Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t John Garrett; According to Princeton psychology professor Elke Weber, lots of people are popping pills to cope with climate anxiety, and more people should raise the issue at Thanksgiving – they will discover their entire family wants climate action.
Coping With The Reality Of Climate Change
August 12, 20214:25 PM ET
Heard on All Things ConsideredNPR’s Audie Cornish speaks with psychologist Elke Weber about the way individuals deal with the threat of climate change.
…
CORNISH: Increasingly, people are dealing directly with the results of climate change – right? – record heat across the country. How do people respond when they’re confronted with the sort of bigness of the issue of climate change? What kinds of emotions can that draw out?
WEBER: It can be incredibly overwhelming, especially among younger people. And so there’s no question that climate anxiety has gone drastically up by contemplation about sort of what kind of world we live in and what kind of a world we might leave to our children and grandchildren. So it’s very debilitating symptoms that oftentimes have to be treated with medication or with psychotherapy.
…
CORNISH: What’s the effect of seeing governments not act quickly or aggressively enough? Is this something that comes up for people when it comes to sort of how they take in the idea of climate change, how they react to it?
WEBER: In psychology, there’s this notion of pluralistic ignorance – that we might be concerned about an issue, but we don’t realize how many other people are also concerned about the issue because oftentimes, when things are polarized and charged, we don’t talk about it. You know, we don’t talk about it at Thanksgiving. If people talked about it more, they would realize that their concern about climate change is actually widely shared. And so therefore, you know, I think there would be more awareness on the part of politicians that many people in their constituencies, you know, sort of do want them to take action.
…
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027198507/coping-with-the-reality-of-climate-change
Going by the last few election, I’m guessing there are a large number of Americans who don’t see climate action as their number one priority. So I think Elke Weber is being a little optimistic about the prospects that everyone will agree, if true believers proselytise about the alleged need for radical climate action at the Thanksgiving table.
I have no doubt climate anxiety is causing real problems. If you brainwash kids into thinking the world is on the brink of destruction, and nobody is doing anything about it, you get a lot of extremely anxious kids – many of whom embrace self destructive choices like taking hard drugs, or lose their minds to large doses of prescribed anti-depressants. What is the point of saving money, getting a better education, planning for the future, if you believe there will be no future?
I do believe the climate crisis narrative is slowly dying, 40 years of predicting the imminent end of the world due to human emissions is wearing a little thin. But the broken lives and human wreckage will remain, long after politicians abandon even the pretence of caring about climate change.
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Just hand over your money, turkey.
Take a knee, beg, good girl, boy, whatever.
girl, boy … could you please find more gender neutral terms. I find such binary role models offensive !!
I identify as a Climate and I will never change.
And you can’t make me.
Nyah, nyah, nyah.
I identify as Climate, and change is my nature, so you can’t make me not change. I always have, and always will
Of course these are the same people who are vaccinated and wearing a mask at home because the NIH director said to. The just aren’t functional people.
I wear my mask 24/7 and I live alone! You get used to it. Although eating and showering are a pain in the a$$. Lost 20 pounds already.
Unless its a properly fitted N-95 mask, you’ve probably already spontaneously generated a mutant Zeta-strain SARS virus and auto-infected yourself.
It’s OK he’s no longer obese, so no more comorbidity.
No. Purposeful ideological corruption of the education system over a few generations is bearing fruit. Isn’t it clear that psychologist Weber himself and his teachers are themselves victims of this corruption.
For goodness sake, don’t send your children to a psychologist under 75yrs old. They’re brainwashing will only be metastasized.
The corruption has destroyed any effectiveness of psychological therapy. They are agents of the harm done. When the 18yr Dreaded Pause resulted in career-ending “Climate Blues” of many climate scientists, neutralized psychologists shamefully only enabled their rationalizations.
Gary, you make a very good point. I have worked in organisations that employ pyschologists and have seen some use their knowledge and role to manipulate people. This is called “gaslighting”.
It is a very dangerous form of mental abuse. Combine this with Critical Race Theory and it is no wonder youth suicide is on the rise.
