Sigh, for some reason some people seem to think climate skeptics hate their children and grandchildren. I wonder if they’ve ever polled to compare with concerns for that other “pass on to the next generation” issue, our soaring national debt that our children and grandchildren have to pay for?
Climate Change, Narcissism, Denial, Apocalypse. The science is critical, but understanding why so many people are still in denial requires further explanation. Here’s an except from an Op Ed by Dr. Robert D. Stolorow at Psychology Today:
“On October 5, 2012, on the front page of the Huffington Post, appeared a terrifying image of melting arctic ice, accompanied by the chilling headline, “Arctic Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise May Be ‘Decades Ahead Of Schedule’” Why have the majority of Americans and American politicians been largely oblivious to this extreme threat? I believe there are two principal reasons.
The first is unbridled narcissism. Psychoanalytic developmental theorist Erik Erikson famously characterized an essential aim of adulthood as generativity—the caring for the well being of future generations. Climate change most likely will not be a threat for most of us, but it will leave our children, grandchildren, and future descendents with catastrophes of unimaginable proportions. In the deplorable obliviousness and indifference to the problem of climate change, any concern for the well being of future generations is being blatantly trumped by narrow self-interest and greed.”
The second is denial. What, precisely, is being denied? More than three decades ago I took my young son to a planetarium show at the New York Museum of Natural History. During that show it was predicted that a million years from now the sun will become a “red giant” that will engulf and destroy our entire solar system. This prospect filled me with intense horror. Why would a catastrophe predicted to occur in a million years evoke horror in me? Let me explain.
================================================================
A couple of points:
Here is the “terrifying” photo:
The good doctor probably does not get to see the other view of sea ice, when it is at maximum in March:
Perhaps he doesn’t realize that the ice regenerates every year, and maybe he thinks that it becomes a permanent condition? Maybe he never looks at the Antarctic either, where the majority of the ice is, and setting new records for the most ice this year.
And since he’s arguing from a position of authority, I should at least point out that he hasn’t even got his basic facts straight.
During that show it was predicted that a million years from now the sun will become a “red giant” that will engulf and destroy our entire solar system. This prospect filled me with intense horror. Why would a catastrophe predicted to occur in a million years evoke horror in me?
Maybe it will be less horrifying when you learn your horror timeline is off by 4.999 billion years? From NASA “Ask an Astrophysicist“:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Question
(Submitted June 04, 2004) How long until the Sun becomes a red giant?
The Answer
The Sun will become a red giant in about 5 billion years, which is slightly more time than it has already been a star. There’s a lot of nice information about the Sun at
http://www.nineplanets.org/sol.html
Hope that helps.
-Kevin and Dirk,
for “Ask an Astrophysicist”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It is difficult for me to take somebody like this seriously, especially one with a “PhD” attached to his name that can’t even get such basic facts they base their argument on right.
As for his diagnosis, perhaps the good doctor would benefit from reading this article in Reason magazine:
The Medicalization of RebellionThe long, shameful history of using science to stigmatize dissenthttp://reason.com/archives/2012/04/21/the-medicalization-of-rebellion
Or this one, about his cohort in slime, Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky which talks about the same topic.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/15/toodle-lew/
Its just more Political Abuse of Psychiatry, such as was practiced in the Soviet Union:
In the Soviet Union, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place. Soviet psychiatric hospitals known as “psikhushkas” were used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate hundreds or thousands of political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally. This method was also employed against religious prisoners and most especially against well-educated former atheists who adopted a religion. In such cases their religious faith was determined to be a form of mental illness that needed to be cured. Formerly highly classified extant documents from “Special file” of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union published after the dissolution of the Soviet Union demonstrate that the authorities of the country quite consciously used psychiatry as a tool to suppress dissent.
Sound familiar when looking at what is being written about climate skeptics today?
I wonder who will be the first to propose that Gitmo have a section added for “climate deniers”?
It is interesting to compare Dr. Robert D. Stolorow’s ad hominem to the observations, analysis in peer reviewed papers, and logic that supports the so called “skeptics” position that there is no extreme AGW problem to solve. The ad hominem is necessary as science does not support the extreme AGW paradigm.
P.S. I see the MET is blaming the UK’s wettest summer, in 100 years on global warming.
