Recently killer storms have been attacking our nation
As global warming means hurricane exacerbation.
Yet there are many, in defiance,
Who deny climate change science,
‘Though such denial is mere mental masturbation!
On the heels of Hurricane Irma, I showed up for our weekly anti-Trump demonstration on Main Street in Greenville, South Carolina. Right after Trump shocked the nation with his pro-neo-Nazi comments, we had at least fifty protesters show up. Right after the total eclipse passed right over Greenville, we had at least twenty protestors show up. But the day after Hurricane Irma, only two showed up—including me—even though the remnants of the hurricane were now merely cloudy skies and a stiff breeze.
Nevertheless, I held high my sign that took hours to prepare. It read GLOBAL WARMING EXACERBATES HURRICANES. Much of the preparation was cramming as much information as I could from the internet to be sure my protest sign was scientifically accurate. Climate change deniers argue that we have always had hurricanes. This is true; global warming doesn’t cause hurricanes. However, global warming does exacerbate hurricanes—it makes them bigger, stronger, and more deadly. As one climatologist put it, with increased temperatures, hurricanes are now on steroids. Global warming has already raised the level of oceans, and has increased the temperatures of both the Atlantic Ocean and especially the Gulf of Mexico.
Although the four words on my poster stated a scientific fact, based on some reactions, you would have thought I was expressing an extreme left-wing political opinion. One guy who drove by felt compelled to give me the finger—not just with one hand, but a double-barrel shot from each hand, with no hands on the steering wheel. I figured anyone dumb enough to take both hands off a moving vehicle to shoot the bird was too stupid to convince, anyway.
Alas, I am not a Climate Scientist, but I am a Political Psychologist. Climate change is no longer a prediction of future harmful events caused by global warming. Climate change is already here and now—and is as deadly as scientists have previously predicted. I am not equipped as well as the actual scientists as to explain the reality of global warming and its effects on hurricanes and other climatic disasters including floods, draught, and melting glaciers. However, I do believe I can provide some insight as to why so many people still deny climate change—including so-called President Trump and the vast majority of Republicans in Congress.
First and foremost, the main reason so many people have denied climate change is because the Koch brothers, Charles and David, have spent millions and millions of dollars discrediting climate science. Their agenda is obvious. Koch Industries is the nation’s second largest privately held company—and their primary source of profit is oil. They don’t give a damn as to whether climate science is real or not; they only give a damn about making as much money as possible and have deemed it necessary to buy as many Republican politicians as possible to do their bidding.
“Moderate Republicans fear political retribution from the powerful Koch brothers and their allies in the fossil fuel industry…If you’re a Republican senator, you look at fossil fuel-funded front groups that are threatening your elimination as a political figure...”
So writes Dianne Toomey in How Big Money in Politics Blocked U.S. Action on Climate Change reviewing Senator Whitehouse’s new book, Captured: The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy. The Koch brothers want to be able to pollute the planet without having to pay the costs of the pollution. Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money goes into great detail exactly how the Koch brothers effectively took over the Republican Party in order to make these two billionaires even richer.
Bernie Sanders echoes this sentiment:
“The Koch Brothers, who make huge profits in fossil fuel, do not believe [or do not care] that climate change is caused by human activity. What a coincidence! Almost all Republicans, whose party receives hundreds of millions in campaign help from the Koch Brothers, also do not agree that climate change is not changed by human activity.”
One case in point is the former Representative from South Carolina, Bob Inglis. Bob Inglis changed his mind about climate change after seeing first-hand scientific evidence on his trip to Antarctica. Moreover, when asked publically if he believed if climate change was caused by humans, he told the truth and said yes. Unfortunately, the gathered crowd didn’t like his answer. Eventually Bob Inglis lost in the Republican primary to the Tea party candidate who denied climate change and was heavily bankrolled by the Koch Brothers! Of this, Bob Inglis stated…
“Do you think that’s how we should handle all scientific questions—put them up for people to decide? ‘What do you think? Gravity, yes or no?’”
