Psychoanalysis on Climate ‘Denial’? (stranger and stranger)

From MasterResource

By Robert Bradley Jr. 

“CO2 is not the threat but the friend, as are fossil fuels that make an unsafe world safe and pleasant for billions of people despite the forces of Statism and … elitist climate policy.”

Climate alarmists live in a self-righteous bubble where humankind is the scoundrel. Nature is optimal and fragile; anthropogenic change cannot be good, even toward greening, warming, and moistening. Think about that nonpolluting trace gas, carbon dioxide (CO2).

To the Church of Climate, there cannot be any debate against the narrative of alarm–or pushback against forced energy transformation. The opposition is evil against the common good, defined so vaguely as to preclude real human betterment. So psychological explanations emerge.

Consider this post on LinkedIn by self-described PR specialist Tanya P. (since deleted or I am blocked):

There’s something I have noticed when I engage with climate change deniers on LinkedIn. I have noticed that fossil fuels has, for them, become about identity… and one kind of identity in particular: hypermasculinity.

The analogy to nicotine and tobacco then comes in, despite what James Hansen had to say about the specious comparison. [1]

This is the same kind of strategy that was used by Big Tobacco to sell toxic products and ideologies to men, even as cigarette smoking killed men by the 100s of 1000s. Big Tobacco understood: if you can make something about *identity* then it is nearly impossible to dislodge that belief, uproot the bad habit or argue any counter perspective.

“This is, in a nutshell, how effective propaganda works,” Tanya concludes. Continuing into psychoanalysis:

I have noted a deeply emotional reaction among deniers. There is a kind of almost religious fervour in some climate change denial arguments. Deniers, conspiracy theorists have, at times, almost seemed to wind their entire personalities up with …the decomposing plants and animals that humanity has burned for a scant 150 years to create our present disaster and climate emergency.

It’s all a conspiracy in her mind.

As a veteran marketer who ran large-scale international communication and persuasion campaigns, I do understand why this sort of transformation happens within people. Oil and gas companies have constructed very sophisticated disinformation campaigns that have equated fossil fuels with masculinity and toughness.

In so doing, fossil fuel companies have enlisted, activated and outraged these fringe surrogates by the 10s of 1000s, witting, unwitting or witless, to do the work of these sophisticated fossil-fuel propaganda campaigns.

She probes deeper into her (imaginary) foes:

These climate change denial activists identify deeply and almost spiritually with the dirty and destructive burning of decomposing plants and animals that make up fossil fuels. These deniers will debase themselves to fight for oil and gas even when it hurts them economically, and socially. Tragically, I see it every day.

I do not know who she is describing, and I know myself and a hundred others in the fight against the Climate Industrial Complex. We are quite the opposite. She should engage with us to shock her simplistic belief; CO2/climate optimists are intellectually grounded and open-minded.

She ends:

Deniers been enlisted and activated by powerful interests, most of these advocates/dupes fully unaware that they’ve become puppets on strings held by powerful interests. These useful, credulous surrogates wrap themselves in the supposed masculine mantle of fossil fuel advocacy, all the while not realizing how weak, feeble and depressing their activities appear to the wider world. It would be deeply sad and heartbreaking if it weren’t so destructive.

One can only turn the tables on Tanya and the many like her who fantasize about the problem and the enemy. CO2 is not the threat but the friend, as are fossil fuels that make an unsafe world safe and pleasant for billions of people despite the forces of Statism and … elitist climate policy.


[1] “Let’s be clear: the frequent comparison of the fossil fuel and tobacco industries is nonsense. Fossil fuels are a valuable energy source that has done yeomen service for humankind.” – James Hansen, June 1, 2021.

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Scarecrow Repair
April 28, 2025 10:10 pm

I cannot for the life of me imagine what it must take to want to delve so deeply into mass psychoanalysis of an entire class of utter strangers as if they were all the same. You can’t do that with Marxists, Nazis, chess players, or smokers, and anyone with any experience with ordinary people knows that. All I know about her is that I don’t ever want to meet her. Beyond that, I don’t care.

Reply to  Scarecrow Repair
April 29, 2025 5:29 am

Dr T.P., her LinkedIn ID, says about all you need to know.

Reply to  Frank from NoVA
April 30, 2025 12:53 am

What does TP stand for? Taking the Piss?

leefor
April 28, 2025 10:11 pm

Well she is a game designer. Computer games and Climate Seance, what could possibly be wrong?

Michael Flynn
April 28, 2025 10:37 pm

There’s something I have noticed when I engage with climate change deniers …

Yes, she’s obviously insane or suffers from a severe cognitive defect. Climate is the statistics of weather observations. There is nothing to deny.

