Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Psychology Today author Patricia Prijatel thinks the silence of Germans oppressed by the NAZIs is comparable to not talking about the alleged dangers of anthropogenic climate change.
Can We Break the Spiral of Silence on Climate Change?
There’s only one way to find out: Talk about it
Posted Mar 30, 2018
Patricia Prijatel
What can ordinary people do to combat the extraordinary problem of climate change? Talk, and keep on talking. Yet, that’s a step some of us are reluctant to take.
According to a report by the Yale Program on Climate Change(link is external), 69 percent of respondents in the United States believe global warming is happening, and 56 percent are worried about it. But (link is external)fewer than a third of those (link is external)ever talk about it to family or friends. Why not? Often because nobody else is talking about it.
The Spiral of Silence
Researchers call this the spiral of silence, a term coined by researcher Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann(link is external) to explain why Germans did not talk about the rise of Hitler and his related atrocities before and during World War II. They echoed the silence around them. Meanwhile, those in support of the Third Reich spoke loud and clear. In so doing, they controlled the discussion, no matter how many people might have disagreed with their opinions. Because the pro-Hitler voices were heard most, they were accepted as public opinion. Early in Hitler’s rise to power, when talking could have done the most to change history, those who broke the silence were faced with social isolation. Later, of course, breaking the silence could be deadly.
This has clear application in our current political climate, although fortunately the risks of speaking out don’t include concentration camps. Those who talk loudest now deny climate change, or at least the human involvement in it, calling it a natural progression of eon’s old environmental change. This makes it appear that climate change denial is a more popular sentiment than climate change acceptance. It is not. According to the Yale program, only 34 percent of those surveyed (link is external)in the U.S. deny the role of humans in global warming. Yet, those who have both the science and public opinion on their side remain astonishingly quiet.
…
What a bizarre conflation of ideas.
Scientists who criticise climate dogma sometimes face serious risks to their careers. For example, Peter Ridd is facing a lawsuit because he defied a gag order from James Cook University in Australia, after he criticised climate hype.
Outside academia, where there are real penalties for criticising the scientific claims of colleagues, I suspect the reason most people don’t discuss climate change is most people find it boring.
Please tell Cook, who likes to dress up as a N@zi, to quit talking about CACA so much.
Australian cartoonist, founder of “Skeptical Science” site, John Cook, in case the character needs to be IDed.
Shades of “Smiling Albert” Kesselring:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lbw90JPZq6Q/U3B9roVxLAI/AAAAAAAABJ4/swCjiaMzqFk/s1600/Herr+Cook.gif
Could not be photoshopped, no way.
It’s not.
Or, if it is, the SS staff did it themselves:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/06/skeptcial-science-takes-creepy-to-a-whole-new-level/
Tom,
The lighting on the grey-scale image of the uniform comes from the right,
whereas the lighting on the full-color image of the face comes directly from the front, probably from a flash mounted on the camera.
From that fact alone it should be evident, to even the poorly-trained eye, that the image in question was, in fact, “photoshopped”.
Open your eyes! 🙂
My comment was lacking the /sarc that at least one person apparently needed. Sorry for the confusion.
We should not associate Cook with Albert Kesselring. Kesselring was a highly competent, and as far as I know honorable, professional military officer. There are plenty of incompetent and dishonorable Nazis to make the association. Kesselring was Luftwaffe not SS.
“Smiling Albert” had just a medical issue of malfunctioning facial nerves. He was a competent and capable officer. Our dear friend, the 97% Cook, has a mental issue, Lord Monckton et al proved him being notorious for bending facts.
A close look reveals that this is a photoshop job. OTOH, maybe it was done by Cook himself. Who else would have done it? If it as a “denier” he would have howled to the sky.
The evidence?
– The noise structure of the face and uniform are different
– The contrast range of the face and uniform are different.
– Where his hair meets the background, you can see that the color of the hair and background is different. The face is warmer (redder) than the background
– The line across the bill of the hat is unnaturally sharp. It should have noise.
