Cognitive dissonance

Hockey Shtick highlights yesterday's EcoAlert about ice sheets acting as "giant solar mirrors controlling future climate change" to point out the following passage (graph appended) as an example of cognitive dissonance:

. . . approximately 53 million years ago, Antarctica was a warm, sub-tropical environment. During this same period, known as the "greenhouse" or "hothouse" world, atmospheric CO2 levels exceeded those of today by ten times. Then suddenly, Antarctica's lush environment transitioned into its modern icy realm. In only 400,000 years concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreased. Global temperatures dropped. Ice sheets developed and Antarctica became ice-bound.


Note what "suddenly" means in geological time. Also, I suspect there was not a lot of man-made carbon dioxide around back then. Note also the The EcoAlert bulletin does not address either of these points, nor does it appear to realize that what it reports makes a mockery of the central tenets of eek!-o-freakery.

While it is perfectly correct to point out that the eek!-o-freaks maintain not merely two but several mutually contradictory beliefs, that - in itself - does not constitute cognitive dissonance.

The term rightly describes the psychic cost of  maintaining mutually contradictory beliefs. Basically, the more the evidence against their dogma mounts up, the more frenzied we must expect the eek!-o-freaks to become as they lash out at anything and anybody that adds to their psychic pain.

We used, cruelly, to mock the seedy individuals who paraded around with signs saying the end was at hand. Now we give them millions of dollars and cruelly mock the aspirations of billions of people who yearn for a more prosperous life.

Very progressive.