“Marshall, Marshall, Marshall”

What would a REAL psyhologist say about Marshall’s need to fabricate his own version of the truth to support his argument, even as he holds everyone else to the measuring stick of scientific truth (cognitive dissonance)? Or how about his use every known fallacious argument (appeal to authority, slippery slope, argument by generalization/ repitition/ selective observation/ error of fact/ Burden of proof, etc etc), in the process of blaming everyone for the same? His statistics on who believes in Global Warming and why, bear no resemblence the statistics I have ever seen on the topic. His statistics on who is funding deiners and to what extent are not only wrong, but insignificant in the face of who is funding the Alarmist movement, and to what extent. And hilarious that, as others have pointed out, he would bring the laughable pseudo-science of psychology into any debate where he is trying to draw the scientific hard line.

I know many many deniers that do not in any way meet Marshall’s claimed psychological profile. This leads me to wonder if the only psychological phenomenon going on here is Marshall’s projection of all the wrongs of the alarmists on to the rest of us.

Some of us are old enough to remember the consensus in the 70′s that the planet was going to get all ice-agey on us. We also understand the lesson of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Being wrong then does not make them wrong today, but it does give a sound reason to not accept these things without critical examination. Being skeptical seems to me to be the sane thing to do.

I’d like to refer to Ken Wilber again, because his model of how different domains of knowledge connect, leads to some choice observations about green thinking.

Unfortunately I can’t really use the model unless people are conversant with it, and a short primer can be found here if anyone is interested:
http://www.holons-news.com/free/whatisintegral.pdf

This is my take on it, so I may be getting it wrong:

Green thinking arose along with PostModernity. It was great for identifying racism and sexism in culture, and in its valuing of human-bonds and sensitivity. Unfortunately there is an extreme version of PostModernity which is now so endemic it gets its own name: Mean Green.

I can give you a personal example of Mean Green. A friend was having a tough time with his girlfriend as she was very drunk and obnoxiously wild at a party. He tries to calm her down and tell her she’s acting hysterically. Her immediate comeback was that he is a chauvinist male and he wouldn’t have said that to her if she’d been a man. That’s Mean Green. You just deconstruct anything anybody says to “point out” that person’s own sexist, racist, bigoted, oppressive core. “The only reason you tried to calm me down is because you can’t handle an aggressive woman, ergo you are a sexist!” (His answer was that had she been a man he’d have just punched him).

Mean Green always deconstructs your evil oppressive motives, including your own criticisms of Mean Green. It is the ultimate defense for anyone’s own ego. Nobody can tell me I am wrong!

Healthy Green on the other hand, can really increase human bonds and sensitivity, it can help people heal and find balance in their lives between work and family and environment; it increases self-awareness. Mean Green panders to people’s own egos and worse, protects them from any and all criticism. (In Wilber’s model, the problem is technically that the person’s cognitive structures are at the Green stage—-they probably got taught to think that way at University—-but their emotional drive and values core is several stages lower down. They are able to think complex arguments, and use them to defend their own egocentric selfishness.)

So if you are a “denier”, Mean Green doesn’t feel it needs to listen to you—-it is egocentric after all—-and it can defend its wilfully ignoring you by arguing that it is your own greedy attachment to material goods that’s made you a denier. If a scientist questions AGW, Mean Green says they are only doing it to protect vested interests of the oil companies.

And you can find Mean Green in many places. Somebody wrote a critique of Joss Whedon, creator of various sci-fi shows. The critique accused Whedon that he “hates women and is a racist”, as evidenced by the fact that in one of his films, a black woman says “Yes Sir” to a white man. The fact that the man was her commanding officer in the military… well.. *groan*.

And Editors, as you rightly say, the contradiction here is that whilst greenies can deconstruct the cultural bias in other people, they act like they themselves have no bias.

They talk about society’s capitalistic greed blinding people and making them “skeptics”, and at the same time, they deny as “conspiracy theory” the idea that green culture may be creating peer-pressure to hype global warming, even whilst they themselves champion peer review and science by consensus!

Somebody hand them a freakin’ mirror already.

Anyway, not everyone who attacks skeptics as being selfish is Mean Green. I think many people are just genuinely misinformed. If you can show them that actually you do care for the environment, then they can listen to you. But if they won’t listen to you, then there is probably some element of Mean Green going on.

Geoff. Perhaps you’re right about Freud.

How about ‘psychobanalysis’?

In the night-train that left Copenhagen
George announced to the sleeping Schlafwagen
(to thundrous applause)
I’ve just wet my drawers
And bullsh*tted myself, into the bargain

I find the lack of self-awareness on the part of these people very interesting. Having had some exposure to psychology myself (in the course of being trained as a counsellor) they seem to be going way beyond their remit as therapists. Seeking to understand and help someone who has come to a therapist and who is presenting a specific problem such as anxiety or depression – that’s one thing. Seeking to evangelise and convert vast numbers of people to a cause, no matter if these people have no specific problem they wish to be helped with, or consider that they are in need of being helped or influenced at all – that’s another thing entirely. A pretty basic line has been crossed here. Are they really aware of what they are trying to do?

As for the peer pressure ploy – I find that laughable and crude. It reminds me of the time when gas supplies were newly deregulated and all sorts of salespeople would appear on the doorstep using dodgy lines like “Everyone else on the street has signed up, you’re the last one left.” Really? Everyone else, you say?

On a similar subject (academics, science and politics), UEA’s Prof. Mike Hulme has some interesting and thoughtful things to say about the recent climate conference in Copenhagen. First here’s the BBC’s predictably alarming headline and report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7940532.stm

Here’s Mike Hulme, posting as a guest on Promethius, Roger Pielke Jnr’s blog (link courtesy of Tom Nelson’s blog, tinyurled for convenience):
http://tinyurl.com/amuraf

A theme for your next post, maybe, Editors?

Psychologists read far too much into human behaviour, and make life seem way more complicated than it should be.

This conference was just another example, in the world of the “pro” climate change camp, that seeks to justify its own stance on things via the job creation mechanism.