The ideological fool is the fourth type of climate denier, and they can be intelligent. But they are utterly blinded by their inane, no-limits version of the free-market creed.

They also read Ayn Rand.

What Is the Free Market Solution to Climate Change? YouTube

I'm satisfied that deniers of truth, climate-change, science; that is, deniers of the being of things that are, are influenced by mental illness or personality disorder. One at first supposes it's ignorance, but that yields to stupidity, and that, in the plain crazy twisting evasions of such people is finally revealed as something seriously wrong with the person, he or she having wholly broken through any boundaries of reason, reasonableness, and even good-will and good-faith. And that in turn when understood, leads to understanding that the denier is being incoherent, shaping words for reasons and agendas not evident, having little or nothing to do with any real issues, but clinging to them as if parasitically.

Reasonable discussion with such people becomes itself inappropriate - their conversation just crazy-making. What to do about it not easy to answer, but at least we can start calling it what it is, rather than trying to reason with the unreasonable and the anti-reasonable. This is not a therapy site; no one is owed indulgence beyond reason, reasonable courtesy, or consideration.

I think climate denial should at this point be either laughed at (as one would flat earthers) or ignored. — Xtrix

It also helps to generate a fake air of controversy over climate action that provides cover for the vested interests seeking to delay the end of the fossil fuel age.

What to do about it not easy to answer, but at least we can start calling it what it is, rather than trying to reason with the unreasonable and the anti-reasonable. — tim wood

It's very difficult for me to refrain from giving oxygen to these people. But it may be the best strategy in the end. If one is to "cancel culture", provide consequences, or ostracize, then one has to stick to it. I don't know if I have what it takes, but I shall try. I'm glad "laughed at" was laid out as an option. It might be a half-way step for me. :smile:

In some (many?) cases ideology came first. An example:

There is this elderly woman I have known for a long time who refuses to get vaccinated for Covid-19. She is not an anti-vaxxer. Actually, she's proactive about her health, and offers usually sound advice to others. So, why does this woman who gets an annual flu shot and got the new Shingrex vaccine for shingles not getting the Covid-19 shot?

She's very conservative; she's a Democrat-hating right-winger. She bought the original Trump spin on Covid 19, and has not been able to take it seriously because of her ideological investment. Along with her politics are very conservative Baptist beliefs about authority, the proper role of women (obedient wife, mother) and so on.

She doesn't express articulate arguments when challenged -- she gets angry. She feels like people who disagree with her are attacking her.

Of course, she had help from the types of charlatans listed. She has recently started reading the Epoch Times, which Wikipedia describes as "The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement"

She feels like people who disagree with her are attacking her. — Bitter Crank

That's true for almost every conservative.

The simple fact is climate change, suppose it's true, hasn't produced the desired effect at the level of society - governments, the powers that be - where it could be dealt with in the right way. Why?

There is this elderly woman I have known for a long time who refuses to get vaccinated for Covid-19. — Bitter Crank

People can be both endearing, and also suffer from poor judgement, sadly.

Part of the issue is that understanding both COVID-19 and climate change requires the ability to grasp abstract concepts and scientific analysis. A lot of people are superficially educated and don't have a grasp of the facts nor of critical thinking, and are constantly exposed to conflicting information under the protection of free speech. Not that free speech is a bad thing, but with democratic freedom comes responsibility, and responsibility means 'capable of responding'. Many people are not capable of responding because they can't arrive at the right judgement. Sometimes I think there is too much latitude given. Everyone, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. But facts are routinely denigrated in modern discourse. As a result many people are deeply confused. And they also have a strong sense of personal entitlement and the feeling that whatever doesn't suit them is an attack on their ego.

If you were in China, you would be told how to respond. You wouldn't be given any choice, not that this is a good thing either.

I think the UK's Johnson and the US President are at last showing definite resolve with respect to climate change at last, after decades of denial and faffing about. That, and responsible reporting, is about all that can be hoped for.

There isn't such a thing as "climate denial". No one denies the climate exists, and most people do not deny that it changes either.

It's also a bit naive to believe that only one side of the debate is susceptible to charlatanry or fallacy.

Not all arguments have two sides.

:up:

Yeah, but anthropogenic climate change denial is a thing.

Status quo über alles – Cui bono? Follow the money, Fool.

