Chris Mooney has come up with new book to explain why people like you and I are “abby-normal” for not unthinkingly and uncritically accepting all aspects of global warming climate change climate disruption. I haven’t read it, though the cover itself speaks volumes. I won’t commit the same dumb mistake that Igor Peter Gleick committed when he wrote his bogus non-review of Donna LaFramboise’s IPCC book, so I’ll let somebody who has reviewed it speak about it. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.
He writes: 
Chris Mooney, the author and blogger who once alleged a Republican “war” on science, is going back to that well one more time with a new book (above). In it he “explores brain scans, polls, and psychology experiments to explain why conservatives today believe more wrong things.”
Mooney writes:
“[T]here might be a combination of genes acting together that somehow predispose us to have particular politics, presumably through their role in influencing our brains and thus our personalities or social behaviors ..,”
Mooney promises to explain:
“[T]he real, scientific reasons why Republicans reject the widely accepted findings of mainstream science, economics, and history—as well as many undeniable policy facts.”
…
Roger adds:
I wonder how well telling half the American populace that they are genetically/psychologically/mentally inferior will communicate?
=========================================================
Next I suppose we’ll hear why we need selective breeding programs to weed out this “genetic scourge”.
Turnabout is fair play:
I’m sure Josh could do a better satire, but hey, this is the best I can do on one cup of coffee.
Some inspiring levity from Mel Brooks:
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I wonder if he’s got a theory on Independents, or on party switchers.
They’re panicking, expect more of this guff.
compulsory euthanasia for the inferior – now where have i heard that before?
Chris Mooney needs to examine his own combination of genes.
I would bet that there is a higher percentage of degree’s in the hard sciences and engineering on the right than on the left …
I think Mr. Mooney is the one with the mental disorder. I find it rather amusing but telling that the warmistas demand we take their claims on faith yet we are the ones that are unscientific and lacking mental faculties. Modern day witch doctor is a fitting title for Chris and friends…
Oh well … I’m off to shoot myself … toodle pip!
“I wonder how well telling half the American populace that they are genetically/psychologically/mentally inferior will communicate?”
Very well should think. Some people need to feel that everything’s all their fault now that the old Orginal Sin story doesn’t wash so well anymore.
Most of us in the West are born into a consensual reality which is underpinned, psychologically, by archetypal themes and motifs that are derived from a Judaic religion. I’m not anti-Semitic and I think the Jews have many things going for them but, in my opinion, their religion is not one of them, not least because it has caused us to always Fall for the line of being the Fall guy for whatever happens.
After the account of the Creation of the Earth in Genesis, the very next story we come to is about how man sinned by eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and so was banished from the Garden of Eden.
No-one has ever managed to explain sufficiently why eating such a tasty and health-giving fruit should be wrong, and I don’t know anyone who’s ever seen a Tree of Knowledge or even why partaking of the fruits of knowledge would be considered “a bad thing”. Yet the illogic of the story doesn’t matter, and might even serve its purpose better. Our subconscious resonates much more willingly with irrationality and it works hard to construct metaphors with such motifs which make sense to it and which override all conscious rationale.
That’s why it has been very easy to persuade our subconscious minds that we’re about to be banished from the Garden of Eden (the Earth) for the sin of listening to the Serpent (emitting too much carbon dioxide) and for accessing the Tree of Knowledge (the internet) through our Apple Macs. Like the song goes, “I can’t believe we’re on the EVE of destruction.”
What kind of gene do you need to make you believe in witch doctors that have not correctly predicted anything…….
….I think that gene would have been bred out by now
Chris Mooney has to have his tongue in his cheek. If he actually believes himself, well, someone needs to take him aside and explain psychology isn’t a true science. Psychology will never be a true science. It is a pseudoscience…
….Unless….
……….You wear a white lab coat and grow a small, pointed beard. Only then is it science.
Chris Mooney lacks the necessary beard.
Oh wow! The eugenics discussion is open again. I’m off to buy a big supply of popcorn to use while I watch this debate.
