From the latest Radio Times, concerning a Radio 4 programme entitled In Denial: Climate on the Couch, to be aired at 9pm this evening. I will listen, and I will set my radio recorder.
Radio Times blurb:
Jolyon Jenkins investigates the psychology of climate change efforts, asking why some people seem unconcerned even though scientists are forecasting terrible changes to the planet. He questions whether environmentalists and the Government have been putting out messages that are counterproductive, and whether trying to scare people into action might actually be causing them to consume more.
My suspicion is that what I and all others who listen to this programme will hear will be an explanation of the failure of the Greenists to convince that omits the crucial matter of the mere truth, and what is now sincerely believed to be the truth by more and more of the mere people. The phrase “In Denial” does strongly suggest this. And “On the Couch” suggests that they think that some people, presumably all who deny, are mad.
You know the kind of thing: People don’t think there’s anything they can do! – No wonder they’re being crazy! – We have not communicated successfully! – We have not got our message across properly!
It probably was rather a bad idea to make it look like they want to blow up children who disagree with them. But what if, despite such communicational ineptness, they have got their message across, but people just think it’s a pack of lies? If that is what people now think, then no amount of improved communicational expertise that doesn’t deal with the mere truth of things will make much difference.
But, my suspicions may prove to be unjustified. As of now, I live in hope that the truth, both what it is and what it is now believed to be, will at least get a semi-respectful mention, in among all the psychologising.
LATER:
This programme isn’t about climate science so it’s going to assume that the scientific consensus is true.
And a moment later, someone described (it may have been Jolyon Jenkins) this consensus as “undeniable”. Which was an odd word to use, given the title.
Well, at least it has just been admitted that people sometimes say that it’s all being exaggerated, even if it is assumed that this is mistaken and evasive. That it might be an honest opinion is not up for discussion, because that would mean discussing climate science.
So, the early and pessimistic commenters here are right. It looks like being a long discussion of what a bunch of true-believers can do to save the world, given that a huge tranche of people has decided that the world doesn’t need saving, but will have to be convinced in the true-believer stuff is to even make sense let alone accomplish anything.
The elephant in their room is that they have lost this argument, in the sense that they need unanimity in this, but are drifting further and further away from unanimity. They are ignoring this elephant. They are behaving like that economist, stuck on a desert island with various other sorts of experts, who is wondering how to contrive a tin-opener. “Let’s assume we have a tin-opener.” This won’t work.
LATER: Thinking about this some more, I should perhaps stress that the people who sincerely disagree that CAGW is happening were not called mad, as I feared they might be. They were simply ignored. All were assumed to really believe in CAGW, but to be using some kind of psychological doublethink to evade what they knew they ought to be doing really. Like I say: let’s assume we’ve won.
How about, “The self-proclaimed scientists pushing this fail at science, modeling, Physics, integrity and general grasp on reality”?
How about, “People recognize Pot-logic when they smell it?” (It feels right, so it must be true!)
How about “It’s hard to scam an honest man”?
Those that claim to believe these ‘forecasts of terrible changes to the planet’ seem remarkably unconcerned about it themselves. They do tend to make it difficult for me to believe that they believe what they say that they believe.
There are quite a number of reputable scientists finally daring to “come out of the closet” and publicly decry the pseudoscience and alarmism which permeates (indeed, defines) the whole AGW “debate”. See this from just yesterday, for example. I wonder if inconvenient facts like these will receive any mention on the program. The use of the word “denial” in the title suggests not, as it gives a very broad hint as to the producers’ viewpoint on the issue. And indeed the entire tenor of the blurb (“So why the gap between what the science says, and what we feel and do?”) makes it eminently clear that they have absorbed the greenists’ hyperbole and outright fraud as settled scientific truth. This program sounds like it will be a total waste of a half hour.
I do wish the academic (and media) establisment would not “medicalize” opposition to their point of view – on just about any issue.
First it was the “authoritarian personality” – Karl Marx, Lenin and so on did not have AP, but anyone who opposed their ideas supposedly did.
Then it was “paranoia” – Marxists going around saying that anyone believed that Marxists existed was “paranoid” (errrrr…..)
Now it is “in denial”.
Anything, anything at all, rather than honestly debate an issue.
Paul
Agreed, but actually that wasn’t what was going on here. I feared this, but it didn’t happen.
This programme was all about marketing. Should they scream disaster? Apparently that put people off. So, maybe some tiny, nice, cheap step in the assumed right direction? That made people say the planet-savers weren’t serious. But the best reason of all for doing nothing to “save the planet” was that everyone knew that half the world was doing nothing, because it disagreed. So why should the other half bother? Action in this matter has to be unanimous or it fails.
They didn’t medicalise the problem. They just flailed about for half an hour looking for the magic marketing pitch that would persuade everyone to act on their assumed unanimous belief, having said at the start that they would not be discussing any actual differing beliefs, by discussing that people might actually have good reasons for differing beliefs. There was no speculation about why people disagreed. Dissenters were not, as I say, medicalised. They were simply ignored.
It was funny, somewhat in a way that reminded me of that scene in one of the Douglas Adams yarns, where some cave man invents the wheel, and the marketers say has it been tested with focus groups. In that case, the marketers wanted to abort an actual miracle, ridiculously. Here, there were being expected to create a miracle, out of nothing. They tried, ridiculously, and of course failed. In both cases they were thrusting themselves to centre stage, where in each case they did not belong. The wheel just needed to start being used, as it actually was, of course. With CAGW, the argument has first to be won that it is actually happening. Unless and until that argument has been won, the marketers are helpless.
The marketers should have said that. Maybe some did. They didn’t appear on the programme.
I caught part of this in the car without knowing what it was. While annoying there were some good moments.
