Essay by Eric Worrall
A group of psychologists have claimed that fear drives deniers to reject the truth. But they ignore the evidence that academic groupthink hysteria is the real “climate crisis.”
Time to freak out? How the existential terror of hurricanes can fuel climate change denial
Published: October 30, 2024, 11:40pm AEDT
Jamie Goldenberg Professor of Psychology and Division Head of Cognitive, Neuroscience, and Social Psychology, University of South Florida
Emily P. Courtney Assistant Professor of Teaching, University of South Florida
Joshua Hart Professor of Psychology, Union College
As televisions across Florida broadcast the all-too-familiar images of a powerful hurricane heading toward the coast in early October 2024, people whose homes had been damaged by Hurricane Helene less than two weeks earlier watched with concern. Hurricane Milton quickly became a dangerous storm fueled by record-breaking temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Yet many people deny that climate change is a growing threat or that it even exists. How is this possible when its effects are becoming increasingly visible and destructive?
One answer lies in a unique aspect of human psychology—specifically, how people deal with the fear that existential threats provoke. For many people, denying the existence of a climate crisis is not only convenient, but can also feel psychologically necessary.
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Terror management theory
Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Ernest Becker put it this way: “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts man like nothing else…to overcome it by denying it in some way is man's ultimate fate .”
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Terror management theory predicts that individuals whose ideologies conflict with environmental concerns may, ironically, double down on these beliefs to psychologically cope with the existential threat of climate-related disasters. It's similar to the way mortality reminders can lead people to engage in risky behaviors like smoking or tanning. Hurricanes can increase denial and commitment to a worldview that rejects climate change.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/time-to-freak-out-how-the-existential-terror-of-hurricanes-can-fuel-climate-change-denial-242390
What saddens me about articles like this is that the alarmist academics who write them never seem to publicly acknowledge the possibility that they have done something wrong.
Because there is plenty of evidence that the climate crisis narrative is just western academic mass hysteria.
The strongest evidence of hysteria and groupthink is all those academics outside the North American and European spheres of influence who are sounding the alarm about the lack of supporting evidence for alarmist climate claims.
My name is Yonatan Dubi, I am a professor of chemistry and physics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. I am also one of Israel's leading advocates for rational environmentalism and climate realism. Together with some colleagues, we conducted a very nice investigation, detailing and quantifying the shortcomings of the famous consensus study by Lynas et al., which (incorrectly) claimed the ridiculous 99 percent consensus. After a year-long journey, our article was finally published in the journal Climate, the link is https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/11/11/215.
Or from the Russian Academy of Sciences;
And of course there are people on the ground who simply think some of the more esteemed climate narratives are nonsense.
One would think that a group of psychologists like the people who wrote the article at the top of the page might be interested in the possibility that they are actually experiencing a period of academic group hysteria like the past episodes that they have certainly studied. got to know. Even if they don't accept this interpretation of events, they should at least mention it and explain why they don't believe it is the correct interpretation.
A courageous study that exposed groupthink would stand the test of time and be celebrated by our descendants, just as we celebrate the academics of the past who stood against the darkness of ignorance and prejudice.
People always remember heroes who stand up for the truth. How long will people remember psychologist Jordan Peterson's name?
But I suspect that even psychologists are prone to groupthink. It takes an academic with courage and conviction to truly challenge society's delusions, someone willing to accept the kind of punishment that society always inflicts on high-ranking people who shoot politically convenient sacred cows.
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