Psychologists were sure “climate deniers” were selfish, but a study of 4,000 showed the experts were wrong

Library, Cloud, book, fantasy, mythology, dystopia, surreal.

By Jo Nova

A team of psychologists were so sure “climate deniers” deceive themselves for selfish reasons that they ran three experiments with four thousand people, only to find they were completely wrong.

The researchers figured that those who do not accept that coal makes storms and floods must be motivated by their desire to keep on polluting, or flying, or feeling warm, and so they lie to themselves about the science in order to  feel OK about it. (A bit like academics must do when it turns out they get paid well, but don’t know their research topic at all, maybe?)

It must have been quite the shock when Zimmermann and Stötzer were proved wrong on every single experiment. They even tried to bribe skeptics with $20 cash rewards and it still wasn’t enough.

Why are people climate change deniers? Study reveals unexpected results

Do climate change deniers bend the facts to avoid having to modify their environmentally harmful behavior? Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ran an online experiment involving 4,000 US adults, and found no evidence to support this idea. The authors of the study were themselves surprised by the results. 

One hypothesis is that these misconceptions are rooted in a specific form of self-deception, namely that people simply find it easier to live with their own climate failings if they do not believe that things will actually get all that bad. “We call this thought process ‘motivated reasoning,’…

The only thing the study showed was the dire state of psychological science. For starters, researchers were oblivious to their own prejudice and incompetent background research. They can’t define a climate change denier in any scientific sense, it’s not a label of a group of homo-sapiens who think the climate never changes, it’s just a petty kindergarten insult designed to fool, well… psychologists. And it works. If they had spent five minutes reading skeptical web-sites they’d know that half the population have good reason to be skeptical of unaudited and unaccountable foreign committees which rely on broken models. In fact if they were looking for “motivated reasoning” in the climate debate (and they say they were) then most of it is on the believer side, where people might be motivated by billions of dollars in government grants.

Zimmermann and his colleague Lasse Stötzer told people they could decide where a $20 donation went — they could choose which climate charity would get the cash, or they could keep it themselves. The “control” group weren’t allowed to keep the cash themselves. Basically 41% to 44% of the crowd kept the money. But amazingly more than 50% still gave the cash to a climate charity.  Humans are nice people, really. I mean, they could all have kept the cash, and most didn’t. Presumably no one wants to look too scroogey in front of researchers, but some people know climate charities are pagan groups designed to cheat money from the poor and give it to billionaires — so it’s better to look like a scrooge than feed the machine.

At the center of the experiments was a donation worth $20. Participants were allocated at random to one of two groups. The members of the first group were able to split the $20 between two organizations, both of which were committed to combating climate change. By contrast, those in the second group could decide to keep the $20 for themselves instead of giving it away and would then actually receive the money at the end. “Anyone keeping hold of the donation needs to justify it to themselves,” says Zimmermann, … “One way to do that is to deny the existence of climate change.”

In another variation, participants could pick either a skeptical video or a believer one, and the researchers hoped somehow it would show people who kept the money would choose the skeptical video to reassure themselves that they were right.  But as it happens, about 51% of the control group wanted to see “the skeptical side” of this 30 year long boring debate, which was slightly more than the test group. Foiled. Another null result.

It was good, bad, nothing-news really — another piece of useless academic study, and the experts don’t know how to convince anyone:

This finding was also borne out in two further experiments. “In other words, our study didn’t give us any indications that the widespread misconceptions regarding climate change are due to this kind of self-deception,” says Zimmermann, summing up his work. On the face of it, this is good news for policymakers, because the results could mean that it is indeed possible to correct climate change misconceptions, simply by providing comprehensive information. If people are bending reality, by contrast, then this approach is very much a non-starter.

All five treatments found nothing, even though there was money to be had. They even sliced and diced the data according to income to see if poorer people were more likely to keep the money and then “become” a skeptic, but they couldn’t even find a link there.

We do not observe that more financially constrained participants choose the selfish action more frequently in reaction to our treatment variation. 

Contrary to our hypotheses, we find no evidence that motivated cognition can help to explain widespread climate change denial and environmentally harmful behaviour.

It never even occurred to Zimmermann and Stötzer that their life’s work was to figure out how to force an absurd political fantasy on to half the population. Do windmills today stop storms in 2100AD? Will solar panels stop the oceans rising? Is it possible that one trace gas controls the global temperature when water vapor is far more important, 10 to 100 times as abundant, and subject to rapid change on a minute by minute basis? Is it possible that the sun and space weather has an effect on our climate through the solar wind, the magnetic field, the heliospheric plane, cosmic rays, or spectral changes.

And lastly, just in case these 2,000 people (or 0.0001% of US voters) were influenced by watching one skeptical video the researchers had to “debrief” them.

To mitigate the ethical concern about showing some participants a video casting scepticism about climate change by presenting factually wrong information, we added a short debriefing for all participants at the end of the experiment (Supplementary Information).

You know it’s a cult…

h/t Willie

Reference:

Lasse S. Stoetzer, and Florian Zimmermann, (2024) “A representative survey experiment of motivated climate change denial” by  2 February 2024, Nature Climate Change. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01910-2

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 79 ratings

104 comments to Psychologists were sure “climate deniers” were selfish, but a study of 4,000 showed the experts were wrong

  • #
    Mooka

    The bloody hide of this idiot to be accusing so called deniers of self deception.