2011 – The 2011 dry spring was blamed on global warmng.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/10/england-driest-may-drought
2012 – The 2011 wet summer is blamed on global warming.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19427139
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/
Observations show major flaws
1. The missing heat is not in the ocean 8 – 14
2. Satellites show a warmer Earth is releasing extra energy to space 15 -17
3. The models get core assumptions wrong – the hot spot is missing 22 – 26, 28 – 31
4. Clouds cool the planet as it warms 38 – 56
5. The models are wrong on a local, regional, or continental scale. 63- 64
6. Eight different methods suggest a climate sensitivity of 0.4°C 66
7. Has CO2 warmed the planet at all in the last 50 years? It’s harder to tell than you think. 70
8. Even if we assume it’s warmed since 1979, and assume that it was all CO2, if so, feedbacks are zero — disaster averted. 71
9. It was as warm or warmer 1000 years ago. Models can’t explain that. It wasn’t CO2. (See also failures of hockey sticks) The models can’t predict past episodes of warming, so why would they predict future ones?
The extreme AGW issue is a mania with no basis in fact.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Aug_2012.png
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/
Isn’t this a “tit for tat” diagnosis?
Millions of links now appear on Google in reference to “Obama” and “narcissim”. How better to understand the proliferation of “I’s” in his speeches? But it’s not just him…
Narcissist Nation: Reflections of a Blue-State Conservative,
George J. Marlin
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1587315653/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
Marlin explores the psychiatric condition of the other side of the political coin.
Ultimately, this is all namecalling. No professionals are more prone to this medical condition than psychiatrists themselves. Pot, meet kettle.
Weird how certain groups (warmists) do exactly what they demonize others for doing, when others are not even doing it. Warming is not happening, but they want to see it happening to feel vindicated, and they are going crazy with twisted logic.
In the Climate-gate emails Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia lamented that
Fortunately, Prof Jones, it also allows us all to find people like Dr. Robert D. Stolorow when we need a good laugh to cheer us up in the dreary British weather.
[Bloke down the pub, I think your earlier comment may have hit the nail on the head.]
“I wonder if they’ve ever polled to compare with concerns for that other “pass on to the next generation” issue, our soaring national debt that our children and grandchildren have to pay for?”
So, if the US was in debt, say for example $200 trillion dollars, to whom do we owe the money to? The Fed? The Treasury? (I know other nations buy our debt, I’m just wondering who in the US we’d owe?)
If it’s the Fed, then wouldn’t we be in debt to the major banks since they sort of own the Fed?
I almost opened a Facebook account to send “robertdstolorow” the remarks here. But I can’t do Facebook.
The climate debate is mainly fueled by confirmation bias. One can hardly deny that WUWT is heavily influenced by confirmation bias, and we find of course a lot of confirmation bias in the other lair. To write off the “oblivious” as narcissists and whatnot can be sufficiently explained by confirmation bias as well. A view fit to confirm one’s own opinion in the debate. Someone who has studied psychology should have had the insight to see that.
Crazifornia has it’s crazy shrinks too! Stolorow lives in Los Angeles and I feel sorry for his patients because he has no common sense. He is horrified because the sun will become a red giant in a million years which will incenerate the earth? Really? May be he should write a prescription of Prozac for himself.
D Böehm: Is that a US Billion or British Billion? I have had discussions with British colleagues who assure me that a Billion of something is a million million or 10^12 while here in the US a Billion of something is a thousand million or 10^9. There are three orders of magnitude difference just across the stormy pond of the Atlantic to reconcile here! So I am not sure that even scientists can get this whole billion thing down, let alone a lowly psychoanalyst. Though either way he is off several orders of magnitude, whether it is 3 or 6 is the question.
It would be much easier if language would stay put when we nail it to the wall, but it seems to shift every time we take our ears off of it! As Churchill is reported to have said: “two peoples divided by a common tongue!”
“I wonder who will be the first to propose that Gitmo have a section added for “climate deniers”?”
I used to laugh at this kind of comment. But after seeing the 10:10 video, your Gitmo suggestion now horrifies me, because it is a real possibility in the clamor of the times.
The good doctor/analyst either pulled the 1 million out of his hat as he could not remember or was just plain lying to make it sound more dramatic. Either way that sort of behaviour, although perhaps trivial to some is not acceptable for someone of his (?) standing.
I cannot imagine any Planetarium presentation stating such drivel.
If there are any people left who still believe that psychiatry is a valid branch of science operating under the scientific method, this individual, Dr. Robert Stolorow, has just disabused them of that notion.
Does the good doctor have any idea why skepticism is essential for scientific– and therefore human– progress?
Talk about “unbridled narcissism” . . . “
Well I got a chance to carefully read that Psychology of Self article I linked to above with Stolorow from 2002 in the carpool line. Being called narcissist for looking for scientific proof from a prof who is reinventing psychology theory to fit with the socialist theory of the mind may well be a compliment.
What he calls NeoCartesian most of us recognize as Marx as in Uncle Karl or John Dewey’s view or Vygotsky’s. The troubling part is the publication in Psychology Today. They also published an article a few months ago pushing civics values that taught a markedly collectivist view that had no acquaintance with the US Constitution.
