climate change
12 Nov 2009
What Makes Climate Sceptics Tick?
Denial is a powerful impediment to constructive action on climate change. To have any chance of success, what we need is biased optimism, writes psychologist Lyn Bender
A recent Lowy Institute survey found that compared to 2007, concern about climate change has become yesterday’s news. It’s fallen from number one to number seven on the hit list: outranked by the economy, jobs, and terrorism. Fears for our only home have slid down the charts in favour of the more immediate.
Too frequently, calls for environmental reform are being met with responses drawn from the lexicon of economics — "recession" being the most ubiquitous. In other words, when in doubt about the climate, we focus instead on our fears about the economy which seems more manageable.
On Four Corners this week, the Liberal Party’s climate change deniers came out in spectacular fashion. They took on the epithet "climate change sceptic" with stubborn pride.
Declaring himself a non-believer — as though comprehension of scientific reality was akin to religious zeal — South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi declared, "We have rain, we have crops. The earth is not melting"; while leader of the opposition in the Senate, Nick Minchin, objected to policies "that frankly terrify 12-year-old children, by saying the planet is going to melt".
Actually it is the polar caps and glaciers that are melting — the Earth is flooding, burning and drying. But to these sceptics, the leading world scientists who are sounding the alarm are being "alarmist".
The bipartisan Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts issued the results of its inquiry into climate change and environmental impacts on coastal communities last month. It documents the erosion of Australian beaches and argues strongly against further development in many coastal areas as well as recommending evacuation plans for extreme storm surges. It warns of health threats arising from the migration south of insect-borne diseases — hitherto rarely seen in Australia — like dengue fever.
In his address to the Lowy Institute last week, Kevin Rudd accurately and passionately stated the grim reality of the global warming challenge. How he can do this and then propose generous support for polluting industries and a puny five per cent cap on emission cuts is beyond me.
Meanwhile, our supermarket shelves remain stocked and our taps are still flowing. We turn on the heating or the cooling and are lulled and feel safe. We worry about our mortgages, the stock market, the value of real estate, and about supporting our lifestyles into the future. Meanwhile our true future — the planet and its infrastructure of earth, air, water and biodiversity — is at risk.
Even if many of us recognise that something is going terribly wrong with our world, we still fall back into forgetting: planning summer holidays and renovating kitchens. The news reports provide daily bulletins on consumer confidence, inflation and expected interest rate rises.
To find new ways to deal with this encroaching catastrophe, its depth must first be fully confronted.
Denial is a psychological defence mechanism that has survival value. It may protect us from excessive psychological injury until we are ready to face an intolerable reality. It enables us to plan for the future and to live in the present moment despite the existential reality of human vulnerability and mortality. We could die at any moment but we go on with our lives, making plans, naively confident of our immediate and future survival. Horrible things happen but we take comfort in the unspoken belief that it won’t happen to me or my loved ones.
Denial also enables us to "switch off" from the plight of others: refugees, the homeless and destitute in our streets, the traumatised and displaced persons on our screens. Denial may help people endure the unendurable or disassociate from our own pain or the pain of others. It prevents crucial action and maintains harmful beliefs and responses. Denial is a fear response and stubborn refusal to allow reality to encroach on an unyielding desire to keep the world the same. But, as powerful as it is, denial doesn’t change the facts of life on Earth.
Climate change denial is an enormous handicap and it’s already caused us to lose precious time confronting the issues. But denial has many states. It can allow us to ignore danger or inspire us to action. The positive face of denial is that it can enable us to tackle this seemingly impossible challenge.
Depressed people often have reduced capacity for denial and therefore for hope. They see the odds against them too clearly and are too aware of dismal reality. Complete incapacity for one-eyed optimism and hope renders them immobile and helpless and may lead at last to self-destruction.
To have any chance of success and survival, what we need is biased optimism — we need to take and enact a hopeful stance, even when the odds seem stacked against us. The paradox of denial is that it holds the key to planetary suicide or rescue. It is the essence of hope or of despair.
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timely post Lyn, good stuff. I was wondering about the same after digesting another mainstream denialist, this time in the form of Ms Devine. The question that none of the denialists seem prepared to honestly answer is “what if the predictions come true?”, instead they engage in endless diversionary tactics disputing the science or the models or the attacking those want to change course. Frankly it is just too depressing.
The people that really run this country and allow it to prosper know well that undertaking heavy taxation on energy and whatnot is foolish for everyone and will stifle prosperity for all. It is clear Copenhagen will fizzle and Waxman Markey is having trouble hence there is nothing wrong with taking a wait and see attitude.
Perhaps people like the author of this article will have glee in studying the behaviour of the human population as massive unemployment sweeps communities across Australia.
Australians are conservative and if they see to much of an infringement on their way of life they will not tolerate it. People wish to act on climate change but they aren’t really willing to pay all that much for it. This is a healthy inertia for change in my view.
I am a mild sceptic - a very hard position to hold in a roomful of rabid greenies - or in the blog pages of New Matilda.
But surely it is long past due for all the labeling, name calling and smears about deniers, flat earthers etc to have come to an end?