    580

  • #
    Orde Solomons

    Never occurred to them, that so called climate deniers are actually factually correct, I suppose?

    660

  • #
    GlenM

    [SNIP] What would we do without modern scientists and their constant wallowing in public money research.

    511

    • #
      StephenP

      In 1993 at the 150th anniversary of the Broadbalk field experiment at Rothamsted Research Station, in the UK, the director of the station commented that it wasn’t possible to get a grant for a research project unless the proposal included the words climate change. Things haven’t changed in 30 years, in fact they seem to have got worse.
      Judith Curry summed the situation concisely when describing the motivation of supposed “climate scientists ” as ‘fame and fortune’.

      131

  • #
    Kalm Keith

    Too often , as in this case, psychology is mirepresented and used as a moral baton to push the idea that people are thinking the “wrong ” thoughts.

    People claiming to act on behalf of “psychology” are in fact displaying their ignorance of the science.

    Psychology is the study of the interaction of the body with its environment.

    It is about how the brain receives information through sensory organs like the eyes , the nose , ears and skin, to name a few inputs.

    Psychology is about the processing of that sensory input and the reaction creates by the brain.

    Moral judgement is not part of that.

    If our betters want to give moral advice they are involved, perhaps , in philosophy.

    300

  • #
    Neville

    I watched the latest WUWT video about the CC trial of the century, or Mark Styne versus Mann and a laughable load of BS it was.
    Of course Mann couldn’t prove that he suffered any financial loss at all and reduced one claim of 9 million $ LOSS back to $100,000.
    And he also admitted that Dr Curry hadn’t slept her way to a Science degree and a suitable position at a prominent Uni. But again he didn’t have the decency to apologise.
    So this is the type of sleezy idiot we have to deal with and he is the number one “go to Mann” for the vile Demo-RATs in Washington. No doubt they thoroughly deserve one another.
    And the top Statistician in the USA explained to the court why Mann’s HS was used because it was the only data that suited his case.
    And he showed many other data that could’ve been used, but alas no HS.
    Mann also had to admit he had no stats training at all and yet this ignorant, vile little ….. has had more input for decades into the CC debate than anyone on Earth.
    The trial is supposed to end this WED and Dr Curry, Dr McKitrick and Steve MacIntyre are to be called before it ends. I hope we hear their evidence, because they are very decent people and deserve their chance to defend themselves from this lousy excuse for a Scientist.

    570

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    Zimmermann… now where have I heard that name before: hint, Margaret 97% Z.

    120

  • #
    David Maddison

    It’s an extremely dangerous proposition that “climate change deniers” might be motivated for selfish reasons, or even worse. As the Left keep saying, sceptics of anthropogenic global warming must be stupid, uneducated or mentally ill. (Usually, the truth is the opposite of what the Left claim and/or they are projecting.)

    Another issue, is the Lie propagated by the Left that scientific fact is established by supposed consensus. Well, that can happen when anybody who disagrees with the Official Narrative is subject to being cancelled, sacked, loss or reputation and loss of income. We have seen numerous examples of that with “climate change” and covid with anyone who disagrees with the Official Narrative.

    The Left have completely corrupted science and the scientific method.

    Beyond that, the belief that there is something wrong with people who disbelieve in anthropogenic global warming, one of the cornerstones of modern Leftist ideology, might find themselves sent for “re-education” and other possibly worse punishments as human rights are further removed by the Left.

    As for psychologists who were incapable of understanding that it is quite legitimate to have an alternative opinion outside of the Official Narrative, “how dare they”. You are not worthy to practice your profession.

    391

    • #
      David Maddison

      Addendum. The eminent psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson was in fact ordered to be “re-educated” by the Leftist Ontario Board of Psychologists for his failure to follow the Official Narrative on gender, “climate change” and other matters.

      This is not a matter of speculation but fact.

      Prof. Gad Saad comments:

      https://youtu.be/VtpYEBvU0gg

      401

      • #
        Penguinite

        UnTrudeauistan is the same administration that made it ok to facilitate the premature demise of psychologically deficient persons until they couldn’t find enough doctors to sign the death warrants.

        180

      • #
        David Maddison

        In that Gad Saad video you will learn that “feminist glaciology” is a thing.

        Not a joke.

        https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132515623368

        Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research

        Abstract
        Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

        110

    • #
      el+gordo

      The CC consensus is weak in the bush, the zealots think we are just slow and obtuse.

      “When you look at the results of different surveys going back a few years, farmers were four times more likely than the national average to be climate change deniers,” said Professor Mark Howden, director at the ANU’s Climate Change Institute.

      “That was about 32 per cent versus about 8 per cent for the population average.” (ABC)

      200

      • #
        Paul

        Would that be because those of us who live outside of big cities are acutely aware of 1: The variability of weather. 2:The unchanging-ness of weather. Many farmers have rain and temperature records going back to settlement days and it’s not easy to fool them when they hold the facts.
        I remember well when we first moved to the mid-north of SA, we went to the Kent Town bureau of meteorology and looked up the rainfall for the town we’d be moving to. The one single fact that was clear in the rainfall records since settlement was the variability, from a minimum of 6″, 15cm, to 3′,1m, but absolutely no discernible pattern from year to year.
        In 30+ years, nothing has changed. Still wet years and dry years, Early wet breaks, and scarily late breaks that have the locals on edge. Late spring rains, or not. Summer thunderstorms with deluges, or not. Cool summers, warm winters or not. Consistently inconsistent.

