K40b: The Psychopathology of
Climate Denial
Psychological studies and their insights
into the political and pseudo-scientific
attacks on climate science and climate
scientists
“This world is a strange madhouse.
Currently, every coachman and every
waiter is debating whether relativity
theory is correct. Belief in this matter
depends on political party affiliation” –
Albert Einstein, circa 1918
• Insane indeed. You probably didn’t know that
General Relativity is actually a LIBERAL PLOT! …
according to this Conserv-a-pedia entry which is
full of pseudo-scientific sounding nonsense.
Yet, belief in the reality of climate change (whether or
not human-caused) has turned sharply upwards this Fall
2015, even among average on-the-street Republicans
…In Stark Contrast to the Republicans
who Run Congress and Create our
Laws…
• “Last year PolitiFact could find only eight
Republicans in Congress, out of 278 in the caucus,
who had made on-the-record comments
accepting the reality of man-made global
warming. And most of the contenders for the
Republican presidential nomination are solidly in
the anti-science camp.”
• I remind you that anti-science is anti-evidence.
Anti-reason. Anti-reality. It is a psychopathology.
Reminder: The Scientific
Conviction
Contrast that with Readers of the blogsite
of Fox TV Weatherman Anthony Watts
“Watts Up with That?” (WUWT)
• Arguably the most popular and highly visited site
of the climate denial blog-o-sphere
The Two Primary Groups behind
Climate Denialism
• 1. Rightwing political ideologues
• 2. Fossil Fuel business interests
• These two groups have a substantial overlap,
but the motivations, psychological and
otherwise, can be quite different
Right Wing Ideologues…
• The governing psychopathology here is chronic, nameless Fear
• Fear of? Of change. Of government stomping on their
supposed freedoms. Of the hated Liberals getting their
way. And unacknowledged fear that they may be wrong
and the future is indeed in deep peril…. And more
• Deeper still, they fear that they are mentally unfit for
this challenge (despite protestations to the contrary)
• Fear is our organism’s signal that we are in danger, out of control.
That our contact with reality is inadequate to our challenges
• Of course, there are healthy examples of proper fear, but fear is
also a pervasive constant state of those who feel a deep lack of
confidence in the primary means by which we achieve control
over our lives – our mind’s ability to think, to acquire needed
knowledge, and to cope
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it
will direct your life, and you will call it “fate” –
Carl Jung
• When one has habitually avoided the
challenge and effort of thought on issues that
may bring up uncomfortable feelings – this
fear of mental inadequacy is to be expected.
• It is well earned.
Studies show political conservatism is linked
with low intelligence and low self-confidence
in the ability to cope…
• Low IQ in childhood is predictive of conservative
attitudes, and racism later as adults (Hodson and
Busseri 2012) and relevant quote “…for those who lack
a cognitive ability to grasp complexities of our world,
strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing.”
• Republican states have lower high school graduation
rates
• College students are increasingly liberal but also
increasingly despairing of political involvement (which
is a reasonable reaction, given Gilens and Page 2014)
A Study from Dickinson University finds watching
arch-conservative Fox News makes one even less
informed than those who watch no news at all
The Problem of Media-Promoted
Ignorance is Profound
• We are social animals, and all except the most
independent thinkers will tend to take their cues of what is
alarming from those immediately around them
• Hear “Fire!” yelled in a crowded theater, and if no one else
reacts, you’ll probably not react either – fire or no fire.
• Enemies of climate science know this. A powerful way to
dumb down the populace in democracies (where brute
popularity is what installs politicians), is to first dumb
down the media.
• Consider the results of this poll on belief in the reality of
human-caused climate change (from 2014 poll by Ipsos)…
The U.S. leads the world in climate denial. And the 3 worst
climate-denying countries (bottom 3) have something in
common – Rupert Murdoch-controlled media dominance
In Fairness – Scientists have not been
helping. They’ve been slow to speak with
the Cognitive/Emotional/Moral selfconsistency necessary for Effective
Communication
• This is not controversial – they know it, they admit it, and
it’s due not just to the intimidation, threats, and hatred
they’ve been subjected to by the Climate Denial
community, and the political meddling in the IPCC process…
• It’s also due to the science culture: the unemotional,
“rational” ethos which initially was attractive to a young
people attracted to science after fleeing the irrationality so
common in much of everyday life.