The very best thing The Environmental Movement could do would be to rise above its baser nature, thereby:
* abandoning the tendency towards apocalytic spin, the dissembling in the face of any sobering bit of mainstream science (e.g. actual likely sea level rise), the name calling, the irrational flight into a too easy group-think religiosity, the endless crass attempts to marginalize all those who don’t fit tightly into your own world view; but most of all
* resisting the perpetual do-nothing attractions of Nimbyism and knee-jerk nay-saying,
then we might just be able to start taking sensible actions such as: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/04/forests-desert-answer-c…
‘Australians are conservative’. If that means self centred and profit driven then I agree.
Without an environment there can not be an economy. People have been fed a mess of obfuscation, twisted statistics and outright lies by the denialists. This has allowed more of the general public to say “whew, now I don’t have to put in the hard yards”. The anti-scientist rhetoric is shameful but understandable considering it mainly comes from those fine people that brought you the false ‘trickle down effect’ in economics. The ones that claim that belief in AGW is akin to some pagan cult tell us that the only answer is to trust/pray to/in the invisible hand to bring our next plane load of cargo.
Thanks Lyn, good article.
The things that perplexes me are comments like the one above this…….apparently it is ALL about taxes……”increased taxes”, “massive job losses”……employment, or more correctly, unemployment is totally in government hands - they choose the unemployment level, just as the reserve bank chooses to adjust interests rates so that inflation stays within their “expected band”. Unemployment will not “sweep” across communities, to make a statement like that is to misunderstand the system. We have an opportunity to make a paradigm shift in the way we operate, if we don’t do it now then we will pay for it like no other people in living history. This isn’t doom and gloom, it is reality. As you say Lyn, denial is a powerful thing.
Be the change you want to see
www.adambutler.com.au
in terms of re-framing the choices from ‘does it exist or not?’, or ‘is it manmade or not?’….to ‘what is the wisest choice to make?’ (regardless of what you may or may not believe)…and in calling ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ by a more accurate name: climate destabilization, interested to hear what you think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
Frankly, when it comes to trusting information I would prefer to trust scientists who are experts in their field of climate science than geologists and other non-specialists any day. After all geologists largely depend on the mining industries for the maintenance of their discipline. It amazes me that the deniers are permitted to get away with such diversions as casting aspersions on the integrity and objectivity of climate scientists - it amounts to slander. As for politicians mouthing statistics about effects on the economy and employment they appear to take the word of the polluters at face value. Either they are extremely naive (probably) and/or pursuing an unrevealed agenda. Unfortunately noone seems to be challenging them when they make such outrageous, incorrect claims. Why do people accept the claims of such people with an obvious agenda? It seems that if a succession of specialist doctors tells us that we have a life-threatening illness and offer a cure we would prefer to take the word of a GP who says we have nothing wrong with us.
Hi Lyn
Perhaps these are your own defensive mechanisms, when people like you wail hysterically about the end of civiilzation on earth. What makes people like you tick?
FANTASY: accepting computer model predictions as facts
PARANOIA: blaming deniers and anyone else who doesn’t agree with you for your belief that armageddon is coming
IDEALIZATION: putting people on a pedestal based on your perception rather than the person’s actual character ie refugees, homeless, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd
yes i have biased optimism too …that one day people like you will stop spreading fear
Lyn says:
“Meanwhile our true future — the planet and its infrastructure of earth, air, water and biodiversity — is at risk.”
“To find new ways to deal with this encroaching catastrophe, its depth must first be fully confronted.”
By treating anthropogenic global warming as a millenarian cult instead of a risk that must be addressed through policy, the environment is threatened. Much energy has been drained from environmentalism by the AGW cult. The degradation of the land, forests and seas continues unabated. It’s easier for the Gunns of this world now that so many environmentalists (and policymakers) are distracted, often pursuing policies that damage the environment (such as wind energy, which cannot replace baseload power- it has be to backed up with yet more fossil or nuclear fuels).
AGW ditherers, sceptics and deniers are routinely patronised and insulted. Unsurprisingly, they resent this. They are also suspicious of absolutism and extremism, exemplified by Clive Hamilton’s warning that democracy may have to be “suspended.” The fact that the earth has not warmed for the past decade has undercut the simplistic claims of the cult. Some scientists now hypothesise a 10-30 year pause in warming before it restarts. They may well be right- the point is that this qualification has fuelled scepticism,. The polls show a sharp drop in AGW belief.
The irony is that effective AGW action is impeded by millenarianism. AGW policy needs to be transparent and rational. Take windpower: it cannot possibly provide baseload power, because it is extremely variable. That’s why Denmark for eg now emits more CO2 than before their huge investment in wind. Germany is building numerous coal power stations- because windpower must be 100% backed by baseload. More wind power: more fossil fuel or nuclear. Hundreds of billions have been spent on this scam. The consumer pays the lot. Denmark has the most expensive electricity in Europe. So what is to be done? In Australia, all coal-fired stations should be converted to gas. A rapid and huge reduction in CO2, without bankruptcy.
