Australian Study Treats Climate Change Skepticism as a Mental Disorder

(by James Murphy – Republished with permission from TheNewAmericanDream.com) – A team of psychological researchers from Australia is delving into the mindset of those who refuse to buy the notion that man-made climate change is quickly creating an unlivable, barren wasteland on Earth. Researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast looked to explain why such “cranks” continue to deny what they call “the reality of climate change, its causes, impacts and the need for mitigatory action.”

The study’s authors — Breanna Fraser, Patrick Nunn, and Rachael Sharman — set out to discover why climate change skeptics think the way they do, beyond what they call “sociodemographic and value factors.” Instead, the study proposed to look at psychological factors involved in climate change skepticism. The study asked 390 Australian participants why they refused to buy the climate change narrative.

“This mixed-methods study investigated whether more malleable psychological factors: locus of control; information processing style; and anti-reflexivity, predicted climate change scepticism above and beyond socio-demographic and value factors,” the study’s abstract declares.

According to the researchers, climate change skeptics were guilty of using “mental gymnastics” in order to deny what they called “the near-universal agreement among scientists on the reality and impact of climate change.” Read Full Article >