        00

        • #
          Frederick Pegler

          The difference between getting paid for the year, or not getting paid for the year. Is a fairly strong incentive to be aware of how the climate works. The only reason climate change exists, is because these people can be totally wrong for 30 years – and still get paid.

          00

  • #
    Strop

    our study didn’t give us any indications that the widespread misconceptions regarding climate change are due to this kind of self-deception,” says Zimmermann

    I can tell you where the “misconceptions” lies. That the widespread misconceptions belong to skeptics.

    If their study shows self-deception isn’t the cause of the differing view point. Then maybe they need to look at their “comprehensive information” with a critical eye.

    220

    • #
      Mantaray

      Strop @ #8. It’s been covered here I think, that Oz farmers are so disenchanted with the Oz BoM’s forecasting…..which is persistently stuffing up their planting/harvesting/spraying planning etc, a majority (and increasing) are PAYING for more accurate sources of information.

      As I know a fair few farmer/graziers through my various activities I can verify that that is true. And I suppose it’s this constant failure to get forecasting right which has made those backwoods yokels sceptical of everything the Climate Change Industry has to say.

      I thought everyone knew the old sayings “once bitten; twice shy” and “Fool me once shame on you: fool me twice shame on me”, but maybe not the knuckle-dragging bone-heads in academia , eh what?

      20

  • #
    George McFly......I'm your density

    The paper by Stoetzer and Zimmermann (2024) opens with the following statement “Climate change is arguably one of the greatest challenges today” so let’s have a look at the evidence:

    In the last 200 years the percentage of people worldwide living in extreme poverty has dropped from 90% to less than 10% today.

    Since 1900 the population of humans on earth has trebled, life expectancy has doubled, and deaths from natural disasters have fallen by 98%.

    In the last 50 years global production of wheat and rice has trebled and production of corn has quadrupled. These three crops provide nearly 50% of food energy for all the humans on earth. In recent decades surface vegetation has also been increasing by 4-5% per decade.

    Since the year 2000 global deaths from malaria, one of the biggest killers of people on earth, have declined by 50%.

    What about those pesky polar bears? Their numbers have increased roughly three fold in the last 60 years.

    Pretty hard to see where the problem is.

    470

    • #
      Gary S

      Dead right, George, and for the last four and a half billion years, the climate of our planet has been constantly changing with no help from us, so let’s all just get on with our lives shall we?

      310

    • #
      Gerry, England

      The only way to go after a false opening statement is down, and so this study did.

      20

  • #
    CO2 Lover

    Thoughts on “Science” and the “Science” of Climate Change

    Sixty years ago, a book by Thomas Kuhn altered the way we look at the philosophy behind science, as well as introducing the much abused phrase ‘paradigm shift

    The real measure of Kuhn’s importance, however, lies not in the infectiousness of one of his concepts but in the fact that he singlehandedly changed the way we think about mankind’s most organised attempt to understand the world. Before Kuhn, our view of science was dominated by philosophical ideas about how it ought to develop (“the scientific method”), together with a heroic narrative of scientific progress as “the addition of new truths to the stock of old truths, or the increasing approximation of theories to the truth, and in the odd case, the correction of past errors”, as the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy puts it. Before Kuhn, in other words, we had what amounted to the Whig interpretation of scientific history, in which past researchers, theorists and experimenters had engaged in a long march, if not towards “truth”, then at least towards greater and greater understanding of the natural world.

    Kuhn’s version of how science develops differed dramatically from the Whig version. Where the standard account saw steady, cumulative “progress”, he saw discontinuities – a set of alternating “normal” and “revolutionary” phases in which communities of specialists in particular fields are plunged into periods of turmoil, uncertainty and angst. These revolutionary phases – for example the transition from Newtonian mechanics to quantum physics – correspond to great conceptual breakthroughs and lay the basis for a succeeding phase of business as usual. The fact that his version seems unremarkable now is, in a way, the greatest measure of his success. But in 1962 almost everything about it was controversial because of the challenge it posed to powerful, entrenched philosophical assumptions about how science did – and should – work.

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions

    130

    • #
      Mantaray

      CO2 Lover. You seem mighty sceptical as to whether Climate Change study is a Science or Not a Science.

      Next up….as a dead-set denier…..you’ll probably be hot on the heels of Mr Marx and his best mate Fred….”In the 1844 book The Holy Family, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the writings of the socialist, communist writers Théodore Dézamy and Jules Gay as truly “scientific”.[3] Later in 1880, Engels used the term “scientific socialism” to describe Marx’s social-political-economic theory”…..denying them in the same way Peter denied Jesus.

      Shame on you. Every Climate Change Fan, and every avid Commie (I know: same thing…my bad) is aware: the science IS settled…and it’s now called….Anthony Fauci!

      00

  • #
    Stephen McDonald

    A climate denier is a person who believes that there is no such thing as a climate.
    A climate change denier is someone who believes that that the climate hasn’t changed since the earth was a ball of fire.
    I’ve never met one.
    If they exist they are in an asylum.
    Professors who don’t understand rudimentary English.
    But that is becoming more common these days.