It’s no wonder violent crimes are on the rise!
That is only the expression in Psychology (and other, connected social sciences) of a wider purposeful ideological corruption of the teaching of the sciences, all sciences. The attack front is much, much wider.
You are correct Joao. Here is a 1970s interview of a Soviet defector who explains how the Soviets are subverting the United States through education. Start at 1:07:30 for a chilling forecast of what society will be like NOW. He even uses the term social justice! The whole interview is interesting but it is long. I hope it reproduces faithfully!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4364&v=HI9PahRmXiM&feature=emb_title
Meh … some people engage in self destructive behavior all the time and forever, always have, and always will … just like climate change. There is always a host of reasons or personal despair, if someone is depressive in the first place. Always.
Get a grip, humanity. Nothing ever changes.
No kidding – the constant barrage of lunatic-level induced paranoia has made ‘mental health’ an oxymoron among true believers.
I wish I could say I was immune, but the truth is, I’m now becoming more afraid of THEM.
There is nothing more dangerous than fear-maddened group-think, encouraged by hate-mongering zealots, who believe they can do no wrong and that their own manifest destiny is to eliminate any and all opposition by ‘any means necessary’ – because THEY are the virtuous.
I honestly still have a hard time believing we’ve really gotten here, even though I’ve been seeing it coming AND shouting out warnings for twenty-five years.
come on man, they already told us the world ends in 7 years now(they said 12 when Trump got elected) 5 years ago.
Remember the ubiquitous “Ban The Nukes” protestors of the 1960s?
When nothing much happened after ~ 30 years of angst, they all just kinda fizzled out.
But by then they had become so addicted to their upside-down Mercedes symbol signs, they took solace in supporting diesel powered Mercs for the rest of their lives.
What about Occupy Wall Street? Ha ha. How long has that one been dead.
I think Black Lives Matter is getting its autopsy as I type
….. and Stop Asian Hate was DOA because of the English language issues (more recently, they need to stick to cardboard signs of two words or less if they need people to get the message).
“climate” seems to be the only cancer of society these freaky loonies have left.
Well, we’ve been in a state of martial law for a year because of covid.
My State has not been locked down during the pandemic. It’s the Democrat-controlled States that are trying to put their people under martial law. I’m glad I don’t live there.
They are making a serious pitch to divide society another way, vaccinated vs unvaccinated.
I agree. The greatest risk is they become so absorbed in their paranoia that they believe they need to take radical steps fix the problem. These people can be very unpredictable.
Let’s hope the Democrats don’t get to field an army of 1.5 million for their Climate Change Corp, with billions in funding.
We know what these Brownshirts are going to be used for. It won’t be about climate change, it will be about silencing the political opposition.
We just had 19 U.S. Senate Useful Idiot Republicans help this radical Democrat process along.
The Darwin duo: leaky masks and non-sterilizing vaccines.
‘Sterilizing’ must have turned into a different meaning without my attention. I know of no vaccine used to sterilize something.
It’s a fine word for neutralizing the virus, as long as nobody decides to inject bleach.
Climate anxiety does not come from climate change — it comes from climate alarmists like Greta … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPnFlUEIy48
Who should be held responsible as she shouts ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre where there is no fire.
Shouting fire is not the problem — it’s how people react — and that’s a direct function of education. The “climate alarmism” education system is at fault, and the politics behind it are the problem … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pYE_F9PhiI
What about a global media network that relentlessly shouts ‘Armageddon’?
Climate change is just one head of the hydra.
Yes, it comes from the climate alarmists and their propaganda machine. Here’s one pointed out by Kip Hansen on these pages a few months ago:
Covering Climate Now
and their Ten Tips
Number Ten: For God’s sake, do not platform climate denialists.
Good grief — very depressing (and very good propaganda) links. Good to know, and just confirms how extensive the “ministry of truth” is. Thanks for the information. That just means we’ll have to do more counter-propaganda (called education) work — such as what the real “red alert” is … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vb7JRK4Yko
and NPR has taken the lead there in instructing media how to push alarmism –
https://coveringclimatenow.org/resource/nprs-climate-guide/#
If you follow the NPR link this one comes up:
Really? Pull my other leg.
