Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Psychology Today contributors Sara Gorman, Ph.D., MPH, and Jack M. Gorman, MD, psychologists are united in their determination to help climate “deniers” face the need for urgent climate action to prevent imminent human extinction, though they are uncertain about how to deliver group therapy to millions of people in the same session.
Climate Change Denial
Facing a reality too big to believe.Posted Jan 12, 2019
Sara Gorman, Ph.D., MPH, and Jack M. Gorman, MD
Denying to the Grave…
But there are also many points that are clear and not subject to legitimate debate. We can affirm without doubt that anthropogenic climate change is a real phenomenon that is already apparent and will, if not mitigated, cause terrible suffering and destruction before this century is over. A recent report from the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us we can still hope to avert some of the catastrophic consequences of climate change, but only if we “abandon coal and other fossil fuels in the next decade or two.” Scientists may disagree about how fast the atmosphere is warming or what the best solutions are, but except for a small number of outliers, none doubt that we are rapidly approaching climate catastrophe.
That a few misguided politicians believe climate change predictions are exaggerated or even fabricated is lamentable. But perhaps more puzzling is the lack of alarm among the general public. As monumental hurricanes lash out in Houston and Puerto Rico and California forests burn out of control, it would seem that the evidence that climate scientists are right would be clear enough. Almost annually meteorologists tell us we have just experienced the warmest year in recorded history. Yet even people who experience extreme weather events often still refuse to report the experience as a manifestation of climate change. Polls tell us that many people are worried about climate change, but that does not seem to motivate much willingness to take action to mitigate it. Others deny that climate change is either occurring at all or that it represents any significant threat to civilization.
…
Too Large to Believe
Among the myriad reasons that we shun this problem is its enormity. We aren’t “merely” being told that unless we take action our identities will be stolen, we will lose thousands of dollars, or even that it will take a few years off our lives. What the climate scientists are telling us is that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels the human race faces extinction. The fact is that many people born this year will not survive global warming if it continues at the current pace and exceeds 3.50C by 2050.
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Climate change denial is in some ways a new mental process for psychologists to understand. Of course, the concept of denial itself is well understood. Psychologists consider denial—the refusal to accept facts in order to protect us from uncomfortable truths—to be a primitive defense mechanism.
But despite the fact that psychologists know a lot about denial, they have never had to face denial on this scale before. Millions of people share the phenomenon of climate denial. This is clearly not something that is amenable to individual or even group psychotherapy.
…
Organizations like Climate Psychiatry Alliance and Climate Psychology Alliance have been formed not only to point out the severe consequences of climate change for emotional and behavioral health but also to lend expertise in determining how best to overcome climate change denial. For these and similar organizations, climate change denial constitutes an emergency that demands immediate attention. We need urgent attention to developing and implementing the best practices for overcoming public despair and inaction and increasing the motivation to demand large-scale climate change mitigation action.
Read more: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201901/climate-change-denial
If Dr. Sara Gorman and Dr. Jack Gorman had even the most basic grasp of the science, they would know that the “current rate” of global warming, between 1-2C / century depending on how you measure it, is not even remotely on track to hit 3.5C by 2050. An enormous acceleration of the current rate of warming would be required to hit 3.5C by 2050.
The evidence for imminent climate catastrophe is far from unequivocal.
Even the IPCC leaves room for doubt about the significance of global warming. The IPCC’s lower bound climate sensitivity of 1.5C warming / doubling of atmospheric CO2 would make global warming a complete non-event, even if we burned every scrap of recoverable fossil fuel on the planet.
There is substantial peer reviewed evidence climate sensitivity is even lower than the 1.5C lower bound provided by the IPCC.
By making unsupported assertions about climate science and the future fate of the human race, and by attempting to dispel legitimate doubts about the urgency of the alleged climate crisis, in my opinion Dr. Sara Gorman and Dr. Jack Gorman are potentially doing unspeakable harm to the lives and wellbeing of people within their sphere of influence. Let us hope Sara and Jack realise the enormity of their error.
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http://www.psychsearch.net/psychiatrist-jack-m-gorman-admits-sex-with-patient/
Head shot looks the same.
If you can “affirm without doubt” a proposition, you are asserting a proposition about religious faith.
Climate change, a/k/a Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, is a religious faith. The “psychologists” are writing an apocalypse, in the same fashion as John of Patmos wrote an Apocalypse known in the English speaking world as the Book of Revelation. This is a religious, not a scientific activity.
Science is a method of doubt. All propositions in science are subject to doubt and to revision. 350 years after Newton, scientists are still doing research, theoretical and empirical, on gravity. That is science. Affirming without doubt is religion.
