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

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 […]

Victims of a dead-end religion — Too anxious about climate to have children

By Jo Nova

Written just in time for the UN Climate junket, Anna Lee, 21, declares she’s too worried about climate change to have children.

In the past these declarations have been a part of a Doomer fashion show where people who probably wouldn’t have had children anyway brag about how saintly they are for not having them. They wear their childlessness as a badge of glory. But Anna Lee’s declaration sounds more like a cry for help from someone raised on a climate fantasy. She doesn’t feel she can offer her children a future, perhaps because she doesn’t have one herself. She has, after all, been raised by the village on a dead-end religion. The world will only be saved if impossible things happen. Storms, fires and floods can be stopped with whirly-gigs and magical silicon carpets, don’t you know? The solution is so obvious, and it’s cheap and free too, but people in our tribe are too stupid and greedy to do it. Imagine what a depressing message that would be — born into a craven mob of colonizing lemmings who didn’t do anything good like ending slavery, inventing antibiotics or walking on the moon. Losers…

Some subset […]

Republican confidence in science fell dramatically in the wake of the pandemic

By Jo Nova

For most of our lives, scientists have been among the most trusted community leaders. But not any more.

For nearly fifty years, more than four out of ten Americans said they had a “great deal of confidence” in the people running our institutions of science. This was the strongest possible answer people could give. But all that has changed in the last few years with public opinion on science now splitting along political lines. Faith in the institutions of science has collapsed among conservative voters.

The goodwill, the trust and esteem built by things like The Manhattan Project and the Moonshot carried on for decades, but when Covid arrived, and science was the number one public topic of debate, many scientists sat silent on the sidelines. The lab leak theory came and went and then turned out to have been true all along. When ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could have saved lives, scientists said nothing. When vaccines were sold as “safe and effective”, researchers who knew there were risks, sat on their hands. When borders could have been shut to stop bioweapons, Trump was left on his own. When universities failed the nation, scientists mostly sided with the […]

The plague of mental illness in teenage girls

By Jo Nova

Something is going wrong with teenage girls. Horribly wrong. Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt have published a bomb of an article. Across the Anglosphere (and perhaps elsewhere) Gen Z girls are more anxious, more depressed, more likely to self harm and less happy, and not just a bit more, but in a seismic kind of way. Things are not exactly great for teenage boys either, but the trends are worst for girls and young women and most of the downturn started around 2012, uncannily in at least five different countries.

Rausch and Haidt make a compelling case that this coincides with the rise of smart phones and selfie-culture, and perhaps that is all the rocket-fuel we need. But the rise of the Glorious Victimhood Era of Woke was surely the guidance system that pointed a whole generation in a race to climb Mental Disability Mountain.

Teenage girls are magnets for fashion — not just in clothes but in ideas too. They may be collecting diagnoses like teenage boys collected football cards, but self-poisoning is not a sport.

The culture that acts like a teenage girl seems to be having trouble breeding healthy women.

Substack: After […]

Former XR climate activist calls it a brainwashed cult

By Jo Nova

Zion Lights

If we don’t teach our children how to spot cults and con artists they might grow into adults who lie on roads, tie themselves to cranes, and throw soup on a Van Gogh. Those who benefit from Climate “action” are exploiting mentally ill people.

A lady with the unlikely name of Zion Lights was once a spokeswoman for Extinction Rebellion but quit and is now speaking out about their brainwashing, destructive behaviour, and the way they never seemed to want to solve climate change.

“The whole thing was a masterclass on how to manipulate emotions”, she says. She was told to “cry on TV” and bring her children to protests. Fellow activists there were so brainwashed some were sure they were going to die before thirty, and the leader of the movement, Roger Hallam offered them salvation, preyed on their guilt, compared himself to Gandhi and MLK and called himself a prophet. But was rude to followers, wouldn’t listen, and really didn’t care about “the people” at all. Ultimately, while he talked about armageddon, “he did nothing to prevent it” she said.

The hypocrisy finally got to her. Ms Lights wanted to talk […]

Climate Change makes People Angrier, so give them a solar panel to hug (it’ll help in 100 years)

A new study in the Lancet shows that people don’t get more amiable when temperatures are 42 to 45°C. Apparently hate tweets were lowest at 12 to 21°C but reached a “prevalence of 22%” at the highest temperatures. Lo, verily and ka-ching, it follows that climate change will cause nastier tweets. If we pull on this logic-string, your car exhaust is making people mean, your beef steak causes political polarisation, and if everyone owned an EV, there would be no more wars.

Obviously believers will argue that we should solve our social media angst with subsidies for solar panels and cricket-chips. But skeptics will say we just need lots of reverse cycle heat pumps at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour. Burn oil and calm the world…

Airconditioners save 20,000 lives in USA each year and reduces indoor air pollution as well.

