I'm OK. You're biased.

Born and raised in northern Ontario, I know cold. This winter is cold. How cold? My editor won't let me say what these temperatures do to a particular part of a black bear's anatomy, so I can't describe the full reality in words. Suffice it to say, it's cold.

Sensible people will complain, dream of Mexican vacations, and leave it at that. But others see something very significant in the cold weather now chilling much of the northern hemisphere. They see proof that global warming is bunk.

Examples are legion. To see a few thousand, Google "global warming," "cold," "snow," and some disparaging phrase that ends in the words "Al" and "Gore." This idea is as wrong as it is common. A cold winter or two says precisely nothing about climate change. But it does say a great deal about the real subject of my column -- which is human psychology and why people often say things they would criticize if someone else said them. Let's start with the basics: Weather and climate are entirely different creatures.

Weather is the stuff we see out the window. Climate is the probability of seeing various types of weather out the window. If the climate warms, the probability of extreme cold will decline -- but it won't disappear. Similarly, there will still be surprisingly warm winters if the climate cools -- they will simply be less likely.

This is why no real scientist will look out the window and say, Aha! It's cold enough to do something unmentionable to a black bear so put on your long johns and stop worrying about global warming.

Those who deny that human activity is causing the climate to change were far from the first to make the mistake of equating weather and climate, however. Activists on the other side have been doing it for years. A couple of winters back, I listened to Elizabeth May give a speech in which she urged swift action on climate change. Just look out the window, she said. It's raining! In Ottawa! In January! And it was. Which said precisely nothing about the climate.
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Many climate change deniers whipped themselves into a lather denouncing this elementary mistake. And they were right to do so. It was unscientific. It was wrong.

Now flash forward and what do we have? A winter cold enough to inspire jokes about a black bear's privates -- and climate change deniers pointing to the weather as proof that climate change is bunk.

And the environmentalists who previously were pointing to the weather as proof the climate is changing? They're either saying nothing about the weather or, in some cases, they're diligently instructing the public not to confuse weather with climate.

Now, to be fair, some of the deniers rattling on about the cold weather are simply mocking Elizabeth May and company. But it's clear that many really do think this cold confounds Al Gore. It's also clear that those who mean it are not being criticized by those who once criticized environmentalists for making the same argument. So here we have a situation in which one group used flawed reasoning. An opposing group was outraged. "That's flawed reasoning!" they cried. Time passed. Circumstances changed and the flawed reasoning pointed to the opposite of the conclusion it had before. The first group stopped using it. Many of those in the second group started using it -- and even those who did not weren't bothered by the fact that others did.

This is all pretty illogical, but that's OK because this isn't about climate change. It's about psychology. Specifically, it's about a psychological bias that goes by the delightful name of "bias bias." Other people often do not see things the way I do. Sad but true. But then the same is true of everyone.

How can that be? When I look at the evidence, I see that it clearly leads to a certain conclusion. That is an objective fact, I believe. But the other person doesn't share that conclusion. She may even believe the opposite of what I do.
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The only possible explanation is that the other person is biased.

Maybe she knows her conclusion is false but she claims it's true anyway because it suits her purposes. Or maybe the distortion is unconscious. If she were honest, and saw the issue clearly, as I do, she would agree with me. See the problem in this thinking? It's not the assumption that other people's thoughts may be skewed by biases. They may well be.

The mistake is to assume that my own thoughts are not. Unfortunately, that's an assumption people naturally make. Psychologists call it "naïve realism." The inevitable result is that we "see others as more susceptible to a host of cognitive and motivational biases" than we ourselves are.

I see clearly. You are biased.

A 2001 study of physicians found 84 per cent agreed that gifts from pharmaceutical companies can influence the judgment of other doctors. But when asked if gifts from pharmaceutical companies influence their own judgment, only 16 per cent said yes. That's bias bias.

It's a big reason why we are very good at identifying the biases and mistakes in the thinking of those who disagree with us, but lousy at doing the same in our own thinking.

Something to think about the next time the weather swings to the opposite extreme, and the arguments flip again.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

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