Money does strange things to the mind. As soon as a Republican politician accepts huge contributions from the Koch brothers, it changes their thinking. According to the psychological principle called cognitive dissonance, what we do affects how we think. Narcissistic or not, virtually everyone wants to think well of themselves. No one want to know they are a blatant hypocrite. No politician wants to think he has been bought by taking a bribe. So if someone accepts big money to say that global warming and climate change is a myth, it is just a matter of time before they honestly believe what they are saying is the truth. They don’t dare change their behavior, so they end up changing their thinking and buy into their own lies that the science of climate change is inconclusive.
There is another insidious psychological principle at stake; what I like to call Algoraphobia. You remember Al Gore, the Vice President who would have been President, except for the inconvenient truth we don’t give the Presidency to the candidate who wins the most votes. Al Gore, a dedicated environmentalist, wrote the book and movie An Inconvenient Truth urging everyone it was time to try to stop climate change. Algoraphobia is the irrational fear of believing that climate change is even possible.
Note the optimistic note at the bottom of the movie poster from Roger Freidman of Fox News:
“It doesn’t matter whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, liberal or conservative…your mind will be changed in a nanosecond.”
Friedman was dead wrong. Today, it does matter whether you are a Republican or Democrat, as virtually all Republicans now deny climate change. Cognitive dissonance explains some, but not all of the irrational denial of scientific reality. Republicans have Algoraphobia because they have put the cart of conclusions ahead of the horse of scientific evidence. Of course, one is supposed to put the horse before the cart, or base one’s conclusions on evidence, rather than be blind to evidence because you don’t like the conclusion.
If climate change is a real and present danger— if climate change is exacerbating hurricanes so much we have had several “hundred-year-storms” back-to-back—then obviously some-thing needs to be done about it. This “something” can’t be achieved by rugged individualism. I bought a Prius, recycle, and added insulation to my attic; but there is little I or anyone else alone can do to prevent global warming, melting ice-caps, rising oceans, and killer hurricanes.
It is impossible to prevent global warming without serious federal government inter-vention and international co-operation. Unfortunately, this is anathema to conservative Republicans who have blind faith that free-market forces solving everything. Their abhorrence of restricting big business— including big oil—with government regulations, runs counter to their “conservative” principles. Since collectively they don’t like the obvious and only solution to prevent further destruction of the planet, with restrictions on the burning of fossil fuels, it is easier for their Algoraphobia to kick in and deny global warming even exists, in spite of the overwhelming scientific evidence.
Are the Republicans outright lying? Not necessarily, but they continue to move the goal posts to insist nothing should be done. First, they deny climate change and global warming even exists. Then, if they ever admit this, then they deny that human activity—namely fossil fuel pollution—has anything to do with it. And even if they finally admit human activity does contribute to climate change, then they insist there is nothing that can be done to stop it!
Yet corrupt Republican politicians, who have been bought by the Koch Brothers and converted into climate change deniers by cognitive dissonance and Algoraphobia, only tell part of the story. What about all those other non-politicians who can’t see the connection between global warming and killer hurricanes? What’s their excuse?
Some say it’s a lack of appreciation of the role of science—the egotistical idea that one can justifiably believe anything one wants, and that their own subjective reality is just as valid as anyone else’s. “You want to believe in climate change, fine,” they argue, “but I don’t believe it, thus is doesn’t exist.” Such a lack of appreciation for objective truth, allows anyone to deny any reality that makes them uncomfortable.
The problem is, that as human beings, we aren’t wired to fear climate change. If our home catches on fire, our fear factor kicks in. If suddenly we come across a spider or snake, we reflexively feel inborn anxiety alerting us to danger. Standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, I consciously decided to move within a couple of feet from the edge, knowing I would still be safe. However, primal instincts kicked in, and in spite of believing I had no fear of heights, I couldn’t bring myself to stand any closer to the edge. Such instincts undoubtedly kept our ancestors alive long enough to reproduce, but we have no built-in instinctive mechanisms for many of the serious dangers of modern living. We have no inborn fear of guns, or electricity, or traveling in vehicle at 80 miles per hour. Such evolutionary programing never had a chance to kick in.
