NEW STUDY: CLIMATE GROUPTHINK LEADS TO A DEAD END
London, 21 February: A new report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) shows that both the science and policy of the climate debate are shaped and driven by an almost flawless example of classical Groupthink.
Written by one of Britain’s leading newspaper columnists Christopher Booker, the report is based on research by Professor Irving Janis, the American psychologist who is famous for his theory of “Groupthink”. But as Booker explains, Janis never looked at the application of his theory outside the policy areas he was interested in:
“Janis’s focus was on decision-making in the foreign policy arena. However, as soon as you look, you see that his ideas apply elsewhere. The climate debate is a case in point – all of the characteristic ‘rules’ of groupthink are there: warmist ideas can’t be tested against reality, and so to ensure they are upheld as the truth, they have to be elevated into a ‘consensus’ and anyone who challenges them must be crushed. These are precisely the features that Janis used to define Groupthink.”
So just as Groupthink led to the policy disasters of Pearl Harbour, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam war, attempts to suppress serious debate of climate science and the policies that are being promoted as solutions are leading to irrational behaviour, costly policy blunders and corruption on an unprecedented scale. This will only end when groupthink eventually bumps up against reality.
As Booker puts it in his conclusions:
“Every South Sea Bubble ends in a crash. Every form of Groupthink eventually has its day. This is invariably what happens when human beings get carried along by the crowd, simply because they have lost the urge or ability to think for themselves.”
Christopher Booker: Global Warming – A Case Study in Groupthink (pdf)
The book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes is available on Amazon (out of print, but used editions are available)
This whole groupthink/echo chamber thing is insidious and frustrating to deal with.
Since retiring I have spent many hours studying climate change and global warming. I’ve dug into IPCC reports and read numerous books and papers. I am a skeptic.
I have 2 degrees in Oceanography and Meteorology and 40 yrs. industry work experience in Marine and Ocean engineering.
I have 2 grown sons that are very successful in business, 4 very bright grandkids in University and 2 in High School. All of them buy the groupthink. None of them have spent anytime trying to understand the science and policy issues. When I try to engage them in discussion on climate change they turn off and are dismissive. I send them books and articles and videos and they don’t even look at them. They think their dimwitted teachers know it all and I am just old and irrelevant. Makes me want to scream.
Mark –
Maybe we have had to lived through an experience of groupthink and have had to witnessed its consequences to recognise it.
My own learning experience involved the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand. It was awful. Many of my age group in NZ learnt a lot from that.
Regards
M
I think the True Believers hang on to their beliefs very hard. Even very intelligent people can get caught up in groupthink. I think human beings have a natural tendency to go along with the group and society/politics puts pressure on them to do so. Skeptics are the exception to the rule.
Don’t be so sure.
Yes – I would agree that a goodly number of skeptics are influenced by an atmosphere of groupthink which shows in political bias. Not all here care about the fascinating science addressing the topic, as it unfolds
Regards
M
If it is true that the majority of those of us who read this blog is to partake (in some fashion) in its scientific approach to the question at hand, what do you suppose then is the reason for most of us to be here?
A fascinating and well conceived essay. Mr. Booker has certainly presented a masterful case for the insanity found in the climate debate.
I must point out that the author himself is not immune to the affliction he so wonderfully fleshes out. He refers to the communist furor of the 1950s in the US and continues the group think that Joseph McCarthy somehow created a witch hunt mentality that was unfounded in reality. He refers to the Senate Un-American Activities Committee and Mr. McCarthy’s involvement. It was actually the House UAC that was active before McCarthy was elected to the Senate, and Sen. McCarthy focused on a limited list of individuals in the US State Department, Department of the Treasury and the Pentagon. That list of some 80 persons has proven to be correct and history has vindicated his claims as presented. Yet groupthink still associates him with the larger hysteria that originated before he began his investigations.
This should serve as notice that none of us are beyond the effects of mob mentality.