:up:

Status quo über alles – Cui bono? Follow the money, Fool? — 180 Proof

:up:

Right! I was actually thinking of something else. Take the USA for example - it considers itself the champion of democracy, not in the Americas, but globally - The US envisions a world in which every inch of land fits the description, "the land of the free." Commendable and deeply inspiring. Let's ignore the fact that it abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban for the moment.

This same kind of global perspective, ecologically speaking, is oddly missing from the US agenda.

Why?

Why? — TheMadFool

Status quo über alles – Cui bono? Follow the money.

There isn't such a thing as "climate denial". No one denies the climate exists, and most people do not deny that it changes either. — Tzeentch

Are you serious? Come on. :roll:

They also read Ayn Rand. — Wheatley

Indeed.

I'm satisfied that deniers of truth, climate-change, science; that is, deniers of the being of things that are, are influenced by mental illness or personality disorder. — tim wood

I myself don’t go this far, but it really does appear this way at times.

It's very difficult for me to refrain from giving oxygen to these people. — James Riley

For me too— but it’s never productive, because the arguments are so irrational and so damaging that it’s hard to keep my temper, and then I’m not communicating well enough to have an effect anyway.



My 80-year old uncle is the same way. It’s just very sad. I do notice evangelical Christianity is a good predictor of vaccine refusal too.

The simple fact is climate change, suppose it's true, hasn't produced the desired effect at the level of society - governments, the powers that be - where it could be dealt with in the right way. Why? — TheMadFool

There are some obvious reasons— mostly money. The fossil fuel industry is massive, and they lobby, bribe, and propagandize very well.

For me too— but it’s never productive, because the arguments are so irrational and so damaging that it’s hard to keep my temper, and then I’m not communicating well enough to have an effect anyway. — Xtrix

Here here. :100:

There are some obvious reasons— mostly money. The fossil fuel industry is massive, and they lobby, bribe, and propagandize very well. — Xtrix

Absolutely.

But the task of converting a world economy to a low-greenhouse gas regime is massive to the nth degree, even if the fossil fuel industry went out of business. We don't want to crash the world economy in the process. On the other hand, the world economy is a major part of the problem, especially the big part that is highly developed.

None-the-less, were we capable of doing it, we should bite the bullet and get on with the transition--whatever the difficulties.

Are we capable of it converting the world economy? All the public statements notwithstanding, the efforts have been phlegmatic, even as the dangers of global warming has become more apparent.

Take transportation as a piece of the problem. There are roughly 1 billion fossil-fueled cars on the world's roads. The stupid solution is to build another billion cars running on electricity, and continue to maintain and build roads. People like private autos, sure. But there is also the tremendously large industry involved in autos, quite apart from fossil fuels.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

None-the-less, were we capable of doing it, we should bite the bullet and get on with the transition--whatever the difficulties. — Bitter Crank

A global economic collapse followed eventually by WW3 might create a global government, assuming the fallout isn't too extreme.

and then I’m not communicating well enough to have an effect anyway. — Xtrix

You haven't been around enough crazy people. Pretty much any communicating you do isn't going to have the effect you want.

I saw an old polar bear in a small zoo, a pathetic sight. It just walked around in slow circles doing some ritualistic things, making some ritualistic gestures, non-responsive to the world around. Or like this panther:

"His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

"As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

"Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone."
---Rainer Maria Rilke

Most crazy people much more like the rest of us than like an old bear or panther, except for the circles they go in that they cannot get out of - that's similar - and that finally they cannot conceal hard as they may try.

"His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

"As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

"Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone."
---Rainer Maria Rilke — tim wood

:sad:

Status quo über alles – Cui bono? Follow the money. — 180 Proof

Are you saying the earth and all living organisms on it, that includes us, are at the mercy of a few people with vested interests in oil? That's uplifting!

See my reply to Xtrix below.

There are some obvious reasons— mostly money. The fossil fuel industry is massive, and they lobby, bribe, and propagandize very well. — Xtrix

Yes, money seems to be the prime suspect. It's the obvious choice from any list of reasons why there are climate deniers. My question then is, does the buck have to stop there? I'm calling for a deeper analysis of money. Greed seems to stick out like a sore thumb but then that's how mother nature - evolution - made us over millions of years with good results (we're what evolutionary biologists might call a successful species). Doesn't the whole issue look like mother nature's plan backfired? Climate change then is not man-made, life/mother nature is to blame. Why make us greedy?