The fact remains, danger doesn’t always correlate closely with fear. We fear dark places like jungles and forests where predators could be lurking, but we have no in-born fear for gradually rising temperatures, global warming, melting ice, and rising seas. We fear loud immediate threats, not quiet slowly changing conditions. A man living in Florida decided to move away after noticing each year the barnacles on the piers in Miami were getting higher. Yet ten percent of the residents of the Florida Keys didn’t even leave even when they knew Hurricane Irma was heading straight for them. Of course, when instincts for survival finally kicked in, it was too late to leave.
In high school Biology class, we were told of an experiment where a bull-frog was placed in boiling water. Feeling sudden pain, the frog jumped out immediately, saving its life. But if the frog was put into tepid water and the water was slowly heated to the boiling point, the bullfrog would boil alive, as it would never notice a sudden increase in heat. When I first heard this story, I smugly thought humans were so much smarter than frogs. We’re not. Global temperatures have been gradually rising to dangerous levels, but we still feel no sense of urgency. When told that sea levels are rising, we think of it like water slowly rising in a bathtub; it may become a problem in the far off future, but not now. Hurricanes, like Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and Irma remind us the ocean is already encroaching onto land that will eventually be continuously under water. We may not panic when a huge chunk of Antarctica falls into the ocean, but it will be too late when that mass of ice melts and is deposited by hurricanes onto Texas, Louisiana, and Florida.
Confirmation bias and belief perseverance are two other psychological principles that account for a failure to change minds to the reality of climate change. Confirmation bias is the tendency to only seek out information that confirms what we already believe. Belief perseverance is the tendency to continue to believe what we used to believe, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. For example, after my distant relative Alfred Dreyfus, a Captain in the French Army, was accused of being a German spy and was falsely convicted of treason; the generals who convicted him refused to believe Dreyfus was innocent even after they discovered who the real spy and traitor was! Thus, if someone believed climate change was a hoax ten years ago, they will still believe it’s a hoax while wading waist-deep in water after a hurricane.
In addition, the false consensus effect puts those who deny climate science “in the bubble.” The false consensus effect is the illusion that your ideas are valid and widespread, simply because everyone around you thinks the same way. If you only watch Fox News, listen to Limbaugh, stay on your Facebook page, and discuss politics exclusively with your conservative friends and family; you will labor under the illusion that scientists are on all sides of this issue, as all they have is inconclusive evidence and conflicting theories. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. You would be deceived that almost everybody holds your same unscientific tenuous belief system. You will never pick up Al Gore’s book or watch his documentary film, because you have already dissed him as a Democrat.
Finally, the good old Freudian defense mechanism of denial plays a part in denying climate change. We think of such psychological denial when an alcoholic denies drinking is killing him. If the alcoholic (who denies he is even is an alcoholic) fears he will be unable to quit drinking, denial of the dangers of drinking reduce the severe anxiety that becomes manifest. We all use denial in one form or another. My dad, at age 94, denies his inability to drive safely. I deny that going to all-you-eat restaurants won’t prevent me from losing twenty pounds. People often deny climate change for the simple reason that the prospect of the earth being destroyed by rising floods and hurricanes is too anxiety- provoking and too emotionally upsetting to admit.
The following classic episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, posted on YouTube on March 2012, beautifully illustrates many of the points I have tried to make, as Bob Lutz tries to make climate change denial sound reasonable. It’s over five minutes long, but by far the best of dozens of videos I watched about climate change denial. Desperately, Mr. Lutz tried to argue that none of the scientists’ dire predictions have become true.
Well, they have now.