Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Scientific American thinks we are all so worried about climate change, our minds have snapped – that we’ve all turned to “climate denial” as a coping mechanism.
Are We Feeling Collective Grief Over Climate Change?
The idea is highly controversial, but at least one psychiatrist is convinced that we are, whether we know it or not.
In 1977, I was in middle school in Michigan, and a science teacher shared a tidbit off-curriculum. Some scientists had postulated that as a result of “pollution,” heat-trapping gasses might one day lead to a warming planet. Dubbed “the greenhouse effect,” the image was clear in my 12-year old mind: people enclosed in a glass structure, heating up like tomatoes coaxed to ripen. It was an interesting concept, but something in the very, very distant future.
Fast-forward ~ 30 years later. The year was 2006, my daughter was three, and my dreams of a White Christmas were going to hell in a hand basket. There wasn’t a snowflake to be seen in Brooklyn and it was DECEMBER—a far cry from childhood memories of jumping off the roof into fluffy mounds after a blizzard. Something was awry. An Inconvenient Truth had just been released, and those graphs and slides were suspiciously coinciding with what we were beginning to see in the form of extreme weather, à la Hurricane Katrina. Any number of idioms might well have marked the juncture: “canaries in the coal mine” comes to mind.
So why weren’t we coming together to nip this in the bud? Why were we failing to embrace what appeared to be so obvious?
The deterioration of our planet—the only home we have ever known and an assurance we used to take for granted—is bound to elicit a wide range of emotions in different individuals. Mourning is personal, but as a species, could it be that we are making our way through the stages of grief as outlined by the late Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross?
Psychiatrist and climate activist Lise Van Susteren, M.D. doesn’t necessarily think so. She points out that the Kübler-Ross framework was a response to people who hear devastating news and feel personally very involved, extremely vulnerable and know that the diagnosis is essentially inescapable.
“That’s not where most people are with climate,” Dr. Van Susteren states. “It takes a long time for some people to lay down the sense within that something is true.”
…
[James] Hansen believes people are moving in the direction of accepting that climate is changing and that humans are at least a factor if not the dominant factor.
But there is also the matter of our wiring.
“Denial is something that allows us sometimes to get through the day,” says Dr. Van Susteren. “And in some cases that’s really good, that’s adaptive, but in other cases it’s going to kill you . . . and this one’s going to kill you.”
…
Read more: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/are-we-feeling-collective-grief-over-climate-change/
If I’m feeling any grief, it is grief that an allegedly scientific magazine which I once respected could publish such mush. Few credible skeptics ever claimed humans have absolutely no influence on climate, but there is a huge gulf between predicting a mild, almost undetectable climatic nudge, and predicting an immininent planetary emergency.
If there is any “climate denial” occurring, it is a refusal by some parties to face the fact that climate models which predict global catastrophe have failed. There is no surge in sea levels, there is no accelerated rise in temperature, other than the gentle warming which started well before anthropogenic CO2 became a factor, and there is no increase in storm activity.
Claims that previously unanticipated “inertia” is preventing the manifestation of all these apocalyptic events, in my opinion is a frantic last ditch effort to defend broken theories from falsification.
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The CAGW movement is in its death throes. The True Believers know this deep down, so are themselves going through the stages of grief. The idea that skeptics/climate realists are somehow experiencing “climate grief” is laughably silly and pathetic.
This is the right answer. Nobody is paying attention to CAGW anymore so their cries are becoming increasingly shrill. It is the Global Warming movement that is dying and it is the Global Warming proponents who are in the Denial Stage 1 of Grief about it.
Which is really weird, to make themselves feel better they have to point to high temperatures from an El Nino year and say, “See? Global Warming!! We’re Saved (from skeptics being right), We’re all going to die after all!! Yay!!!!”
how very desperate and weird
You do rather wonder sometimes but, is this one a bit/lot bigger than the previous scares. I don’t recall any great windmill construction projects, rampant tax rises or sunshine panels going up during the global cooling crisis.