Cheers!
You gotta hand it to Mooney. There are a lot of people who will eat this book up. He’ll make quite a bit of money on it. Wouldn’t surprise me if it becomes a New York Times best seller.
However, the first lesson in psychology for Mooney is that “Projection” is one of the most basic and primitive of the ego defense mechanisms. You can’t create something without revealing a lot about who you are, yourself. The parody title “Chris Mooney’s Brain” is really the more appropriate title for his book.
I like Mooney’s (lack of) details on the AGU website /sarc
And a gmail address!
FOIA avoidance anyone? 🙂
Clearly, Mr. Mooney comes from the shallow end of the gene pool
“In it he ‘explores brain scans, polls, and psychology experiments to explain why conservatives today believe more wrong things.'”
Who decides what the “wrong things” list is? Presumably someone who doesn’t believe those “wrong things.” Very scientific indeed . . .
I could come up with my own list of “wrong things” and see who believes them (not I, of course, as I would disbelieve every single one of them, thus proving that I don’t believe wrong things).
If I didn’t already know Chris Mooney can’t be taken seriously, his interchangable use of the terms “Republican” and “conservative” would alert me.
I wonder how much time Mr. Mooney spends hiding under the stairs, giggling and sucking his thumb?
How nice – he is using the pseudoscience of agenda-driven punk-written “polls” telling us how uninformed conservatives are in order to support the pseudoscience of CAGW.
If we really want to find out who is smarter, and perhaps there is a small difference, then we’d need to do a double-blind study using established IQ tests with a sufficiently large sample size and/or correcting for age/education/etc. That is unlikely to happen; they are more interested in declaring certain things to be “true” and then if someone doesn’t believe them they are stupid.
I guess it just goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun of Progressivism – eugenics is making a comeback!
Here’s the problem for Mooney’s lame idea – how do you explain evolution-believing, left-leaning, pro-science atheists who doubt global warming scare stories for the same reasons we doubt homeopathy and voodoo?
Because there are plenty of us…
Its true that in our past many made their living by killing others and taking their things. One wonders how they justified it and if this sophistric approach is encoded in their genes along with the urge to kill off those that oppose them?
So, it mentally deficient to believe in adult, responsible behavior, balancing a budget, living within your means, and not driving yourself into irretrievable debt? And it’s wrong or deficient to oppose “science” which is not science and makes no sense, just because there is an evil agenda afoot? And it’s deranged to believe in personal work, creativity, and productivity, which make up the free enterprise system of capitalism, the only economic system that actually can work by itself without government control or regulation?
I guess I’m just plain its, then. Gee, somebody sure screwed me up somehow! Now, who to blame?
Mr. Mooney seems quite caught up in his own great understanding of science,economics, and history. So much so that he feels it necessary to “prove scientifically” that anyone who thinks other than himself must be defective. And he thoughtfully worries that he may hurt the feelings of those genetically doomed to ignorance and stupidity. And he has deduced a quick and sure way to identify these imbeciles. They are “Republicans”.
Mr Mooney has just done more good for skeptics than he can imagine.
Wilson says:
November 9, 2011 at 8:29 am
Here’s the problem for Mooney’s lame idea – how do you explain evolution-believing, left-leaning, pro-science atheists who doubt global warming scare stories ..
—
That must be your brain in the jar.
Compulsory euthanasia for the inferior [unbelievers]
Obviously of green forebears…..kill everyone who doesn’t believe what we believe [the right stuff]
“Jon says:
November 9, 2011 at 8:12 am
Oh well … I’m off to shoot myself … toodle pip!”
Your comment reminds me of the present Mayor Daley of Chicago who in a 1980’s or 90’s Wall Street Journal interview was asked about flunking the bar exam 3 or 4 times and responded, “Yeah, so I flunked the bar, I guess I should go out and shoot myself!” Always loved his refinement, good Democrat that he is. His Dad actually ran a pretty tight ship, if you ignored the crassness, crooked machine, kickbacks and bribery of the city politics.