The wind scam has subverted support for AGW reform. And no confidence has been engendered by other govt. action either- there’s been precious little- tiny investment in other renewables for instance.
ALP AGW policy is essentially phony- they admit that there will be no significant effect on CO2 for 25 years or so. Far too late according to Millenarians like Prince Charles (July 2017, the end).
People aren’t fools, neither are they “depressed”: they will respond to rational, transparent action fairly administered (no one compensates the neighbours of windfarms, for eg). AGW is a serious risk, not an absolute fact. To claim otherwise is politically naive and profoundly unscientific.
Therefore patronising pop psychology such as this article is no help at all.
(This comment has been deleted for being off topic.)
Well said Frank.
Frank Campbell “The fact that the earth has not warmed for the past decade has undercut the simplistic claims of the cult”.
That rubbish has been covered time and time and time again and it keeps being hauled out. It only makes sense if it is taken in context of the extremely hot year 1998 as your starting point. Extremely sloppy or intentionally twisting basic stats. This decade still gets 8 out of 10 for high scores and NASA claims 2005 was hotter and that 1998 tied with 2005 for second place. That is not cooling.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
The cooling claims have been debunked in almost every forum I have read on this subject for the last couple of years, so you must have either come into the argument in the last 5 minutes or you are intentionally being part of the problem.
(This comment has been edited.)
We remind readers that, as we explained in our most recent editorial (http://newmatilda.com/2009/10/28/countdown-to-copenhagen), newmatilda.com is not the place for detailed rejections of the majority of climate change science. There are peer-reviewed journals which are better suited to that purpose. This thread is now being moderated in line with that policy. NM
Rationalist, who are the people who really run this country?
Lets see what makes me tick …… hmmm so many things and so little space so I will limit to 10 things which make me (and other sceptical scientists) tick:
1: An intimate knowledge of integro differential equations, the parameterisation process and boundary conditions (or lack of!) used in the GCM models.
2: An intimate knowledge of physics and chemistry and how they are approximated by models of everything from radiative physics to non elastic collisions.
3: Nearly 10 years of studying the theory of climate models and in particular the “missing” bits like ignoring turbulence on all scales from micro through to global mixing phenomena.
4: Thousands of hours of pouring over thousands of lines of Fortran code for NASAs GISS computer models (thats the ONLY model code that was available to the public)
5: Seeing the whole scientific tradition of openness, transparency, reproducibility and rigour corrupted by so called “climate scientists”
6: Seeing the outright fraud associated with “global warming” e.g. “hockey sticks”, Hadley’s missing data temperature datasets and correction after correction to so called “data” but only after being caught out!
7: Watching people who know nothing of atomic physics/chemistry/mathematics/numerical analysis etc become experts in science
8: Not observing ANYTHING particualrly unusual (in other words unexpected or novel) in any of the physical observations of surface, sea or atmospheric temperatures, sea levels or glacial states.
9: Noting that EVERY single forward prediction of the IPCC’s favourite computer models (yes there are many others!!!) from AR1 to AR4 have proven to WRONG every single time, in fact not even close to reality! We can’t even get predictions even close to reality in the most trivial situations.
10: But most of all because the factors which really drive climate are only just beginning to be understood resulting in the monotonous reversal of the alleged “consensus science” of key climate model paradigms i.e. the effects of aerosols, ice crystals, cosmic rays, ozone, nitrogen radicals, humidity and the list goes on and on.
Is that enough reasons to be sceptical ?
In answer to Lyn Bender’s question, “What makes climate sceptics tick?” Answer: MONEY.
I think we have completely inability as a society to change. This is despite every management textbook blathering on about flexibility and adaptability.
All my adult life we have know about environmental degradation, overpopulation, pollution &c &c and NOTHING AT ALL HAS BEEN DONE. All we have had is a retreat into the childish world of right-wing politics with our heads up our rear ends.
AGW has been known about for 30 years, widely accepted for 15, and yet nothing whatsoever has been done to change the way we do things (K Rudd’s ‘solutions’ of course will not do anything either). And we still have these denialist dinosaurs huffing and puffing about a world of their imaginations that never existed, where the laws of physics don’t apply.
It’s all very sad really.
‘They couldn’t change’ the archaeologists will say, and shake their heads.
Denial is certainly a powerful force and no doubt serves it own purposes, useful and not.
But perhaps the question posed in the heading on this article can be answered in other ways.
By observation, sceptics are not a homogenous group. It is possible that they actually are all in denial, but no doubt there are many explanations for what makes sceptics tick as there are sceptics.
Having had the dubious pleasure of crossing paths with several prominent Australian sceptics - and many none prominent ones - I have found myself wondering about the many subsets of denial: some issues that come to mind are self-aggrandisent, a deep-seated need to be feted, narcissistic personality disorder, gullibility, delusion, career grievance, personal ambition, malice, ignorance, moral confusion, scientific illiteracy, a tendency to believe in conspiracy, unethical, intellectual laziness, short-sighhtedness, neurosis and sheer bloody-mindedness.
This may, of course, apply equally to many people in the other camp.
Concentrating for now on the sceptics, however, what bothers me most is the reckless irresponsibility of those urging them on.