‘The People’ are patently over-reacting, they are revelling in doom and disaster scenarios and cannot in any way accept their own blame for what is perceived to be happening. They are incapable of reasonable argument any more – hence the endless appeals to authority & consensus or the relentless ad-homs.
In other words, vast numbers of people are behaving like drunks – that is how chronically and clinically depressed folks behave. Anyone over the age of, let’s say, 40 will know that.
Of course the scary thing here is like when you yourself are one of The Drunks. If you are drunk/stupid at a roaring party where everyone else is drunk, you don’t realise just how dumb you/they are all behaving. But call in on that party after a year of abstinence and frankly, its really really frightening what you see and how those folks react towards you you.
Let talk ideas and not people or events.
Two possibilities, and not mutually exclusive either.
1. Something is depressing the people. Certainly western societies get through huge amounts of alcohol but also sugar = glucose = carbohydrate. Me, you, we all, feel sleepy after a large meal. A large meal of what though.
Try that large meal without any carbs and see what happens. We are all sat here in the perfect piece of test equipment.
Maybe you don’t want to.
Why?
Are you scared to = lack of self confidence = depression.
Doctors say to eat carbs = appeal to authority = passing the buck = lack of self confidence = depression.
You get my drift?
2. Maybe what is left of our natural instincts tell us that something really rather bad is going to happen. We patently don’t know what exactly, how it will unfold or precisely when but, we just ‘feel’ something.
Maybe that something is that we are existing on a starvation diet. this is The time of the Full Stomachs. Yes we have masses to eat but it is universally nutrient free and tasteless mush. Carbohydrate. Some misguided souls venture that we may be carnivores. BS. We are lipivores. We are meant to eat fat, jst like those other predators at the top of the food chain lions/tigers. They kill to get fat, livers, kidneys, brains, blood and bone marrow. The scavengers, the vultures, hyenas maybe get to eat the meat.
Instinctively we know there is a monster over the hill.
I say, like Murray Salby although he hasn’t said it outright that I know of, the carbon dioxide signal in the sky is the smoke from the fire breathing monster that’s going to get us. Its coming from the dirt, being stirred up by tractors and ploughs and ignited with nitrogen fertiliser.
As any farmer will tell you, you cannot keep growing the same stuff in the same patch of dirt forever and all the while expecting more and more yield. It doesn’t happen and when that system crashes, it does so rapidly and spectacularly.
So there’s the prefect irony, we are growing stuff that is destroying us (obesity, heart disease and diabetes) while the growing of it destroys the dirt that everything depends on.
Of course we have the perfect universal excuse ‘Oh sorry, I was drunk at the time’
I think, in the USA at least, probably also in Europe, we went from the Cold War certainties into a period of total confusion as to the purpose of life. We had a certain enemy for so long that it became an ingrained part of our culture and then it was gone in a flash and we didn’t know what to do. So we began searching for new enemies, new doomsday scenarios, new people to hate, all to fill that void that the end of the Cold War left in our national philosophy. We tried to hate drugs, didn’t work. We tried evangelical religion. Few bought it any more. Now we have “climate change” on the left and Islam on the right. Everyone has their enemy again, their own personal Doomsday to keep them warm with fear and hate inside. Everyone’s happy.
Nah. I would put it all down to intellectual laziness, plus the herd instinct. Perhaps kids are no longer being taught to think for themselves, to question. That makes them prone to simply accepting propaganda.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
Charles MacKay
*Perhaps kids are no longer being taught to think for themselves, to question.*
Kids are being taught not to think. Rational thought leads to judgment of what might be right and what might be wrong, and to the Left, that is “discrimination” and hence a crime.
“In other words, vast numbers of people are behaving like drunks”
Or vast numbers of people believe what the experts, via the MSM, has fed them. Really, can you blame people for that? Not everyone has the desire to learn climate. That’s why we have government climate scientists that are trained to know this stuff and keep us informed. That’s their job, how or why could any layperson question that authority? Even the data supports their claims (after adjustments).