I liked the bit where the marketing guy had to admit that the best test message in the US – something about “protecting our deteriorating atmosphere” – was not just innaccurate and misleading – but successful precisely because it was innaccurate and misleading.
Then I got home, so don’t know how they got out of that one.
That consensus claim is usually based on the study Doran 09. I’ve looked at it in depth here:
http://climatequotes.com/2011/02/10/study-claiming-97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-flawed/(Link)
It’s not a well designed survey. The questions are flawed and lead to practically everyone answering yes.
The IPPR set the tone for this in 2006 in their “Warm Words – How are we telling the climate story and can we get it better” diatribe “ippr.org.uk/members/download.asp?…/warm_words.pdf&a=skip”(Link)
This basically stated that we can not argue our case against the likes of Prof Philip Stot and therefore we should ignore him as he confuses the debate.
Trenberth and others have now furthered this position of ignorance. These people to use the words of Aneurin Bevan are “lower than vermin.”
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Saving the planet is such a heady business, and the associated sense of panic and urgency is so addictive as well as lucrative for some such as the WWF, Futerra, Goldman Sachs, and many more, that no amount of reasoning and fact-finding will deflect the faithful. They are to too much of a good thing.
Typo fix: that’s ‘on to’ too much of a good thing
Dear BBC,
Following your programme In Denial: Climate on the Couch and bearing in mind that the BBC has a legal duty to show “due balance” in its broadcasting, I hereby offer to produce a programme, at the same rates to be entitled “Inane, Deluded, Corrupt or Truthful: An assessment of the BBC broadcasting 10s of thousands of hours of warming alarmism & not one of scientific scepticism”.
If the BBC are interested in giving the impression you would like to show even 1 part in 10,000 of balance I am sure you will be very grateful for this offer & accept immediately.
————————————
Any bets.
The really interesting psychopathology is the apocalyptic mass hysteria displayed by the believers in AGW. This phenomenon is only the most recent version – there have been many earlier examples. Of course it is going to be spread using the theological vocabulary of the day – that of science.
I forecast, minus any visible change in trend so far, steady global warming having no correlation with CO2. I plotted actual thermometer records that carry back 350 years and found that there is utterly no indication that history is a Hockey Stick: http://oi49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
I seem to have missed something.
What’s the “C” in “CAGW”?
C=Catastrophic.
Two West-End plays on climate change:
http://bit.ly/gjfjXd – Greenland
http://bit.ly/fmR22a – The Heretic
– just got covered on Front Row on Radio4; I’m not able to comment because I only just caught the end of the review…
The House of Wind-sore – One needs taxpayers subsidies these days
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBS6xSAYrVk
Fortunately I had just had a few drinks when this program popped up on the radio.
The scene was set with the statement that we will assume there will be a rise in temperature of 4 degrees by 2060.
I have absolutely no idea from which report this was plucked (IPCC or otherwise), but the program was a cliche and hyperbole ride downhill from there on. Hilarious, a must listen.
Thanks Brian for a great fisk.
Very good post, and I enjoyed the Douglas Adams reference (carbon footprint reduction implementation advisors and sustainability consultants would have definitely been on the “B” Ark, IMO.)
What still continues to puzzle me, though, is why they still feel they need the rest of us to agree with them, given that CO2 reduction targets are practically written into the DNA of the last government, the present government and the entire EU.
It is appropriate that Samizdata is discussing this issue, as the assumption of psychological abnormalities in those deviants is similar to the assumptions of the Soviet authorities.
If somebody denies the holocaust, or that heavier than air objects can fly, there is no need to call that person a nutter, or accuse them of being paid to lie. There is overwhelming evidence that both six million Jews died in Europe in the 1940s or that airplanes actually fly to demonstrate that that their statements are false. Explanations as to why somebody should deny the holocaust or or that heavier than air objects can fly becomes of interest only to those sociologists who have run out of ideas.
I would suggest anyone who needs to use, as first choice, the tactic of calling their opponents deluded, or in the pay of the wicked and degenerate, have themselves a very weak case, or are incapable of formulating a proper argument.
Echo Stonygrounds remark that climate alarmists aren’t upset enough about the doom and gloom they peddle.
I recall a poster on Dotearth (New York Times ecoloonery page) winding up with ‘It’s all so damn sad’, when his whole demeanour was of a kind of quivering, barely suppressed joy at the coming disaster. He wasn’t sad at all, just pretending.
I’m sorry… ‘radio‘… what is that?
Radio still has a punch Darryl.
Otherwise Rush L. would not still be so successful, and Glenn Beck would just give the thing up for television and the internet.
Of course in Britain all radio is from the establishment point of view – which they call being unbiased.
But I am glad this particular show was about marketing – not another “anyone who does not agree with us, on everything, is mentally ill” show.
What if AGW is real? In that case the other side is quite fucked politically. Seems odd to bet a whole philosophy on a (seemingly quite unclear) question of fact.
Can somebody please tell me why the following research evidence on Global Warming is not acceped evidence that GW is not man-made;
1) Dr S Fred Singer’s conclusion that anthropegenic CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of earth’s greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapour). This is insignificant. see http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse
and 2)Prof Ian Clark’s work with ice cores showing (as` opposed to Al Gore’s film) that increases in CO2 lag increases in temperature, not precedes them.
What are the arguments against this evidence?
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That’s 8 spam posts in a row, chaps.
The opening post is interesting.
I think mdc made a very interesting irrational point about the political risk, with:
Reminds me of the joke that “Even if you’re not paranoid, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone isn’t out to get you.”, or “Join a church even if you are an atheist, just to cover your bets.”
As Brian Micklethwait suggests in the post’s title:
The answer seems to be “Apparently not.”.
Elections are a trailing indicator.