Politicians like Minchin, for example, who seek to exploit fear, denial and confusion, or industries like coal that stand to lose out from being forced to cost the whole life-cycle of their products and processes - all to serve their own short-term ends and bugger the greater good.
Asking WHY leading sceptics are the way are has not, for me at least, had many positive answers. What else would you expect, though, when to be a sincere sceptic you need to believe that climate change is not happening. To believe that means that you must be convinced that thousands of scientists from scores of disciplines and from almost every country in the world have somehow jointly conspired to toss away all their professional standards and principles - or else have lost sight of the very foundations and knowledge base of science itself - to be in league with some nebulous global anti-industrial environmentalist plot. All those nasty boffins trying to bring the world to its knees - and for what? That’s never really explained, is it? Ah, that’s right, to score more funds for research and more letters after their names. Sure.
Alternatively, you might accept that climate change is happening but that it is “natural” and therefore that it is okay and you need not bother trying to do anything about it, probably because you can’t conceive that our puny little species could have affected the workings of a thing as big as a whole planet. To believe that means you are abysmally and blissfully ignorant of the evidence of the incredibal upheavals to life during past periods of climate change - that, for example, the sea fell and rose 120metres during the last ice age, which ended only 10,000 years ago; or that much of Europe and North America were buried under massive sheets of ice; that Australia endured drought that lasted centuries and blew the guts out of its central dunefields. Ah, but that’s right - that’s all just fantasy scaremongering, isn’t it?
Bob Beale
Hi Lyn,
Judging by the icedvolvo comment above, the pathology of denialists also includes a weird kind of egotism that says, “I’m right, and none of you, or the IPCC, OR any of the world’s most respected scientific organisations or journals know anything about science.” It’s hilarious: Icedvolvo clearly wants us to think he’s one of the world’s best authorities on this stuff.
If that were true, why would he be on New Matilda, yapping away, when he could be “debunking” climate change in an actual scientific forum?
I suspect it’s because he would get his bum kicked by some actual scientists.
GREAT article on such an important subject. It is all too easy to dismiss climate change deniers as nonsensical flat earthers, but they are clearly having an impact on people and politicians. Tempting as it is we cannot just ignore them. I believe we really do need to give them our attention and try to understand them and their fears. More articles like this one please!
Perhaps it is as simple as people being happy to believe in Climate change deniers as their basic message is much more marketable then that of those who want action. While the green message is “We have a serious problem”, the denier message is “We don’t have a problem”. Who wants a problem? At this basic level most people would choose not to have a problem over having a problem. Thankfully most people consider the issue a little more then this and support action on climate change. And perhaps the green movements needs to keep working at changing the message from ‘We have a problem’ to something like ‘We have a fabulous and empowering solution that can benefit all’.
Perhaps we could even be a little kinder to the skeptics if we really want to break through this defense mechanism of denial. The AGW message is an incredibily hard message to hear, and much more difficult if you have a strong faith in the current system or have personally done very well out of it. The basic message is that the way we have lived our lives to date has seriously put our children and grand childrens future at risk. An incredibily tough message. Climate deniers have children too, and I imagine that many of them have worked hard in the current system at acquiring wealth and so on in the belief that it was the right thing for their children. To just call them plain wrong and/or selfish will no doubt strengthen their denial.
That being said I am enjoying the comments about them here, especially “What makes climate sceptics tick?” Answer: MONEY.”
Hhhhmmmm icedvolvo - so you slipped through the ‘moderation’ fence that time! Well done.
But not the next time I’ll wager.
Further to GraemeF’s response to Frank Campbell regarding the alleged cooling since 1998. You can see both the NASA record and the British Met Office record (the one that actually has 1998 as the hottest year) at
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/global-cooling-since-1998/
Both show that the moving 5-year mean has continued upwards. Climate is not about annual fluctuations, it is about longer-term trends. And even if the 5-year mean comes down a bit, you can see it’s done that several times before, after which it ramped up even faster, so the longer-term (10-year+) trend continued upwards.
This gets to the crux of when scepticism is false. This and many other claims of sceptics have been clearly shown to be a misinterpretation of the data, but people keep quoting it.
The scientist that Miranda Devine quotes today hasn’t done his homework. If he had he would have found ready answers to the questions he raises. People like Devine and Andrew Bolt are in a different category. They are professional trouble makers. They and their employers profit by stirring up trouble.
Take one of the claims peddled by Devine, that CO2 lagged temperature changes during the ice ages, so how could it have caused them? Well it didn’t trigger them, and climate scientists haven’t been claiming it did. The trigger, it seems, was small changes in heat from the sun related to small changes in Earth’s orbit. But CO2 was important because it greatly amplified the changes once they got going. None of that is inconsistent with CO2 being able to trigger global warming itself, if something causes its level to change. It seems to have happened back in the Eocene, 55 million years ago.
Guess what? We are changing the CO2 level. Guess what else? The measured warming and other phenomena are pretty much what those wicked scientists started predicting two or three decades ago. (Except lately the changes have been accelerating beyond those early predictions.) James Hanson was one of the earliest predictors. He has a track record.
