Why do so many apparently informed, intelligent, educated people still believe in ManBearPig?
For the same reason that the U.S. underestimated the Japanese threat before Pearl Harbor; that General MacArthur stupidly advanced north of the 38th parallel in Korea; that JFK got embroiled in the Bay of Pigs disaster; that LBJ dragged the U.S. deeper and deeper into the Vietnam War.
A phenomenon known as ‘groupthink’.
Though the name dates back to a 1952 article in Fortune magazine by William H Whyte, it wasn’t popularized for another twenty years when a Yale research psychologist called Irving Janis used it in the title of his influential 1972 Victims of Groupthink.
Little did he know it – Janis was looking to past events like the ones mentioned above, not the future – but his book would anatomize with unerring accuracy the perverse mindset which would lead to the creation of the biggest, most expensive junk science scam the world has ever witnessed: the great global warming scare.
This is the subject of a must-read paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by Christopher Booker: Global Warming – A Case Study in Groupthink.
Though it’s quite a long read, I do recommend you have at least a dip because it contains so many pertinent answers to that question you so often hear from global warming true believers: “What kind of crazy conspiracy theorist would you have to be to think that so many experts from science, politics, business, the media, even the oil industry would lie to us about the scale of the problem?”
But as Booker – via Janis – shows, there’s a much more simple explanation than a conspiracy theory. It has to do with the bizarre but very well documented tendency many humans have towards embracing fashionable nonsense.
According to Janis, there are three rules of groupthink.
They are:
Rule One. A group of people comes to share a common view or belief that in some way is not properly based on reality.
Rule Two. Because their common view/belief cannot be subjected to external proof they have to reinforce its authority by claiming ‘consensus.’ The idea is to emphasize that all right-thinking people hold this view and that it is no longer open to challenge.
Rule Three: Anyone who disputes this ‘consensus’ must be excluded from the discussion: at best marginalized; at worst openly attacked or discredited.
These, Janis showed, were the rules which led to the Pearl Harbor/Korean War/Bay of Pigs/Vietnam War disasters above.
They are also, as Booker shows, the rules which explain the current global warming hysteria.
The scare originated in the imaginations of a tiny handful of people. Just three in fact.
First of these was a Swedish meteorologist called Bert Bolin who had been obsessed, since the late 50s, with the idea that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, must inevitably precipitate potentially disastrous global warming.
Next came Dr. John Houghton, an evangelical Christian and former professor of atmospheric physics at Oxford, who became seized with the spirit of Bolin’s notion – and proceeded to proselytize on its behalf via his influential position as head of the UK Met Office.
And the third of this unholy trinity was the hugely rich Canadian businessman and Marxist Maurice Strong who knew little about the environment but who quickly grasped that it was the perfect cause he could exploit to advance his left-wing global agenda.
Without this trio’s passion, energy and influence, the entire global warming scare might never have happened. But between them, they had the necessary skill set to push their pet issue onto the world stage and embed it in global political consciousness.
This they did under the auspices of the United Nations, via a series of conferences – Geneva in 1979; Villach, Austria in 1985; and ultimately the Rio Earth summit in 1992 – which caused interest in global warming to snowball.
In 1988, thanks to their efforts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) held its inaugural meeting. It was sold to the world as an impartial body of scientists but it was never any such thing.
Right from the start, it had a political purpose which trumped any scientific one: to assert the existence of man-made climate change and to urge dramatic, concerted action to stop it.
Does all this so far sound like a denialist’s paranoid conspiracy theory? Of course, it does. But that’s OK – thanks to Christopher Booker’s expert marshaling of the facts, we can fully back up these scandalous allegations.
If you haven’t got the time to read Booker’s GWPF report then I’ll give you a choice selection in part 2 of this article.
Read more at Breitbart
Liberal Groupthink means a bunch of ultra liberal Eco-Wackos get together to think or ways to return the whole world to a Primative state and you can catch the distinct smell of a smoldering bicycle tire
Okay, groupthink might be a major factor today, but the genesis and structure of The Scam was constructed by the UN, IPCC, and Maurice Strong. There is a clear agenda here, and to pretend that The Scam is not part and parcel of the UN’s Agenda 21 is to mislead the public. There are clear and stated goals to de-industrialize the Western World and to lower its standard of living. Then, we have the dependency of those on the multibillion dollar gravy train of government-funded “science” and “green energy” subsidies. Now, layer on top groupthink and politicians taking the moral high ground by claiming to be trying to save the world. Now, you have The Scam cake. Groupthink, IMHO, is an excuse for ignoring the evil plans behind The Scam. Groupthink is more of a symptom than a cause.
Yup, groupthink continues to invade even the minds of people who regard themselves as “skeptical” about man-made climate change, formerly known as man-made global warming.
The only issue that will save climate science is the recognition that carbon dioxide is not a “greenhouse gas”, does not “trap heat” and that there is no “greenhouse effect” making earth warmer than it should be.
http://tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_CO2-EaE.pdf (peer reviewed and published)
and
http://tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_GHE-EaE.pdf (peer reviewed and published)
There is a peculiarly hostile and dismissive nature of the response by supporters of the ‘consensus’ to those who question all this, a group that includes many eminent scientists and other experts.
Ultimately their groupthink must always end up in someway colliding uncomfortably with the reality their blinkered vision has overlooked.
Get the facts, make the right decision.
Its time to place a big time Bounty on Manbearpig bring it in Dead or Alive
A better question? Why do so many apparently informed, intelligent, educated people still believe in Wealth Redistribution?
Something that has never worked anywhere it has been tried.
“Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated. – Ottmar Edenhofer
For those who may not know, Ottmar Edenhofer is the co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III.”
Quoting Amirlach: “A better question? Why do so many apparently informed, intelligent, educated people still believe in Wealth Redistribution?
Something that has never worked anywhere it has been tried.”
Exactly! The left is fully ready to accept the entire MMGW/Climate Change theory meme based upon a series of impossibly complicated and repeatedly failed computer models AND they don’t question the absurd political prescriptions of redistributed wealth to solve this imagined crisis. Absolutely incredible!
Yet, taken alone, forced redistribution of wealth, AKA Socialism, AKA Communism, etc, has never failed to fail! (Exhibit history from the Soviet union to present-day Venezuela.)
Here’s another gem:
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy… basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization… One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. That has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more.”
-Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC
Or this:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized nations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
-Maurice Strong, Head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and former Executive Officer for Reform in the Office of Secretary General of the UN.
There’s no doubt global governance UN-style is the ultimate purpose of the climate change movement. Reminds me of “Moonraker” where Sir Hugo Drax tried to commit global genocide; UN henchmen like Ottmar Edenhofer desire economic genocide as an excuse to impose global communism.
Groupthink is also a weapon to mold the masses to their liking–blaming humans for the problem, using “1984” tactics to control what becomes “truth” and paying for climate models and climate papers that become self-full-filling facts. It’s the most shocking corruption of my lifetime.
Yes, shocking and brazen corruption. It used to be that science was respected as unbiased, and fact-based. The one remaining discipline in a sea of bias and corruption. The left wing has systematically changed that, destroying the last reliable source of truth that has led so much to the advancement of mankind. Such is the legacy of socialism.