[ale] [OT] Psychology of Denial about Climate Change

[Tim Watts]

On Thu, 2009-12-10 at 09:58 -0500, Doug McNash wrote:
> The sky is falling, the sky is falling....
> 
> I thought the consensus is that we are heading towards an ice age.
> 
Nope. There has never been consensus around this. A flurry of articles
in the popular press in the '70s, and a few scholarly papers which have
been refuted. That's it.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

This sort of reaction [which neatly ties in with the article the OP
linked] reminds me of the ozone hole "controversy" of the '80s and '90s.
Here again, half the popular culture portrayed the whole thing variously
as a dubious conjecture or an alarmist theory and often repeated the
defeatist's mantras of "So? there's nothing we can do about it anyway",
"It's too complex to know if we're the cause" and "Just buy a lot of
spf30". Of course, the business community warned of global economic
collapse if we tried to fix it. And, not surprisingly, they found a few
scientists to "prove" there was nothing to worry about. But we made the
decision to get rid of CFCs (mostly). The world economy didn't cave
because of it; and the ozone hole is indeed slowly closing. Did we avert
a crisis? No one can say for sure. But what we can say with certainty is
that we averted a global ozone depletion experiment: through scientific
inquiry we knew what the ozone levels typically should be, that we were
causing the changes, and we decided *not* to find out what would happen
if we really f*cked with them.

Notably, the "controversy" did not exist in the scientific community but
rather was birthed by the business community. This wasn't an example of
"group think" in the scientific community. It was an example of
scientific rigor meets economic power players.

The climate change "controversy" is just another example of history
repeating itself.



> "Science: Another Ice Age?" Time  June 24, 1974
>     http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914-1,00.html
> 
> "The Cooling World" Newsweek, April 28, 1975 
>     http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
> 
> Reminds me of another fairy tale - Goldilocks.
> 
> The Malthusian Catastrophe (population explosion) also has not
> occurred yet even though it keeps getting revised.
> 
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe
> 
> As for the rest of your screed, I would suggest you should double up
> on your meds!
> 
> (Head down - headed for my bunker now - where I will rape the planet
> and no one will hear it scream)
> 
>     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4XhhTF7vRM
> 
> Peace on Earth, Purity of Essence
> --
> doug mcnash
> 
> ---- aaron <aaron at pd.org> wrote: 
> > The ongoing exchange on Climate Change has been amusing and very
> > revealing about the incredible strengths of scientific method and
> > peer review.  It has reinforced my certainty that this is a problem
> > that could affect the survival of our species and is something we
> > should clearly be addressing with heavy investments in research
> > and potential sustainable solutions.
> > 
> > The simple, well documented reality is that the ratios of greenhouse
> > gasses in the atmosphere are escalating rapidly due to the activities
> > of human beings and their use of fossil fuels. Increasing greenhouse
> > gasses will inevitably raise planetary temperature. The rate of human
> > population growth is also out of control and continues to escalate,
> > so the damage can only get worse from here. Solutions for stemming
> > the increase of human population and demand for energy, as well as
> > for converting to less toxic and more renewable energy sources, will
> > need to happen in tandem if we are to avert disastrous consequences.
> > 
> > The discussion also leaves me in awe that so many normally rational
> > people can be so easily manipulated by the corporate welfare state
> > propaganda machine and whipped into an extremist, rabid and even
> > suicidal frenzy of denial on this kind of issue.  The hate zombies
> > serve their blood sucking overlords well, assuring that the glutinous,
> > greed driven, unsustainable exploitation of the planet's resources and
> > the rape of the compliant masses by the ultra pig elite will
> > continue unabated until it all comes crashing down on us (but not
> > them) in massive global catastrophes.  The "Cap and Trade"
> > delusion is a great example of the level of suicidal denial that
> > the hate zombies will buy into -- a corporapist scheme to provide
> > the biggest of the ultra pigs with payola permits to poison the
> > world's populace without any accountability or consequence --
> > yeah, sure, that's a GREAT deal for all us common folk!
> > 
> > The article linked below attempts to explain the psychology of
> > this self delusion and denial, but it still doesn't forgive the
> > shear suicidal stupidity of it. Especially knowing that most of
> > these screaming hate the government (and thus, hate yourself)
> > denial freaks are the same clan of rabid zombies that have sat in
> > spineless silence through decades of massive deficit tax increases
> > imposed on them to fund insane and continual escalations of the
> > U.S. war and torture death machine industries. They can magically
> > rationalize that it's OK to massively bloat and militarize the
> > government and destroy civil rights and democracy and massively
> > inflate the tax burden on us, our children and our children's
> > children so long as it's being done to support imperialist invasions
> > and occupations of foreign lands where we murder the brown people
> > there, steal their nation's resources, and let the ultra pigs claim
> > ownership of it all.
> > 
> > <http://tinyurl.com/psychofdenial>
> > 
> > 
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________
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein

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