The Climate of Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is the act of going against or opposing something that contravenes one’s own values actions, feelings, beliefs, or sentimentality. It can easily lead to a dishonest or false reality.
In the linked story Susan Krumdieck of Net Zero faith and fidelity says, “The first big dissonance was 40 years ago when the belief that scientific observations warning of environmental damage would cause the necessary change. I still want it to be true.” It would seem all of her feelings and affections for energy transformations caused by her desire for environmental catastrophe were being destroyed by reality.
Can you imagine?
To Krumdieck’s claim, Richard Lyon of Lyon Energy in Edinburgh, Scotland states, “One of the first warnings 40 years ago was from prominent climate catastrophist Paul Ehrlich that “everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989” adding, “Since then, we’ve thrilled to warnings that the oceans would be “As dead as Lake Erie by 1980” (Ehrlich, 1970), that there would be a new Ice Age in 10 years (NASA, 1971), that England would cease to exist by 2000 (Ehrlich, 1971), that there was “no end in sight of the cooling trend” (New York Times, 1978), that the Maldives would be “completely underwater in 30 years (1989), that UK snowfalls were a thing of the past (University of East Anglia, 2000), that Britain would be “Siberian” by 2025 (Pentagon, 2004), that the Arctic would be ice free by 2013/2014/2016/2018 (Gore, US Navy, NASA), etc.”
Lyon concludes with, “What you note as “warnings” 40 years ago are more accurately labeled as falsified speculations produced by climate models observably unfit for duty. That is producing severe Cognitive Dissonance in an industry that depends on the hypothesis being true that there is a climate crisis, and is manifesting itself most visibly in the proliferation of what Lakatos proposes as “Auxiliary Theory” in his account of pseudoscience – “theory to explain the failure of the theory”
While I perused through some of Lakotas’ “Auxillary Theory” or “Lakotas’ Challenge”, I did not delve into its content, context, or conclusions.
Essentially, Lyon was saying that all the evidence and every observation point to the reality that climate change is not occurring, but people like Susan Krumdieck are having great difficulty in accepting that simply because they do not want it. In Krumdieck’s deep desire and devotion for the transformation of energy sources, away from fossil fuels, she selfishly wishes environmental disaster would have happened.
Democrat Representative Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “There's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.” That in essence is a weird form of cognitive dissonance where all of the factual evidence points against her claim, but she has the perception of righteousness on her side. In that matter, which involved military spending by the Pentagon, even the progressive Washington Post gave Ocasio-Cortez four Pinocchios.
Cognitive dissonance occurs with the knowledgeable - those that acknowledge that there is distortion and twisting behind the science of anthropogenic climate change but continue to a conviction or belief in the theory irrespective. Others stay clear of any information or facts that could cloud or obscure their faith in climate change. This is done through confirmation bias – recognizing where contrary or opposing information is located and never going there. Most everyone else reads a few headlines from the legacy media, watches an episode or two of “60 Minutes” and apathetically accepts the fiction.