On an issue this important, yes we can blame people for choosing to simply Believe. Anyone with a modicum of desire to and at least half a brain can figure out that all is not as they say. It only takes a little time for the part of the brain that questions things – some call it a BS-meter to wake up. But people prefer Belief, due to the herd mentality and the fact that it doesn’t require them to actually use their brain.
One might suppose that for the supposed worst thing ever, number one threat to our national security, most expensive thing ever, change your life and do everything someone else tells you to do, world ending disaster,
that everyone make an exception and learn everything there is to know about this one.
In fact, now that I think about it, everyone in the world who is even slightly uninformed on this issue must think in a way which is entirely different from the way I have thought since I was about four years old…learn about important stuff!
Bruce Cobb says: “It only takes a little time for the part of the brain that questions things”
Question things you know nothing about? Like I said, not everyone has time and/or desire to become a climate expert first. And you can question it all you want, that doesn’t change the facts that our “experts” say you are wrong. People have a “Belief” based on what they’re told. You can NOT learn the truth when your teacher lies to you.
Menicholas says: “learn about important stuff!”
Do you do your own experiments for car crash safety, or do you rely on what the experts provide?
Do you do your own food safety studies, or do you rely on what the experts provide?
Do you do your put up your own satellites, or do you rely on the data from the experts?
Do any work on medical devices, medicines, etc? Again, experts provide the data.
Sure, learn about important stuff but bottom line, you ARE relying on the experts to tell the truth. It has nothing to do about critical thinking when the “facts” are incorrect.
In recent times we have seen the corruption of Nature, Scientific American and New Scientist at least. It’s all terribly terribly terribly sad.
New scientist has been leftybollocks for several decades.
True indeed – as well as being pretty useless. I stopped reading that at least 30 years ago (and I was getting hand-me-down free copies from a friend too).
The familiar “canaries in the coal mine” metaphor was cited in the article. We all know that the Canary Islands are a real place, and wind and rain often cross them on their way from Africa across the Atlantic to form hurricanes. My question is: Are there coal mines in the Canaries?
” My question is: Are there coal mines in the Canaries?”
Can’t say for sure, John, but I do know there are Sardines in the Canneries.
Completely bizarre.
Almost by definition, sceptics are the people who are the *least* likely to be alarmed by future climate change.
Climate Alarmism helps us deal with our collective sense of environmental guilt.
People are so alarmed at what they think we are doing to the environment generally that climate alarmism serves as a coping mechanism and avoidance strategy.
In reality we should forget bout climate alarmism and focus on more effective environmental improvement methods.
But that would be less expensive, make more sense and provide fewer opportunities for political, emotional and ideological grandstanding. We can’t have that.
The level of climate grief is inversely proportional to the size of the CGW research cheque.
This is all very interesting but let’s face it, this whole discussion is a displacement strategy to avoid confronting the real issue: overpopulation.
Science is telling us loud and clear that if we don’t cut our numbers on this planet drastically, and cut them now, people will start dying. Rapidly.
I’ve noticed that people with children and grandchildren have no trouble accepting the reality of population crisis and the need to do something. It tends to be the older, angrier, childless Caucasian—with no genetic investment in the future of this planet—who resists action.
You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to guess why, though it probably helps.
[??? .mod]
…Ummmm, you forgot the /sarc tag!
The more technologically advanced the culture, the lower the birth rates. The environmentalists who call for the destruction of fossil fuel economies would reverse all that.
I’d love to believe the answer was prosperity. Wouldn’t everyone? But beware the lure of the easy fix. Scientists have shown that lowering birth rates would not make enough difference, fast enough to avoid the worst impacts of overpopulation. We need to increase death rates—that’s the only way to meet the targets for a safe planet.
Time is running out.
“We need to increase death rates—that’s the only way to meet the targets for a safe planet.”
The way the ACA is going, that should help out.
You’re joking, right?
You first, Brad.
“You’re joking, right?”
I used to be like you. Making fun of the krayzee treehuggers who babbled on about population control. All the while aware that it was just my unconscious fear of the truth. So much easier to laugh than act.
But the day I first held my second or third baby girl in my arms, that’s when I finally had the courage to snap out of my denihilism and start spreading the word: people need to start making sacrifices. Not for our generation’s sake. For her. For the sake of the crowded planet she’ll inherit.