It suggests to me that Marxian political and cultural theory without using the M word must be a big part of what passes as undergrad psych today. Largely Unemployable in a middle class earning job and trained to think like a Marxist without knowing it.
I guess the triple ouch would be if you still have student loans for that degree.
The fact that someone who wants to reinterpret psych to fit political theories is angry about deniers is interesting. A reminder that AGW and climate change, like education, are mostly tools of statist subjugation over the individual and the economy these days. They just do not want to say so because we just might cut off funding and tell the kids a plumbing degree makes more sense than most college degrees these days. Especially with borrowed money.
Reasons:
“The first is unbridled narcissism.”
“The second is denial.”
The third is, its not happening, they’re making it all up to scare you.
Steinar Midtskogen says:
October 8, 2012 at 12:56 pm
I don’t know about you, but I have yet to see data that wasn’t tortured beyond all recognition which conclusively refutes the null hypothesis that the temperature changes we have seen are consistent with natural variability. Most of us here would probably begin studying the cost-benefit of mitigation and weighing the potential damage if nothing is done if we were to see non-tortured results indicating AGW. Though I daresay, with the preponderance of engineers here, we would likely look to adaptation techniques rather than doomed attempts to change the climate. Practical people analyze problems and seek the simplest solutions, and finding simple adaptations to enable society to continue with minimal disruption is far more palatable than the “kill off 95% of the worlds population” solutions advocated by radical environmentalists. Of course if all you have is a hammer, the world looks like a nail.
As for the red giant problem…in 5 billion years we might have figured out how to move the whole planet out of harms way – you never know.
Robert Stolorow on narcissism: How about you, Dr. Stolorow? And how about all the AGW freaks? Al Gore, George Soros?
Obviously, Dr. Stolorow, you have no substantive arguments to make against skeptics, so you attack them personally. Typical of the-end-justifies-the-means thinking. A reeactionary, inhumane idea, long since discredited on all acounts.
“I wonder if they’ve ever polled to compare with concerns for that other “pass on to the next generation” issue, our soaring national debt that our children and grandchildren have to pay for?”
Irony: a still growing % of that debt is owed right back to the Federal government by unemployed liberal arts majors, all who will suffer further ego annihilation when their parent’s window thermometer fails to catch fire as the clock ticks and tocks.
Hmnnn, ze psychiatrists spend most of ze time, telling ze patients – ‘don’t vorry! vat you are feeling is engsiety, it is not real…here hev some drugs’. Or,
‘You should try and relex, vot you are feeling is called paranoia…really no one is out to get you…here take zeeze drugs’. Or,
‘Zose voices you are hearing in your head?…zey are not real…vee call zem delusions, zeeze drugs vill make zem go avay’. Or,
‘Zat ‘Cult leader/Pastor’ who is predicting ze end of ze world? He is vot ve call a self-aggrandising, narcissistic-sociopath, vis messianic tendencies…ignore him. And if zat doesn’t work I’ll give you zis drug here….
‘On ze other hand Global Varming now zat is a real problem, I am filled with trauma and angst….I zink I better proscribe myself some drugs.’
Fessinating.
Some call it a “science”? Psychology?
It fails to compare with astrology.
I have, here, to be kind;
But they’re all out of mind.
And they want me to chant their doxology?
TL;DR “People I don’t like should be punished.”
It really is that simple.
Robin says:
October 8, 2012 at 12:20 pm
It’s not about temps. It is about power and control over individual behavior. The historic norm where there was no prosperity for the masses.
Funny how it always turns out to be about power and control.
OMG! He invents and diagnoses himself as suffering from “Apocalyptic Anxiety” Disorder having apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a prediction of a exaggerated disastrous outcome, but doesn’t recognize it and instead accuses those that don’t suffer from AAD as having some sort of mental problem. Can it get any more cognitively dissonant than that?
On the bright side, now I know what to call them: AAD sufferers.
“a US Billion or British Billion? I have had discussions with British colleagues who assure me that a Billion of something is a million million or 10^12 while here in the US a Billion of something is a thousand million or 10^9. “
That’s correct, Owen in GA. A British billion is 10^12 But in everyday life the term billion is usually taken as 10^9. £10 billion would be understood as £1000,000,000
That should be £10, 000, 000, 000
Duh!
Owen in GA,
Sorry, I should have anticipated that. In the U.S., a trillion is a million million.
Anyone who disagrees with me or doesn’t suffer existential anxiety over the same things I do must be nuts!!!
(Are you sure this wasn’t written by Mann or Hansen?)