– At the back upper right hand side of the white collar, you can see where an erasure mistake was made.
Yes, bizarre
A peek inside the little parallel universe that tenured academics often call normal thinking.
More of a vortex than a spiral I’d say after observing higher ed from the support side during my career.
No analogy too inappropriate….
There’s silence about climate change? THERE’S SILENCE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?!
Just tell me where. Please. Can I get tickets there?
+97
LOL!
The propaganda is non-stop 24/7.
And has been for 30 years. Apparently that’s not enough.
Then there’s this, “Those who talk loudest now deny climate change … ”
On what planet is this woman living?
Certainly not Earth, where the climate alarmists, and only the climate alarmists, have been screeching to the sky for 30 years.
She apparently believes that people are afraid, to the point of intimidation, to let it be known that they agree with the official government position.
I am actually laughing out loud at Prijatel’s stupidity; here at work.
Real reasons people do not talk about climate change:
– it’s incomprehensible.
– it’s Partizan. One person’s climate science is another’s flat earth dogma.
– uncertain knowledge. Climate is a complex, multi-faceted subject. Most of us non-‘climate scientists‘ don’t know enough to say anything for sure.
– it’s a minefield. Say the wrong thing and you could lose all your Democrat friends, have your Republican friends poke fun at you, and/or have any green friends in shout hate speech at you.
– talking about climate could lose you your job
– it’s boring because it’s oblique (e.g. proxies!), complex (e.g. statistical photon absorption behaviour of a trace atmospheric gas will bring catastrophe, or not), …
– most climate discussion is not about climate. It’s a proxy to discuss how humanity must be shackled because we are evil; at least that’s how most alarmists put it over.
– only Democrats, who’ve reduced complex climate issues to ‘Carbon Pollution’ want to talk about it but who would want to talk to them?
Is this psycho serious????
It’s Super Cereal, man.
i would love to talk about climate change. The problem is that the the other 68 % that believe in it like a religion were taught in school that it was true so they dont bother to talk about it. They refuse to debate it at any great length because they lose every argument. Then at the end they walk away saying Yah but Antarctica is melting . Well Antarctica isnt melting
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/ross-ice-shelf-bore-antarctica-freezing/?beta=true
They refuse to debate it at any great length because they lose every argument.
you have different experiences to me, I don’t find they argue so much as bellow chanting points and when you start using numbers their eyes glaze and they get a look which suggests their either going to cry, beat me upside the head or scream ‘I can count to potato! before they stomp off in a huff muttering moron under their breath at me.
This is yet another call for climate scientists to stage a public debate where they defend their ideas.
Let them talk!
Let them explain how they distinguish manmade warming from natural changes.
Speak loud. Say why the uncertainty in climate sensitivity hasn’t decreased in 30 years. Explain why the theory can’t be improved by faster computers, more monitoring buoys at sea and lots of new satellites. The public wants the omerta to be broken.
Shout it from the rooftops. The world warmed in the first half of the 20th century. The world warmed in the second half of the 20th century. And the warming rate was just the same despite the far greater CO2 emissions in the latter half. Talk about that!
Please, talk about that.
Thank you, Court.
We need to talk and read and examine and so forth.
Wish we could, but here in the U.S. folks that do not agree with the “settled science” are shouted down and villified.
Best bet is talk with your grandkids and assure them that the “science is not settled” Discuss the “scientific method” and quote Eintstein and others about just one bad experiment could trash the “settled science”.
Gums sends…
The enema within.
Perhaps some, or at least one of them, would explain why it is that on the spagetti plots of computer models versus the instrument impiracal temperatures there is just one computer model that comes even reasonably close to tracking the empiracal data that is read by balloon and satellite borne instruments.
It is very boring because there’s nothing happening.
Exactly. We’re at a point where most people have noticed that there’s nothing really to notice.
In other words pay CC lip service and then you can go on using fossil fuels, hey at least you did the good work of talking about it and telling others to lead humble, low carbon life styles, so you get a free pass.
Liberals are generally about talk—no action. Ask the DACA kids.