One day I hope you’ll have that moment too. Let’s just pray it won’t be too late for my kids.
OK, I get it now!
Your humor went right over my head on the first few passes Brad.
It will take a lot of people to get the message of population reduction out, Brad, so you best start working on child’s 4 5 6 and 7 ASAP, eh?
Have a few for me too will yah, because I’m too selfish.
@ur momisugly at Brad Keyes
Remember, Brad, you’re the one advocating that “we” must make sacrifices and “increase death rates” for the sake of the planet. But then, I note that you advocacy is on behalf of your own children, and your fervent hope that they’ll inherit a future with plenty of post-cull leg-room, free from the current “crush” of us tacky, cull-fodder riff-raff. In other words, I think it a reasonable inference that you see your self and your own children as getting a pass when the time comes, the sooner the better, to “thin the herd”, while you have assigned to us groaning hoi-poloi the lethal burden of your proposed increased death rates. Hard to interpret you otherwise, Brad. So why is it, Brad, that your parasite, “thought-leader” dumb-ass deserves to live to bounce grand-kids on your knee, while us coolie-trash herdling-nobodies, who do all of society’s real work, are marked for doom? And why is it that your kids are too good for Moloch, but ours aren’t? Just askin’, Brad.
@ur momisugly Brad Keyes
Just a stray thought, Brad. Might your comments on this thread be, collectively, just a self-indulgent, goof-ball, razz-booger, private-joke, snot-nosed-prankster put-on, intended to make your hive-mummy proud? I keep an open mind. But, if not, then let me just say that you’re one sick-puppy, Brad, ol’ buddy.
Paul,
“We need to increase death rates—that’s the only way to meet the targets for a safe planet.”
The days when 100% was ‘good enough’ are over. Population change has changed everything. Your gym teacher was right: this is going to take a team effort, and it’s going to take 110%.
I must be hard of hearing…I have never heard science telling me that people have to die in large numbers and that right fast.
Wow! You really nailed it!
Get rid of all the people and this would be a great place to live!
Lonely, but great.
Hey Brad!
This is some pretty advanced, cull-crazy good-stuff you’ve got goin’ in your topside comment, Brad, ol’ buddy. And, maybe I’m wrong, but I’d say that your thrill-cull call-to-action, above, has just made it a little bit harder for your fellow hive-tools to make fun of us “good guy” lovers of Liberty and ethical science–at least in terms of our conspiracy-theory “ideations”, and, most especially, in terms of our style-conscious, hand-crafted, tin-foil chapeaux. Which is sort of why I always thought hive-licensed big-thinkers, like you, Brad, were required to only discuss plans for the “Big-Cull” behind the backs of us doomed, coolie-trash, cull-fodder nobodies.
So what’s the deal, Brad?–are the gloves comin’ off, in the delicate matter of “thinning the herd”? If so, at least us expendable useless-eaters, who actually produce the wealth our parasitic betters rip-off from us and frivolously expend on their obscenely extravagant, brazen-hypocrite, carbon-piggie good-times, will finally get to see the creep-out reality behind all that shape-shifting in which our masters-of-the-universe have, heretofore, cloaked themselves. Some say, you know, Brad, ol’ sport, that the hive-masters, whose attention-seeking pervert-rumps, so many of your Camp-Commandant-wannabe, sell-out comrades regularly smooch (but not you Brad–not you, ol’ pal!), and who pull your hive-mates’ lickspittle-gofer strings and supply them with their party-line, mouth-piece “talking-points” (again, but not you, Brad!) are nothing more than a bunch of iguana-like lizards. But, for moi, my bet is that they’re really just a scuttling mutant-brood of blood-meal-seeking, genetic-hybird arthropods, indistinguishable from your common cockroach, except for that grinning death’s-head, that supports their antennae.
