If you consider yourself mentally stable, of good character and to have thought things through carefully, what are you to make of those with whom you disagree? Surely, there are only three possibilities: they are either mad, evil or stupid. Well, that certainly seems to be how things are in the high stakes debate surrounding climate change. For example, the internet requires only the briefest of surfing in order to unearth an abundance of scholarly pronouncements calling into question the mental health, good faith and cognitive capabilities of anyone who dares to challenge the wisdom of a rapid transition to a carbon-free economy. But all of that has just changed due to ground-breaking research recently conducted by Nottingham University. Apparently, all you need in order to fall down the rabbit hole of climate change denial is to fail to get a good night’s sleep. Why? Because it would appear that there’s nothing more guaranteed to turn you into a rabid conspiracy theorist than a few sleepless nights.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that the researchers deny the existence of the many other factors that ‘explain’ the supposedly enfeebled reasoning of the climate change ‘denier’. After all, they readily avow:

Social influences, including social norms, also play a significant role. Personality traits such as narcissism and a preference for intuitive thinking are linked to greater conspiracy beliefs.

So no one is suddenly saying that climate change ‘deniers’ have thought things through properly, or are of good character. It’s just that there is this other thing that can lead even the best of us astray: sleep quality:

While these factors are well documented, our research adds another key factor: sleep quality. Poor sleep may increase cognitive biases and emotional distress, making people more likely to accept conspiratorial explanations.

I could blind you with science at this point, but there is no need. The logic can be made very simple once all intellectual dissent has been disallowed:

Sleep is crucial for mental health, emotion regulation and cognitive functioning. Poor sleep has been linked to increased anxiety, depression and paranoia – all of which are also associated with conspiracy belief.

A couple of non-replicated studies later and, voilà, your doubts regarding Net Zero have been neatly correlated with paranoia and a failure to regulate your emotions properly. But don’t you go dismissing all of this as just another prime candidate for the Ig Nobel prize. These are serious matters:

Conspiracy beliefs are not just harmless curiosities; they can have serious real-world consequences. They have been linked to vaccine hesitancy, climate change denial and violent extremism. Understanding the factors that contribute to their spread is essential for addressing misinformation and promoting informed decision-making.

The thing is though, when I look at what Ed Miliband has already baked into my future, I can’t help but think that it is he who is either mad, evil or stupid. Is this really just because I haven’t been sleeping too well recently? Would a good night’s sleep cure me of my misgivings? I’m not so sure. Call me a conspiracist, but I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that our friends at Nottingham University may have overlooked a few vital details.

11 Comments

  2. I have an easy conscience, and sleep well without fail, so I fear my climate and net zero scepticism must be down to stupidity, despite going to the same university as the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and emerging with a better degree than him.

    It’s all a puzzle, but I suppose the funding will continue to be available to enable universities to keep investigating what exactly is wrong with you and me.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Lordelate,

    You may very well be correct; there is nothing to say that the three possibilities are mutually exclusive. But perhaps it doesn’t matter too much which of the possibilities apply.

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  4. Mark,

    I don’t sleep that well, to be honest, but it has nothing to do with climate change itself and a lot more to do with how political leadership is panning out nowadays.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I spent a nostalgic hour clicking on the links to the Conversation article by the authors of the report. What a lot of old friends! Uscinski, Swami, and most prolifically, Professor Karen Douglas, the author of the Lady Di paper that found a correlation between believing the Princess to be alive & dead at the same time – Schrödinger’s Princess in fact – based (as Steve McIntyre discovered) on a sample of zero.

    I also discovered a paper listing all papers linking conspiratorial thinking & climate denial. Douglas’s was the first, in 2012, followed by two by Lewandowsky in 2013. Fragile roots for a cottage industry! There’s more to find in this particular rabbit hole, I think.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Another rabbit hole, indeed, Geoff.

    The linked paper linking conspiracy beliefs to climate change denial (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22001099) was supported financially by the IRIS Infodemic Coalition. Their website (https://www.irisacademic.org/about/) seems to have a one-sided view of misinformation, and publications they are associated with could keep us going for months: https://www.irisacademic.org/publications/

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Yeah, no, it’s true actually. I had a really bad night’s sleep a couple of weeks ago and after waking up bleary-eyed from the few hours shut-eye that I did manage to get eventually, the first thing that entered my mind was that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm as, if not slightly warmer than today! Then immediately after that I began wondering if Buzz Aldrin was a fraudster. But I’m cured now.

    Liked by 2 people

  8. Geoff,

    The psy-ops wing of the Climate Complex is indeed substantial, and it meshes with an equally sizable army of ‘experts’ fighting ‘misinformation’. But it does seem to be a case of quantity rather than quality. If I had set out to spoof the genre, I couldn’t have come up with anything better than the real thing as per Nottingham University.

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  9. Mark,

    To evaluate the Biddlestone et al meta-study we must first recognise one brute fact: statistically correlating A with B is meaningless in the absence of a firm phenomenological understating resulting in an unambiguous definition of both A and B. So I would expect that the paper would spend a great deal of time providing this necessary foundation. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the methods section that goes anywhere near doing so. Instead, all we have is this in the introduction:

    These conspiracy theories range from the simple idea that climate change is a hoax and accusations of systematic scientific bias and fraud, to elaborate plots that the government is manipulating the weather through advanced geoengineering and that global warming was invented by global elites as part of a sinister plot to create a New World Order.

    Note how ‘systematic scientific bias’ is sandwiched between ‘hoax’ and fraud’. Honestly, if concerns regarding potential bias qualify as a conspiracy theory then no amount of statistical wizardry is going to rescue the analysis. What we are looking at here is junk pseudoscience that fails to meet even the most basic of criteria required for academic consideration.

    Liked by 1 person

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