Oh the dilemma — to stop snarky tweets on hot days, we could spend $100 trillion dollars to try to change the climate and wait for next century, or we could just go back to what we had 20 years ago — the miracle of cheap air conditioning?

Bad climate policies breed hate and discontent. In Spain people are […]

We know it’s a cult because apostates must be exiled

One side of politics maintains its support through fear, but it’s an invisible wall until you touch it. Most people within the bubble think they got there through persuasion and reason. They think they are free to leave, they “just don’t want to”. But once an errant thought occurs, or they ask an unpermitted question, the wall of fear appears — it’s the unexpected poison barb, the mockery a reasonable question provokes. It quickly escalates to full blown “primal rejection”.

Leil Leibovitz lived within the bubble, and writes about The Turn — the moments he realized that he was afraid to ask, to speak his mind.

I sense a phase change coming as more and more people reach The Turn.

The Turn

By Leil Leibovitz

You might be living through The Turn if you ever found yourself feeling like free speech should stay free even if it offended some group or individual but now can’t admit it at dinner with friends because you are afraid of being thought a bigot. You are living through The Turn if you have questions about public health policies—including the effects of lockdowns and school closures on the poor and […]

A culture of climate bullies may be using your retirement funds against you

Who voted for Superannuation funds to decide energy policy?

And you thought we elected a government to manage our National energy policy?

Businesses must adopt Paris emissions targets even if the government fails to do so, big investors say.

The Guardian

So even if voters don’t want “climate action”, by default, it’s sneaking in the back door, unless they pay attention.

The “big investors” in this case being a small team of activists running a club that some Superannuation corporates have joined, though it’s not clear why. Perhaps they joined to “look Woke” or perhaps they are feeding the crocodile for fear of being targeted?

The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) is not trying to persuade funds or investors to go Green with reason, instead they seem to operate by Cancel Culture principles on a corporate scale. Their aim, apparently, is to bully Directors of your Superfund into themselves bullying the companies they invest in. In a Saul Alinsky fashion they effectively threaten Directors that they might be personally isolated and targeted if they are not seen to be supportive enough of the Woke religion (ie, climate, slavery, femo-glass-ceiling stuff). Somehow ACSI may “recommend members […]

Climate Distress? ABC offers therapy and forgiveness to failed Ecowarriors who still use plastic nappies and styrofoam cups

It’s all a bit much for snowflakes

The ABC is just a Lifestyle Magazine for the Upperclass, paid for by everyone else.

For twenty years the media EcoRulers told people they will destroy the Earth if they use disposable coffee cups and nappies. Their whole identity as a Good Person depended on doing the right thing. And “every little bit matters” — etcetera, and ad nauseum.

Who would have guessed that asking people to save the Planet with every purchase would cause anxiety, a perpetual sense of failure, and long term stress?

And it never mattered anyway — the point was not the environment, but the political power. So now that hapless fans are being struck down with “Climate Distress” — it’s time to forgive them.

Here’s the ABC Agony Aunt column letting all of them off the hook:

Climate distress is real and it’s rational. Here’s how to manage it

Edwina Seselja

While researching how to reduce her carbon footprint a few years back, Brisbane woman Zara Monteith quickly fell down an anxiety-inducing rabbit hole, with each search opening her eyes to a different environmental problem to try to solve.

“It feels overwhelming — […]

Finally, instead of lefty globalist collective marxists: just call them “Upperclass”

We’re in a Culture War, and there has been no name to label the group who are driving this war. The old Left-Right canard isn’t working. The DINO-RINO’s are one and same Swamp-creatures. The left-leaning Bernie fans got screwed by the Upper Class as much as the Trump fans did.

It’s not about the rich versus the poor either: Donald Trump is a billionaire but he isn’t upper class. Green hippies in XR Superhero-Monk costumes needn’t be wealthy, but they aspire to be in the popular upper class. It’s about status and the pecking order. The same is true of the high school students who lecture grown ups on climate change. They might be poor but they’re aiming to climb class rungs.

Words matter. People can unite behind an idea that has no name, but the movement is fragile, prone to fragmenting. But here, in a rather scathing blast from someone who isn’t Republican and doesn’t even like them is a suggestion that’s got a lot going for it. Bring back a new version of the class war, against the Upper Class, and a war on classism. It is something that can unite the Deplorables, the workers, the minorities, and […]

Herding the Democrat school of fish toward civil war

Hypothetically, if someone were trying to divide a nation this survey is Paydirt

It’s almost like a team is winding up the young and impressionable, stoking their fears. Republican Voters worry about policies, but Democratic voters are just scared of Republicans.

h/t David for the “school of fish”.

Look at the top four concerns:

Matt Margolis, PJ Media

According to Kristen Soltis Anderson, the cofounder of Echelon Insights, Democrat voters are more concerned about “Donald Trump’s supporters” than anything else.