    341

    • #
      Dennis

      An example when he was Prime Minister is Tony Abbott who referred to the IPCC modelling and climate change politics as “cr*p”, but as a sceptic he said that climate changes naturally.

      His political opponents as they often do changed his comment to claim that he said climate change is cr*p.

      240

  • #
    Maptram

    While searching Britbox for something to watch a couple of nights ago, I came across this movie or series. I didn’t watch it but I think it must be some sort of comedy. I assume the respected scientist is a “respected climate scientist.”

    “The Trick

    Respected scientist Professor Phil Jones finds his work has been hacked by climate change deniers and turned into the first big fake-news story. Starring Jason Watkins.”

    180

    • #
      John in NZ

      That sounds like Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia who featured in the Climategate emails.

      I don’t think I could stand to watch it.

      170

    • #
      Dave in the States

      Just like with Hunter B, whenever when the true villain gets exposed they claim they are the victim.

      130

  • #
    Serge Wright

    How about a study on people who suffer the combined mental disorder of “narcissism, eliteism and apocalypticism”, otherwise known as climate alarmism ?

    250

    • #
      melbourne resident

      I thought that – why did they stop with their so-called Climate Deniers? They should run the same study on 4000 known climate alarmists to see whether their views are subverted by the dreaded dollar? And in any case – why would they think people who are interested in this debate would take a derisory amount of $20 as bait? Thats barely 2 morning coffees – hardly an inducement to profess strong “denier” opinions. If they think their study had surprising and unexpected results – try it on the other crowd. Or are they themselves already so biased in their thinking that they cannot conceive that all these people with their snouts in the climate trough are doing it altruistically or for science?

      200

      • #
        Frederick Pegler

        My thoughts exactly re the value of $20. Still given a choice between a cup of coffee, and feeding the ‘beast’. I’ll take the coffee (note there was no option to donate the money to a skeptic)

        00

  • #
    David Maddison

    The two most destructive things the Left have done on their attack on science are:

    1) The falsehood that scientific fact is established by supposed consensus.

    2) Postmodernism which denies the existence of objective natural reality and there is no objective truth. It is fundamentally an attack on Enlightenment values.

    Quoting Michael Shermer:

    Postmodernism is a late 20th-century movement challenging the Enlightenment worldview that objective truth exists and can be discovered through the tools of science and rationality.

    220

    • #
      CO2 Lover

      There is also a related attack on history – where an idealised version of the past is presented as “history” such as the pre-European settlement history of Australia where the “Noble Savage” lived in harmony with nature and where native food was plentiful.

      252

  • #
    Honk R Smith

    As a ‘climate denier’, am I allowed to have an opinion about psychologists?

    250

    • #
      JohnPAK

      A real sciences lecturer at Uni once suggested to me that the psych lot were really there to sort out their own subconscious issues. My own reading into the psych and sociology crowd pointed towards personal problems in the authors. Later in life four different well qualified psych types interviewed one Martin Bryant who was accused of shooting 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania. The four came back with four different diagnoses of the man.
      “Science” ?

      60

      • #
        Honk R Smith

        Just as there are engineers that design toasters and engineers that work at Los Alamos, there are psychologists
        that work with suburban housewives and psychologists that work wherever the psychology equivalent of Los Alamos is.

        Somebody was smart enough to convince policeman that it made sense to arrest adult children that wanted to visit their dying parent.

        60

  • #
    Yancey Ward

    People being mugged are just selfish jerks trying to keep their hard earned cash.

    200

  • #
    Mike Smith

    These fools would be more usefully employed consoling the victims of climate change induced hysteria. They’re bleeding psychologists after all.

    170

    • #
      Strop

      That’s the problem. They would only be consoling them. Rather than setting them straight.

      This study might just be the best use of their time. It fixes their “misconceptions” about the mindset of sceptics.

      40

  • #
    Old Goat

    Just another “study” designed to produce a desired result gone awry . At least they were honest unlike M.Mann…..who has doubled down . MSM is supremely disinterested as usual .

    140

  • #
    Dennis

    One of the earliest “climate deniers” was Christopher Monckton, a mathematician, who audited the UN IPCC climate and warming modelling and produced a report revealing that the modelling did not match historical records data and therefore forward projections were useless. He was criticised and name calling was directed at him about his natural appearance, that he is not a scientists so cannot be believed (ignore the audit report), that science is settled and much more.

    He was banned from speaking at climate conferences and meetings.

    But not long before the Copenhagen Climate Conference hacked emails exchanged between the IPCC “scientists” were made public exposing their plotting and planning to deceive. Even emails speculating about what could happen if they are caught. Those emails were released in two batches and thereafter called Climate Gate 1 and 2.

    80

  • #
    Dennis

    06:43 PM ET 02/10/2015
    Economic Systems: The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man’s stewardship of the environment. But we know that’s not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this.

    At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

    “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

    Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

    The only economic model in the last 150 years that has ever worked at all is capitalism. The evidence is prima facie: From a feudal order that lasted a thousand years, produced zero growth and kept workdays long and lifespans short, the countries that have embraced free-market capitalism have enjoyed a system in which output has increased 70-fold, work days have been halved and lifespans doubled.