BTW. Where did they get 3.5°C by 2050 from? I didn’t think that RCP 8.5 projected anything that high.
Yes, “climate science” in the mainstream has devolved into nothing more than a secular religion.
AGW is not Science: Your name says it and it is true. Climate change a/k/a AGW is not Science, but it is a religion.
Of course the Gormans didn’t actually read the IPCC report. Instead they quoted a “science” article from a left-wing publication (the Atlantic Magazine). If you really want to hurl just take a look at some of the irresponsible “climate” articles they’ve written recently:
https://www.theatlantic.com/search/?q=climate
How about a good slap in the face reality check with real data.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
http://climate4you.com/images/ArgoTimeSeriesTemp59N.JPG
http://climate4you.com/images/OceanTemp0-800mDepthAt59Nand30-0W.gif
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_February_2018_v6.jpg
Feel better now? And you didn’t have to take, prescribe, or sell any opioids in the process.
Actually no, I feel worse – the cooling oceans indicate climate cooling ahead, and it is cooling, not warming, climate that is alarming. Of course, all we can do about it is adapt to the changes, just like in a warming climate.
Can you say, ‘re-education’?
The human race faces extinction. The fact is that many people born this year will not survive global warming if it continues at the current pace
Lets be honest, this script has been thrown out a thousand times
Behavior-based extinction, perhaps – what with crippling energy, food production, pesticides, all with the frequently stated goal of 90% population reduction.
The real danger has always been what warmists will do to save us from their own imagined threat.
This is another example of “The Great Bifurcation.” Scientists write papers to fit a warming trend that are dutifully called “dangerous” while acolytes warn of impending doom and catastrophe. The scientists never correct the doomsayers because… why would they. They’re helping raise the alarm. If there is smoke in the building, you don’t criticize the person saying the fire tornado apocalypse is upon you, so you must therefore leave the building.
The actual warming level is whatever one justifies windmills, new taxes, and transfer payments,
Eric,
You should probably correct the title and body of this posting. While Jack undoubtedly has the credentials to qualify as a “psychologist” his daughter Sara most definitely does not.
“Sara earned an MPH in Health Policy and Management from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and a PhD in English literature from Harvard University. She also holds a Masters in English literature from Oxford University. She graduated with a B.A. in English and Psychology, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.” https://segorman.com/
Perhaps your title should be:
A Psychologist and His English Lit PhD Daughter “Affirm without a doubt” Imminent Climate Catastrophe While Promoting Their 3 Year Old Book in Psychology Today.
I disagree with one aspect Jack is an MD, and from his bio, has been a professor of Psychiatry, not Psychology. I do agree that the article should be re-titled.
I think its just a father/daughter thing.
Sounds like just what you need in order to get out of town quickly.
Using the IPCC as Biblical prophecy, without examining its fundamental basis, otherwise considerably intelligent people can unknowingly choose to look through tainted intellectual glasses to endorse a religion that they cannot know is a religion, because they are blind in a critical part of their mind.
This is fragmentation of knowledge gone seriously awry (i.e., “specialization” separated from the fundamentals of another field, to the point of creating specialized idiots)
These “psychologists” are simply activists who are part of a “groupthink” fiasco. They think they’re the “smartest people in the room” and won’t admit that the state of “climate science” is just not as credible as other academic fields. Anyone who has seen Anthony’s reports on the decrepit state of surface temperature measurement stations in the U.S. can see that it was never intended to influence policy. No one ever dreamed that the AGW nut cases would come into existence. It’s an absurd situation, really. Could you imagine doing medical procedures based on such a faulty diagnostic tool? Never.
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
These are the 5 stages of human coping with bad news like climate change.
The authors of this paper are at stage 5, and lament that many are still at stage 1. Their position is denial of the teaching of their own profession.
Healthy people are supposed to be allowed to cope at their own speed. The two authors now propose to turn their profession on its head by proposing everyone cope at the authors speed.
I have 2 questions for the Gormans:
“What is your confidence level, we can successfully create a global, CO2 neutral, market friendly society? If we can establish this society, what is your confidence it will stop climate change?”
And so it begins! When the “consensus” of psychologists and psychiatrists come together to declare “climate denial” as a mental sickness, the politicians will have all they need to begin “treatment” of the disorder!
Postmodernism at its best!
Actually, the Soviet Union was doing that 70 years ago.
For my not so bold prediction of the day, I predict more alarmists will seek out their services than “deniers”. Best to focus on your core market, quacks.
