This video is of Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert and it’s well worth your time to watch (there is also a part II). Today is writers action day on climate change. The official title is “Blog Action Day”. It’s a wonderful idea, because I’m tired of news and politics, and climate change is so much more interesting than war and military issues and whether Obama will live up to his Nobel Peace Prize. This Blog Action Day on climate change is taking place in 150 countries and will involve 13 million readers, about 1/1-millioneth of which will read this if I’m lucky.
I just listened to a podcast done by a well-known website host (blogger) who puts other peoples’ articles on his website. But that and his own writings have made him quite well-known. I’m hiding his identity because I really don’t want to give him any more advertising than I already have. In this podcast, he interviewed a woman scientist (who sounded old, and smug) and who is a global warming denier. In fact, they are both global warming deniers. They smugly joked about how most presentations by Al Gore and other “believers” involve no science, and how smart they were for catching that, and how global warming can’t possibly be true. That point was wrong. Their conversation contained absolutely no science, just smugness. I’m sure they are both of an age where they will not be around in 2060 when the temperature is now predicted to plausibly rise 4 degrees C over current temps. This was just announced by actual scientists in Oxford, UK, as opposed to smug opinionators who hate government and who know nothing about climate science despite pretending to know everything.
What climate change deniers share is usually many of the following things: deep paranoia about government (not just George Bush’s government, but all government); deep hatred of “The Fed”, love of radical mavericky libertarians, obsessive love of the 2nd amendment, deep distrust of Democrats, suspicion of non-libertarians, love of the smell of gasoline, and a visceral dislike of Al Gore and James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist and one of the best climate scientists in the world. Deniers don’t like fresh water, clear skies, trees, and people who like those things either. Nature itself is suspicious. It’s full of bugs and dirt. Deniers love cars, automakers, exhaust, and CO2. They don’t like the truth, because they claim “we” (whoever that is) want to disallow them to breathe out, which means they exhale CO2 and somehow that will be made illegal, which is completely untrue and ridiculous.
Deniers have a problem not only being fair when they “debate” and talk about climate change, but they also have a problem discerning fantasy from reality. Many of them are conspiracy theorists, Tea Baggers, some are anti-science fundamentalists, and all are generally extremely paranoid people who don’t worry about anything but their money and hide gold bars in their attic for the day the economy collapses. (Now that last thing might not be a bad idea. Sometimes it helps to be a little paranoid.)
Putting aside the paranoia and my critique of deniers, look at who inspires them: other deniers. Not scientific fact, or any other fact, but their only clique-y denier circle, made up of “scientists” (chemists, podiatrists, nail fungus experts, etc.) and “experts”. They all rely on each other for a sort of circle-jerk self-feeding wad of denier mythology. They pass around startlingly ignorant documents. I got one yesterday from a prominent Tea Bagger women who calls herself a “scientist”. (Well I got news for ya lady, I’m a scientist too! I have a Ph.D. in caffeinology!) Her document contained astoundingly simplistic and obvious lies about the science of climate change and the politics around it. It contained spelling errors and sentences that trailed off into nothingness. It was cosmicly awful as a debunking document. It attacked “Leftists” who believe in climate change because we hate Freedom. It was juvenile.
So I wondered about the psychology of deniers. Are they simply deeply afraid of the future (and correct spelling and complete sentences)? Worried about their money, their property, their relatives, their own thin skin? If so, why not take action to make themselves safer, or more ready for what is coming? They don’t feel able, I suppose, to handle it, so they deny climate change is real. The woman scientist in question lives in Florida. Now, if I lived in Florida, I’d be worried about climate change a LOT. Sea level rise will be knocking on some coastal dweller’s doors soon. Just ask the Maldives.
Now interestingly, the Oxford University Conference called 4 Degrees and Beyond covered a very frightening topic, and this is information the deniers probably don’t even have yet. The information that our temps might rise 4 degrees C by 2060 or 2070, within the lifetimes of some people alive today, if not many of us. That makes the very frightening future not so far off. Deniers then can no longer put off thinking about global warming and what it might do to them and their families. I produce a podcast, by the way, that contains some of the talks given at this conference, and you can hear that by going to this site.
Besides annoying and angering me, deniers don’t really have much of an impact on me, but I’m afraid they are going to change the minds of those who don’t know a thing about climate science and that will mean those people might lose property or worse in the decades to come. Climate change is not that odd of a concept, so I don’t understand climate change deniers, but they don’t have to be right. Climate change will happen with or without their knowledge and approval. The earth doesn’t need the understanding or approval of anyone to do what its atmosphere is going to do.
The biggest problem I have with deniers is that I’m sure they know they are lying. I’m sure some of them at least know very well that climate change is happening, and for political reasons, because they don’t want legislation or something to pass, or they don’t want their favorite coal mine to close, they pretend it’s not happening. Of course, some of them are just ignorant and let’s face it, stupid. But some aren’t. Some are faking it because they have something — usually money — at stake.
Even worse, I know some of them are working for big energy companies, or big media companies, or some other corporation with a real interest in supressing knowledge about climate change.
Treehugger has done some excellent research on this. So has Think Progress. Here is a little excerpt from Treehugger’s article about their research on a “climate denier gang”. Yes, they are in gangs now!
“Earlier in the week we reported that the favored list of climate doubters Senator Inofe’s political assistant Marc Morano relies on to stoke the global warming is a hoax echo chamber had been discovered by the researchers at ThinkProgress.
In turn, our research team has taken Mornano’s list and added in all of the information we have here on DeSmogBlog about each of the indivuduals and made it into a handy referal page here: Researching Marc Morano’s Climate Denier Gang.
We are working to research the individuals on Morano’s list that we didn’t have information on and will be adding what we find.”
Then they list several well-known names that are scientists, bloggers and “experts” who are in the business of spreading lies and disinformation and doubt about climate change.
Why do they do it? It could be a psychological problem; it could be paranoia; but in some cases, they are actually hired and/or given money by big energy, big coal, big oil, etc., to spread these doubts and lies.
I think I’ve made my point, whatever it was. You can tell that fact-science-climate change, etc., deniers really do irritate me. For some science on climate change so you can get the facts, visit RealClimate.com or the Union of Concerned Scientists. Both these sites have more than enough proof and science about climate change on them to explain what climate change is without getting too complicated about it. And no, admitting you believe in the facts of global warming does not mean that Obama will send you a bill for your heat this winter.
And remember that climate change deniers, the really adamant ones, are purposely lying to generations of kids and young people that will be really pissed off in about 30 years.
P.S. Climate change and global warming are real.
For more informative information, see: (thanks for this list to greenfyre)
The Psychology of Climate Denial
- Dan Gilbert on the psychology of global warming
- The Psychology of Denial: our failure to act against climate change
- Why Climate Denialists are Blind to Facts and Reason: The Role of Ideology
- Are Human Beings Hard-Wired to Ignore the Threat of Catastrophic Climate Change?
- Sourcing Skepticism … what factors drive questioning of Global Warming?
- The real reason conservatives don’t believe in climate science
- How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth
- Contrarians and consensus: The case of the midwife toad
Academic
www.350.org"
Nice post. It would be funny except I don’t think our kids will get the joke.