Yep, more snails, more wasps, more ticks…
It’s sort of psychobabular nonsense.
Your comment has been discounted because it has a big word in it.
….. which, incidentally, proves that carbon dioxide at these current levels causes global changes in climate parameters that have never been measured, nor ever will be.
Climate change zealots demonstrate their idiocy every day. According to them EVERYTHING is driven by climate change, and they loudly proclaim this no matter how ridiculous they sound. It’s amazing what they can do or say when they are incapable of shame.
Including but not limited to: covid-19, American financial collapse, open borders and toe nail fungus. Scary.
You mean if I stop emitting CO2, it will cure my toe fungus? Count me in!
“All these $Trillions? If it saves just one toe, it will all be worth it.”
(Does that sound about right?)
I”ll donate a toe for a 1% finders fee.Since it’s nice and warm here in the East SF Bay, I’m in shorts and pondering which one. I think it’s gonna be the one with the wonky nail. Where do I send my wire transfer information?
Saving the planet, one toe at a time.
Absolutely. Where shall we send the body?
Yes, definitely, but it may take a few years in your casket to complete the process of eliminating the fungus. Faster if you opt for cremation.
and since the climate is just a set of statistics from the previous 30 years of weather for a given area, their CLAIM is that the PAST controls the future.
Anybody worried about AGW should stop exhaling, right now.
Yep let Darwinian theory take them all.
I’m waiting for legislation from Washington that requires us all to wear carbon sequestration masks over our faces. That way we cover both bases: COVID-19 and climate change.
No such technology as carbon sequestration masks? Try telling that to everybody in Congress who believe the alarmist narrative I’m sure they’ll think of something. /sarc
Lead poisoning will be the next issue.
“If people talked about it more, they would realize that their concern about climate change is actually widely shared.”
I’m appalled at the deep projection onto children of unfounded fears. The psycho-ologist here unfortunately with the same last name as I should turn attention to the study of climate change groupthink amongst self-loathing humans, mostly liberal, who fear life and nature.
There’s a reason people have always complained about the weather, but don’t do anything about it – because we can’t change the weather and climate, it operates naturally as always.
I agree with Eric, the numbers were in last year, Americans put climate worries dead last.
I think if those with climate change anxiety were to talk about it more, they’d find that people are completely disinterested in their concerns. Whether this would ease their fears or worsen their anxiety is anybody’s guess. It is, however, irresponsible of a healthcare professional to advise people to share their anxieties without knowing what that effect could be – it could make them far worse.
‘people are completely disinterested in their concerns.’
I think you probably mean ‘uninterested’.
No, I mean disinterested. Uninterested might work as well in this context, but I wanted to give it a little more emphasis, hence disinterested.
dis•in•ter•est•ed dĭs-ĭn′trĭ-stĭd, -ĭn′tə-rĕs″tĭd►
un•in•ter•est•ed ŭn-ĭn′trĭ-stĭd, -tər-ĭ-stĭd, -tə-rĕs″tĭd►
You do know that those are actually seperate definitions, don’t you? They don’t all apply at the same time, in all contexts. Take the first definition in your list and then stop. While everybody is completely fascinated by your ability to look words up in an online dictionary, it probably isn’t necessary to copy and paste it into a discussion just to prove that yes, it is a real word, yes the definition does match the context I used it in and no, I don’t need to swap it for uninterested.
Do you guys mind if I just follow your exchanges on this?
As an unabashed pedant myself, I have to strenuously resist the impulse to join in the stoush.
🙂
So you’re disinterested but not disinterested, Mr,?
I used both meanings there, but if someone comes up with a third definition, put me in the uninterested camp.