Oh and the evidence for anthropogenic global warming goes well beyond the computer models that Icedvolvo and others like to bag.
Well Lyn may have an intellectual argument, but bbeale’s got the answer. It’s always interesting to find what drives people to take on a cause opposite to mainstream, the obvious, or common sense. And I agree 100% with bbeale’s assessment, so 100% do I agree that I’ll repeat them … “self-aggrandisent, a deep-seated need to be feted, narcissistic personality disorder, gullibility, delusion, career grievance, personal ambition, malice, ignorance, moral confusion, scientific illiteracy, a tendency to believe in conspiracy, unethical, intellectual laziness, short-sighhtedness, neurosis and sheer bloody-mindedness.”
As for the ‘argument itself’ - as stated many times by perceptive people, the crux in terms of determining what if any action we should be taking is not to fight to the death to determine certainly whether global warming is real or not. It is risk management. If there is only a 30% chance (or 10% or 90%) that global warming is real, the consequences are so great that it behoves us to get off our bums and out of our collective sand boxes very quickly and do something on the assumption that it is real.
As you (Lyn) state, the very notion that we should face something of such incredible consequence with interminable discussions about how to make sure that no vested interest is harmed during the course of saving the planet is laughable. If it weren’t so serious.
Mr Rudd and his obsession with polls, pleasing everyone and directing his energies constantly with an eye on the media / his rating / politics of the worst kind is an appalling manager of this country.
Mr Turnbull’s crowd are, unbelievably, even worse on this matter. It is more than distressing to see our fate determined by a bunch of self-serving politicians fighting for their political survival at the cost of ignoring the bleeding metaphorical meteorite that’s 10% or is it 90% likely to blow the earth to smithereens.
The three major camps of denialism and do nothingness.
1. The world is cooling not warming.
2. The world is warming but it is not the fault of homo sapiens.
3. The world is warming due to homo sapiens but Australia is such a small part of the problem that we may as well do nothing.
In the US, part 3 changes to China/India being the uncontrollable problem so any action is wasted.
How is it possible to make informed comment on ‘What Makes Climate Sceptics Tick’ in this blog when the ‘administrators’ (love that Orwellian term) have decided that any comment, which in their interpretation contains content that questions their perception of the mainstream orthodox view on AGW is simply ‘moderated’ away?
As a mild sceptic I would very much like to reply technically to the comments of Geoff Davies (12/11/09 9:14Pm) but, based on all the previous comments I have submitted which simply got ‘moderated’ away I ‘m now sure I cannot reply. I doubt whether Geoff himself is aware of the level of censorship which is now going on here.
So, my question is: what really is the point of this article if a fair breadth of comment is so aggressively muzzled?
In the meantime, let me say that I have met and/or listened carefully to prominent, highly technical, and scientifically reputable sceptics such as Garth Paltridge, Dick Lindzen and Steve McIntyre and I can assure the readership of New Matilda that money is in no way a motivation. The suggestion herein is juvenile in the extreme.
“A Mild Sceptic” - that’s pretty funny. I think I’m mildly pregnant.
The Soviet Union perfected the art of pathologizing its dissidents. Since the USSR was a “Worker’s Paradise” it was rather obvious that anyone who objected to the arrangement must be psychologically impaired. Dissidents were routinely sent to Psychiatric hospitals and injected with all manner of powerful Psychiatric medications in an effort to correct their Psychiatric disorders. Once the basic premise was accepted, the misuse of Psychiatry was inevitable. It appears that the Lyn Bender (great name for a psychologist) is following the American Psychological Association that is itself following in the glorious footsteps of Soviet Psychiatry. I guess Ms Bender felt it best to get her CV in. Careful with those needles, Lyn.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjU0MGQ5YzJjZDM5MjE1MWVkNGI5ZWN…
What makes anyone believe 100% in anything debatable or that has yet to be proven beyond reasonable doubt is a worry.
What if the earth’s surface is cooling (and the tectonic plate movement is a sign of this steady contraction) and that this is in fact is the main cause of rising sea levels?
So rather than there actually being more water in the oceans (due to slow melting of the polar ice caps), the ocean’s are gradually being decreased in size due to a cooling of the earth’s crust.
And perhaps most weather pattern changes are mainly due to deforestation and the devegetation of the earth’s surface, rather than from the polluting of the atmosphere, with greenhouse gases.
There’s nothing wrong with skepticism as long as the science can back up the skeptic.
Because there’s nothing worse than someone who jumps on a bandwagon (climate change ‘believers’ especially) without having a clue as to what they actually believe in or think about, other than what some scientists have decided to formally agree upon.
It’s a bit like dealing with religious zealots who believe they have all the answers to life in their religion, when in reality they are usually brainwashed automotons, without proper comprehension or understanding of the subject matter they are debating.
We’ve come so far in such a short time. And now some would have us believe that we’ll all be on a raft adrift on the worlds oceans without a bucket of sand in site(Waterworld?) unless there is an ETS introduced into Australia, along with Australia signing a blank treaty supposedly to ‘cure’ the theory of man made global warming . ( yes I am poking fun at your Friday the 13th cartoon).
