Andrew Bolt: Why climate change sceptics must just accept what we’re told

A psychologist claims climate change scepticism comes from “from a basic misunderstanding of climate projections”, so what explains all the dud predictions?

I’ve finally had my mental condition checked out by a psychologist and owe it you to pass on the disturbing results.

For decades I’ve refused to believe experts telling me the world is heating dangerously, and “the collapse of our civilisation is on the horizon”, as Sir David Attenborough puts it.

Now psychologist Rachael Sherman, a senior lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, aided by a colleague, has diagnosed my condition after interviewing 390 fellow sufferers.

She’s published her findings, and they are brutal. The headline alone tells you my mind is leapfrogging all over the park: “Inside the mind of a sceptic: the ‘mental gymnastics’ of climate change denial”.

Sherman finds that we sceptics are more likely to be “older people”. Ouch. I’m 62, and it’s true that younger people, more refreshingly naive and inexperienced, are quicker to believe anything.

Former Chief Climate Councillor Tim Flannery couldn’t be trusted after so many dud predictions. Picture: AAP

Sherman says we’re also more likely to be conservatives. Right again, because even I can see most global warming believers are tribalists of the Left.

And we sceptics have “lower environmental values”. But this puzzles me because I’m a fanatical gardener. Have I failed to put up enough “climate emergency” posters?

Deeper in her article, Sherman does admit to one thing she got wrong: “Contrary to our predictions, people with high analytical abilities were even more likely to be sceptical.”

Damn those “high analytical abilities”. Why don’t we sceptics just accept what we’re told?

Sherman is also correct in putting her finger on the problem that causes our “mental gymnastics”. She says we’ve seen “predictions not becoming reality” and “climate change alarmists’ predictions being completely false”.

The Bureau of Meteorology says we’re going into a third year of La Nina — but 15 years ago, they warned drought would be our ‘new climate’. Picture: David Caird

I mean, just look this week. The Bureau of Meteorology says we’re going into a third straight year of La Nina – a weather pattern that brings a lot of rain. But how can that be? I remember 15 years ago the Bureau warning drought would be “our new climate”, while Tim Flannery, later our first Climate Change Commissioner, claimed “even the rains that fall will not actually fill our dams”. Governments built hugely expensive desalination plants, arguing that cheaper dams were useless because they’d never fill.

So while I can’t trust these warmists after so many dud predictions, Sherman declares such thoughts “result from a basic misunderstanding of model-based climate projections”.

I’d love her to give examples of such “misunderstandings” – of how people like Flannery were actually right when they seemed so wrong. But that’s my sick mind talking.