• Climate scientist Dr. Eric Rignot expresses it well (AGU ‘14
interview (4:29))
Dogmatic hatred of government influences Republican rejection of
climate science (Campbell and Kay 2014, discussed here): Republicans
rejected climate science if told government regulation is required to
solve climate change, but much less so if told there were free market
solutions. Rejecting reasoned evidence because one doesn’t
like the required solution, exhibits psychopathology.
Low-Effort Thought promotes political
Conservatism (Eidelman et al. 2014)
• Below is the paper’s abstract…
• “The authors test the hypothesis that low-effort thought promotes
political Conservatism. In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was
measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so
did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and
political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load
reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load
counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants’
endorsement of Conservative terms. In Study 4, participants
considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed
Conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator
of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the
relationship between processing effort and Conservatism. Together
these data suggest that political Conservatism may be a process
consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate
thought is disengaged, endorsement of Conservative ideology
increases”
The connection between chronic fear
and political Conservatism is backed
up by brain studies
• Kanai et al. 2011, in their paper “Political
Orientations are Correlated with Brain Structure
in Young Adults”, find that conservatives show
larger brain mass in the right amygdala which is
primarily involved in the emotion of fear, while
conversely, the anterior cingulate cortex of
liberal students had more gray matter than their
conservative counterparts. The anterior cingulate
cortex is most active in coping with complexity,
and especially in error-detection
The Abstract section from Kanai et al.
2011…
• “Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives
on psychological measures [ 1 ]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic
influences and their interaction with environmental factors [ 2, 3 ]. Recent work
has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity
measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex
[ 4 ]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a
counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related
self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We
found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter
volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater Conservatism was
associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were
replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings
extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in selfregulatory conflict monitoring [ 4 ] and recognition of emotional faces [ 5 ] by
showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although
our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the
formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [ 4, 6 ] to
suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms
that mediate political attitudes.”
A Failure of the Normal Maturity Path
• As an infant, we see Mother as the source of all satisfactions. If we
are unhappy, we cry and she’ll make it better somehow
• As a child, we begin learning our own capabilities and that there’s a
larger world
• As a teenager, we begin to think conceptually, engage the neocortex,
project a future, and understand the power of principles and ideas.
We begin to learn that the World does not owe us a living, that
nature has laws which the evidence shows are unchanging across all
space and all time, regardless of temper tantrums
• As an adult, we learn that our task as humans is to master the
understanding of those laws, and the laws of human psychology and
biology as part of the fundamental requirements for finding a path
to a happy life
• Some of us fail at this enterprise
But some people refuse to grow up,
refuse to accept that their wishes are
not all-powerful, and that life requires
effortful thought, and that success is
not guaranteed simply by wishing it so.
Perhaps over-indulgent parents disincentivize the normal maturity path,
or perhaps it is simply their choice.
Personal growth is stunted until this
failure is corrected.
• The Campbell and Kay study on slide 15 is a dramatic
example of this failure by rank-and-file Republicans –
• Refusal to accept reason and evidence simply
because one does not like the consequences is a
severe dysfunction, and the subconscious mind
registers this fact, even if denied consciously.
• It cripples self-confidence in mental capacity,
regardless of compensatory bravado to prove
otherwise to self and others
Projecting the Future: Relation to
Intelligence and Success – The
Stanford Study
• A classic series of psychological experiments done in the
late 1960’s at Stanford by Walter Mischel and colleagues
tested 4-5yr old children’s ability to make the future real
enough in their minds to exert will power to resist
immediate gratification in favor of larger rewards in the
future: “one candy now, or two if you wait 15 minutes –
your choice, kids” (summary here, and further links)
• About 70% of children failed to wait, but the 30% who did
showed later SAT results which outscored the impulsive
kids by over 200 points!
• Those who failed also showed, in later life, lower
intelligence, fewer friends, lower incomes, lower
educational attainments, couldn’t handle stress of any kind
well, and lower scores in a wide variety of other life success
measures.