April 28, 2025 10:38 pm

I think it’s the side effect of sniffing solvent free glue…since can’t get high on that shit so you must invent some other crap to compensate

April 28, 2025 10:41 pm

Closeminded science illiterates warmest/alarmists are mentally ill people because they have no skill in rational debate on the topic as they are often profoundly ignorant and continually evade the hard data/evidence argument against playstaion modeling scenarios which has no demonstrated forecast skill.

I regularly bring up the two classic modeling failures as proof the AGW is a failed conjecture which has devolved into pseudoscience claptrap ever since trying to inject life back into a long dead rotting corpse of the AGW baloney.

1) No Lower Tropospheric Hotspot. The few who tried to counter it used the stupid Sherwood paper who pretended he found it using a pile of statistical baloney.

I point out that the NOAA never accepted his made up data thus still unsupported and the HS today still doesn’t exist after 35 years.

2) No Positive Feed Back Loop. They make it clear they don’t know the difference between Positive Feedback which exist to the one that is in a full Loop which doesn’t exist as it is impossible.

3) The warm forcing of CO2 at the 435 ppm level is too small to matter anymore which they never counter as they have no idea about the 3.8W m/2 increase formula for a doubling from 280 to 560 ppm which in itself is also negligible change.

The climate change cult needs to let it go as it is a SCAM!

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Sunsettommy
April 29, 2025 8:42 am

They are trying to model dynamic, coupled chaotic energy transfer systems using a trace gas, not variable energy, as the input.

Of course the models are wrong. The sun is not constant. The orbit is not a perfect circle. The planet is not a perfect sphere with every 25 km^2 identical. Average temperatures are meaningless.

Reply to  Sunsettommy
May 1, 2025 4:54 am

No skill? Oh please. 99% of peer reviewed research concludes or affirms that the planet is warming about 0.26F per decade — the fastest rate of warming in millennia — and caused by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. The thousands of scientists that find this to be the case have no trouble debating. It’s the Deniers that have the trouble. Most can’t even identify the basic laws of Physics.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Warren Beeton
May 1, 2025 12:49 pm

Look in the mirror.

April 28, 2025 10:54 pm

I appreciate Tanya P’s perspective.

But as a chromosomally challenged person-of-pallor, I can’t fathom the equation hypermasculinity <=> fuel.

However, it does remind me what a bona fide feminist pioneer once wrote [paraphrasing here from a failing memory]:

“Sure, men are evil. But it’s also true that without them we would all still be living in grass huts.” — attributed to Camille Paglia
—————————
I didn’t say it; she did:
Camille Paglia Quotes:
If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
Camille Paglia – If civilization had been left in female…
https://www.brainyquote.com › camille_paglia_159814

Reply to  Whetten Robert L
April 29, 2025 2:08 am

Yes but: a lot of people want us to do just that. You know: back to ‘nature’.

Reply to  ballynally
April 29, 2025 4:38 am

Nature is full of hypermasculinity. It’s perfectly natural!

I'm not a robot
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
April 29, 2025 6:37 am

Indeed.

But there’s a certain common type that identifies it is a “toxin” (none of them know what toxin means, either!)

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  ballynally
April 29, 2025 8:44 am

No. They want us to live in oversized Velveeta Cheese Boxes where everything we are allowed to have are no more than a 15 minute walk away.

MarkW
Reply to  Whetten Robert L
April 29, 2025 6:19 am

Those grass huts were probably built by men.

Reply to  MarkW
April 29, 2025 6:57 am

Yes, built by young hypermasculinites:

Grass-hut construction workers should be boys, mainly; keeps them productively occupied, away from their habitual tree-climbing mischief.

Nomenclature warning:
‘Boys’ <=> those too young to hunt, scout, or raid — er practice ‘homeland security’.

[ Gotta tread lightly here, or the language-police will get you banned. Cf. a separate politically-incorrect posting. Keyword: ‘pyromania(cs)’ ]

Reply to  Whetten Robert L
April 29, 2025 8:52 am

Re ” I appreciate Tanya P’s perspective.
I regret posting that comment, which I now see could be interpreted as disrespectful or sarcastic.
Dr. Tanya Pobuda* appears to be a highly qualified profession — in her respective field(s) — and IMHO has done us all a favor by stating her views so clearly. In lieu of retracting my post, here is an amended version:
——————
Re Dr Tanya Pobuda,* I do appreciate her published Perspective, as it is highly original.
However her striking association of hypermasculinity <=> fuel-o-philia  may not be immediately clear. But does remind of something a bona fide feminist pioneer once wrote:

If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
Camille Paglia – If civilization had been left in female…
https://www.brainyquote.com › camille_paglia_159814

Perhaps this (in)famous epigram (Paglia’s) can help us understand her Dr Pobuda’s Perspective:
The masculine condition has been historically (think ‘Prometheus’) associated with pyrophilia (pyromania); we are allfuels for love … Amour d’combustibles, sayeth Sadi Carnot (‘Car-Noh’), the legendary French Military Engineer.

