Contemplating climate change: mental models and human reasoning

Global climate change policy has failed us all, but what is the reasoning that underlies this failure? Why are some people more disposed to reflect on confounding issues like climate change, recognise the danger, seek a solution, and act accordingly, more than others? This book is concerned with how we think and act in response to climate change. In particular, faced with deep uncertainty and the multifaceted complexities that characterise the climate change conundrum, how the various actors and institutions involved in the policymaking process make decisions that both aid and impede in the design and implementation of climate change policy. This book focuses on how these actors and institutions frame and use the knowledge available – under conditions of competing ideologies and interests – and synthesise it to form often-disparate mental models, or worldviews, that inspire them to become firm advocates of meaningful climate change action or indeed, sceptics that continue to downplay the threat, and hence the need for urgency. By exploring how we think about climate change and the disparate mental models we hold as a result, this book explores why humankind has thus far failed in its endeavours to solve the climate change problem.This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, environmental policy and environmental psychology.

Cover -- Half Title -- Book Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- 1 Introduction: contemplating climate change -- A preface to a crime -- The investigation: a brief synopsis -- The plot -- Humans and the weather: the early years of discovery -- The world according to the IPCC -- Waking up to a complex climate change -- Decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty and denial -- A preface to framing theory -- A preface to mental model theory -- The worldview concept as it relates to mental model theory and Dilthey's dilemma -- Nature versus nurture: the blessing and the curse -- Notes -- 2 The stealthy art of framing -- Framing mental models -- Framing theory -- Media effects and politricks -- Framing public opinion -- Framing climate change -- Framing scientific uncertainty -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 3 Mental-modelling: in search of a theory -- A mental model defined -- Filling the knowledge gap -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 4 The General Model of the Policymaking Process -- The Model -- A language of images -- The efficacy of knowledge: its utilitarian and admirable use -- Policy design and implementation: two sides of the same coin -- Conclusions -- 5 The Institutions Process Model -- The Model -- The language of science -- The language of politics -- Rational choice theory -- Public choice theory -- Men are not angels and power corrupts -- Institutional failure: between civilisation and savagery -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 6 The Mental Model Process -- The Model -- Mental-modelling 101 -- Nicola Tesla: a mental-modelling supremo -- System 1 and System 2 reasoning -- The cultural codebook -- To believe or not to believe: that is the question -- The unconscious mind rules in absentia -- Zombies and learning to think again -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 7 Deductions -- De-framing the politico-mediaist

chapter 1 Introduction: contemplating climate change -- chapter 2 The stealthy art of framing -- chapter 3 Mental- modelling: in search of a theory -- chapter 4 The General Model of the Policymaking Process -- chapter 5 The Institutions Process Model -- chapter 6 The Mental Model Process -- chapter 7 Deductions -- chapter 8 Summary and conclusions.