Correlation: Intelligence vs. the
Willingness to Tolerate Short-term
Discomfort for Long-term Reward
• I'm haunted by the results of these classic Stanford "delayed
gratification" studies (and here) of children, which show that the
willingness to delay gratification for ultimately larger reward in 4year olds is predictive of later measures of intelligence and
success in life.
• We as a planet behave like the immediate gratification 4 year olds
in these studies, preferring to eat through our seed corn now
rather than clearly acknowledge what that means for our future.
• What's interesting about the studies is that the choice is so easily
grasped by all (1 candy now, or 2 candies if you wait a bit), that it
is not a test of the ability to understand what is being asked…
• It is a test of the willingness to pause and make real in one's
mind what the future will hold, vs. simply avoiding that
awareness in order to indulge short-term wishes.
Sound familiar?
• I can’t help thinking of these studies when I look with amazement at
how short-sighted are both Right Wing ideologues and their politician
corporate shills … surely they KNOW they are wrong denying the
reality of human-caused climate change and how serious it will be –
the Oil Companies’ own scientists demonstrated this as early as the
late 1970’s, as we’re learning in 2015.
• Witness their stubborn refusal to project the kind of lives of
everyone’s grandchildren, including their own, will face because of
their actions.
• Witness their stubborn refusal to think, even more immediately about
their personal reputation, their own legacy in the minds of people, in
the very near future, their own impending (if not present) public
disgrace. Can they not make that real enough in their minds to cut
their losses? How deep a hole will they dig?
• NO immediate gratifications, certainly not next quarter’s profit
margins, are worth such costs. Yet, they do it anyway.
• I don’t know whether the Mischel studies asked the adult versions of
their study children what their political preferences were, but it would
be very interesting to know.
Reason and Self Esteem
• The evidence is strong and widely accepted in psychological studies that
humans have a strong need for self-respect
• If self-respect early on is earned genuinely by exercising mental clarity and
a commitment to honoring evidence and truth (see Chapter 0), fear tends
to play a minor and appropriate role in life, and the psychic rewards of
thinking clearly tend to send one into a positive reinforcing cycle of clarity.
• But caving in to fear, and giving up on thinking when it is not always
immediately successful, can set up a vicious cycle in which cognition is
further limited to avoid painful awareness of real or imagined inadequacy.
Fear (unconscious and conscious) becomes the ruling emotion.
• When genuine self esteem is not there, people often seek it by attaching
to a group or ideology which promises “rightness” with only minimal effort
– often nothing more than blind faith. But going this route amplifies the
negative spiral, as reasoned thought further retreats, and fear becomes
even more pervasive when one thereby develops a now well-earned
judgment of intellectual inadequacy.
• Does this cycle explain the larger amygdala in Conservatives, or were they
born that way? How much is in-born, how much is from personal choices?
It’s not clear from these past studies.
All These Findings Bring up Disturbing
Questions
• Certainly most people (myself included) can attest to the frustration of
trying to reason with Conservatives on climate. It goes nowhere.
• Cause and effect are not clear from these studies – are Conservatives
born with brain abnormalities and/or mental handicaps and cannot be
expected to ever change?
• Or instead, does their continual awareness-avoidance promote fear and
low self-esteem, expanding their amygdala and atrophy’ing their
anterior cingulate cortex, and they find similar political conservatives
safe company and perhaps a source of positive regard, substituting for
their low self-esteem?
• Or is it a mixture of both?
• What do the answers to these question imply about how willing we
will be to make the wrenching changes necessary to halt climate
change?
• Or, as increasing evidence points towards - how do the answers to these
questions explain why we failed to act back when there was still time to
halt it at all?
But More Disturbing…
• … as climate change continues to accelerate in a worsening direction,
there is the very real possibility of societal breakdown in vulnerable
places
• We’re already seeing the climate-related worst refugee crises in Europe
and the Middle East since World War II, even at this very early stage
• We’ve shown the climate consequences to come, in earlier
Presentations…
• All of these are likely to promote MORE fear, and MORE clinging
attachment to dysfunctional politics, and further fleeing from reason if it
requires tough-minded solutions which are psychologically distressing in
the present.