A “Bravo Zulu”, Brad, for your, “…if we don’t cut our numbers on this planet, drastically, and cut them now, people will start dying. Rapidly.” So let’s see, now, Brad, as I read your learned analysis of the over-population planetary-crisis, “cut” is dog-whistle hive-speak for “kill”, and “cut our numbers on this planet, drastically” means “kill” lots and lots of us “little guys”, and “now” means–well…we all know what that means, Brad, don’t we? Hope I got all that right, Brad. But the “good news” part of your “modest proposal”, Brad, at least as I can best understand it, is that if the mass-murder, you appear to be advocating, is “mass” enough, then those same poor saps, you’ve just killed off, won’t “die rapidly”. What a really, really great idea! You know–kill the plebs so they don’t die! Wow! Super good-stuff, Brad!–your best yet, guy!
But I’m sorry to say, Brad, that there’s some knuckle-dragger types who will maliciously want to smear your solicitude for the planet as just a tad-bit “genocidal” (those insufferable Gaia-phobes!), in character, and of a quality worthy of the work-bench of Professor Gruber, himself. And then, Brad, we can well expect those same, contemptible “flat-earthers” to further get themselves all worked up into one of their typical, conspiracy-theory, “ideation”-fantasy spazz-outs and insist that there must be some sort of detailed, supporting plan of “action”, behind all that generalized and rather vague, population-reduction chit-chat of yours (not to mention that they’ll also, more likely, than not, invite low-information readers to Google: “you tube Gary Grathwohl Bill Ayers”). And then–so what else is new?–look for these same, preposterous headless-chickens to get their over-heated “Republican-brains” into a dither and further insist that operation “Angel of Death” is all locked and loaded and ready to go just as soon as the hive can figure out how to get the “stupid” Americans to agree to a gun confiscation (nobody wants to go through another one of those “Tambov Rebellion” bummers–I think we can all agree on that, right, Brad?). But you and moi, we don’t think like that, do we, Brad, ‘cuz we’re just a coupla good buddies, right, guy?
And then, Brad, there’s your dig at us ol’ fart white-boys (almost all of whom have kids, I might add–it’s what our generation did, Brad, along with getting a “real” job, and moving out of our parents’ home, when we finished high-school). And I also like that “…genetic future of this planet” riff. Code-language to assure your hive-mates that certain, good-comrade “blood-lines” are safe in the coming “End Times”, maybe?
Finally, only one part of your comment, Brad, has me perplexed and scratchin’ my head, and that’s your parting, kinda cryptic, “Sigmund Freud” zinger. I mean, like, I’m probably gonna show just how ignorant I am in matters of psychoanalysis, but the best I can make of your allusion is that you just might be one of those typical, testosterone-deficient, can’t-get-a-date hive-weenies, angry that life has outfitted you with a comically teeny-tiny pee-pee (just a fantastically remote, but finite possibility, is all I’m sayin’, Brad), and so you harbor a really nasty, Freudian “penis envy” in regards to us studly, “good-guy” lovers of Liberty and ethical science and our big dicks that materially contribute to our continued success in the “gettin’ laid’ department. But just thinkin’ out loud here, Brad.
Hey Mike!
Don’t worry, impugning my manhood won’t deter me from standing up for what the latest scientists are telling us. Your comments hurt me more deeply than I will admit, of course. But so what? I’m used to being crucified by this crowd. At the risk of sounding grandiose, on the third day I shall rise again. Let’s see, it’s Wednesday now…
Brad,
I’ll see your three kids and raise you two more plus two dogs and a cat. I think you’re bluffing.
@ur momisugly Brad Keyes
“…impugn your manhood”? You’re “hurt”? Jeez, Brad…it’s called “joshing”, guy. And you’re supposed to respond with a kick-butt, “regular-guy” come-back, like, “YO MOMMA!!!” And it’s a little “rich”, Brad, that my tit-for-tat comments have reduced you to near sniffles when you’re the one who started the whole deal with your “Sigmund Freud” booger-flick. C’mon, Brad, you know the WUWT blog isn’t one of those ivory tower safe-spaces, I suspect you regularly haunt. Honestly, Brad, you’ve been hangin’ out with the hive-bozos way too much, you really need to get out of the hive-bubble more. I mean, like, you’ve gotta toughen up, Brad, since wadin’ through seas of gore requires not only scientific-detachment, but an iron-will, as well.