For crying out loud. Add a bloody sun shade to that raft. Humans are more inventive nowadays.
Why even asylum seekers have more brains than to shove off on such an unsound vessel.
It’s not as if it’s happening in down town Sydney or Melbourne tomorrow. You’ve got time to gather supplies and start hoarding lumber for the futures futures future generations.
Or buy stock in carbon credits.
Both will be of about as much use.
GraemeF you must belong in one of these 3 camps of hysterical paranoia and fear-mongering
1. The world is warming not cooling.
2. The world is warming and it is all the fault of homo sapiens (especially the ones in the strong economies)
3. The world is warming due to homo sapiens and Australia is a small part of the problem but we may as well do something because that would make me feel better about myself (or is it that since you think australians are self-centred and profit driven you’re on this crusade as some kind of middle class guilt trip)
Why are you so afraid of the world?
Lyn, you should stick to being a psychologist. There is supposed to be a debate you know. Not that we would ever read about it here.
And if you think ‘denialism’ is just some non-socialist ‘state of mind’, then you would be wrong. Dissent, with respect to the carbon tax etc is at an epedemic now. Not only in these ‘United Australian States’ but just about everywhere.
Check out ‘Appendix 4” of the NIPCC document - just as an example.
http://www.heartland.org/publications/NIPCC%20report/PDFs/NIPCC%20Final….
well said IBerlin
NW just made itself irrelevant as a forum for debate. You can tell by the attitudes of, and contempt the ‘believers’ hold for the so called skeptics that this issue has passed beyond rational debate and into the hysterical. NM is only enforcing that prejudice by moderating debate away. What a joke.
Psychology. Helping people rationalize their feelings of personal resentment since the 19th century. Good to see that nothing has really changed.
Denial, driven by fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of not making enough money, fear of everything that could affect our existence - as long as it is something within past experience. For anything new, many prefer to be blind, deaf and dumb. It is all about risk - and it is seriously worrying that so many politicians think the risk worth taking.
There are some really insightful comments on this thread. I was downright inspired by the flawless application of logic by IBerlin (that works on at least two levels). Lateral thinking and evidence based arguement at its very best.
I would like to add to this discussion by drawing out (what I believe to be) one of the implicit assumptions made by the author in this article. It is an assumption that has been taken for granted by many of the more forceful dissenters on the thread and an assumption that has been skirted around by those wishing to make their criticism more ‘constructive.’
The assumption is that people who think or behave differently must be held in contempt. And by ‘contempt’ I mean that they must be treated like objects. In more general terms it might even be called a hatred of difference.
Yet this article isn’t just a rant. If it was, it could be easily dismissed. It’s actually much worse. What makes it particularly insidious - as Frank Campbell pointed out - is the fact that the article invokes psychological terminology. Of course, the author here offers no evidence for her broad-brush application of the languge REAL disorders to that most ridiculous of strawmen: the ‘atypical’ climate change denier.
But why would evidence be neccessary anyway. NM has a moderation policy.
The only real proven common agenda amongst climate scientists is better undersanding of climate and human impacts on it. Science careers are furthered by getting it right. To find those most motivated to want made-to-order results look no further than the enormous vested interests in industries that are major emitters.
Yes, the good life we currently enjoy derives from exploiting the energy of fossil fuels but the science is sound enough to make willfully ignoring the long term, future costs of emissions they have revealled to us very unwise.
We do know how to make energy in other ways and we won’t be forced back to the stone age - except by ignoring timely warning of problems ahead and failing to deal with emissions.
As others have asked those who disbelieve climate science - what happens when it turns out the dire predictions are right and we are well past avoiding major climatic tipping points? Blame scientist for failing to have adequately warned us?
It’s dangerously irresponsible of governments to dismiss and ignore the scientific advice they are getting and let’s be clear, that advice hasn’t changed after more than a decade of serious international attention and ever greater scientific enquiry on this.
Annual Antarctic and Greenland ice sheet loss has been accelerating (NASA GRACE data) so much over the “decade of cooling” that its more than quadruple the rate now as at the beginning of the decade. If anything the IPCC estimates look like underestimates of climate change. Meanwhile no alternate explanations for all this warming have emerged, just been alleged, no great flaws in the science have been shown, just alleged.
We can no longer afford to indulge the denialists; our future food supply and security depends on taking the ample warning we’ve been given seriously.
chrispriolo, a typical nonsense take on a perfectly true situation. Look at most forums and you will often get the same 3 arguments running in parallel without a blush of embarrassment despite their complete opposition to each other. The only thing that unites the 3 separate groups is their paranoia that any change to their life will destroy it and a complete lack of faith in science, whether it be that of climate or the possiblities of alternatives technologies to the business as usual and to hell with the damage camp. Agnotology without shame.
The argument by Iberlin paints some evocative pictures but it is very immature and not helpful. Its similar to the strategies in a childish childish couples tiff where one might say to other “I like you to think about making less mess” and the other then goes right off the handle screaming, “You hate me, you don’t think I do anything right, you think I’m crazy. Should I be locked up for making a mess?” .. Im not sure of the name for this style of argument but I’m quite sure its not recommended if anyone wants to get anywhere meaningful on topic.