*Dr Tanya P. has recently posted, quite publicly, under her full name:
——————————
” Dr. Tanya Pobuda. @tpobuda.bsky.social.
– I wrote an entire PhD dissertation about representation and inclusion in #boardgames Bluesky https://bsky.app › profile › tpobuda.bsky.social › post
Nov 13, 2024 — I wrote an entire PhD dissertation about representation and inclusion in #boardgames – I am working on a podcast series based on my research .. 
———————————
[Sure, Robert Bradley could’ve included this, but he left it as a homework assignment.]

Reply to  Whetten Robert L
April 29, 2025 9:11 am

But as a chromosomally challenged person-of-pallor, I can’t fathom the equation hypermasculinity <=> fuel.

Think Monster Trucks. 🙂

Reply to  Phil R
April 29, 2025 10:02 am

An unexamined assumption is that stereotypical masculine behavior is always undesirable because it is reckless, destructive and different from feminine behavior. I submit that had the US invasion forces of the Pacific Theater been composed of modern feminists, or men whose behavior would be approved of by feminists, we would all be speaking Japanese.

April 28, 2025 11:12 pm

The overwhelming mayority of people who study ar dabble in psychology are driven by an overinflated want to understand themselves…

Basically she is adressing the mirror by stating what she certainly not is.

Reply to  huls
April 28, 2025 11:30 pm

psychoanalysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring. It has a theory as to what causes disease—lots of different spirits, etc.

The witch doctor has a theory that a disease like malaria is caused by a spirit which comes into the air; it is not cured by shaking a snake over it, but quinine does help malaria.

So, if you are sick, I would advise that you go to the witch doctor because he is the man in the tribe who knows the most about the disease; on the other hand, his knowledge is not science. Psychoanalysis has not been checked carefully by experiment.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  pigs_in_space
April 29, 2025 8:45 am

Witch doctors are often women.

Reply to  pigs_in_space
April 29, 2025 9:13 am

Reminds me of the old saying, “climate” is to science as “witch” is to doctor.

Reply to  pigs_in_space
April 29, 2025 10:09 am

A friend once remarked, “How can we expect to understand the behavior of normal, healthy people by focusing on those who are exhibiting what is normally considered mentally unwell people’s behavior?”

Reply to  huls
April 29, 2025 7:19 am

Re ” overinflated want to understand themselves
You are too kind.
Desire to manipulate (control) others is an ulterior motive, often overlooked.
Practice the Dark Arts of the wannabe Tyrant, indeed.

Reply to  huls
April 29, 2025 7:21 am

Re ” overinflated want to understand themselves
You are too kind.
Desire to manipulate (control) others is an ulterior motive, often overlooked.
Practice the Dark Arts of the wannabe Tyrant, indeed.
But as regards Dr. Tanya P., I do appreciate her excellent Perspective, no sarcasm here!

Ed Zuiderwijk
April 29, 2025 12:17 am

Every day, she does. ‘Tragically I see it every day’. In the mirror.

April 29, 2025 12:19 am

Just another example of how people fail to understand the ideological, philosophical and psychological bases for skeptical thinking. 

Nothing to see here, other than attempt to project her feminist woke ‘social & climate justice’ (toxic masculinity) ideological theory within the context of ‘climate denial’.

Does Tanya live in a solid structure? A house or similar, roof over her head? What enabled it to be built? – Fossil fuels and — Men.

Dave Fair
Reply to  SteveG
April 29, 2025 9:12 am

I don’t have toxic masculinity, just testy-cals.

strativarius
April 29, 2025 12:22 am

Climate alarmists live in a self-righteous bubble…

Net zero blamed for blackout chaos
Experts say a reliance on solar and wind power left Spain and Portugal vulnerable
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/28/blackout-risk-made-worse-by-net-zero/

strativarius
April 29, 2025 12:41 am

Story tip?

The BBC (Radio4) has a programme called The Life Scientific. [Approved] Scientists go through their careers etc and achievements

Today at 09:00 (BST)….