If you’d be so kind, Brad, I’d like to know three things about your “modest proposal”:
-What is your “cull-list” selection criteria and who devised the same and what was the logic of their “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” reasoning.
-What tools, techniques, organizations, and methodologies do you intend to employ to achieve your mass-cull, population-reduction good-deeds?
-Who has joined you in implementing your Gaia-freak, brave-new-gulag final-solution, and what is the current status of your noble work?
Finally, I checked out that “crucified” link in your last comment and noted your bumptious notion that “…science is, and always has been, fundamentally about concensus…” Well maybe so, but from what I can vaguely recall of an epistemology course, through which I mostly slept, a long, long time ago, science is, and always has been, on the contrary, a technique for making estimates of the situation, regarding the material world, that derive from rational empiricism, and that any such estimates are inherently tentative and corrigible and open to challenge by further iterations of rational-empiricism. But I guess that since science has now become a corrupted hive-tool, just like pretty much everything else that once had value, I guess my angry, white-boy, old-timer understanding of the subject merely proves that I just “don’t get it.”
I see you’ve bought the Ehrlichian crap hook, line and sinker, and it’s rotted your brain (whatever is left of it anyway). Condolences.
I’ve long been in awe of Ehrlich’s pre-science, and am not ashamed to say so.
You really should be. Ehrlich’s self-indulgent garbage is the poster child for eco-fascist paranoia and anti-human philosophy. And the fact that fifty years later sycophantic fools are still licking up his pap is just the latest atrocity.
It frankly disgusts me.
OK, ease up big fella. Read Menicholas’ comments.
Joel Snider, Bruce Cobb,
Please read his link before commenting, if you have not done so (which I’m guessing you have not, judging by your comments).
(I also get lost in commenting, so I hope this comes out in the right order.) :>)
Ah, so you’re an idiot and proud of it. Got it.
Brad is obviously not serious, peeps.
No one is so ridiculous as to advocate for people to die, in order to clear out some room for the kids of the advocate, and to go on a public forum and declare as much.
He is goofing.
Even if he don’t know it.
If only “peeps” would slow down and read critically. No shortage of tipoffs.
Should have read further before my comment above, but I stand by it. :>)
All kinds of people show up from time to time.
We have a presidential science advisor who was calling for this sort of thing in decades past, and a Presidential candidate who sings the praises of one Margaret Sanger, who called person of color human weeds, and used horrific language to advocate getting rid of them by whatever means necessary.
Our host requests that we use a /sarc tag if the brand of humor we are using is not at least somewhat transparent.
I am not sure if what made it click for me was the image of clutching a new born baby girl, and instantly deciding large numbers of people have to die, or if it was the perhaps mistaken-for-a-typo reference to de-nihilism.
Hey, it is not the first time someone being sarcastic got torn a new one, or had the old one widened some, before anyone realized.
🙂
@ur momisugly Brad
Hey Brad, ol’ buddy! Like totally luv your “JUST KIDDING!!!”, surprise ending. I mean, like, that’s, like, really, really cool, there, guy! And I also hope that you, Brad, and all the other “peeps” all slowed down and read my comments, addressed to you, Brad, critically, too, because they were, likewise, all a bunch of goofs (no shortage of tip-offs)–and yes, Brad, I’m talkin’ about even that playful, just-horsin’-around, ribald suggestion that I threw out there about the size of your cock. Geez, this whole deal has been such a merry rip! And I hope there was nothing I said, in the course of our rough-house good fun, Brad, that detracted, in any way, from the savor of your smug, little denoument–I’d just hate myself, if I were think myself responsible for anything like that.
