Science Is Becoming Feelings

Our constant prediction has been Official Science would spend increasing and inordinate time and energy on FEELINGS. Indeed, science would become, in good part, about feelings. Including the feelings of scientists towards other scientists who dare buck The Consensus (whatever the consensus might be in any field).

As proof of this, I bring you this story: “How anxiety over climate change affects students“.

Utah undergraduates are anxious about climate change, with many feeling powerless and frustrated about Earth’s future, yet resources to help students cope are in short supply on campus, according to new interdisciplinary University of Utah research. The sentiment isn’t limited to students studying the environment.

“They’re not alone,” said Jennifer Follstad Shah, associate professor in the School of Environment, Society & Sustainability. “There’s a lot of students feeling that way, and likely a lot of adults feeling that way.” Her findings appear in the journal Sustainability.

The research led by Follstad Shah and other U faculty surveyed 547 University of Utah undergraduates about their emotional responses to climate change and the factors that influenced their feelings. More than half reported frequently feeling powerless or frustrated.

Students ignorant about the physics of fluid flow over a differentially heated rotating sphere were asked about their, I quote, emotional responses to “climate change.” Which are worth as much as an empty soup can. Even less, because the can is metal and can be recycled for money. (This is also the Appeal to Non-Authority Fallacy, as detailed in the upcoming second edition of Everything You Believe Is Wrong. 22 November.)

In any case, these emotional responses were called The Science, and published as if they were science, or had any bearing on science.

Tell you one thing, though, before we continue. It’s that “feeling powerless” to change the weather is the accurate feeling. Get used to it, kiddies. You’ll find these feelings apply to a great many things in life. Nitwits, and more to the point midwits, who tell you do “Do [or imagine] the impossible” ought to be scorned.

The name of the peer-reviewed paper is “Climate Anxiety Among Undergraduates at an R1 University in the United States“, in, as we saw, Sustainability. (“We are a, <sniff>, R1 University.”)

I am going to give you a complete list of the authors, and you tell me what you make of it, and how it relates to our thesis that The Science is becoming about feelings. Authors: Jennifer J. Follstad Shah, Debolina Banerjee, Sara K. Yeo, Andrea Brunelle, Adrienne Cachelin, Monika Lohani, Lynne Zummo, Abbie Nistler and Jennifer Watt.

Ponder that question and let me know in the comments what conclusion you reach.

Here is the opening sentence of this new science, which happens to be a true sentence at that: “The emotional toll of environmental degradation, like mental health in general, is not at the forefront of policy or pedagogy discussions.”

All those hurricanes that were predicted to come, but which were absent, like every other predicted horror—and they were endless—that failed to materialize over these many decades, has taken its toll, and made those who wish for “climate change”-caused disaster mad.

But the good news, at least as far as modern scientific research goes, is that insanity produces a wealth of feelings. Which can be studied and on which papers can be written.

Here is the second sentence, in which I challenge to you to find at least three forms of feelings: “Climate anxiety is a specific form of ecological anxiety related to perceived concerns about how climate change will affect oneself, friends and family, cherished habitats or wildlife, and life-supporting ecological systems over short and long time scales”.

My favorite feeling, and likely yours, too, was that “cherished habitats”. I can just picture the meeting at which our authors sat with their water bottles and pronouns and came up with that word, all with suitably pained looks on their faces. To show how much they care about what they “cherished”.

My dear readers, I hope you will forgive and indulge me in the third sentence, as painful (a feeling) as it might be, but I find I cannot help myself: “Both ecological anxiety and climate anxiety represent a spectrum, ranging from emotions leading to adaptive action and engagement to denial and dysfunction in daily life.”

I am only at the denial yet still-functional form of daily life part of the spectrum. The dysfunction must arrive as soon as “climate change” does, though, if The Science is right.

Which it hasn’t been.

Now I know I’ve quoted from David Stove’s Essay “What is Wrong With Our Thoughts” many times, but it is most apt here, and quoting him will stop me going from sentence to sentence throught our authors’ paper.

I do not know whether other people’s experience of marking so many of these [student] essays has been the same as mine, but my impressions are these. First, that if I were to write down everything that has gone wrong in a single typical sentence of one of these essays, I would finish up writing a book. Second, that if I were to write down everything that is wrong with the next sentence, this too would yield a book, but a different book.

It is the same with reviewing these papers. You could make a career of showing all that has gone wrong with just this one example. Things like this, for instance: “Undergraduate students are at a critical juncture in life when factors, such as academic progress, finances, and relationships, are major concerns that co-occur with or possibly supersede climate anxiety.” Was it really necessary to find excuses to bypass the “climate anxiety” are authors are sure the students must feel to be good people?

Well of course it was necessary. That suffering “climate anxiety” is the only proper way to go through life is a premise with our authors. There have to be good reasons, therefore, why somebody flits about carefree.

And how about this? “Does climate anxiety vary among individuals of different race/ethnicity or gender?” Does it matter? Of course not. Not to us. To them? This is an R1 University! This is where DIE (Diversity, etc.) goes to live.

It goes on and on and then on some more, and way beyond even that. The end is pictures like this, which looks like Science, so it is Science.

Is it worth investigating these numbers? No, sir—or, rather, no, ma’am—it is not. And all this is before they get their models with things like Cronbach’s alpha and, yes, wee P-values. How dreary!

Here, in its full glory, is their main “discovery”:

Concern for climate was a strong predictor of climate anxiety in the present study, particularly if a student also suffers from moderate-to-intense generalized anxiety, has a high frequency of exposure to climate information via online media and in classrooms, and is left-leaning in political ideology. 

Agatha Christie would, if she were alive, make this the plot of a Poirot. A student, of the female kind, is found hanging in a lab, a paper detailing “climate change” predictions in her mitts. But it turns out she was murdered by a professor, also female, incensed that the student didn’t suffer severely enough from “climate anxiety”, thus threatening the tenure decision of our murderess.

Finally, the only numbers that interested me were these:

This research was funded by a seed grant (10068892) from the University of Utah. D.B. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Student Pathways, Action Research & Critical Community Engagement (SPARC) Environmental Justice Lab in the School for the Environment, Society & Sustainability at the University of Utah. A.N. was supported by undergraduate research fellowships from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and the Wilkes Center for Science and Policy at the University of Utah.

How much was blown in total, I don’t know, and I’m not sure if I want to know, since it would make me suffer even more from bad science anxiety.

Video

https://youtu.be/AC6axhkkhls

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