Dr Anthony Fauci…

Reply to  strativarius
April 29, 2025 2:14 am

That’s funny..🙂. And i think a rerun. It is overall a good program and is not intended to question the guest. With Fauci you cannot really avoid that but they will.
I don’t mind because it reveals their thinking if they are not on guard.
So, Adolph, can you tell the audience a bit about your career?😄

April 29, 2025 12:43 am

I do not know who she is describing, and I know myself and a hundred others in the fight against the Climate Industrial Complex. We are quite the opposite. She should engage with us to shock her simplistic belief; CO2/climate optimists are intellectually grounded and open-minded.”

She isn’t describing anyone, aside from herself and her ilk. They’re the ones who have the religious fervor, but it isn’t for Gaia or the environment. Their fervor is for Marxism. They’re anti-capitalists. They know that capitalism can’t be defeated in the marketplace or on the battlefield, so they must try to sabotage it. Endless regulations, DEI, and lawfare are some of the tactics that they use, but nothing is as good strategically as attacking the lifeblood of capitalism, which is energy. And that energy comes overwhelmingly from fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Reply to  johnesm
April 29, 2025 6:20 am

It is said that thieves worry most about being robbed, since that is the mindset they most understand. I suppose for people whose only lens is sexist, that is what they suppose is the driving force in others.

MarkW
Reply to  johnesm
April 29, 2025 6:25 am

Capitalism doesn’t value them as highly as they value themselves.
They see others, whom they view as lesser creatures, living better than they do.
That’s all they need to prove that capitalism is hopelessly broken and only by turning all decisions over to them, and people like them, can the world be saved.

CampsieFellow
April 29, 2025 12:44 am

CO2/climate optimists are intellectually grounded and open-minded
Not entirely sure that is correct. Just mention words like ‘Pope’ and ‘religion’ and you’ll get lots of comments from people with very closed minds.

MarkW
Reply to  CampsieFellow
April 29, 2025 6:26 am

To them, open minded means you have accepted everything that they believe in.

jon
April 29, 2025 1:06 am

Fossil fuels gave and still give us control over the external world.

Traditionally men were the main way of doing this as they were/are the stronger and control was above all a physical activity.
Women’s role was the internal world of home and hearth.

Then men gave us (developed) fossil fuels.
This has enabled us to free women from the traditional chains and embrace the chains men have such as wage slavery,

Do you really want to go back to before that? Our modern chains are so much more comfortable. This is a view easily tested, just turn off the stove and washing machine for a month, the situation will become clearer.

MarkW
Reply to  jon
April 29, 2025 6:27 am

Men’s role was to kill anything that would endanger the community.
Women’s role was to keep the men from killing each other.

Admin
April 29, 2025 1:18 am

The evidence is clear – they can break through our brainwashing, they need to reach us with the power of Mime acting while dressed in drag.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/28/claim-drag-queens-can-use-comedy-to-inform-about-the-climate-crisis/

Given climate change in the minds of these concerned activists is an existential crisis, surely everything is worth a try 🙂

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Eric Worrall
April 29, 2025 8:59 am

Are you… fishing for clicks to your own story? 🙂

April 29, 2025 2:04 am

It is like reverse engineering: 1 people display a pathology, 2 analyse the symptoms, 3 attribute motivation, 4 propose solutions.
But A: the analyst is looking at this from their concept of health so the pathology is seen as both a deviation and a problem. B: the analyst is trained NOT to self examine or pose questions in relation to their own inbuilt bias, otherwise they cannot analyse a pathology.

Now, people on this channel do the same thing as the ones accused on the msm and institutions but it switches the perspective.
For a ‘neutral’ observer this looks very much as a binary system in which opposing teams accuse each other of foul play.

I don’t want to be on a team but if you force me to be on yours i am going to be against you. That’s pretty much how i feel about a lot of things.
One major takeaway here is that if all the power is on the other foot you get the same mechanism.
To add (and this might get some negatives): we see this play out w Trump. Promising quick Golden Hills followed by a reality slap and diminishing returns.
The adagio: ‘careful if what you wish for..’

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  ballynally
April 29, 2025 4:35 am

Wrong. It is not a binary system. When I first started looking into the issue about 17 years ago, my reason for doing so was to better be able to refute the claims of someone who I considered a “climate crank”. I assumed that what I had been hearing about CO2 and climate change was true. Why would scientists lie about it? I found, much to my shock that the exact opposite of what I had assumed was in fact the case. We were in fact, being lied to. The more I looked, the more that fact was confirmed. I did not “want” it to be true. It simply was. And I value truth above all. I was also a Democrat then, now Independent. If I had any “skin” in the game, it was in favor of Climate Belief.