• The risk is, they retreat into a fear/hate based bunker-mentality.
• How to deal with the amazing level of dogmatic refusal to confront
reason and evidence…?
• It’s a tough problem. Looking tougher every time I look deeper. In
personal psychological growth, a person has to WANT to grow and
change before it can happen. That key element, so far, seems utterly
lacking. And it must be experience GLOBALLY, not just by a few.
Fossil Fuel Business Interests
• This is the second major group involved in attacking climate
science and climate scientists
• Members of this group, at least the members who are distinct
from the Right wing political faction described earlier, are
increasingly seen to be not so much in outright denial as
compared to the average Conservative on the street.
• Example: Exxon-Mobil’s own scientists were doing good climate
science and advising corporate headquarters of the catastrophic
climate consequences of their business as early as the 1970’s.
• Their reaction? Dismantle their climate science effort and fund
groups attacking climate scientists and climate science. Fund
“Doubt is our Product” purveyors. While Exxon-Mobil’s PR
person claims they don’t fund climate denial groups now,
observe the evasive and manipulative wording in this
interview…
From the Sept ‘15 Interview by NPR’s
Bob Garfield of “On the Media”
• “BOB GARFIELD: [Y]ou're kind of changing the subject.
This reporting by InsideClimate News doesn't really
concern itself with what ExxonMobil has done lately
(RN- but see next slide), it's concerning itself with the
very sharp change in corporate behavior and
apparently strategy 25 years ago. Namely, that you
dismantled some significant percentage of this [climate
change] research program, and, beginning in about
1989, started pouring millions and millions of dollars in
the funding of three dozen organizations, some of
which were transparently industry front groups, and
some which were right-wing economics advocacy
groups, that themselves spent decades in various
degrees of climate denial.”
Since 2000, money to fund climate denial groups is being
laundered through the anonymity of Donor’s Trust. See links
to understand how the red curve rose, while taking direct,
named responsibility declined in the past decade here
Exxon Knew
• It is difficult to get a high-level decisionmaking job in a tough competitive business in
America unless you have an above average IQ,
and can think clearly in areas which needs
clear thinking in order to make profits
• So the earlier discussion about the intellectual
deficiencies of Conservatives may not be as
relevant here
• Instead, the psychopathology seems to be
the repression of, or vacancy of, a moral
compass.
In Fact, it’s now known that all of the
major oil companies knew
• The Pulitzer Prize winning organization ClimateNews has uncovered
the documents showing that not just Exxon, but all of the major oil
companies knew how catastrophic their business model would be
to future generations. Their own climate scientists did high quality
work in the 1970's demonstrating this, just as scientists and
academia have been warning about for these past decades.
• They knew, and yet they chose to react by spending hundreds of
millions of dollars funding rabid climate denialist dis-information
campaign organizations as a strategy to manufacture a false
"debate" and forestall policy action until it was too late.
• The New York attorney general is looking into filing criminal charges
under the RICO anti-racketeering laws, and further, as corporate
charters in the U.S. require corporations to be public with
information which endangers their shareholders.
• To make such incredible choices, in the face of retribution from
one’s own shareholders, from the legal authorities, not to mention
the future well being of all life on Earth – exhibits deep
psychopathology, even outright sociopathic behavior
Fossil Fuel corporations fund attacks
on climate scientists because it is in
their financial interest to do so…
• …not because they think it’s morally correct to do
so
• Yes, this is obvious. So the question is – why do
amoral people capable of this level of sociopathic
betrayal get chosen for such high positions?
• “Natural selection”… it seems.
• It appears to be more profitable to choose CEO’s
who will not let morality interfere unduly with the
single-minded goal of modern capitalism –
accruing money to the corporation and its
stockholders
And Yet: Genuine self esteem is the most
valuable achievement there is, and amorality
will not take you there
• Why did these people default on their own intelligence and make this
sociopathic choice?
