Doomsday cults have, of course, been around for a very long time. Historically, they have been relatively isolated, resulting the deaths of just a few hundred people at a time such as in the Jonestown massacre. But it may well be that the globalisation of issues of news and current affairs brings with it the danger that these cults might be capable of growing into something much more widespread.
I came across this interesting passage in Wikipedia this week:
Doomsday cult is an expression used to describe cults that believe in apocalypticism and millenarianism and can refer both to groups that predict disaster and those that attempt to bring it about to destroy the entirety of the universe.[1] The expression was first used by sociologist John Lofland in his 1966 study of a group of members of the Unification Church of the United States, Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith. A classic study of a group with cataclysmic predictions had previously been performed by Leon Festinger and other researchers, and was published in his book When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World.[2][3]
Referring to his study, Festinger and later other researchers have attempted to explain the commitment of members to their associated doomsday cult, even after the prophecies of their leader have turned out to be false. Festinger explained this phenomenon as part of a coping mechanism called dissonance reduction, a form of rationalization. Members often dedicate themselves with renewed vigor to the group’s cause after a failed prophecy, and rationalize with explanations such as a belief that their actions forestalled the disaster, or a belief in the leader when the date for disaster is postponed.
I had to read this twice to check that Professor Lofland was talking about members of the Unification Church in California in the 1960s, and not the swathes of people still banging on about the notion that global warming is an existential threat to humanity.
From a rational point of view, the predictions of disaster by the Unification Church and by the Doom Troll are equally bonkers. To recap on some basic points:
- There are umpteen demonstrations that the model simulations suggesting runaway global warming over the past 30 or 40 years are just plain wrong. I quite like this graph because of its appealing Bargello-like colours.
- The most reliable way to test a prediction as to wait and see if it comes true. The predictions of the global warming community have not come true. They were wrong. The warming has been modest.
- Meanwhile, world production of major crops has steadily risen:
- that graph is a few years old now. Since then, those increases appear to have accelerated.
- Whilst agricultural yields have been going up, extreme poverty has been going down. It may well be thought that any extreme poverty is a tragedy. But happily, it declined considerably during the last century, and that rate of decline has again accelerated over the last 30 or 40 years. In part, of course, this welcome relief from poverty has been the result of technology, and of the success of the capitalist system. More recently, agriculture might have benefited from some very slightly warmer weather, but far more beneficial no doubt has been the increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, from about 300 ppm to about 400 ppm, and that increased fertility has done much to assist the rural poor.
Less happily, the world’s overreaction to Covid has caused a reversal in this trend over the last year. And likewise, the war being waged on affordable electricity by the World Economic Forum and its fellow travellers is now surely hindering the efforts of the world’s poorest to escape economic hardship.
- In the same period, the number of extreme weather events has been on the decline, although the reporting of them has become increasingly shrill. Frankly, it is doubtful that anybody really knows what controls the frequency of extreme weather events. But we can say with certainty that recent increase in extreme weather events has been caused by anthropomorphic climate change. Because there has been no recent increase in extreme weather events.
- And of course, over the last 30 or 40 years, the climate alarmists have had nothing to say about the fact that world temperatures today are less than they were in past periods of human prosperity. And those who can afford to do so, continue to buy themselves some global warming, by migrating from colder regions to warmer regions.
And so the prophecies of the climate change doomsday cult have not come true. And yet, members of the cult continue in their beliefs with renewed fervency.
Dissonance reduction, eh? Who would have thought?
phenell 