MarkW
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
April 29, 2025 6:31 am

Scientists are often the hardest to convince. I’ve had countless scientists tell me that “A scientist wouldn’t do that”, when I try to describe what has been done.

It is their belief in the purity of science and scientists, that make the particularly vulnerable to the scam.

Reply to  MarkW
April 29, 2025 6:55 am

Feynman. “…and you are the easiest one to fool.”

cartoss
April 29, 2025 2:14 am

All the religious fervour is on the alarm pushing side. Tanya is delusional

Reply to  cartoss
April 29, 2025 2:52 am

I think that sums it up nicely.

Tanya needs to go see the Shrink. She is seeing things that are not there.

MarkW
Reply to  cartoss
April 29, 2025 6:32 am

Socialists are first trained to believe in the perfection of themselves.

April 29, 2025 2:39 am

From the article: “Oil and gas companies have constructed very sophisticated disinformation campaigns that have equated fossil fuels with masculinity and toughness.”

Really? Please provide an example of one of these campaigns. I seem to have missed them all.

MarkW
Reply to  Tom Abbott
April 29, 2025 6:34 am

Tanya sees them, therefor they exist. That’s all she needs to know.

Dave Fair
Reply to  MarkW
April 29, 2025 9:18 am

Like Greta’s CO2?

Reply to  Tom Abbott
April 29, 2025 9:16 am

Example: oil rigs and coal mines and the men working there. Both very masculin and tough. Nothing wrong w that and i don’t see the ‘disinformation’ bit.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  ballynally
May 1, 2025 12:57 pm

Women work there too. Are they hypermasculine?

Reply to  Tom Abbott
April 29, 2025 10:20 am

Ditto! Beyond the “Put a tiger in your tank,” which was an attempt to market a particular brand of gasoline, nothing comes to mind that resembles a “disinformation campaign.”

Bruce Cobb
April 29, 2025 3:34 am

Oh dear, Poor Tanya is afflicted with both Climate and Feminazi delusions, and leans heavily on psychological projection to try and quell her raging cognitive dissonance. Perhaps a shrink could help her, I don’t know.

2hotel9
April 29, 2025 3:45 am

Seriously? She is a mental health professional and she speaks and writes like a 5th grader, a 5th grader two grades below where a 5th grader is supposed to be. What an idiot.

April 29, 2025 4:24 am

Sure, I have been persuaded by the hypermasculine visualizations from the GOES satellites to discard the description of the atmosphere as a passive heat “trap.” Right. That must be it.

https://youtu.be/Yarzo13_TSE

(full explanation in the Readme description text at this short time-lapse video.)

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  David Dibbell
April 29, 2025 7:30 am

Warning! This comment has been flagged for excessive sarcasm.
Just kidding!
Or AM I? Dun-dun-dunnnn….
Peter Griffin

April 29, 2025 5:28 am

Although I agree with everything in this post, I think one of the most important points Mr. Bradley makes is this: “It’s all a conspiracy in her mind.” I think this sums up much of current “climate science.”

I go back to my fundamental guiding principle: You can’t have a rational discussion with irrational people.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Phil R
April 29, 2025 8:52 am

Or as a friend once put it, do not engage in a battle of wits with the unarmed — they never know when they have lost.

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
April 29, 2025 9:19 am

or, never wrestle with a pig. you’ll get covered in sh*t and the pig likes it.

Reply to  Phil R
April 29, 2025 10:26 am

Humans are not inherently rational. Even among the brightest of us, people are only capable of rational behavior for short periods of time in order to achieve their irrational goals. The trick is to understand what those goals are because people are adept at disguising their goals with rationalizations.

J Boles
April 29, 2025 5:49 am

The usual Leftist projection – every single thing she blames on the other side…she does in droves! WHAT A HYPOCRITE SHE IS.

MarkW
April 29, 2025 6:12 am

Fossil fuels decomposed millions of years ago. She makes it sound like we are digging up rotting bodies in order to burn them.

Her mental images say a lot about her, nothing about those she disagrees with.

MarkW
April 29, 2025 6:14 am

The Soviets used to lock their opponents in mental institutions.

It comes natural for socialists to assume that those who disagree with them are incompetent, if not criminally so.

After all, they view themselves as being the font of wisdom and truth in a fallen world and must therefore take charge and lead their fallen brothers out of darkness into the light that only they can see.
Anyone who disagrees just proves how fallen they are.