    Figueres is perhaps the perfect person for the job of transforming “the economic development model” because she’s really never seen it work. “If you look at Ms. Figueres’ Wikipedia page,” notes Cato economist Dan Mitchell: Making the world look at their right hand while they choke developed economies with their left.

    120

  • #
    Ronin

    Maybe they should do a study on the believers into how and why they were so easily duped.

    130

    • #
      DOC

      Ronin, it begins now to be taught to preschoolers – kindy kids. Anyone teaching such AGW stuff, and loads of other things based on racism and national history, is really playing ideological politics on our youngest minds. It’s a total disgrace and probably explains why our student learning system is falling like a stone on international performance tables. It’s the same way adolescents are used to carry explosives amongst crowds while their experienced elders rarely do.
      Our people up to 40yo have heard nothing but AGW reinforcement to make sure they stay true to the theory. They don’t have the longer experience of life and political machinations that the older folk do and who create the blowback to the activists. So the activists have to deride the baby boomers and ‘the workers’ in any way they can to counter their voices to their own kids.

      130

    • #
      RickWill

      study on the believers into how and why they were so easily duped.

      Do you think your government will provide funding for that?

      Believers get rewarded. And you do not need to wait till you die for your salvation when it comes to Climate Change™. Your government has organised the racket where believers are gifted money taken from consumers of all manner of things. Electricity retailers are the principle bagmen in the racket in Australia but every dollar you spend has a component going to the racketeers either through the artificially high cost of energy or the money creation by governments using debt financing to pay the Believers. Believers and non-believers all pay but none of it comes back to non-believers.

      The toying about in this study was paid for by Germans who actually produce something useful. Like German farmers who might stop doing something useful if it has no reward.

      60

  • #
  • #
    John Hultquist

    What is a “climate charity“?

    There are various charities that I would give $20 to, and I do. I would not give any money to a group known as a climate charity. Would I give $20 to Al Gore, John Kerry, or St. Greta? Not just NO!
    My advice: Find a local small group doing something you might like to do if you could and give that group $20. I can’t hike or snowshoe 3 or 5 miles to study animals so I give a small amount to folks that can.

    80

  • #
    John Hultquist

    Am I the only person getting an error trying to get to WUWT?

    10

    • #
      David of Cooyal in Oz

      Just opened for me – iPad and DDG.
      Cheers
      Dave B

      30

    • #
      RickWill

      It has been going on for a couple of days. Eric commented on the issue in the comments on a recent post.

      My browser is Safari and has had issues a few times. And Safari will not display the webp format often used in the blogs. If I really want to see them, I have to use Chrome.

      30

    • #
      John Hultquist

      THANKS to all.
      Chrome got it. 🙂

      00

  • #
    DOC

    The bias of the researchers is defined by their aim to prove anthropogenic Global Warming (sceptics) act simply to retain their own comfort and or advantages they have from the traditional systems as said by this article. Advantages to be lost due to the internationally declared AGW theory. The researchers seemingly lack insight to their own bias, belief in AGW theory based on opinion that tossed traditional scientific method. This experiment itself demonstrates a paucity of knowledge of statistical methodology. Did they get the experimental methodology used passed by a professional statistician? Otherwise it appears as a bit of work for more propaganda purposes.

    The more interesting question is, did the outcome of their experiment change the researchers’ own belief in the AGW theory? Perhaps, with eyes wide open, they might consider their next experiment must be to look over the entire framework of the AGW farce. That includes the science and the way in which propaganda, constructed by people with the same psychological expertise as the researchers, have been used to push the unproven, AGW theory down the throats of the gullible less educated (in this field) public. Maybe they might recall Hitler had his own pschological propaganda unit to push his own wares on Germany. I wouldn’t like to be classed the same way if I was a psychologist. Used to enforce evil on one’s own nation.

    100

  • #
    Dave in the States

    It follows the pattern first established in grade school. Those who do not conform to the collective and retain their individuality are labelled as selfish.

    80

    • #
      CO2 Lover

      Exploiting the willness to obey Authority Figures – The Milgram Experiment

      Beginning on August 7, 1961, a series of social psychology experiments were conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, who intended to measure the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a “learner”. These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.

      The experiments found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions, with every participant going up to 300 volts, and 65% going up to the full 450 volts

      90

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Possibly related to Svant Arrhinius who after being rubbished by Planck, Einstein and Angstrom (and others) changed his “research” to child education by wiring up students and administering painful electric shocks to the inactive one.
        He claimed that they was a change with students.

        [Snip. headed a bit off topic. – Jo]

        00

  • #
    Zigmaster

    The terms misconception and self deception are very presumptive terms. There is only one side that engages in that behaviour and that’s the alarmists. Truth is definately on the side of the sceptics and it staggers me after 2 decades of trying to prove the climate change hypothesis there is still not a scintilla of evidence that human induced CO2 impacts the climate and there is also no proof that we can do anything about it.

    100

  • #
    RickWill

    Climate Change – give me money
    Climate Change – give me your money
    Climate Change – give me some money

    I am currently reading a book about evolution and where the chain that resulted in humans parted with the chain that evolved to the current cephalopods, which are smarter than your average Climate Scientist™:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewNhL2esBqQ

    Researchers found that some cephalopods could not be bribed with food rewards; making them hard to train. Their interests go beyond food as a means of reward to elicit a certain behaviour. This shows intelligence beyond Climate Scientists™ who have been trained to utter the words “Climate Change” so they get funding as a reward for their valueless toying about.

