Psychologists have a name for everything. For example, you know that feeling when only you seem to think the way you do, because everyone around you appears to think differently? So you pretend to fall in line. But then you find out that everyone else was doing the same thing. Despite appearances, it turns out you were in the majority all along – it just happened to be a very silent majority. Well, that phenomenon is referred to by psychologists as ‘pluralistic ignorance’. And since it is a real thing, I decided to play a bit of Climate Change Only Connect, to see what crops up if I search for a link between pluralistic ignorance and climate change.
This is what Google’s AI Overview told me:
Pluralistic ignorance, in the context of climate change, refers to the tendency for people to underestimate the prevalence of pro-climate attitudes and behaviors among their peers. Essentially, individuals may believe that fewer people share their concerns about climate change or support climate action than actually do. This misperception can lead to a reluctance to openly express climate concerns or engage in pro-climate behaviors, as people may fear social disapproval or judgment.
Which is, of course, very odd, because there seems to be no good reason why it could not have said instead:
Pluralistic ignorance, in the context of climate change, refers to the tendency for people to overestimate the prevalence of pro-climate attitudes and behaviors among their peers. Essentially, individuals may believe that more people hold concerns about climate change or support climate action than actually do. This misperception can lead to a reluctance to openly express climate scepticism or engage in sceptical behaviors, as people may fear social disapproval or judgment.
Both are, in principle, descriptions of a state of affairs that would meet the definition of pluralistic ignorance. The only difference is that there is no a priori reason to believe that climate-related pluralistic ignorance would operate in the manner described by Google’s AI, and yet there is every reason to believe in the alternative account offered by myself. The first (accepted) version lacks plausibility and, in my view, any convincing supporting evidence.1 The second version, on the other hand, whilst being dismissed by the AI overview, is entirely plausible and fits in perfectly with all expectations.
First of all, how could anyone in the UK gain the impression that there isn’t a great deal of concern for potential climate catastrophe, when the BBC, Westminster, all local government, the left-wing educated elite, nearly all journalists, the education system, the Church, an endless queue of ‘climate communication’ charities and NGOs, TV soaps, Ofcom and even Google’s AI are all telling you it is so. Every single facet of the ‘establishment’ is telling you the same story – we are all massively concerned about climate change — and there isn’t a day goes by without someone shoving the 97% consensus statistic down your throat. Pluralistic ignorance is supposed to shift behaviour towards perceived norms, so faced with such a cascade of information, it should be the privately sceptical who are tempted to fall in line behind the crowd. And if you do happen to have climate change anywhere near the top of your list of concerns, it would be perverse of you to assume that it makes you part of a minority, even though that would be the truth.2
Secondly, one should consider the state’s overt and covert efforts to render the sceptical narrative an underground view, shared only in enforced or self-imposed secrecy.3 There is no corresponding effort to censor into silence those with ‘pro-climate attitudes’. There certainly hasn’t been any de-platforming (shadow or otherwise) or state-sponsored censorship, such as that aimed at the sceptical. And where is the evidence that the establishment has accused those who fear climate catastrophe of peddling ‘harmful misinformation’? On this basis alone, one would expect any silent majority to be comprised of cancelled sceptics rather than the climate concerned.
As for a fear of social disapproval or judgement, what evidence is there that the climate concerned have anything to fear from such disapproval? There’s none that I am aware of, apart from when Extinction Rebellion extremists seek to disrupt everyone’s lives. Contrast that with the sceptic being branded a ‘denier’, with obvious connotations. Or what about the huge number of academic studies4 that accuse sceptics of having various cognitive deficiencies, or the calls5 for contrarian views to be criminalised? If any self-censorship is to be expected for fear of social disapproval, it is clear that it will be the climate sceptic who has the greater incentive. Agreeing with climate policy has been framed as a question of morality. Those who are on the ‘right side’ by being privately in agreement are not going to be fearful of their supposed decency being exposed.