Climate change science is so simple it can be stated in a few sentences. The burning of fossil fuels, chiefly coal, oil and gas, emits CO², which absorbs and retains heat more effectively than other atmospheric gases. Since the Industrial Revolution, billions of tons of CO² have been injected into the atmosphere, changing its composition and therefore raising global temperatures. This has flow-on effects such as melting of the polar ice-caps and glaciers, and more severe droughts, floods and storms, and severe wildfires. All of these effects have been observed in the last decades, without any significant possibility of error. Combined with the requirements of feeding an ever-growing and historically-unprecedented population and the other environmental consequences of large-scale human industrial activities (such as the proliferation of plastic waste and species extinction), this poses a critical threat to the habitability of Earth and the survival of the species.

All of which was spelled out in Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth. Since then most OECD economies have frittered away years bickering about it and asking stupid questions about ‘how much it will cost’, when the cost of not addressing it is certain doom.

Greed seems to stick out like a sore thumb but then that's how mother nature - evolution - made us over millions of years with good results (we're what evolutionary biologists might call a successful species). Doesn't the whole issue look like mother nature's plan backfired? Climate change then is not man-made, life/mother nature is to blame. Why make us greedy? — TheMadFool

Did not Mother Nature endow us with care and concern for others as well? Why is greed given primacy? Especially when you see generosity all around. So why make us generous and loving?

It’s not Mother Nature, and it’s not human nature. It’s not genes. It’s about a society that elevates some aspects of human behavior and suppresses others. The dominant system today is called capitalism.

Did not Mother Nature endow us with care and concern for others as well? Why is greed given primacy? Especially when you see generosity all around. So why make us generous and loving? — Xtrix

Yes, but arguably our proclivities aren't equally matched - greed/selfishness trumps genorosity/altruism any day.

It’s not Mother Nature, and it’s not human nature. It’s not genes. It’s about a society that elevates some aspects of human behavior and suppresses others. The dominant system today is called capitalism. — Xtrix

I humbly beg to differ. If we weren't as avaricious as we are, money wouldn't be our priority and then things might've been different.

Coming back to what I said earlier, I still feel that Mother Nature's to blame for her own predicament. Life is, all said and done, selfish - evolution made us that way and now we're supposed to feel guilty about how we (mis)managed the situation. C'mon!

By the way, are we sure that climate change isn't what Mother Nature actually had in mind when she, over billions of years, perfected human grabbiness?

I don't think it's predominately greed that is the problem at all. Most of us are not that greedy; what we are is addicted to our present prosperous, comfortable lifestyles (at least most of us are who have such lifestyles and are also the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions it seems).

It seems the majority just won't vote for any government that would seek to diminish comfort, convenience and prosperity; it's inertia, not greed, that is the major problem, as I see it. And as @Bitter Crank mentioned the transition from a fossil fuel based economy to an economy based on sustainable energy is an enormous, seemingly almost insurmountable problem, just as are reduction of the human population, making the transition to an economics of de-growth, and giving up the multiple evils of industrial farming practices which are destroying soils everywhere and fish-farming and general over-fishing which is degrading the oceans.

It’s not Mother Nature, and it’s not human nature. It’s not genes. It’s about a society that elevates some aspects of human behavior and suppresses others. The dominant system today is called capitalism. — Xtrix

Industrial society could not have developed without sufficient energy sources, and most of it came from coal, which captures energy from the sun. Coal beds took hundreds of millions of years to form, and the industrial revolution has been powered by that captured energy. Global warming is a side-effect, an unintended consequence.

industrial society was only possible because our species briefly had access to an immense supply of cheap, highly concentrated fuel with a very high net energy—that is, the amount of energy needed to extract the fuel was only a very small fraction of the energy the fuel itself provided. Starting in the 18th century, fossil fuels—first coal, then coal and petroleum, then coal, petroleum and natural gas—gave us that energy source. All three of these fossil fuels represent millions of years of stored sunlight, captured by the everyday miracle of photosynthesis and concentrated within the earth by geological processes that took place long before our species evolved. They are nonrenewable over any time scale that matters to human beings, and we are using them up at astonishing rates.

...No other energy source available to our species combines the high net energy, high concentration, and great abundance that a replacement for fossil fuel would need. Those energy sources that are abundant (for example, solar energy) are diffuse and yield little net energy, while those that are highly concentrated (for example, fissionable uranium) are not abundant, and also have serious problems with net energy. Abundant fossil fuels currently provide an “energy subsidy” to alternative energy sources that make them look more efficient than they are—there would be far fewer wind turbines, for example, if they had to be manufactured, installed, and maintained using wind energy. Furthermore, our entire energy infrastructure is geared to use fossil fuels and would have to be replaced, at a cost of countless trillions of dollars, in order to replace fossil fuels with something else.