No one here is suggesting climate change deniers should be locked up and medicated. Denialism is something that effects a lot of the population in a lot of different ways but as the author suggests here it isn’t a pathology on the same level as more serious psychological conditions.
Deniers have a role. I for one have learnt a lot from those on forums like this one. Some of there outrageous claims have caused me to go and look up stuff for myself and learn why what they are saying is wrong. Stuff like the world has been cooling, that Carbon is great. (of course it is in balance, as is oxygen) and all the other strange twists they like to put on things. . Quite fascinating. I would not want them or anyone else a little eccentric to be silenced, but this does not mean we should not discuss them or try to understand them. This is especially important when they seem to be having such an influence politically.
And note that its not just the left that has pathologised its dissidents historically. And these day Climate deniers try to do that to greens all the time, by suggesting we are part of some brainwashed wacky human hating religious cult, when we are simply choosing to believe the overwhelming evidence for action from the worlds most respected scientists, rather then the spin put out by those linked with polluting industries.
By the way has anyone actually found an article in a peer reviewed scientific journal that argues human activity is not contributing to global warming?
Isn’t it extraordinary: an article debating “what makes sceptics tick” attracts a 10 point response from one of the forums main “sceptics” and not a single response to the given reasons!
There’s only one rational conclusion to that: you don’t understand what makes us tick because you don’t understand anything about climate science and therefore CAN’T debate “what makes us tick”. But it won’t matter in the end anyway because it’s not about facts or reality is it :-)
How does that Cheap Trick song go again:
the dream police
they are driving me insane
those men inside my brain
the dream police they live inside of my head
the dream police come to me in my bed
the dream police are coming to arrest me
judge and jury …..
I wonder when the “climate police” will come for me ……..
Hey icedvolvo,
No offence, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.
This isn’t a “forum” - people don’t reply to stuff they aren’t interested in. If no one has replied to your points it’s probably because not many people take your scepticism very seriously. Like me, if they think about your posts at all, they probably wonder why you’re here instead of getting articles published in scientific journals where real scientists check if there’s any substance to them. The fact that you’re posting all your theories here probably says to them that these theories of yours aren’t worth very much.
I like how everyone thinks that sceptics are all anti-environment and don’t care about the plight of humanity. However, would it not be better to spend the billions upon billions of dollars that have been spent on ‘climate change research’ for over 20 years without, might I add, a skerrick of evidence of AGW, on problems that we know we can fix, like global poverty, deforestation, etc? Or even renewable energy over a realistic (like 30-40 year) period?
And please stop calling us ‘deniers’ - it’s loaded with negative connotations and is considered offensive.
“Climate change denial is an enormous handicap and it’s already caused us to lose precious time confronting the issues”
I would rather an honest denier than the two-faced lying hypocrites who promote schemes which will do nothing to slow “global warming”
I have yet to read anything by these advocates which will reduce existing greenhouse gas concentrations and yet they would impoverish the world with quackery like an ETS.
AYCCC - you are a Denier! Be offended if you like. It’s actually quite polite given that you appear to be advocating inaction in the face of a world changing problem of an order never before faced. Our kids and grandkids will pay the enormous costs of failure to deal with it - very many in the world will be paying with lost homes, empty bellies and blaming people and organisations like you. Expect far worse names than Denier as this slow building crisis unfolds.
AGW has gotten to it’s position of established science the hard way. No intelligence agencies have uncovered conspiracies, no reviews by independent scientists - like the US National Academy of Sciences conducted at GW Bush’s presidential request - has found fundamental flaws. Multiple independent lines of research all end up supporting the same conclusion - it’s real, it’s serious and failure to deal with it will have devastating consequences. All the arguments otherwise - contradicting each other as they do - are dangerous distractions we’ll come to deeply regret.
The capacity of people like you and IcedVolvo to reinterpret the same data to reach the opposite conclusion isn’t indicative of the science being wrong, just of you being wrong.
Meanwhile others, trying to blame those advocating strong action for the failure of mainstream politics and business to develop effective policy is complete nonsense; it’s not Environmentalists who’ve failed, it’s mainstream politics that’s failed. Deniers have figured very large in that and it’s nothing to be proud of.
Australian Youth Climate Change Council? Is this for real? Are there really any Climate Change deniers under 55?
I tried googling this name and there was only one result which states, “The AYCCC is the only known youth organisation in Australia that does not ‘accept’ human induced climate change” so I guess their must be a few of you out there. Top points for bravery though, as you guys will probably still be around to see the more serious effects of AGW, as opposed to most deniers. That is of course, unless politicians stop taking notice of people like you and actually do something meaningful about the problem.
Also Im suprised no one has commented on the link to the Heartland Institute provided by a denier here. This right wing so called ‘think tank’ is funded by big business, including Exxon Mobil who gave them $676,500 between 1998 and 2006. Since 2006 they have kept their funding secret. They are most famous for campaigning against the link between smoking and cancer, whilst recieving funding from cigarette companies.