    If Climate Scientists™ had the traits of higher intelligent beings like cephalopods they would not be so easily bought by governments to maintain the climate scam.

    Speaking of climate scammers. No Day 12 podcast yet on Mann v Steyn but Judith Curry continued evidence:

    The following literally had to be stated and asked in Court today:

    Dr. Judith Curry: Michael Mann knew who I was. My name appeared in one of the ClimateGate emails that Mann sent. He knew who I was. I mean, when this story was changed or altered to portray me as a graduate student, to my mind, the implication that I was, you know, just a woman sleeping my way to the top. And if you’re a professional woman, this is about the worst thing that anyone can say about you. It discredits your accomplishments and it gives people permission to ignore you.

    Defense Counsel: Dr. Curry, did you ever get any of your tenured faculty positions or department chairs or awards or publications or anything else because you slept with somebody?

    Dr. Judith Curry: No.

    Mann is slimier than a cephalopod and has lower intelligence than a single cephalopod tentacle.

    100

  • #
    Simon

    Identity motives could be the key driving force; for example, people on the political right might want to deny or downplay climate change because such beliefs are part of their political identity.

    I suspect this conclusion is correct. There is a strong anti-science bent on the US right, e.g. in COVID vaccine hesitancy.

    229

    • #

      Please define science for us Simon. Then, we’ll either help you correct your misunderstanding, or you’ll realize that the most virulently anti-science are mostly on the left.

      Is your “science” the one where people follow government appointed experts, no matter how absurd they sound, or is it the one (like us) where hypothesis are tested with observations, and only the data matters?

      Over to you…

      280

      • #
        Simon

        Perhaps you would like to name some absurd sounding government appointed experts? We can then judge whether their advice was evidence-based or not.

        017

        • #
          David Maddison

          What’s your opinion of the climate “science” known as “feminist glaciology” Simon?

          https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132515623368

          Abstract
          Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.

          111

          • #

            No Simon. My question was how you define science and your answer tells me that “expert consensus” is your choice.

            In other words science to you is just a modern stone age religion in a lab coat.

            You are the anti-science “bent” you accuse your political opponents of being.

            110

            • #
              Simon

              Whenever there is scientific consensus, it is because the evidence supports the existing hypothesis.
              Anthropogenic induced greenhouse gas warming is an example of a hypothesis which has stood for 128 years, it’s not like we haven’t had the opportunity to adapt and mitigate.
              https://xkcd.com/2889/

              09

              • #
                Hanrahan

                The miasma theory stood for many centuries. SCIENCE replaced it.

                The miasma theory was advanced by Hippocrates in the fourth century B.C.[3] and accepted from ancient times in Europe and China. The theory was eventually abandoned by scientists and physicians after 1880, replaced by the germ theory of disease: specific germs, not miasma, caused specific diseases.

                20

              • #

                Consensus doesn’t advance science research which you should have known years ago since it is reproducible research that forces examination of the data that points in a specific direction for future research to follow.

                Consensus arguments exposed your lack of science rigor since you are telling us popularity of an idea is what you measure which is why they stagnate until someone runs over it with a paper that flattens dumb assumptions that consensus is commonly built on.

                There have been many consensus errors because of people like YOU who want to be part of a unthinking herd built on ideology that runs on an idea they will protect because it is a preferred position that is why science research stagnates when they sit around on the paradigm that will eventually gets blown up by a renegade who obstinately insist on reproducible research as the benchmark.

                10

              • #
                Tricky Dicky

                Hi Simon,
                Scientific consensus at work. https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/19/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect/. “Part of what makes Earth so amenable is its natural greenhouse effect, which maintains an average temperature of 15 °C (59 °F).”
                https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202313. Average global surface temperature for 2023 15.08 °C

                There is your scientific consensus. So where is the problem.

                20

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Simon,
          try Guy Callendar, who started the global warming by CO2 back in 1938.
          Callendar was a well respected Engineer (Callendar’s Steam Tables were (then) a goto reference).
          He claimed that “rising temperatures were caused by rising CO2” although some ‘sceptics’ pointed out that his choices included only NZ in the southern hemisphere.
          Nevertheless his claims were that the doubling of CO2 would only result 1.5℃ or in 0.75℃ at the present. Of course his thoughts may have been distorted by his WW2 employment as the Chief Engineer in charge of burning thousands of tons of oil to lift the fog off Bomber Command airfields in east Anglia, and possibly by his experience of the very cold winters in 1947 and 1962, when temperatures were perishing.

          60

          • #
            Simon

            Callendar was looking for historic evidence of global warming. He found that that global temperatures had risen 0.3°C over the previous 50 years to 1938 and attributed this increase to CO2 emissions.

            08

            • #
              Graham Richards

              Simon,

              Are you not perhaps Peter Fitz ( something or other ) in disguise or have you been imbibing his drivel for a month or six???

              00

        • #

          LOL, you failed to answer a simple question.

          Please define science for us Simon

          Waiting……

          10

    • #
      Pauly B

      If skepticism is “anti-science” in your view may I suggest, respectfully, you have no effing idea about genuine scientific methods .

