Psychological Problems faced by disappointed alarmists
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
The Sydney Morning Herald has published an article describing the psychological problems alarmists are experiencing, in the wake of their Copenhagen 2009 disappointment.
Ask most alarmists and they will insist they are winning the debate – that the world is about to embrace green orthodoxy, that carbon trading schemes are rising, that “deniers” are more marginalised than ever before.
The article in the SMH tells a very different story – rising despair, despondency, disengagement, and in some cases delusional behaviour, in the wake of serial climate disappointments.
According to environmental scientist Nicole Thornton;
““It’s strange. Sometimes you just don’t feel you’re making headway in the time you’ve got, before it’s too late for the planet,” Thornton says. “All these little things weigh you down, and then the big stuff breaks you.”
The article goes on to describe more serious cases – for example, “Six years ago, a dehydrated 17-year-old boy was brought into the Royal Children’s Hospital, refusing to drink water. He believed having a drink would somehow contribute to the global shortage of potable water, and became the first diagnosed case of “climate change delusion”.
Personally I’ve always wondered if their is a correspondence between promotion of green ideas, and poor life choices made by far too many of our children – if you tell a child they have no future, that the world is about to be destroyed, that its all their parent’s fault, and that there is nothing they can do about it, don’t expect them to be enthusiastic about doing their homework.
However there is an even darker side to green despair. A while ago, Osama Bin Laden attempted to recruit frustrated environmentalists into his global Jihad – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/29/strange-but-true-bin-laden-on-global-warming/
Bin Laden ultimately failed in his effort to recruit frustrated greens to his campaign of mass murder, but if we don’t find a way to pull back from this green brink of societal self hatred, next time we might not be so lucky.
h/t WUWT reader “berniel” for the SMH article
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“Chris B says:
August 15, 2014 at 8:34 am
One could argue that…”
One can most assuredly not argue this about the many acquaintances in my world.
Is there an official disability classification for climate despair? I’m thinking of signing up for it.
Perhaps AGW will merge with the Westboro Baptists and will picket Congress with signs saying: “God hates Deniers” and “Carbon will send you to hell”.
The greens have other plans, much more effective than Bin Laden’s. Mass global energy deprivation can only mean one thing. Here are a few snippets from a small island.
GeologyJim says:
August 15, 2014 at 7:30 am
The Green Delusion “is consistent with” [TM-Climate Science] the religious faith and devotion of its practitioners.
This is standard “World is Coming to an END” moonbattery when reality undermines the basis of the faith.
It’s not pretty to watch, but it will be entertaining
………………….
HUGELY Entertaining!!!
Akin to those religions who predict the end of the world on a particular day and then the look on their respective faces when all carries on as normal.
The Green delusion is precisely the same – just drawn out and all the more entertaining and funny for that.
Chris B says:
The rise of CAGWism at the same time as Atheism may not be coincidental.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I find that the way that your Atheists don’t believe is wrong. Only my Atheists don’t believe in the proper way. 😉
It used to be that one would try to correspond him or her self to realty and that was considered a virtue. Now we think we can correspond really to ourselves somehow by the use of technology and that is called a delusion.
Having a vasectomy seems to cheer some up.
Also, eschewing air travel. On the other hand, many seem to be positively cheered by jetting across the world to commiserate.
One is tempted to re-watch On the Beach, and, instead of nuclear holocaust, imagine the cause to be a climate-fried globe. That pretty much captures the melancholy.
I have just finished watching a show with moro^Wpeople from Meteo France.
http://www.france5.fr/emissions/c-dans-l-air/diffusions/15-08-2014_255869
They didn’t seem depressed AT ALL; the sea is going up by 50 cm (“don’t buy near the coast”), so all is good.
God bless IPCC predict^Wproject^Wwhatever.
I have the perfect cure for this: at least for the men. There is an anti-depressant, the generic of which is called Citalopram. How do I know this? Well, I take it. And, I’m one of those anal people who actually reads the info sheets that comes with the prescriptions. So I know what the side effects of Citalopram are. Most of those side effects are fairly ho hum. But there’s one side effect that’s a real humdinger. What is that side effect you ask? Ready? It’s a prolonged and painful erection. Got that? An antidepressant can cause a prolonged and painful erection that if not treated immediately it can lead to impotency. And I’m not making this up. Check it out if you don’t believe me. How an antidepressant can cause such a thing and alleviate depression I’ll never know. Forever more a pleasant erotic dream causes me to wake up into a nightmare.
Anyway, threaten all those who are depressed about global warming that their depression will have to be treated with Citalopram. Voila, the CAGW nonsense will cease to exist.
Guaranteed.
@Tom J – Actually I found a beautiful woman to be the cure for me. And the side effect is not nearly as long term (sadly). 😉
Shoshin:
At August 15, 2014 at 9:48 am you say
Yes, as you say, Atheism has several denominations. But they all believe there is no God which is a belief that makes Atheism a rather foolish religion.
Having clarified that, please now return to the subject of the thread.
Richard
Brent @ur momisugly 8.15 am
‘Psychotherapist Rosemary Randall counsels people on their feelings of powerlessness and anxiety around climate change issues’.