In short, the idea that pluralistic ignorance plays a significant role in the climate change debate is very plausible, but not in the way described by the Google AI Overview. And yet, for this overview to exist, there must be a huge body of work on the internet making the claim that the climate concerned suffer from pluralistic ignorance. But how much of that is wishful thinking? Funded surveys and PhD theses may say one thing, but common sense suggests something quite different. Besides which, relying purely on survey results is a mug’s game. Results that are not corroborated by hard data cannot be trusted. For example, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue noted, with heavy heart, that in the lead up to COP 26 a video posted by Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neil attracted four times more views than a heavily promoted keynote speech given by People’s Advocate, Sir David Attenborough. There’s scant support in such statistics for the idea of a silent majority of climate policy supporters.
That there is a pluralistic ignorance operating amongst the climate concerned may be a highly dubious claim, but it is a useful one that comes with the establishment’s cascade of information – AI is just taking its position in that cascade. The idea of a silent majority of pluralistically ignorant supporters of climate change policy isn’t true, but it certainly suits those with a climate concerned agenda to push the idea that it is.6 If nothing else, it will add to the ceaseless drive to foster pluralistic ignorance amongst the hapless climate sceptics. Apparently there is a danger that, despite everything the establishment has said, you sceptics might still think you are in the majority; but then you are asked to take into account all those supposed silent concerned who vastly outnumber you! Yes, you are invited to believe that there are hordes of climate concerned out there but they are afraid to speak up for fear of social disapproval, so they either pretend to be deniers or run for cover when asked for an opinion! That would also explain why there is no mad rush for heat pumps. We all secretly want one but don’t want our neighbours to laugh at us.
Psychologists have a name for everything. They also have a professional bias that comes with the liberal, left-wing leanings that just about every one of them possesses. It is a bias that ensures that any insights they may have into human thinking and behaviour will be put to good use in furthering the cause of climate change activism. The implausible but tendentious connection they make between pluralistic ignorance and climate change is just one of many examples of such a bias put into practice. The bias can also be seen in a profession that can tell you every failure of critical thinking that lies behind climate change scepticism, but has absolutely nothing to say regarding how failures in critical thinking could result in the acceptance of an unsafe consensus. It is a bias that they can’t see because they have their own bias blind spot. They are experts at seeing bias in others but are completely clueless when it comes to self-examination. I have nothing against psychologists as such, but I think I have said it before, the day that they decided as a profession to jump aboard the climate activist juggernaut was a sad day for us all.
Footnotes:
[1] I’ll leave my readers to decide for themselves whether this paper cited by the Google AI Overview is in any respect convincing when it says, “This may be partly due to the large media exposure of the views and opinions of climate contrarians, and partly due to a misleading information environment where individuals infer from the carbon‐intensive behavior of others that most people do not really care about climate change.”
[2] Based upon the level of media coverage, climate change is in the top three of public concerns within the UK. But when members of the public are asked to rank their personal concerns, climate change comes nowhere near the top, with health care, crime, the economy, immigration and national defence dominating (ref. YouGov UK data).
[3] I refer here, for example, to the work of the Government’s Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) and Rapid Response Unit (RRU). According to the government’s own ‘fact sheet’, there is nothing at all sinister about what they do. Call me a cynic, but the very fact that they protest innocence raises suspicions. Certainly, Big Brother Watch is unimpressed.
[4] See this meta study, to get some feel for the scale of the industry.
[5] There is a recent UN General Assembly Report that, in paragraph 73, recommends: “Criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry…”
[6] Clearly, Rebecca Willis, adviser to the UK’s Climate Change Committee, sees the political advantage in pushing the idea of a silent majority wanting more action. In a recent radio interview she said: “Yeah, the bottom line is this: politicians massively underestimate public support for climate action. So, there’s a long-running survey asking how concerned people are about climate change.” It isn’t clear to what survey she is referring, but there are plenty of candidates. Take, for example, the People’s Climate Vote 2024, as seized upon by the Guardian. But even that survey conceded that only 25% who felt the need to tackle climate change were prepared to say that they were dissatisfied with their government’s performance (ref. Question 6: How well is your country addressing climate change?). So no, there isn’t a massive majority out there silently craving a stronger push for Net Zero.
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