• Denial is still involved. One cannot keep any semblance of fully conscious
genuine self respect and at the same time face the true magnitude of
one’s betrayal to all future generations and other species on this planet
entailed in funding climate denialism, especially during these very last
years when it was possible to halt climate change
• It’s a slippery slope from white lies to self, to gray lies of convenience…. to
worse, as the motivation to preserve genuine self esteem wanes, much
like the urge to keep a new car shiny and spotless wanes after 10 years of
dings and stains, road insults and failures of maintenance
• Psychological repression must be involved
• In the same way that it would have been pointless to try to get Joseph
Stalin to acknowledge his atrocities as a step in his therapy, it may well be
futile in this case as well. Beyond a certain point, one simply cannot face
the magnitude of what one has done and yet still preserve some feeling
of the value of one’s own life
Psychological Repression
• When our attention encounters a fact which, if fully let
into awareness, will cause a very painful realization
about one’s own sense of worth, we can feel the urge
to quickly shift our attention elsewhere
• If we give in to this urge, and if we do this repeatedly
and consistently over time…
• …with repetition it becomes automated, and sinks
beneath conscious awareness; a habit, and no longer
requires constant energy from the conscious mind.
• Habits are an evolutionary adaptation - our brain is
trying to save biological energy by making habits, but
in this case, it’s cementing in a pathological response
that will now require hard work to undo.
Sharp, Motivated, Sociopathic CEO’s?
• If we show high competence in areas not touching on this
repressed area, we can convince ourselves that our selfvalue is ALL about that narrow competence, and this can
make the repression all the harder to unseat.
• “I’m a fantastically wealthy high-powered player in the
Corporate and Political world – I’m SOMEBODY!” (and
unconsciously they’re saying “I won’t let my betrayals to
humanity along the way enter the equation” – observe
the consequences when Reality is no longer deniable, the
apparent suicide of fracking legend and Chesapeake
Energy founder Aubrey McClendon)
• The (pseudo) reward is (pseudo) self-esteem, blunting the
pain mechanism which would normally alert us to our
psychopathology and motivate us to heal ourselves.
Pseudo-Self Esteem Based on
Competitive Success is Costly
• Surrounding yourself with “yes” men, or sycophants in general,
will make it all the easier to avoid awareness of our betrayals
• But there is a cost… it becomes impossible to emotionally
connect with innocence, with perhaps one’s own children,
grandchildren, or mate
• To repress the pain of the betrayals also cuts one off from the
full experience of the pleasures that can only come from
emotional open-ness.
• It’s difficult for me to imagine that Lee Raymond, Rex Tillerson,
or David or Charles Koch… for example, could possibly fully
enjoy talking about the future with 5 year old children who love
playing in the fields and seeing the wild things there. There
must be a betrayed child inside themselves somewhere,
struggling to find expression in such moments. I imagine this
would provide powerful psychic motivation to avoid such
encounters.
Money and Envy as Substitutes for
Self-Value
• A society such as America makes it easy to attempt to
substitute financial wealth for genuine self respect.
• If one doesn’t have genuine self-respect all the way through, as
Oil execs who fund climate denialism cannot, then one can feel
driven to go after its substitute – envy from others
• Earning lots of money honestly by creating genuine value to the
World is of course nothing to be ashamed of. But money as
substitute for a self-esteem one does not have, becomes a
compulsive, never-satisfied obsession to fill a hole in one’s soul
that can never be filled with money
• When one doesn’t truly believe one’s own moral worth, one
can feel driven for status and accolades from others, however
such can be commandeered. The never-ending quest to
convince oneself… “See? I MUST be a good person after all, or
so many people wouldn’t envy me”
Charity as Compensation
• Earning vast sums as an Oil exec, and then
dealing with one’s nagging conscience by giving
much to charities, even to a PBS Science Program
(which then does not create and does not
broadcast programs on human-caused climate
change – by far the most consequential science
happening today), will not fill that hole either.
• This problem of conscience is not in being rich,
the problem is the self-delusions involved in lying
to yourself, and then others, about the motives
you have in attacking science and scientists, and
in avoiding awareness of what your business is
doing to everyone’s future.