      In fact, most methods advocate step 1 is to QUESTION.

      But of course, having observed your contrarianism on this platform my comment will most probably sail between your ears….

      140

    • #
      el+gordo

      ‘I suspect this conclusion is correct.’

      Speaking on behalf of the utopian socialists, we argue that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming.

      21

    • #
      Skepticynic

      I suspect…

      Wow! How sciency of you!

      There is a strong anti-big-brother-government coercion bent on the US right, e.g. in COVID vaccine hesitancy.

      There! fixed it for you!

      30

    • #
      Strop

      people on the political right might want to deny or downplay climate change because such beliefs are part of their political identity

      Funny thing with your accusation. When I have spoken to leftist family and friends about climate change, they throw around words such as “consensus”, “97% of scientists”, “polution”, “hottest on record”, “ice caps”, “renewables are cheaper”, “Al Gore movie”. When I show them data and information that doesn’t support their ideas, the argument from them usually turns to clean environment, plastics, and ultimately ends up somewhere at Murdoch is evil and capitalism is wrong.

      That is genuinely where it typically ends up. I’m not making it up. And that end point is the giveaway. It’s not about science, or facts. It’s political along the lines of their political bent.

      Therefore, I have a similar themed sentiment to you. Only the positional and political opposite. That those on the political left want to push or exaggerate AGW because such beliefs are part of their political identity.

      It really is an interesting thing you have touched on. Because both sides of the AGW debate can be largely split along political lines. Why is that?

      I would theorise that left leaning people are generally more about feelings and emotional political attitudes. Particularly the green left. There is an element of union/labourer left who have been brought up to think boss bad/worker good, who don’t give much of a hoot about AGW. It’s just a leverage tool for their crowd and they secretly fear it’s going to bite them eventually. As the labor party moves further left they may be found looking for a new political home. Much to their own angst.

      Then there’s the political right who can be more analytical/fact based. Doesn’t mean ideology doesn’t interfere with their opinions. But generally less about how it feels.

      The left’s emotional/feeling influence is why there is a greater emotional aspect, fear, radicalism, and self justification for inappropriate action and unsociable behavior amongst their activism.

      I’m sure you will think that, “No, I’m the logical fact based one. All you righty fascists are just ignoring the facts and have no logic”.

      Here’s an example of screwed lefty logic. When covid hit and lockdowns started, the government proposed jobkeeper and some other business support. My lefty brother-in-law said, “Capitalists want little government interference and poo poo socialism, but now they all have their hand out for government support instead of standing on their own two free market feet. Hypocrites. Capitalism has failed it’s first real test. It is a sham.”
      (right now I bet you’re going, “That’s what I said. He’s right”.)

      To which I said, “Right now the government is interfering with the free market. It has shut down the free market. It has closed the capitalist system that gives government its riches. This is not an example of capitalism failing by it’s own design. This is an example of government interference curtailing prosperity. It is actually a demonstration of why what you typically advocate for doesn’t work.”

      Of course, he couldn’t see that logic. Or refused to because it would mean he’d have to admit so much of his mutterings over the years were wrong. (IMnotsoHO)
      (that’s a true reflection of the conversation)

      Then there’s human nature. Stubborness and a lack of willingness to say, “hey, you were right. I’ve looked at the information and have changed my mind”. Both sides have a problem with this. Especially the left. Because it’s not about AGW and it’s about crushing the evil west.

      70

    • #

      Most skeptic people with background are scientsts. They don’t spread opinions but scientific facts, and the named antivaccers based their decisions on scientific researched facts. Maybe the what you name political right orientated people are more critical than leftist believing more the propaganda their gurus and the msm spread.

      10

    • #
      R.B.

      I didn’t have a political identity when I became a sceptic.

      Admittedly, in the decades since, I’ve come to believe that you know the Left are lying because their mouths are open. Is that what you mean by political identity?

      00

  • #
    Pauly B

    So the “science” of psychology is about as reliable as that of climatology…?

    Got it!

    100

  • #
    Ed Zuiderwijk

    That ‘motivated reasoning’ is an old chestnut: ‘it is extremely difficult for a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on not understanding it’.

    The ‘researchers’ have difficulty understanding their results; the aphorism appears to apply to them a fortiori.

    The idea that ‘deniers’ are ‘deniers’ because they know what they are talking about simply does not occur to these psychologists.

    30

  • #

    Another case of ‘experts’ being wrong,
    What most of us knew all along,
    That skeptics hold true,
    To the sound science view,
    Unconvinced by the climate-cult throng.

    50

  • #
    aspnaz

    The authors of the study were themselves surprised by the results.

    My guess is that these authors have no life, they live in their ivory towers, talk to fellow bullshitters/academics, ignore the ignorant plebs, congratulate themselves on their intellectual superiority, even to the extent of having a superior understanding of the thoughts of the plebs than even the plebs have themselves. Then, one day, after generating all this self-congratulatory bullshit, they trip face first into their own nonsense. My only question is why did they publish this paper, they could have hidden it like all their other failures, but they decided to publish it, which means that they had no choice, somebody knew what was happening and recorded a few of the conversations? That is the more interesting story, not the revelation that most people are sane and that the insane are those paid to be insane.

