Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to New Zealand Academic David Hall, climate deniers actually accept the climate crisis on some level, but can’t face reality.
Climate explained: why some people still think climate change isn’t real
David HallSenior Researcher in Politics, Auckland University of Technology
October 9, 2019 5.56am AEDTWhy do people still think climate change isn’t real?
At its heart, climate change denial is a conflict between facts and values. People deny the climate crisis because, to them, it just feels wrong.…
Negating reality
Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna were the great chroniclers of denial. Sigmund described this negation of reality as an active mental process, as “a way of taking cognisance of what is repressed”. This fleeting comprehension is what distinguishes denial from ignorance, misunderstanding or sheer disbelief. Climate change denial involves glimpsing the horrible reality, but defending oneself against it.Contemporary social psychologists tend to talk about this in terms of “motivated reasoning”. Because the facts of climate science are in conflict with people’s existing beliefs and values, they reason around the facts.
When this happens – as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt memorably put it – they aren’t reasoning in the careful manner of a judge who impartially weighs up all the evidence. Instead, they’re reasoning in the manner of a defence lawyer who clutches for post hoc rationalisations to defend an initial gut instinct. This is why brow-beating deniers with further climate science is unlikely to succeed: their faculty of reason is motivated to defend itself from revising its beliefs.
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Undoing denial
In sum, denial is repressed knowledge. For climate change, this repression occurs at both the psychological level and social level, with the latter providing fodder for the former. This is a dismal scenario, but it shines some light on the way forward.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-some-people-still-think-climate-change-isnt-real-124763
What is this awful reality we are supposed to be trying to escape?
If CO2 was a genuine issue, all we would need to do to dramatically cut CO2 emissions is copy the 1970s French nuclear programme. France generates over 70% of their electricity from nuclear. Sweden generates 35-40%. Sweden and France are living proof that going nuclear is affordable, safe and effective; the rest of the world could easily do the same.
Why is the prospect of going nuclear supposed to be so traumatic? I’m a fan of nuclear power. If I thought there was the slightest chance CO2 was a problem, I would be campaigning hard for more nuclear power.
Suggestions that climate skeptics can’t cope with the societal adjustments which would be required to substantially reduce CO2 emissions are lazy intellectual absurdities.
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Interview with a Climate Extinction crank confirms that they have no answers, no solutions and no idea what they’re talking about.
https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1182062423844544513
NZ is aiming for back door Nobel Prize status with this “world class” research effort.
David Hall has no sense of self awareness. His OWN “motivated reasoning” leads him to believe that because HE believes in a global warming catastrophe, deep in their guts everyone ELSE believes in a pending global warming catastrophe.
I guess some of us skeptics can ALSO incorrectly use “motivated reasoning”. Since I know that “catastrophic anthropogenicc global warming” is a scam, deep in my guts I feel that all alarmists not merely ignorant, but are deliberately “runnning a scam”.
Yet more obvious projection from psychiatrists who have no more credibility in judging climate science than a janitor.
The USSR used faux scientific words to declare those opposed to “scientific socialism” as mentally ill.
And in Australia “psychiatrists” claim ten year old children have the maturity to undergo “gender reassignment”.
There is something horribly disgusting in OZ.
In Aus too, on ABC (Who knew?) there is a British TV program called “No more Boy and Girls” all about identifying and removing gender differences in school kids of around 10 or so. It has been aired several times now. It’s pretty disgusting but not unusual for the ABC.
Australia’s Brainwashing Company!
The data says nothing much is happening so we should panic and run around in circles hysterically!
Snow cover extent anomaly trend is unchanged this century. The snowline on average ain’t moving so where is all the terrifying climate change?
The world is flat.
I know that because I saw the Disney Documentary years ago. (Pirates of something or other that look really cool!)
All those who don’t believe the world is flat but a rather a globe instead only believe that because they are afraid of getting crabs. (really big ones!)
What does one call the psychological phenomenon where one sees a chicken running about shrieking “the sky is falling”, then accepts that claim unflinchingly and subsequently joins the chicken in its Armageddon jig while calling out all the unbelievers as deniers.
Leftism.
Raw data massaged to fit theory, so blatantly that it would be fraud if the work of an investment bank. Started by the man responsible for the modern modelling of catastrophic warming too boot. Why wouldn’t you have doubts that they did a proper job of the theory?