Facing and overcoming these mental
handicaps will already be tough. Clearly the
first step is still in the future, for our
Republican Congress people…
• But it will get even tougher for a very cruel reason…
• New studies are showing that our decision-making
ability drops by a strikingly large 21% when CO2
levels double. Before the end of this century, on
trend CO2 levels will be double the pre-industrial
levels, and rising further
• This mental handicap will affect all of us, not just
Republicans (although with, on average, their lower
starting IQ level, they can afford it least)
Beyond the Thermodynamics of Civilization The Reasons Why Global Warming is so
Dangerously Unlikely to be Controlled
• 1. The human mind can make ‘light bulb’
connections in a very short time – given the Will
to Clarity; the DESIRE for genuine honest
understanding. But society does not have the
intimate and rapid neuron/dendrite connections
like the cells of the brain. Communication is a
million times slower.
• Teaching, especially against psychological
resistance is just plain slow. I can vouch for this!
2. The Emotional Progression of the
Resistant Mind
•
These are the likely stages a world society will go through in confronting Climate Change. Individuals
can go through these at very different speeds, or detour altogether into a better direction,
depending on their COMMITMENT to AWARENESS and to what extent they have the mental frame “I
Just Want to Know the Truth” (review Chapter 0)
•
•
•
•
A. Apathy: “I’m too busy, don’t bother me about global warming”
B. Denial: “I refuse to accept this. It just can’t be right, that’s horrific”
C. Skepticism: “In my opinion, you’re wrong, and even if you’re right, it won’t be so bad as you say”
D. Anger : “Science is saying WHAT? I demand FAIRNESS in life, I don’t DESERVE this kind of thing.
You’ve GOT to be all wrong!”
E. Feeble Token Efforts: “OK, we need to do something, let’s put solar on our roofs (now that it’s
cheap), and a bucket in the shower stall. But you have no RIGHT to expect huge sacrifices to my
LIFESTYLE! It wasn’t MY fault!”
F. Fear, Panic: “My God, food prices are skyrocketing, insurance is unaffordable, mega storms and
mega-droughts, resource wars breaking out, it’s hot and muggy all the time now, and coastal cities
are starting to drown. It’s so hot and stuffy I can’t think straight. I don’t know what to do!!”
G. Despair: “The time to act was the late 20th century, and it’s now well into the 21st, and physics time
scales are acting as you said. Adopt fetal position/thumb-in-mouth. “Bunker mentality” to life in a
stuffy, chaotic, expensive, overcrowded, overheated, claustrophobic world.
•
•
•
And Finally…H. Acceptance. Get back up, resolve to
save what we can of the future, for our children and
other species
• -- We either realize the world will pull together across national boundaries, or
sink together individually
• -- Stiff carbon taxes, some of this money diverted to funding research and
deployment of massive atmospheric CO2 removal installations, beyond
ending CO2 emissions.
• -- Commit to lowering global temperatures to halt permafrost carbon
feedback, re-freeze the Arctic Ocean, thicken and re-ground thinning polar
ice-shelves- requiring massively expensive air capture/sequestration of CO2
• -- Don’t complain when it’s getting colder or you feel poorer, while we do this.
• -- Strong population control measures
• -- Re-think the notion that Bling=Wealth, Meat=Status... Learn the joys of
giving to future generations, instead of taking
• -- Contract global civilization in as controlled and humane a way as possible,
until we are within sustainable boundaries which also end the 6th Great
Global Extinction Event already well underway.
• Re-think as a value to pursue, the Libertarian/Objectivist mindset of Homo
Sapien’s manifest destiny to completely dominate the planet, and then the
Galaxy
Where are we today?
• We’re somewhere between “B. Denial” and “C.
Skepticism”, with some at “E. Token efforts”.
• It will take an individual of rare maturity and
discipline to reach all the way to Stage H.
• Can a sufficient number get there, to actually
change civilization before chaos sets in?
• I fear Nolthenius’ First Law will rule once again.
And by then, chaos may already have arrived.
• Where are you on this list, personally?
3. Individual Carbon Footprint: Personal
Utility=High; Climate Impact=Zero
• Our individual carbon footprints are so microscopic as to be negligible
for climate
• Yet our felt utility in engaging carbon-generating activities is very high.
Drive to the store for a weekly food shopping, buy ‘fridge and washing
machine/dryer to allow time to spend loving your children, etc.
• It’s the clearly well-motivated thing to do, to burn that carbon for the
benefit of your personal life. That’s the energy infrastructure we
inherited. Again, your personal voluntary efforts will not change climate.