@ur momisugly Brad Keyes
Hmmm…my earlier comment appears to have fallen victim to the moderator’s well-judged, zinger-cidal cull. But I don’t want to miss the opportunity, Brad, to tell you just how much I luved your “Suprise Ending!” That was like so totally cool, there, man! But it was all a merry rip, we had, so “what difference does it make?” (to quote a famous American). And, of course, I, like you, Brad, hope that the “peeps” (and you, too, Brad, for that matter) all “slowed-down” and read my comments “critically”, and thereby appreciated that my little rants were all “goofs”, as well (no shortage of tip-offs)–you know, just like yours, Brad. But, let me just finally say, Brad, that I sincerely hope nothing I said in the rough-house, give-and-take of our little exchanges worked, in any way, to lessen the self-satisfied savor you surely derived from your smug, impish little denouement–I’d truly hate myself, if I were ever to think such a thing.
Meanwhile Dr Harb continues to eat his own: https://theconversation.com/what-is-extremist-belief-an-answer-from-medieval-islamic-philosophy-63224#comment_1057660
(Of interest mainly to UK and colonial readers within the sphere of influence of The Conversation.)
/unsarcastic
Fear not, Mike, I knew you were playing along with the gag. The first ten hyphens were enough of a tipoff. We make a good team.
Pity about the Scientific American, though.
This kind of clap trap is why I no longer read or subscribe to Scientific American, National Geographic, and Smithsonian, despite having done so for years before they degenerated into Alarmist propaganda organs. It’s a sad, sad thing when these formerly wonderful publications decided to lose their collective minds and buy wholesale into the CAGW BS. I’ve lost all respect for them and they do not get my money as a result. If they had just fallen for the false “science” of CAGW that would have been bad enough, but they have gone full bore into the “let’s lambast the evil Deniers” and have pushed out propaganda and insulting diatribes like the above, and in doing so have moved so far from what science is as to be on the level of a supermarket tabloid. Heck, even the National Enquirer is right more often then these guys are.
I think you’re all missing the point. What is driving climate alarmism is not psychology, but something a lot more concrete – money!
To take but one example, in the last ten or twelve years, more than $2 trillion has been spent worldwide on alternative energy, largely wind and solar. Now ask yourselves how much of that would have been spent had the terms global warming and climate change never entered our consciousness. When this amount of money gets spent, an awful lot of people get very rich.
Even if a new ice age descends on us tomorrow you can expect the global warming militia to fight a vicious rearguard action, because that sort of money isn’t going anywhere quietly.
Money talks. $2 trillion screams.
Roger Graves
….. and it will be the same people who get another $2 trillion to dismantle all the environment-destroying crap they’ve foisted on us.
(Unless a lot of people wake up, of course)
Psychiatrists are highly controversial. Move along, nothing to see here.
An Inconvenient Truth is “White Christmas” is a song, not a weather or climate forecast.
Their theory works both ways, though they are too blind or ignorant to understand that. Is that a stage of something?
They will know real denial when their grant proposals get rejected.
‘slides were suspiciously coinciding with what we were beginning to see in the form of extreme weather, à la Hurricane Katrina. Any number of idioms might well have marked the juncture: “canaries in the coal mine” comes to mind.’
Katrina was extreme for Louisiana. It was not extreme for the world. Strong cyclones form every year, but few make landfall in the U.S. Describing Katrina as “canaries in the coal mine” is meteorologically ignorant. Dr van Susteren reveals the origins of her superstition. That you don’t share her superstition makes you defective.
Conservatives are dismayed by US debt. But we don’t cheer when we see graphs of it going through the roof.
“The idea is highly controversial, but at least one psychiatrist is convinced that we are, whether we know it or not.”
Personally I think being convinced we are something, whether we know it or not, exhibits neurotic, obsessive behaviour, but hey what would I know?
it’s called ‘gaslighting’
Gaslighting is when it is done intentionally.
If these idjuts are serious, I think psychological projection is the correct terminology.
“it” being the knowing presentation of false evidence or information.
scientific american is promoting the meme and they have no intentions whatsoever
because it has nothing to do with any agenda of any kind.
and they are a science magazine and that article is totally science.
pull the other one- the first 2 are already stretched.
don’t run. they are your friends.