It often pays off to do a little googling on your denialist information, though in most cases the spin merchants are clever enough to hide the money trail a little better than heartland have in the past.
But of course to suggest ‘money’ makes climate change deniers tick is “juvenile in the extreme” right? (Well I am well under 55)
Ha - we have no funding whatsoever from anybody. If you can find anything to the contrary, I’ll personally deposit my entire savings (around $200) into your bank account and my computer (a 5 year old laptop brick).
And is it “juvenile” to suggest that money makes some alarmists “tick”? Like Al Gore becoming the first “climate billionaire” recently, through books, his documentary and countless other publications? It isn’t all one-way traffic. Sure, some sceptics are funded by big business and organisations like the Heartland Institute, but $676,500 is nothing compared to the billions and billions provided by governments to climate change research institutions.
I never suggested a conspiracy theory, nor do any of our policies say so. We do not believe that there is a massive conspiracy theory with the IPCC, CSIRO, the government and everyone around the world involved in a huge conspiracy. It’s mainly been the spreading and propagating of misinformation, whether deliberately or not, and the rise of environmentalism.
Proof of ice caps melting, extreme weather, etc, is not proof of anthropogenic climate change. Sure, overall, in the past 100 or so years, the Earth has warmed. However, this is not proof that we did it. If we did cause it, then how does one explain the 10 or so years that we’ve had recently of temperature falls whilst carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise steadily? None of the models predicted this, none of the “independent scientists” did, and this is because there are factors out there that we don’t yet know about. Sure, we don’t know, but what we DO know is that humans are not entirely, or even significantly, the causers of climate change.
AYCCC - expecting continuous temperature changes in direct line with rising GHG concentrations is denial of the natural variations that must, given the nature of climate, continue to occur. Misunderstanding the variable nature of climate as well as of AGW’s impact on it is intrinsic to such mistaken conclusions as you make; deliberately overlooking known natural variations that operate on timescales of years and decades simply to make your conclusions look more convincing is intellectual dishonesty.
Climate scientists use averages of many climate models and model runs and still know and emphasise that the warming trend overlays natural variations. What hasn’t declined is the increase of energy within the Earth’s climate system; because it doesn’t show up immediately in Surface air temperatures doesn’t make it disappear.
So, so much you fail to understand and, it seems, you are determined to not ever understand. I should be persuaded by your ignorance over a couple of decades of actual intensive scientific research?
BTW what cooling? The last decade has seen 8 of the 10 hottest years on record (NASA GISS - which is the one global temperature measure that includes the fastest warming region on Earth, the Arctic). The highest sea levels on record and still rising (CSIRO - combining tide guage and satellite data). The greatest ice loss from Antarctic and Greenland icesheets on record - and rapidly increasing over the past decade - so much so that it’s almost certainly evidence that one crucial tipping point has been reached (GRACE and ICESAT satellites). The highest ocean heat content on record (University of Colorado).
What you know and don’t know versus the leading scientific institutions that study climate? Your ignorance being presented as superior insight is no substitute for multiple independent lines of research all reaching the same conclusions.
You are wrong and the misunderstandings and misinformation you and other denialist are spreading about is dangerous to our future.
AYCCC, the world has not cooled since 1998.
You have allowed yourself to be misinformed. See http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/global-cooling-since-1998/ for the reputable evidence, and its straightforward interpretation.
What are your sources for statements like “not a skerrick of evidence” that people are causing global warming, or that “what we DO know is that humans are not entirely, or even significantly, the causers of climate change”?
The physics of greenhouse gases has been understood for a century, and the Earth has been responding pretty much as was predicted by James Hanson about three decades ago and many others since (except now it’s going faster than expected). There’s some evidence. See my post http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/for-global-warming-sceptics…
41 degrees in Sydney today, and Katoomba has just set a new max record for overnight temperatures. Its a good thing the world has been cooling since 1998 - imagine how hot it would be otherwise!!
That the vast majority of Climate Scientists agree that anthropogenic Climate Destabilization is ‘99% certain’ is verifiable.
That the Tobacco Industry paid many propaganda people for decades to deny and delay the harmful effects of tobacco consumption from the public is verifiable.
I suggest a cost/risk/benefit analysis of transitioning to a Climate Safe future asap is a more compelling argument for effective AUS action now, than these suggestions by ‘Climate Deniers’ which rely (at best) on unverifiable non-peer-reviewed science.
I further suggest that people believe the Climate Denial Industry because they are unwilling or unable to work through their emotional reaction to reliable Climate Science. This Industry supplies (like a drug dealer) a convenient fantasy to vulnerable people.
Instead of our emotions enslaving us, let’s use them constructively to help our lives.
There is cause for educated optimism, because we already have the technology to probably succeed in preventing Auto-catalytic Climate Destabilization. We also already have the Plans/ Initiatives to beat this Climate nightmare in a hundred ways. Our success is currently being blocked by the lack of a critical mass of people who have worked through the anger/denial/hopelessness stages, to acceptance of individual Climate action.
Keep up the good mental health work Lynn Bender!