“This should serve as notice that none of us are beyond the effects of mob mentality.”
That’s right. I actually got caught up in mob mentality and a riot outside a music arena in Honolulu one night, and noone was more surprised about it than me. It came right out of the blue.
I always considered myself objective and in control but when this riot started up I found myself physically and mentally caught up in it. Not to the point that I did anything stupid, but enough to demonstrate to me that “mob mentality” is a very real thing and can sweep you along with it before you know it. A place where emotions can easily get out of control, especially if you think you have the moral highground (whether you do or not).
My one and only riot was a very strange experience.
It took me the best part of two days to read Chris Bookers article.
Your comments lack the local groupspeak, and are considered enough for me to believe you have actually read the article. Thanks.
Now will the rest of you do as the article urges, stick to the science, not the politics…_
I suggest that the large consensus supporting the invasion of Iraq is a better example of group think than Pearl Harbour. A number of wise men with extensive foreign policy experience were saying “Don’t do this”. They were ignored
Regards
M
The reference to Pearl Harbor refers to the smaller group of policy makers that permitted the attack on Pearl, indeed set the stage for it.
Coincidentally, I posted this just yesterday. Charles Mackay said it 177 years ago in 1841.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/19/climate-alarmism-is-still-bizarre-dogmatic-intolerant/comment-page-1/#comment-2748200
[excerpt]
Some reading material is included below for those who are worried about very-scary global warming.
The hypothesis of “catastrophic manmade global warming” is already disproved by actual earth-scale data since ~1940, where atmospheric CO2 has increased while temperature has gone down, up and sideways.
The hypothesis of “catastrophic manmade climate change” is so vague it is unscientific – it is the hypo that increasing CO2 causes everything – warmer, colder, wetter, drier, windier, etc. etc. It is drivel.
CO2, “the miracle molecule”, aka “the destroyer of worlds” – actually the basis for life on Earth.
Regards to all, Allan
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF SIR KARL POPPER
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-85729-950-5_18
Sir Karl Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of science in the twentieth century and probably of all time. He proposed that a scientific theory could not be proved but could be disproved or falsified. He claimed that ‘It must be possible for a scientific system to be refuted by experience. A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Every “good” scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is’ (Popper 1963).
RICHARD FEYNMAN ON THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD (1964)
at 0:39/9:58: ”If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.”
At 4:01/9:58: “You can always prove any definite theory wrong.”
At 6:09/9:58: “By having a vague theory, it’s possible to get either result.”
__________________________________________________________________________
“EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS” Charles Mackay (1841)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
Quotations
“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, and one by one.”
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.”
“How flattering to the pride of man to think that the stars on their courses watch over him, and typify, by their movements and aspects, the joys or the sorrows that await him! He, in less proportion to the universe than the all-but invisible insects that feed in myriads on a summer’s leaf are to this great globe itself, fondly imagines that eternal worlds were chiefly created to prognosticate his fate.”
“We go out of our course to make ourselves uncomfortable; the cup of life is not bitter enough to our palate, and we distill superfluous poison to put into it, or conjure up hideous things to frighten ourselves at, which would never exist if we did not make them.”
“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”
Digger – above is the science that you ask us to “stick to” and you choose to ignore:
The hypothesis of “catastrophic manmade global warming” is already disproved by actual earth-scale data since ~1940, where atmospheric CO2 has increased while temperature has gone down, up and sideways.
The upper-bound estimate of Transient Climate Sensitivity of ~1C/(2xCO2) by Christy and McNider (2017) is highly credible for the satellite period from ~1979 to mid-2017. This maximum climate sensitivity is so low that there is NO credible global warming crisis.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf
The hypothesis of “catastrophic man-made climate change” is so vague it is unscientific – it is the hypo that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes everything – warmer, colder, wetter, drier, windier, etc. etc. It falsely alleges that CO2 is the “miracle molecule” that can cause everything that frightens the chronically fearful. In summary, it is utter drivel.