Climate change deniers are getting angrier and angrier because there is less and less ground that they can even moderately stand upon. They are being forced off of multiple positions and the world is ignoring their opinions en masse.
People used to be able to believe that warming wasn’t occurring without much cognitive dissonance.
In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.
More and more, their position is being challenged in multiple ways, and they are being forced to greater and greater mental leaps in order to hold on to their position. But even when they move, it’s stressful and embarrassing, leading to more anger.
Cognitive dissonance makes people mad. Being forced to change makes people mad. Being forced to admit, even subconsciously, that they were wrong and were often wrong publicly and loudly, makes people mad.
I created this continuum of positions on climate change a while ago. It ranges from the extreme of not believing that any warming is occurring at all, to believing in impacts above the range of IPCC scenarios.
Some people, in the face of overwhelming evidence, continue to hold to the position that warming isn’t occurring. Most who held it have been forced off of it. They have been forced to change by the sheer weight of evidence which says that they are wrong. But usually they just move slightly to the right on the continuum.
A lot of people who firmly held the belief that CO2 emissions from humans were insignificant have been forced off of that position too. And every position to the left of the chart. Basically, the leftmost positions are intellectually and empirically untenable, so anyone with a fragment of intellectual self-respect who holds them is confronted daily with evidence that gives them cognitive dissonance, and if they move to a slightly more moderate position for relief, it doesn’t help much.
What evidence of the shift to the right exists? Well, an Australian organization has surveyed people about their positions since 2010 and finds regular movement, and an acceleration in it.
And in the USA, despite recent events, climate change is shaping up to be a game-changing election issue, with denialists increasingly unable to get elected, and once again with recent rapid strides.
The new survey found a growing number of registered voters understand global warming is happening: “Three in four (73%, up 7 points since Spring 2014) now think it is happening. Large majorities of Democrats — liberal (95%) and moderate/conservative (80%) — think it is happening, as do three in four Independents (74%, up 15 points since Spring 2014) and the majority of liberal/moderate Republicans (71%, up 10 points).”
Basically, the further to the left on the chart you are, the more likely you are to be bitter and angry. But anyone to the left of the low-end IPCC projections is likely to be annoyed and dismayed and lash out occasionally.
As to why they are so common, that’s simple. A group of self-interested companies and individuals set out on a course of creating uncertainty about climate change far beyond any that existed a couple of decades ago. It worked. Sadly.
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