demonstration, via qualitative and quantitive surveying and statistics, of some of the power of this game+model, even among those with a traditionally negative bias toward anything climate change.

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 13:14:33 +0000

Adam, a genuinely thought-provoking piece. Thank you for posting it. One question, one evoked memory. First, the question: How was the energy in the room affected by selection bias in the way that participants were recruited? Second, re “bridges.” While still in high school I was invited to participate in the Telluride Summer Program at Cornell University. The topic that summer was labor relations in the USA. After discussion of the Haymarket Massacre, I naively asked, “Wouldn’t it be better if people tried harder to understand each other?” The professor teaching that session replied, “There are, you know, situations in which people understand perfectly clearly that their interests are diametrically opposed.”

By: Eduardo Fracassi

Eduardo Fracassi — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 22:45:38 +0000

Thanks for this success story!