Perhaps she can help me. I have very strong feelings of powerlessness and anxiety over the UK’s slow motion train crash of a Green energy policy that is lining landowners pockets, raising energy costs and is now unlikely to even keep the lights on. Also, about our cash strapped health service and other institutions that are spending €millions on needlessly reducing their infinitesimally small ( in both National and Global terms) carbon footprints. Also the mindless anti fracking rent-a-mob that is hell bent on preventing the release of the vast national wealth that our shale gas reserves represent…………Powerlessness, the alarmists don’t know what it feels like!
Sorry, wrong currency: £millions
“if you tell a child they have no future, that the world is about to be destroyed, that its all their parent’s fault, and that there is nothing they can do about it, …”
Its true. Even today at my kids school, every fall like clockwork they are still forced to watch ‘Inconvenient Truth’. They discuss the misery of human caused climate change and they are still being told how their future holds nothing but climate apocalypse. Whenever my kids tell me about this, I have to sit them down with world maps and climate records to ‘debrief’ my children. I have to do this multiple times per year.
I’m trying to keep them from becoming depressed self-loathers, and to see a bright and prosperous future. Is this too much to ask?
Chris B says:
August 15, 2014 at 8:34 am
The rise of CAGWism at the same time as Atheism may not be coincidental.
=====
Just swapping one for the other….people gotta believe
Best laugh I’ve had all week.
And no, I shan’t be contributing to the ‘Save Your Local Eco-Loony’ campaign.
The problem with misanthropy is that eventually the hatred of mankind comes home to roost.
klem:
I write to support your post at August 15, 2014 at 10:14 am.
I have repeatedly pointed out that this global warming propaganda aimed at children is child abuse.
At the time of the 2009 IPCC Copenhagen Conference the BBC broadcast a video showing childrens’ homes being flooded and their pets drowned. The Conference itself showed a video with children running from expanding desert. When I was interviewed about it on BBC Radio Devon the interviewer asserted that I had said “explaining global warming is child abuse” and I had to point out that there is a difference between
(a) the subject of an advert.
and
(b) the nature of that advert.
(a pornographic advert. having been made for baked beans does not mean that baked beans are pornographic)
but the interviewer refused to accept the difference.
However, please take heart. This thread is about alarmists starting to notice that ‘The End Is Nigh’ for the AGW-scare. The scare was killed at Copenhagen in 2009 and even the alarmists are noticing it is in its death throes.
Richard
James the Elder says:
August 15, 2014 at 7:58 am
“How long before a Pied Piper arrives on the scene and convinces the flock that Guyana is a nice place to get away from it all?”
How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?
On the issue of child brainwashing, the Guardian is now talking about including children in the policy making process regarding climate change:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/aug/15/children-climate-change-talks-unicef-report-2014
You know, if I’m ever asked on my deathbed what my biggest regret was I’m starting to think it will be that I was told so many lies, especially in my formative years, that then took decades to unpick.
climate change delusion , despairing and despondent alarmists you say http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,778.0.html
a whole thread full of them with one or two exceptions.
I am especially concerned with the effect of AGW propaganda in the children’s classrooms. The legal processes in the UK rather effectively took down at least some of Gore’s tripe but I haven’t seen much similar action elsewhere. Whatever happened to the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child? It emphasizes “…..the right to survival, development, and protection against abuse, neglect and exploitation” of children. Oh, wait. Somalia and my country, the USA, were the last to sign the Convention. Somalia has signed. The USA hasn’t. Not that anything the UN produces is worth the paper it’s written on but the idea is noteworthy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._ratification_of_the_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child
Perhaps someone has already noted this (please forgive my apparent lack of diligence; I’m on my ‘droid), but if the poor brainwashed kid in the article was only 6years ago, it’s impossible he was th first case of dellusion related to Global Warming aka climate change.: that would have to be Stephen Schneider, right? With James Hansen & Algore hot (or perhaps I should say, “warm”) on his heels…
Did anyone else think it was funny that “ballsbounce” was talking about vasectomies?
Richard, I think shoshin was just being clever. Regardless of his/her beliefs, it was a really funny comment…just sayin’.
Tom J, LOL. Are you sure you haven’t confused your citalopram with your viagra?
rip
<“Every time I talked about environmental issues, I would start crying, which I think is a really unusual response,” she says. “I’m a scientist, so I like to break things down – to drivers and causes – but I was confused. I had never heard of anyone who had something like this. I tried talking to some of my colleagues and friends, and I felt like an idiot. I felt quite stupid talking about it. It was a lonely and steep, frustrating learning curve.”
Susie Burke, a senior psychologist with the Australian Psychological Society, has done extensive work on the mental impact of climate change. Burke understands Thornton’s confusion, but also points out that she is by no means alone.
Only last month, Burke made a presentation on mental health and the environment as part of the Climate Reality Project, hosted by former US vice-president Al Gore at Rod Laver Arena and attended by hundreds of committed by weary campaigners.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/a-climate-of-espair-20140813-102r1w.html#ixzz3AUBkGyT7
Go with your feelings, you are an idiot and quite stupid.
Since Rod Laver Areana seats 15,000, those 100’s must have felt quite lonely.