Bozell Column: Climate Skeptics Need Mental Help?
9th December 2009
NPR brought on sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, to explain why, as scientists grow ever more confident of global warming, public opinion is moving the other way. “This seems irrational,” she said. “And in that sense, it’s challenging the basic premise that we have of an enlightened, democratic, modern society.”
Harris said Norgaard studied the shift in public opinion and found that people are not too bright and easily overwhelmed: “As people start to feel overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, they simply turn away from the topic. It’s denial, plain and simple,” Harris suggested. Norgaard added: “We just don’t want to know about it, and so we are actively distancing ourselves from it or trying to protect ourselves from it.”
Her scientific theory: Anyone immersed in global warming theory embraces it. To know it is to love it. Anyone opposed to that theory has his nose in a corner with his fingers in his ears, trying not to hear a discouraging word.
The arrogance of liberals never ceases to amaze. Lazy people are the most likely people to go with the media flow on global doom and gloom. But get intellectually involved, analyze the evidence, listen to the discussions on talk radio, read the hot websites skeptical of the global-warming lobby – and you’re bizarrely analyzed as someone who’s “distancing themselves” from reality.