Democrats

Democrats are less concerned about policy issues than they are about people with whom they disagree politically. To them, Trump supporters are more dangerous than Islamic terrorists, a more pressing issue than gun violence, and even more important than issues that affect their various constituencies, like discrimination against LGBT Americans, sexism, student debt, alleged voter suppression, etc.

To these voters, Trump supporters are a bigger issue than all of those and more. Imagine being a store owner minding your own business and thinking that the Democrat voters around you think you are a bigger issue facing this country than anything else, even more than the issues that directly affect […]

A vasectomy as a fashion statement

Look who wanted an excuse to justify what he never felt motivated to do anyhow:

When I got engaged, my fiancée, Virginia, and I started planning for the future. It wasn’t just my dog Wiley and me against the world anymore. All of a sudden, I started thinking ten to 20 or more years ahead.

People who want kids don’t mention US presidents, forest management, or generic family pets in their decision-making:

Children are an obvious thing to plan. With a sudden focus on responsible decision-making, it no longer made sense to leave hypothetical future offspring up to chance. When should we have them? What did our careers look like on that timeline? Who’d be responsible for staying home and raising them? Couldn’t we just have one of the dogs do that?

We got engaged in June 2018, a couple months before a wildfire destroyed an entire town in California and another one wiped out sections of Malibu. Shortly after that, most of the Mississippi River basin flooded, something that might be the new normal, virtually eliminating the future for industrial agriculture throughout a region that produces much of this nation’s food. And, of […]

In grand attention-getting fashion statement Coldplay band says it won’t fly to Australia

Quick, who has a yacht to offer these poor celebrities?

Following Greta’s marketing example, Coldplay are getting headlines by refusing to fly to Australia. Climate-compassion-marketing is a good way to promote their next tour, especially among the young delusionals:

Coldplay won’t tour its new album until the band’s concerts can be environmentally ‘beneficial’

Paul Donoughue, ABC “News”

Singer Chris Martin says the band will not be touring new record, Everyday Life, until it can find a way to tour that is not harmful to the environment.

“We’re taking time over the next year or two to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial,” Martin told BBC News.

He said that rather than just be sustainable, he wanted to the tours to have a positive impact, but that flights for the band, crew and gear represented the biggest hurdle to that.

These fashionistas are just not good with numbers. Flights for the band and crew are probably nothing compared to flights and car travel for 10,000 people in the audience. Look, even the ABC (not good with numbers either) can find quotes to […]

Climate scare machine — happy to use people with a mental illness as a promotional tool:

So some people have a mental illness. Unbridled, baseless Climate-Panic makes that worse. Now those victims are advertising material:

Climate Despair is making people give up on life

Mike Pearl, Vice.

There’s nothing like a bit of unprecedented misery made possible by unprecedented history denial:

“This is painful,” [Renee] Lertzman said. “It’s super painful to be a human being right now at this point in history.”

We live longer than ever, are richer than ever, fly all over the world, and one of our biggest fears is losing our mobile phone. This article is wholly so far gone past the Rubicon that it makes Michael Mann look sensible. Seriously, by reviewing apocalyptic books and stories from mental health wards, the man who brought hockey-stick hype to the world appears to be the most normal person in the room.

This article is doing its best to normalize climate-depressive-obsession.

Step 1: pick one graphic tale

Suddenly, she was contemplating self-harm. “Though I don’t think I would have hurt myself, I didn’t know how to live with the fear of… the apocalypse, I guess? My son was home with me and I had to call my friend […]

Surprise: 17,000 lost wallets show humans are nice people (mostly)

Humans are a gregarious species. Most people do the right thing, and it’s this altruism, or self-identification as a “good person” that the climate industry preys on.

In a new study, researchers pretended to be tourists dropping 17,000 wallets they’d “found” into banks, offices, theatres and such, then tracking which ones got returned. To most people’s astonishment (lay person and expert) not only were a lot of wallets returned but the ones with the most money ($94) in them were returned more often.

What nobody seems to have remarked on is that these wallets were just plastic pouches. Which makes it all the more amazing that in so many nations a mere $13 in a plastic envelope might prompt half the population (or more) to send an email. How many people couldn’t be bothered, not because they are dishonest, but they figure, with petrol and parking, it’s not worth the owners time to come collect this? Indeed, people even sent off an email to return the “wallets” which didn’t have money to begin with.

Ed Cara at Gizmodo inadvertently summed up the zeitgeist of Western self hate, saying that this new study shows ” …maybe we’re not as awful a […]

It’s a tech-wreck: models now use human moods and fashions as a climate forcing

How many climate marches does it take to stop a storm?