😜
imagine if we had the internet and 24/7 news and talk shows back in the fifties when the prospect of thermonuclear war was a part of everyday life .? in fact we came very , very close to nuclear war over the cuban missile crisis . besides newspapers , all we had was about 25 minutes of national news per day . today whatever catastrophe happens anywhere in the world we are totally swamped with it . there is a huge industry now in creating and feeding anxiety . and there is no perspective or critique of it . news orgs should be more aware of the psychological effects of their industry instead of competing with each other to escalate anxiety and fear .when New England was destroyed by the Labor Day hurricane of 1938 it wasnt even the lead story in a lot of newspapers and people in other parts of the country were barely aware of it in the era before tv
back in the sixties ,sorry
You were right the first time.
I was practicing hiding under my classroom desk in 1954.
A section of our large public park (designed by F L Olmstead) was taken over by an antiaircraft battalion, with barracks etc. That was something the youth could actually experience every day on the way to school.
None of us were in the need of psychotherapy.
The 30 minute flight time of ICBM and SLBM horror didn’t arrive until the 60’s Duck and Cover started in the 1950’s though.
#MeToo.
Luckily, I was being brought up in that part of the world (Australia) that was expected to dodge the direct nuclear exchanges between the main “Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)” combatants.
But, as Neville Shute’s book and film “On The Beach” presented, nowhere was expected to escape the global radiation extinction that followed.
Now, a couple of degrees of global warming over the next 100 years – pfffft.
“imagine if we had the internet and 24/7 news and talk shows back in the fifties when the prospect of thermonuclear war was a part of everyday life .? in fact we came very , very close to nuclear war over the cuban missile crisis”
If it had been up to Fidel Castro, Cuba’s communist leader, there would have been a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. Castro was lobbying the Russians to fire away. Russia’s leader thought Castro had lost his mind when they learned what he wanted them to do.
See the book: “One Hell of a Gamble”. It lays it all out. The Russians took the right course, despite Castro’s pleas to attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons.
The American Left loves Castro. One has to wonder why. I guess they don’t have any sense of self-preservation.
The most debilitating psychological effect is what alarmism does to brains by causing them to look for and then blindly accept fake science that’s imagined to ‘fix’ the alarm.
Forty years,, Eric? As far as ecological disasters in general, more like fifty plus years of failed predictions of imminent doom.
I work in the court system as a criminal defense attorney. I am seeing these people all the time. Not that climate is necessarily a big concern, but all of life is, and you can fix it with a little pill. These people are all drugged up and that just exacerbates their problems. I have yet to see a bonafide domestic violence case that did not involve drugs or alcohol. If you can’t get a prescription, you just use something else. Growing up, I don’t remember anybody who took drugs for behavior–now they all do.
On a brighter note, pharmaceuticals are THE area to invest in. Drug companies are raking it in.
Unfortunately I do not see the bogus narrative weakening, much less slowly dying. Just before the lockdown we had millions marching. If anything the hysteria is slowly growing.
It is evolution in action: teenagers overcome with climate panic won’t breed and will top themselves. Job done!
“Pluralistic Ignorance”
n. Phenomenon wherin masses of people believe something to be true based on little evidence, and on the say-so of “experts”. See “Mass Psychosis”.
I live in Europe and suffer climate idiocy anxiety.
Good one Jan, couldn’t agree more 😉
The woke progressives are nuts? Who knew?
Thus, let sleeping progressive lie.
They always lie, sleeping or not.
yeah but all the consequent human miseries have been monetized into multiple, sustainable revenue streams so it has that going for it
China is the big financial beneficiary of all this stupidity. They’re exempt from the UNFCC’s onerous dictates as they supply the hardware, built using mostly coal energy, that makes the idiots who accept the junk science feel better about themselves. If we stay the course, it will be too late by the time these Marxist fools learn that their green boondoggle is causing far more damage to the planet and its citizens then even the imaginary climate catastrophe they’re so obsessed about.
Don’t we see major psychological disorders at work at the UN and in the government?
Liberalism is a mental disorder for sure. Not sure if it is curable though. Maybe electroshock therapy or a lobotomy might be curative.
“Liberalism is a mental disorder for sure.”
