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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When you don’t have a logical, fact-based argument to support a belief, I suppose the only recourse is to create a myth regarding those who refuse to adopt that belief. They must be possessed by demons to deny the faith!
Agreed, except maybe there is no need “to create a [new] myth”, since the so-called Pagan worldview, has been a logically coherent one, thru the ages. G. K. Chesterton wrote brilliantly on this essential conflict, already a century ago, e.g. see Everlasting Man.
etymology (maybe correct) is Pagan — Pahan / Pan , god of the forest (creatures), cf. ‘Peter Pan’ …
… shows the enduring appeal of this Mythos
When your age passes 80 years or so, as my friends of that age agree, you ask yourself if you are satisfied with what you achieved in your career. It is a comfort to be able to show that you gave to society more than you took out.
I see this author Tanya P. describing herself as a veteran marketer of international communication and persuasion campaigns. That is, she told others what they should and should not do, an activity that I have seen to grow over my lifetime.
I wonder what Tanya P. thinks of her contribution to society. I wonder if she is able to demonstrate net good by her efforts. Geoff S
Unfortunately, I think Ms. P. is incapable of the self introspection that you describe. I think Ms. P. is less concerned about her contribution to society than she is about society’s contribution to her.
Essentially, absent a few cases of artificial insemination (AI) no woman exists without a Man having had sex with a Woman.
It is not customary to thank forebears for their efforts, but it is a little ungrateful for a Woman to go on about toxic masculinity. Women need Men. Geoff S
Funny how biology has it that a woman can only be “serviced” by one man but one man can “service” many women. It that what leads to the concept of hypermasculinity?
Makes perfect sense from a biological/evolutionary standpoint.
The only way for a male to ensure that his genes are passed on is to ensure that he is the only one given the chance to impregnate the females.
The female knows that as long as she gets pregnant, her genes will be passed on.
Doesn’t matter the species.
Of course it does.
Seems to be another of those washed up marketing people who imagines herself to be a psychologist. With predictable results.
One of my favorite scenes from the BBC’s version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is when the marketing manager demonstrates umbrage at criticism of her attempt to re-invent the wheel.
Upvote any time someone can work in a reference to the THGTTG.
+42.
Any woman asserting toxic masculinity is an exemplar of toxic femininity — mostly a woman too neurotic to see through the malignance that is modern Feminism.
I got booted from LinkedIn long ago. But anyone here with an active account, might do Ms. Tanya P. and we here a favor by posting a link to the above WUWT essay in the comment section of her post.
Ms. Tanya P.’s profile lists her priors as journalism and marketing, with a PhD in something thereto in 2022. Perfectly qualified to discuss consensus climatology.
Re your suggestion “do Ms. Tanya P. and [us] here a favor…”
Agreed.
It appears that Dr. Tanya P. has recently posted separately under her full name:
——————————
” Dr. Tanya Pobuda. @tpobuda.bsky.social. Follow
– 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 .. ”
———————————
There is a group on LinkedIn called “sceptical science” to which I subscribed. It was anything but – it just parroted all the “disprove the sceptics” pieces I have ever read. I have since left LinkedIn – too full of politicians and others up their own backsides.
There is a website by the same name with the same purpose.
I think they are also on Youtube. It is meant to attrack people who start to be skeptical about The Climate Science to try to get them not to do that. Properly funded propaganda..
“The projection is strong with this one.”
Ha! Tanya P’s comments reminded me of this eco-justice study, from 2018.
– – – – – – – – –
Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire (From June 20, 2018)
As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny. Rather than consider these resentments separately, this article interrogates their relationship through the concept of petro-masculinity, which appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing white patriarchal rule.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0305829818775817
Someone should stand outside her office and chant, ‘Petromen’s rights are human rights!’
Cara Daggett’s petro-masculinity paper has had >108,000 views and downloads, has an Altimetric score of 1010, and Google Scholar says it has 523 citations.
If ever there was a case demonstrating:
a) there isn’t an idea so stupid that academic intellectuals will not embrace it, and
b) that the need to prune the academy of political nonsense is great,
that paper and those metrics are it.
After a few (too many) hours with the writings of Prof Cara New Daggett, it seems clear that there’s nothing humorous, much less joyous, in her research. On the plus side, there is plenty of material here for one of you master parodists to work with.
A quick peek at her style (unchanged as of 2022) can be found here:
https://autonomy.work/portfolio/petro-masculinity-climate-refusal/
Her concept of Petro(hyper)Masculinity (2017) was sort of fun (especially the scandalous pp. 12-13 & 15) and that could account for the essay’s noted popularity (approaching 500 citations).
But what an awful chore to read the first chapter of Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics … (2018), it’s just one accursed eurocentric injustice after another, with nothing redeeming to offer the world beyond the north’s Golden Billion. Sadly, ideological orthodoxy is a joy-killer.
By comparison, Huber & Mills Bottomless Well — the Twilight of Fuel … (2005) makes the same subject seem fresh & relevant, positively rejoicing in its paradoxical aspects.
I also couldn’t help thinking what her contemporary, a terrific story-teller named Tara Westover (Educated – A Memoir, 2018), could’ve done with the same material — their doctoral dissertations concerning respectively the 19th-Century Industrial and Social Revolutions.
You appear to have a scholar’s knowledge of the subject.
Presuming a happier future, such literature will be studied as a curiosity of human ideological pathology. A prejudice-driven aberration of scholarly thought.
Are you sure this isn’t one of those spoof articles?
Gotta defund (de-Fed) it all, let them save the Anthropocene on their own time (dime).
But have you considered — Maybe this one is a parody?
Look at these keywords combined in just one sentence:
Petro-masculinity is helpful to understanding how the anxieties aroused by the Anthropocene can augment desires for authoritarianism.
Comic gold, or soft-porn for under-stimulated academics.
Remember the ’90s Sokal Hoax?
https://www.amazon.com/Sokal-Hoax-Sham-Shook-Academy/dp/0803279957
Stranger things have happened …
“ our present disaster and climate emergency.” The poor woman is hallucinating. She should seek help.
To me this reads like very non-creative boilerplate hate speech!
I see almost nothing specific mentioned about the targeted group, which means you could easily replace denialists with any other group or minority, even alarmists, birds or pumpkins and rage against them instead..
Most importantly this person adds nothing of value to the debate.
“DeniersAlarmists have 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.”Fixed it.