Liberals think nothing of adding $trillion of debt every year, but are horrified by adding 2 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere. Let’s have a conversation about that..putting things in perspective. The debt bomb is much worse than any possible (unproven) problem from doubling CO2 in the next 100 years. Subsidizing oostly, ineffecient, intermittent and non-dispatchable wind and solar “energy” does nothing for global warming and adds substantially to the debt problem.
“Liberals think nothing of adding $trillion of debt every year”
..
Trump just signed a tax cut and a spending bill that will increase debt by well over $trillion per year. That makes him liberal right?
The fact that Trump is not and never was a conservative has been obvious for decades.
He’s not a socialist, which for some is enough to declare him a extreme conservative.
The problem is that’s it’s NOT a free pass! It’s a pass that’s costing society trillions of dollar$ wasted on ridiculous pseudo-science & bogus alternative energy projects!
And, of course, governments everywhere are complicit in this unbelievable scam since it allows them to impose all manner of taxes on a brainwashed population in the name of “Saving The Planet”
This CAGW nonsense is the greatest tax grab ever and most people have been conned into supporting it because it’s the politically- correct thing to do.
I’d rather that academics worried more about the much more immediate effects of poorly designed climate policy.
“69 percent of respondents in the United States believe global warming is happening”….
…and the rest told them to piss off and hung up…..operative word “respondents”
Or just redefine ‘respondents’… certain poll replies may not meet the criteria or be beyond the scope of the survey, so may have to be discarded. But it can’t be 100% and 97% is now discredited, so let’s use, oh, say… 69%.
And yet it was a none-issue in the presidential election, as it was in many other elections across the world.
69 % of respondents believe in climate change. So what? A large percentage of people believe in the tenets of religions all the way from Buddhism to Pastafarianism that are mutually contradictory. If you asked the average climate believer to explain the basic scientific principles behind his belief, he wouldn’t be able to do so. Therefore, just like a religious belief, it is accepted as handed down without any questioning on the part of the believer. As a climate sceptic, I have thought about the belief long and hard, I understand the basic physics, my doubts are founded on the fact that AGW is an unfalsifiable conjecture and is therefore no better than a guess. The warming we have experienced is well within the range of natural variation. It can be explained statistically by a random walk approach. The mathematical models used to forecast future warming are running too hot by a factor of two or three. Wake me up when some real science happens.
Isn’t “unfalsifiable conjecture” pretty much the definition of “religion”?
I don’t think anyone actually believes in Pastafarianism, it’s just a parody of actual religions.
Oh, I don’t know. It was the religion of that great Italian chef, Al Dente. Too bad he died recently. Just pasta way.
And a full-body eye-roll for Mr. Kelly.
Tooth!
How well do you reckon this Patricia Prijatel could explain climate science? Or the mathematics of a statistical “random walk.”
Did anything else come out of the twentieth century that was nearly as strange as “climate change” dogma?
Well it is delightful of you to drop in Patricia. I would be delighted to talk. Let us talk about our beliefs shall we. Why, for example do you believe that climate change is dangerous? Let us talk evidence here. You must have evidence for your beliefs or else they are just prejudices. Backed up perhaps by that common fallacy, an appeal to authority. So, don’t be shy, tell me your evidence. Then we can discuss it.
Very unlikely she will agree to have a chat to us. It’s a hard choice, hypocrite or idiot. Even psychology pseudo-professors struggle with these real world dilemmas.
+97
I’d like to send her a list of all the big-name panic-mongers who have backed out of a debate with a skeptic after agreeing to one.
Steve Borodin – March 30, 2018 at 2:43 pm
If the author of the above cited article, Patricia Prijatel, is in fact a Degreed Psychologist or Psychiatrist, then ya gotta remember that most everyone engaged in those professions are avid believers and practitioners of the claims and ideas of a late 19th Century heroin addicted author named Sigmund Freud, …….. and thus it isn’t surprising that she would also be an avid believer in the “junk science” of AGW.