“… cause terrible suffering and destruction before this century is over. A recent report from the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us we can still hope to avert some of the catastrophic consequences of climate change, but only if we “abandon coal and other fossil fuels in the next decade or two.” ”
Slight rearranging of the above words:
“… if we abandon coal and other fossil fuels in the next decade or two, this will cause terrible suffering and destruction.”
Political Climate (PC), perhaps.
This is a dangerous notion. We know from history that many medical professionals easily slid from ethical to monstrous, and murderous behavior to curry favor from rising authoritarian / totalitarian regimes. It was a common practice in the old Soviet Union for dissidents who were too well known to just shoot, to be labelled insane, and imprisoned.
The American Psychologists Association (APA) has been at this sort of brainwashing for years. Ten years ago they stated: “Psychologists need to examine the attitudes and behaviors in the wider context of beliefs about environmental and social change. … developing an international agenda for psychology and climate change.”
See: http://appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/AGW_Psychology.htm#us_apa
The hysterics are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
A couple united in producing one Lew Paper.
Dilbert did a cartoon that covers this.
“Yes you are batshit crazy”.
Thomas Szaz comes to mind,back in the last century he mocked his own “profession” as they were attempting to define all human activity as clinically deranged.
Nice to see this lovely couple confirm nothing has changed.
I wonder when the scientific method will become fashionable again?
As long as the IPCC only has a mandate to assess manmade climate change, and not natural climate change, there will be many difficulties in finding out what is going on in the atmosphere and oceans. How can we sort out which aspects are caused by humans, if we don’t first know what natural causes (without humans) is doing? This has nothing to do with psychology, it has to do with geophysics. These guys are trying to find a cure to an ailment that does not exist. They’re not out on a branch even, as the tree they are sitting is does not exist.
Mental Defectives in need of psychological “deprogramming. Unhinged and hysterical, they can’t comprehend the possibility that THEY are asylum “patients” gazing out at a sea of ‘normal’ people.
Happy to be counted among the “small number of outliers” and be “stuck” with the unadjusted measured data rather than hang with the 97% of “consensus” models (and the aggregates of the same) that are not even close to demonstrating/predicting reality.
Psychologists are notorious for the irreproducability of their research. The are frequently guilty of p-hacking, stopping their study when they get the “right” answer, wishful thinking, implausible conclusions, and wild speculation. They have now declared masculinity to be problematic. They cannot make heads nor tails out of proper treatment for depression or schizophrenia. For them to be confident of climate change being a catastrophe does not inspire confidence in me at all.
They’re also quite frequently responsible for releasing mentally ill criminals who commit crimes.
All due to “science” of course…
My only concern is that as CAGW is a one-world socialist production, and as socialists have used psychology as a political weapon in nearly every occurrence of such governance, pronouncements such as this will be used as rationale to round up dissenters in institutions to “cure their obvious psychological problems”. In these benevolent state institutions, such treatments as full lobotomies and high dose electroshock therapy will be employed to bring about compliance and make the patients good world citizens.
1984 was prophecy, and The Brave New World shall come to pass. Only deniers of the “true state of evolved man” see these as warnings and not handbooks for right-thinking governance!
(Do I need a big /SARC here?)
Yes, but the world described by Huxley in “Brave New World” IS here, or at least quite a bit of it.
I have to mention this to people who moan on about how we are in a dystopian-like 1984 society, when in fact, its just the opposite.
“1984” was set in a grim future where few smiled and everyone toiled in endless misery. And loved it, of course.
“Brave New World” was full of light, and endless fun and partying, etc. Everyone was stoked on soma (i.e., smart devices), played ridiculous games (Angry Birds, etc.), etc.
Turns out the entire world was being run by a clique of elites who didn’t trust anyone else with ideas and forced everyone into a stratified social system…
It makes sense to me that a global PR effort would turn to psychologists as their ally since marketing and psychology majors go together. In this case it’s in the name of bad public policy, but then the Marlboro Man was not exactly created for the best of health to everyone including GIs and the Greatest Generation saving the world from evil.
Psychologists “Affirm Without Doubt” the Evidence for Imminent Climate Catastrophe?
Based on what? All of the IPCC models and reports have overestimated observed cLIEmate UNchange buy factors of 3 to 5. Their affirmation/ appeal to their own authority is as worthless as a fraudulently adjusted temperature record. Pick one.
This proclamation will only convince those already in the cLIEmate Choir.
The alarmists aren’t bringing out the A team, science-wise this week.
I mean, psychologists AND philosophers? Wow, that’s one entire math course over 8 collective years of college…*.
* Yeah, I know, math and philosophy have gone together in the past, but these days? Kinda like the split between astrology and astronomy.