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”?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Error in the title – the good doctor is not a medical doctor, which psychiatrists are, and they are the ones pushing medicines these days- apparently they’ve given up on Freud (hasn’t everyone?).
Presumably this guy is a clinical psychologist, but regardless of what “credentials” he himself
may possess, the profession itself is of little practical value.- neither clinical psychology nor psychiatry can claim any ability to cure much of anything, excepting some phobias – using techniques they lifted from animal trainers. As a science, psychology does much better in
grade B Hollywood films than in the real world. Society needs people that mentally afflicted folks
can be sent to and psychiatrists and clinical psychologists were more or less invented to be those people. I remember one study that found it advantageous to not send incoming mental patients to
be treated by a psychiatrist – they had a much better chance of recovering if left alone.
I have an experimental Psychology PhD from the University of Edinburgh. The British Psychological Society, that accredits our psychology degrees insists on a spine of research design and statistics throughout. Every student I taught over 20 years ran correct experiments gathering empirical data and analysed them using a range of tests to find out if their theory and hypotheses were supported or not. I believe this is called ‘doing science’. I dislike Psychiatrists, a feeling shared with many of my colleagues, because they presume scientific standing for their case studies and elevate their ‘diagnostic skills’ to be on a par with solid experimental research. I can believe that a psychiatrist would make such appalling errors recounted here but not a psychologist trained under the auspices of a good university and the watchful eye of the BPS. To many, the terms ‘psychologist’ and psychiatrist’ are interchangeable; they are not. I’m a sceptic about humans being able to change the climate simply because the empirical evidence does not support it. As Husserl said: ‘To the facts!’
I notice that the Arctic sea ice is currently almost exactly at the extent it was 5 years ago. I can’t see any reason to be alarmed.
Narcissism, Denial, Apocalypse, Oh My!
Narcissism, Denial, Apocalypse, Oh My!
Narcissism, Denial, Apocalypse, Oh My!
These shrinks sure are strange.
What will they think of next?
It just boggles the mind.
cn
Did Tiny Tim’s performance art resonate over the decades in the fragile psyches of some children of the 50s and 60s?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Liberal-Mind-Psychological-Political/product-reviews/0977956318/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
There are indeed rational psychologists that can explain the ‘liberal mind’.
In regard to the political dimension, the Green Agenda website should be mentioned from time to time, since there may be new readers that are unaware of the extreme worldview that animates the CAGW attack on the West. Reading quotes from the leaders of environmental politics gives the game away.
http://www.green-agenda.com/
“Arctic Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise May Be ‘Decades Ahead Of Schedule’”
Sea level rise, you could prove this false easily.
Well, you could, if the ocean reference page had some sort of…useful, relevant sea level rise graphs. However, it does not, the farthest back it goes is 1993, far to short to be relevant, the only graph that goes back further is only about thermosteric component of it.
The only really possibly scary thing the warmists can threaten with is sea level rise, and you don’t cover sea level rise?!??
You want to show that warming is not happening, the below is still true:
If it is warming, the ice will be melting.
If it melts, the sea will be rising.
The sea is not rising.
Therefore the ice is not melting.
Therefore the world is not warming.
It’s just that simple.
Why can’t you see that?
Why don’t you show that?
Through an online enquiry form I sent Dr Bob some information about WUWT and also invited him to join this discussion so that he could become better informed about climate. He should turn up any moment now…….
@Legatus
Your line of attack is good, but you should qualify your statements as follows:
The sea level rise is not accelerating
Therefore ice-melting is not accelerating
Therefore the earth’s warming is not man-made, but is a natural recovery from the LIA.
I’m very frightened by the monsters under my bed. One of them’s a Red Giant, and I think one of them’s a Climate Change!
Our unbridled narcissism and greed explains those big-oil-funded conferences we all attend in Rio, Cancun, Bali…
Do I have to say “sarc”? Yeah, I’d better: sarc.
Oh how ironic for a shrink to use these words and miss a wonderful opportunity for self-diagnosis of his own cognitive dissonance. There is little doubt that the shrink is a liberal ( American sense ), one unerringly who no doubt voted for lefties like President DingleBarry and every other socialist he possibly can. Why does that matter? Simple! With just a change of a word or two we can demonstrate the severe mental illness that afflicts these phonies …
Trust me, this person will crawl over broken glass to get to the booth on election day to inflict our future descendents with catastrophes of unimaginable proportions. He knows full well what these socialists are up to, and so he deflects onto the strawman of Climate change so as to be able to sleep at night and not face the demons he helps facilitate.
Well, if you want a classic study of the tactic, have a look at “The Myth of Mental Illness”, by Thomas Szasz.
Pretty much establishes the case that the entire Psych profession exists to control eccentricity and dissent.
It would be intersting to know what proportion of WUWT readers realised the 1 million year gaf was absurd the moment they read it.
I’m genuinely surprised that people with a level of advanced scientific education, as I assume this “doctor” has, can be so completely illiterate on stuff that is just general science and requires no specialist training at all.
When your a no-body in your chosen career path jump on the CAGW bandwagon is the only option you have when your intellect doesn’t measure up to your ego.
Dr Anthony Fallone says:
I can believe that a psychiatrist would make such appalling errors recounted here but not a psychologist trained under the auspices of a good university and the watchful eye of the BPS.
Stephen Lewandowsky trained at several universities, currently professes at the University of Western Australia, and operates under the auspices of BPS offshoot Australian Psychological Society. He is frequently seen sporting a derriere chapeau. What do you think is going on there?
Heh, yes, you’d think anyone venturing into a supposed discussing involving science or politics (or both) would know these distinctions quite well. But it’s also pretty well established that people of a certain political bent cannot fathom large numbers, spending levels, budgets, deficits, debt, and this incomprehension creates fodder for a competing psychological theory as to why this Ph.D bozo was SO wrong.
A few weeks back on a Yahoo news thread, a raging lefty indignantly compared this years’ annual state operating deficit of Republican dominated (ergo, bad) Texas with that of Democrat controlled (therefore, good) California. He claimed California was in good shape, because they had a deficit of only 16 million, whereas Texas had a much higher deficit of 25 million. I gave him a little tap-on-the-shoulder, and politely informed him that his California number was a little off, and is, in fact, 16 billion, as opposed to 16 million, meaning it’s deficit is currently 640 times higher than Texas’. But I gave him some encouragement, too. I told him that being wrong by only 3 orders of magnitude isn’t too bad for a lefty. The ingrate gave me a thumbs down. 😉
I really don’t think that there is a period of history to compare with this one, where so many people with advanced degrees have studied so hard, often in areas outside of their range of scientific competence, .but missed the implication of the data by miles by miles and miles.
This is not science; this religion. Period.