The N@zi-like behavior is by CACA-spewers who want to silence Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism skeptics.
As I have stated on this site before, there is no public discussion of climate change in Britain, by order of the BBC. The only outlets available to climate sceptics are the internet and books. Meanwhile, the climateers still seem to be making a lot of noise over here.
There you have it.those who make noise must be nazi’s. 1010 no pressure.
So let me get this straight the Nazis and their supporters were drowning out anyone disagreeing with them and therefore the lies which they were attempting to pass and were winning out. All that one needs to do today is see which group is the loudest and attempting to shut down opposing opinions in order to determine which group is attempting to emulate the Nazis. After doing that then one of the next questions will be to attempt to determine which of the Nazis’s tactics will be used to further their cause. By doing so perhaps it will be possible to take proactive steps to counter this group and shed some light on them.
I will deny forever that I have a degree in psychology and in any way would associate with these fascists.
At one time, psychology actually resembled science. Now it’s just a club for the government to take away people’s rights.
I guess this is what they do in their off hours in between data mining to manipulate.
The words “cognitive dissonance” spring to mind concerning how this lady got to her conclusion having considered the facts of the matter.
Hang on, to get to her conclusion must mean that she didn’t check the facts, she just accepted the dogma. Because if she’d even superficially checked the facts she couldn’t support her conclusion. We appear to be seeing the results of predetermination based on bias.
Predetermination of the end result, while it’s common in Climate Science, is not scientifically rigorous behavior Ms. Prijatel !
As circular reasoning gets more and more tuned to itself, it spirals inward and eventually collapses into fallacy under the pressure of outside influences.
A psych professor engaging in projection.How perversely appropriate.
Wold that be astral projection?
Maybe with a different spelling of the first word.
“Looking for Trenberth’s missing heat.”
“Hey, it’s the same place they found all the catastrophic proctnostications!”
‘Climate Projection(s)’ can mean different things.
All wrapped up in himself, I see….
The cold and snow this last winter in the northern US states, as well as much of Europe, must challenge some of the hardest global warmist … you’d think. If not, there’s next winter.
and the one after that……
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
I apologise for derailing this politico-psychology thread by raising a more scientific point, but the chart above contains, to my untutored eye, an apparent absence . The El Ninos of the last 20 years . although a Pacific Ocean phenomenon have an effect stretching far and wide to judge from mean global temperatures.
But it does not seem to be very obvious in the chart of NAtlantic SSTs. Is this to be expected ?
BTW I said “mean global temperature” , should I have said : “global mean temperature”. I suspect that there would be a difference.
Reductio ad Hitlerum
Some comparisons to Hitler are valid arguments, as the Wankerpedia states.
People are insignificant. ice sheets over a mile thick disappeared before industrial age. Polatitions & academics feel they don’t get paid enough(who does)And are very clever about diverting resources to DC to be redistributed. YOU CAN’T CONTROL THE WEATHER! Not even that good at predicting the weather.
Patricia Prijatel should see a shrink; – – sorry a doctor.
This is not psychology, Patricia Prijatel. It is politically bigoted hate speech that must be ‘called out’ as such.
You are advocating and applying the same propaganda techniques used so successfully by the Socialist Democrat party of 1930’s Germany.
Psychological analysis has been applied to CAGW theory, to wit the life cycle of a psychological theory.
1 – The Flashy Finding
2 – The Fawning Replications
3 – A Consensus Forms
4 – The Rebuttal
5 – Proper Replications Pour in
6 – Zombie Theory Lives On
link
The confounding factor here is government funding and political pressure. If it weren’t for that, CAGW theory would now be well into the zombie phase.
Climate Science 1984; When Science Becomes a Tool of Tyranny
Amazon Prime has Orwell’s 1984 available, and if you haven’t seen to, or better yet, read the book, it is well worth the effort. I’ve mentioned many times that many use Rand, Orwell, Huxley, and Vonnegut as warnings, others use them as instruction manuals. After refreshing my memory by watching the movie, I find it … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/climate-science-1984/