Photo by Vlad Tchompalov

A new climate model includes “social processes” to predict the climate. They expect the fashionality of hybrid cars or solar PVs will help predict the future climate. So serious researchers are now feeding their models with trends in human behaviour. Though there’s no sign climate models may use the million-mile-an-hour solar wind, nor changes to the solar magnetic field that’s bigger than Earths orbit. They’re also not using solar spectral changes, but who cares about the odd quadrillion joules of ultra violet fritzing or not-fritzing our ozone layer? So much better to track twitter trends on solar panels instead.

The fixation on CO2 is so obsessive compulsive it’s practically a science cult. This kind of work puts the psycho in psychology.

Years from now when everyone agrees it was The Sun, historians are going to fish deep from this well of academic obsession:

New global warming model highlights strong impact of social learning

Human behavior influences a wide range of complex systems, including ecosystems, social networks, and the climate. Moreover, these systems impact human behavior, creating a feedback loop. Human behavior is […]

Blame Climate Change for stupid British Voters choosing Brexit says ABC

If only we had built more windmills, and changed more light-globes we could have prevented the British voting to control their own nation. It all makes sense — if you are insane, or a broadcaster paid one billion a year to promote Big Government.

What a disaster — the fifth largest economy choose to trade more with the rest of the world and be less under the thumb of Germany and Brussels. Such madness needs an explanification. So here it is: Our coal plants caused a terrible drought in Syria which made lots of nice people seek refuge in rich countries, I mean “globally”, and that made people talk about a refugee problem in the UK (which wasn’t really a problem, see) and that made scared, selfish and small minded populist voters choose fear and Brexit over the glorious wonder of the EU.

This is the genius analysis we pay Sabra Lane and the ABC for:

SABRA LANE: Could it be that Brexit, the UK voting to leave the EU, is the result of a cascading series of events due in part to climate change?

ROBERT GLASSER: Yeah, so there was a […]

Eco-psychology: NEW Free helpline, handbook, for climate change mental illness

After thirty years of Green-Blob disaster porn, there are casualties.

Climate change [propaganda] takes a toll on our minds

Psychologist Susie Burke tells the story of a woman who came to her for counselling after having her first child. Not because she was suffering from post-natal depression, but because she was “struggling with the enormity of what she had done.” She felt she had brought her child into a “world she knew was going to be a lot harsher and a lot less safe,” Burke told DW.

“She came to me when she was overwhelmed by this distress; questioning whether she had done the right thing. The fear she had for his future was really huge.”

Look out for the new hotline (Can someone find this number?)

Burke is an Australian psychologist and academic who specializes in eco-psychology. She treats people suffering mental illness as a result of climate change, and also recently set up a free hotline called the “Climate Change Psychological Support Network,” where Australians can call a qualified psychologist to talk through their feelings about environmental change.

Look out for the handbook:

‘The Climate Change Empowerment Handbook’ is a handy […]

Cricket will be sport hardest hit by climate change “fundamentally changed” by summer rain

Forget the plight of snow skiers who won’t know what snow is — it’s cricket that will be hit hardest.

That’s why the sport must take notice of a report published by Climate Coalition, …

The document names cricket as the sport that will be hardest hit by climate change in England, stating that “wetter winters and more intense summer downpours are disrupting the game at every level”.

God forbid. This is a death spiral:

.. Glamorgan Head of Operations, Dan Cherry, …warned that climate change could “fundamentally change the game”.

“The less cricket we play, the fewer people will watch it, the less they will come to the ground and pay to enter, the less chance there is for young people to be inspired,” said Cherry.

This change, it seems, has already begun.

Wait til you see the evidence:

In international cricket, 27 percent of England’s home one-day internationals since 2000 have been played with reduced overs because of rain delays. The rate of rain-affected matches has more than doubled since 2011, with five percent of matches abandoned completely.

By crikey. That is a six year weather […]

Old GOP voters are skeptics, so it takes 20 years to recover from education and wise up to the media

From Jo: Bookings close this Sunday.

Hope to see you in Sydney the weekend after next!

I’ll be speaking with Ian Plimer at the ATA Friedman18 conference.

It’s a great line up of speakers on May 25-27, or come for the Gala dinner.

Get a 10% discount with the code Nova18.

On Climate, There’s A Sharp Generational Divide Within GOP

USNews, Alan Neuhauser

A Pew survey exposed a stark gap between younger and older Republican voters on global warming and energy policy.

 

Neuhauser doesn’t mention it but the implications are pretty dire — look how long it takes to recover from school:

Republican millennials – people roughly ages 22 to 37 – are far less likely than older generations to support the use of coal, oil and other fossil fuel sources. By one count, while three-quarters of Republican baby boomers and older generations supported more offshore oil and gas drilling, fewer than half of millennial Republicans felt the same way.

At least most Republicans grow up:

Among [young and old] Democrats, by contrast, there was only a small divide.

If half the population is shifting in the same direction […]