• This is entirely rational, and it would be pointless and counterproductive
for me or anyone to guilt-trip you about your personal carbon choices.
Who wants to be finger-wagged by the uber-pius? For most, all that
would do is motivate further head-in-sand avoidance of critically
needed conscious awareness of tough climate truths.
• Avoiding personal voluntary carbon sacrifices - It is the rationally
irrational thing to do! A psychopathology that is not a psychopathology,
but instead a failure of the “group selection” genetic programming of
humans (see E. O. Wilson)
• So what to do? See the “policy” PowerPoint K44
4. Physics Time Scales…
• …for big things are long. This allows the non-scientist to
indulge the false belief that since things haven’t changed
much yet, they never will, and things won’t be so bad, or
else they’d be bad already...(false, but seductive)
• This is a tough one. The logic is just not compelling enough
for average people to appreciate. It’s hard to gut-level
convince them about physics time scales. At best they take
it on science faith, until they see the “bill”, that is.
• And it’s too wonky, especially for the mentally challenged
Conservatives, to motivate the level of dramatic,
emergency action actually required
• The truth is, we don’t have that time. It is more and more
apparent that the time to avoid a seriously crippled future
has already passed
5. Recency Bias
• We tend to accommodate to what we’ve experienced recently
• You - my students - may not miss the frogs which I loved to hear in
my younger days, and the pollywogs I loved to watch in even the
urban creeks of my youth. You’ve perhaps not experienced them,
and so won’t miss them as much
• You may not miss all the many songbirds, which now are rare. I
used to hear them all the time, almost every day as a youngster. I
do miss them.
• People of the next generation may accommodate to the world of
that time, because they won’t remember the wonders of Venice
before it went underwater, or the beauty of coral reefs before they
disintegrated, or the beauty of icy mountains and quiet backcountry skiing, when mountains had snow, and hard-driving
snowmobilers hadn’t ruined what little there is.
• And if they don’t miss them, we will continue sliding into quiet
negligence, doing nothing about their loss
• And the children of these children will unconsciously slip into lower
and even lower expectations….
They’ll have a much different world… and not
complain too much, all because of recency bias.
(Hopefully not THIS grim)
Game Theory Says – Climate
Negotiations will Continue to Fail
• A study applying Game Theory and Nash equilbria (remember,
“A Beautiful Mind”?) finds that climate negotiations will fail.
Experiments with real individuals verified this, as does every
day’s real-world headlines.
• When given realistic rules and choices, including a certain
amount of uncertainty as to when we hit the tipping point and
climate catastrophe is inevitable, competitive negotiators will
not do the right thing.
• Why? Selfish interests, trying to get the other guy to make the
carbon sacrifice instead of you.
• In a system of competitive players within a global
atmosphere, Mutual Assured Destruction is the result.
• Read the details here
Along the Same Lines…
• A History of Climate Change Negotiations in
83 seconds… (you’ll laugh, you’ll cry)
Thelma and Louise weren’t doomed
when they sailed over the cliff
They were doomed 300 feet before the cliff, when
they FAILED to slam on the brakes and yank the
wheel hard, sending the car into a fish-tail spin.
They…. are us.
What is Needed is a Change in
Cultural Values. Happiness,
Genuine Well-Being, must be ReThought by the Average Voter
• See “The Conundrum” by David Owen
• I’m going to stop here. This is getting to be too
deep to go further for this limited course! I
hope I’ve stimulated you to think further….
Key Points – K40b: Psychopathogies
of Climate Denialism
• Low IQ when young is correlated with political conservatism as
one grows up
• Republicans deny the reality of climate science because they
abhor government, which must be strongly involved in
solutions to global commons problems like climate
• Amplifying feedback loop: low self-respect leads to temptation
to lower awareness, thus lowering self-esteem further, even
poorer decision-making, lowering self esteem further
• Fundamental motivation for attacking climate scientists is fear,
growing out of (well-founded) fear of mental inadequacy
• Doubling CO2 levels reduces decision-making abilities by 21%
for all humans (we think poorly in a stuffy place)
• Republicans, but not Democrats, reject the science of climate if
dealing with the problem requires government solutions.