    60

  • #
    Gerry, England

    On the face of it, this is good news for policymakers, because the results could mean that it is indeed possible to correct climate change misconceptions, simply by providing comprehensive information.

    So having failed with lying to us so far, these idiots think that more lies will work. Yep, good luck with that.

    40

    • #
      Dave in the States

      Oh yes, the old it’s ignorance on the part the skeptic as first reaction. A little education should bring them into line. But in my experience, the skeptics are the ones more literate on the topic. It’s usually the alarmists who don’t know which end of the pencil is up. And its always the alarmist who want to limit access to information on the topic to only their gate keepers.

      30

  • #

    Many heterodox academics – who were either in on the scam, or stood on the fence – are now skeptics. This was mainly due to their experience within academia: watching woke ideology and politics trash academic excellence. But also watching COVID hysteria ruin their kids education and the economy. They realized that neither smart nor powerful people are more honest than dimwits or skeptics. I’d even go so far at to say they feel a bond of skepticism with actual climate skeptics such as us.

    20

  • #

    There is a much more compelling study – about activists:

    The dark side of environmental activism

    Abstract
    In times of growing concerns about climate change, environmental activism is increasing. Whereas several studies have examined associations between environmental activism and the Big Five personality characteristics, the potential “dark side” of environmental activists’ personality has been neglected. Accordingly, this study examined associations between environmental activism, the dark triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism) and left-wing authoritarianism (i.e., antihierarchical aggression, anticonventionalism, top-down censorship). Data came from 839 employed individuals in Germany. Results showed positive associations between environmental activism and Machiavellianism, narcissism, antihierarchical aggression, and anticonventionalism. Most of these associations remained significant after controlling for Big Five characteristics, demographic characteristics, political orientation, and right-wing authoritarianism. These findings suggest that environmental activism, in addition to its potential positive outcomes, may also have a dark side in terms of activists’ personality.

    And an analysis about:

    Dark personality traits linked to engagement in environmental activism

    60

  • #
    Paul Cottingham

    Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, chair in cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol, said that people who don’t agree with him on Man-made Climate Change, are loonies who believe that NASA faked the moon landings. But then the two scientists who walked on the Moon disagree. Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmitt are Man-made Climate Change Sceptics based on the science, but not loonies.

    Loony Lewandowsky has now commented on the psychology of those who refused to get a Covid mRNA jab, saying that hardcore vaccine refuseniks, like the inventor of mRNA technology, Dr Robert Malone, need deradicalising like terrorists. A “deradicalisation” programme like those given to former terrorists or cult members might be the only way to dissuade some hardcore antivaxxers from their belief that the mRNA jabs are not “Safe and Effective”. But for a small section of “hardcore refuseniks”, he said, it may be difficult to reach them by conventional means because their beliefs are so ingrained by knowing people who have been injured by the jab. Statisticians like Norman Fenton, Ed Dowd and John Beaudoin are also in need of being deradicalised by cognitive psychology.

    Further reading “Political abuse of psychiatry”: https://www.zersetzung.org/images/weaponized-psychiatry/Schizophr%20Bull-2010-van%20Voren-33-5.pdf

    50

  • #
    MatrixTransform

    name some absurd sounding government appointed experts

    Does Chris Bowen count?

    20

    • #
      Tel

      You only have to look down at the names of the ministries they create for themselves.

      https://www.directory.gov.au/commonwealth-parliament/cabinet

      Why is there a “Minister for Women” but not men? Why is there a “Minister for Northern Australia” but not the South?

      They did a well balanced job with “Minister for Housing” and her counterpart the “Minister for Homelessness” but those two are the same person! Clever in a kind of James Thurber style.

      Most of the ministries are not even constitutional, when you look at what the government is supposed to be doing, vs what they claim to have control of. They aren’t supposed to be running education, nor healthcare, nor anything related to land management.

      40

  • #
    Paul Cottingham

    Only an idiot thinks people deny the existence of the Climate, or deny that the Climate Changes.

    The not well known censored facts prove that Climate Change is 100% natural. (see below)

    The facts are that the average temperature at the one bar pressure points on each of the planets, is the same, adjusted for distance from the Sun, despite the different main gases, Nitrogen for the Earth & Titan, Hydrogen for Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn & Uranus and Carbon Dioxide for Venus. The radiating temperature of Venus is 1.176 times that of the Earth, proving that input from the Sun and a change to thermal inertia due to pressure as a precise function of altitude are all that is needed to calculate the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Proving that the greenhouse effect is induced by molar mass and not by radiative forcing.

    These facts prove that carbon dioxide induced Climate Change, and therefore, Man-made Climate change is a massive and expensive “Hoax”.

    Any psychiatrist cannot be very intelligent if they think ordinary people or atmospheric physicists have ‘Climate failings’ because they deny the existence of the ‘Climate’ or deny that the ‘Climate Changes’.

    Most sceptical videos are also full of moronic rubbish, and do not include the basic science seen in this video: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2021/09/06/ned-nikolov-demystifying-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect

    With an IQ of 164, I think this is as strange and as moronic as sacrificing people on top of pyramids, to try and stop the climate from changing.

    20

  • #
    R.B.

    They needed to bring Lewandowski onboard. Then the result would have shown that climate deniers believe in child sacrifice.

    10