Third, these problems leave only one viable alternative, which is to decrease our energy use, per capita and absolutely, to get our energy needs down to levels that could be maintained over the long term on renewable sources. — John Michael Greer - Collapse Now, and Avoid the Rush

Published in 2012, but still, I fear, largely true.

:clap: I often feel guilty about being a supermarket shopper but the alternative seems daunting (plucking and cleaning a chicken for instance :yikes: )

I don't think it's predominately greed that is the problem at all. Most of us are not that greedy; what we are is addicted to our present prosperous, comfortable lifestyles (at least most of us who have such lifestyles and are the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions are it seems).

It seems the majority just won't vote for any government that would seek to diminish comfort, convenience and prosperity; it's inertia, not greed, that is the major problem, as I see it. And as Bitter Crank mentioned the transition from a fossil fuel based economy to an economy based on sustainable energy is an enormous, seemingly almost insurmountable problem, just as are reduction of the human population, making the transition to an economics of de-qrowth, and giving up the multiple evils of industrial farming practices which are destroying soils everywhere and fish-farming and general over-fishing which is degrading the oceans. — Janus

You mean to say inertia as in a resistance to change like in physics how it's difficult to start/stop motion. You might have a point there; this same inertia has been the stumbling block for positive change throughout the ages - what could've been achieved in, say, a decade took over a coupla centuries, in the process delaying the transition from mere civilizations to good civilizations.

what could've been achieved in, say, a decade took over a coupla centuries, in the process delaying the transition from mere civilizations to good civilizations. — TheMadFool

Not sure what you mean by "good civilizations" as opposed to "mere civilizations". If you have in mind our present state of "uber-civilization", this was achieved as quickly as it has been due to, as @Wayfarer mentioned, the "boon' of fossil fuels. I don't think inertia has been all that much of a problem when, as circumstances have allowed, it comes to transitioning to greater prosperity, comfort and convenience; I'm not convinced that many of us resist that kind of change. It's change in the other direction that causes us to dig our heels in, I would say.

I think most if not all of the ideological fools are ideological fools because they're actually egomaniacs.

They are desperate for recognition, and, when it stubbornly refuses to arrive, they are drawn to make increasingly extreme pronouncements, in the hope of finally being proved a dogma-busting, 21st-century Galileo.

But in their case it's more a "Loyal and noble crusader, fighting for the true ideology" rather than a dogma-busting Galileo.

I often feel guilty about being a supermarket shopper but the alternative seems daunting (plucking and cleaning a chicken for instance :yikes: — Wayfarer

Since I moved onto 15 acres I have considered farming animals, but I don't really have the stomach for it. The best I can do is keep a few chooks for eggs. I had a friend up here who I have known for about twenty years who's been up here for about 16 years and has very militant attitudes about people who get their meat prepackaged in supermarkets. His attitude is that it is disrespectful to animals to have someone else kill them for you under possibly brutal conditions. Also the conditions under which they have been raised are probably not great either.

He keeps rabbits, pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep and geese and the ones he eats he slaughters and butchers himself. I've watched him do it, and I could probably get used to it, but I actually have no desire to do it, and even an aversion to doing it. If meat wasn't available already butchered I think I'd probably become a vegetarian, but you never know I guess. I think the way he keeps the rabbits, for example, is appalling, although his other animals have it pretty good it seems.

Not sure what you mean by "good civilizations" as opposed to "mere civilizations". If you have in mind our present state of "uber-civilization", this was achieved as quickly as it has been due to, as Wayfarer mentioned, the "boon' of fossil fuels. I don't think inertia has been all that much of a problem when, as circumstances have allowed, it comes to transitioning to greater prosperity, comfort and convenience; I'm not convinced that many of us resist that kind of change. It's change in the other direction that causes us to dig our heels in, I would say. — Janus

By good civilization, I mean one that's in keeping with how nature works - harmoniously with other species and the environment itself - and so, is in some kind of sustainable equilibrium with everything else. Mere civilization is the one we have at present - disequilibrium defines it.

How many times have climate alarmists been right? One day, I guess.