[???? .mod]
Psychobabble + SWAG + Projection = 0
“In 1977, I was in middle school in Michigan, … Fast-forward …2006, … There wasn’t a snowflake to be seen in Brooklyn and it was DECEMBER—a far cry from childhood memories of jumping off the roof into fluffy mounds after a blizzard”
Who writes this drivel? Who publishes it?
You moved from Detroit or maybe some place well north of Detroit, like the Upper Peninsula, where it gets really cold and snows a lot to Brooklyn NY, which is south of Michigan and which sits on the ocean and which does not get nearly as cold and does not have nearly as much snow as any place in Michigan.
This is not an example of global warming, it is an example of moving to a warmer place.
It is also an example of gobsmacking stupidity.
I missed that small but damning detail Walter…good catch!
From start to finish, it does not get more unscientific than the dilly nonsense in this article. And, as usual, the comments section and the Intro from Eric are infinitely more informative and entertaining and scientifically accurate than the alarmists drivel being commented on.
Walter,
I was going to make the same comment. Clearly the author failed geography.
I also thought it bs when they claimed that their middle school science teacher knew about anthropogenic greenhouse warming in 1977. I recall learning how the Earth’s atmosphere prevented everything from freezing but nothing about gloom and doom, except for the coming ice age.
I sort of quit when i got to jumping off the roof into the snow drift.
In the mid 1970s I wrote computer programs for meteorologists at NOAA and NCAR in Boulder, Colorado. I heard NOTHING about AGW. This writer is simply following the Leftists’ tactic of using words to shape history instead of reporting history.
It’s too hot. It’s too cold. It’s perfectly normal.
I think that due to the Earth’s semi-stable system and relatively short human lifespans, the illusion of living in a literal greenhouse with invariant internal dynamics and isolated from external influences has corrupted the scientific and consensus (e.g. social) perspective.
I grew up with Sci Am and lamented its passing as a legitimate publication. One person being convinced is exactly the kind un-scientific thinking that science itself was invented to prevent.
But there is a perfectly sound reason why people are getting turned off to the alarmism. If you put rats or people in a cage and randomly deliver electric shocks which they cannot anticipate and over which they have no control, in short order they go mad. In the case of humans being tortured, they will agree to anything at all to stop the madness.
Against the barrage of scary CAGW stories, individual people are helpless to act effectively and thus to stop the madness instilled by the random fear jolts.
However, as I have experienced many times, people with uninformed fear about AGW relax instantly when presented with even a single verifiable scientific fact negating the fear claims. The sea level rise during the holocene chart, or the ice core temperature charts are excellent for this purpose.
A single verifiable conter-fact can negate thousands of fear messages and inoculate the person against future fear. That is why the fear-mongers (and their money grubber puppet masters), are so afraid of publications like WUWT.
Science itself is not the least casualty of this entire AGW debacle – almost by itself, AGW, and it’s alarmist proponents, has shattered the credibility of science and scientific institutions for a generation .
OMG!
The climate changes and that change affects some people some how!
I never would have guessed that.
The other obvious answer is we just don’t like being lied to. But seven or eight words does not make for a good article, so we get pages of climate alarmist denial instead.
Nobody likes it when you sneak up while they are sleeping and scream” WAKE UP!” directly into their ear canal.
“Dubbed “the greenhouse effect,” the image was clear in my 12-year old mind: people enclosed in a glass structure, heating up like tomatoes coaxed to ripen.”
Well, I can understand a 12 year old envisioning the Green House Effect that way, but as a supposedly “adult scientist”, I would think it would be important to point out that isn’t exactly the way it works.
Unless he meant his 12-year old mind is enclosed in a glass structure and he isn’t absorbing any new information?
Dunno.
LOL
I have fond childhood memories of sledding in Delaware. All winter long, it was white and cold. Except it probably wasn’t because Delaware is not a particularly Northern state. It’s just that I only remember the parts that stand out. I was 8 after all. Meanwhile, Brooklyn gets its fair share of snow too.
I let my subscription to Scientific American lapse about 15 years ago after they “blamed” the end of the last ice age on agriculture. In the time since, it’s remarkable how stable the climate has been considering how unstable the climate is.