I would prefer to say “radical leftism” is a mental disorder. They live in a false reality which distorts their vision of the world.
Some Liberals live in the real world, and I would not equate them with radical leftists. Unfortunately, the Liberal numbers are diminishing and the radical leftists are increasing.
Still, it looks like radical leftists only make up about 25 percent of the American public, if you go by the polls.
Well we all should have known things were going to turn out the way they have with the Rockefellers involved in the original siting.
CCDS Cimate change delusion syndrome.
IPCRESS
Works a treat on the gullible
Which ???
Induction of Psycho-Neuroses by Conditioned Reflex with Stress
(The IPCRESS File, novel by Len Deighton)
or
Icosahedral Permuted Comparison of Relative Shape Similarity
My apologies if you were confused. Naturally, I was referring to the article above: “Climate Change Anxiety Driving Debilitating Psychological Disorders”
The constant bombardment of ever greater alarmism will, as I opined, “Induce Psycho-Neuroses” in the gullible.
Shape-shifting doesn’t come into it.
There you have it: Climate Change Belief is a debilitating psychological disorder. So, stop Believing, and you’re cured.
Psychologists are an odd lot. Many that I know are good scientists dealing with extremely complex issues. Their curriculum in college actually teaches “methods” that involve statistics, and many are as a result better informed statisticians than many physical scientists and engineers who can get to a degree with no statistics education at all — and it shows.
Unfortunately they have also become infected with left-wing politics to an awful degree and despite knowing full well what bias is, they let bias lead them forward. Beyond a certain point education can become a good or bad thing. Another of life’s ironies.
The problem is that they are inured to sampling statistics and know nothing of physical measurements, their accuracy, or their precision. The ones I know, have little knowledge about what assumptions are behind many of the statistical tests nor do they have any kind of inkling about time series and the implications therein.
Wasn’t this the Green Blob’s goal? Propaganda works.
Yes, it is their goal, and it does work, when you have control of the mass media communications network, like they do.
The Media becomes the “Voice of Authority” and a lot of people are fooled into believing the narratives the Media propagates. And in this case, they are fooled into feeling anxiety and fear over how the Earth’s climate is behaving.
The alarmists are scaring a lot of people. One of my friends, who never said a word about climate change before, apparently noted the lastest exaggerated claim by NOAA and expressed concern for his future crops due to what he thought was going to be excessive heat. I alayed his fears by telling him all that stuff was BS.
It’s criminal the way the alarmists are scaring people while having no evidence to back up their scary climate change stories. They know they don’t have the evidence and they are deliberately distoring this truth to the public.
It’s not Climate Change, which is a multi-decades slow changes in weather patterns. Changes to which humans and ecosystems are quite adept at adaptation. We all know that it’s the scaremongering from the Communist-inspired Left to seize power that is frightening the sheeple.
Bedwetter Eric Holthaus is the poster boy for Climate Scared Sheep everywhere. Steve Milloy writes about that on his blog.
https://junkscience.com/2020/11/if-you-need-more-evidence-that-climate-is-about-communism/
As I think you know Joel, they’re not actually Communist-inspired. They’re bank account inspired. They’re not power-inspired. Is Joe senile nitwit a one-world socialist or communist? He couldn’t even spell those words without his handlers, let alone know what they mean.
It’s good work though if you can get it.
As I read this, it’s Aug 14th, the “dog days” in southern Wisconsin. It’s almost 11:00am and it’s 71 F with a gentle breeze and not a cloud in the sky. I have to say my “climate anxiety” has never been much of a problem and is currently nonexistent.
Wisconsin’s climate problem occurs every year about the 3rd week in January. Then the “January Thaw” comes to remind folks that winter, too, will pass.
You knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, Trumpster rayciss fashisshes. I saved the planet by making a new cardboard sign. I’m lovely.
“It’s almost 11:00am and it’s 71 F with a gentle breeze and not a cloud in the sky.”
Same here. It feels like the big heat of summer is starting to diminish. It’s getting a little chilly in the mornings and it’s the middle of August, which is usually the hottest part of the year around here.