Sigmund Freud had a dream. In fact, he had quite a few, which he chose to analyse in his little book of dreams. Each dream had something to tell us about the nature of the unconscious mind and, if you believe the internet, one dream in particular had something special to say about climate change sceptics. The dream goes by the title Irma’s Injection. I’ll spare you the details but it is a dream in which our father of psychoanalysis can be found surrealistically flirting with multiple but contradictory attitudes toward poor Irma’s condition. Upon awakening, he was able to explain that not only was such incoherence a sure-fire indicator of a dreaming state (a conscious, rational mind would never engage in such a blatant illogic), it was also a demonstration of how the unconscious mind can defy the authority of real-life logic when pursuing the ego’s transcendent desire to meet a basic need – in this case the need to be proven right. To further illustrate the point, Freud recounts a humorous anecdote in which a man returns a borrowed kettle in a damaged state. In his defence the man first claims that the returned kettle is undamaged, before adding that the kettle was already damaged when borrowed and that he had not borrowed it anyway! This style of arguing, in which contradictory assertions are bundled into one desperately defensive argument, has now found a home in the psychologists’ taxonomy of fallacious thinking. It’s filed under the title of ‘Kettle Logic’.

Unfortunately, many have failed to appreciate that the kettle anecdote was only a joke, coined to exemplify the illogic that can also enter into dreams. Freud was just demonstrating how the absurdities in a joke’s set up are very similar to the incoherent inconsistencies encountered in dreams, particularly since they can both betray an unconscious desire to fulfil a wish. He was not suggesting that Kettle Logic was a thing that rational people can fall into the trap of using during their waking state. But that didn’t stop people from filling the internet with supposed examples of genuine Kettle Logic perpetrated by decidedly wakeful individuals who were not joking. And, in particular, it didn’t stop the accusation that Kettle Logic is a real-life affliction that can be found in most climate denial argumentation. Yes folks, we’re here again. We are in the world of the half-baked expert pathologizing the sceptical brain.

Urban Spacemen

Ask any AI what Kettle Logic means in the context of climate change and it will readily tell you that it is a denialist’s aberration of thinking. The example most commonly offered is the supposed argument that global warming isn’t happening, but it is natural and not caused by humans – and besides which, it is now too late and expensive to fix the damage that humans have caused. Certainly, this would qualify as Kettle Logic, and if someone were to offer such an argument in your presence you would be perfectly justified in suspecting that you were dreaming – a suspicion that could readily be confirmed by flapping your arms and soaring up to the ceiling. Personally, I have never had that particular dream, nor have I encountered anyone acting it out in real life. What I have seen, however, are statements to the effect that global warming isn’t happening, but if it were, then one would still be justified in questioning what is causing it; and if it turned out to be us, that wouldn’t automatically mean that we can do anything about it within the required timescale. That’s not Kettle Logic; that’s just conjecturing with regard to a number of issues. Also, if one looks into a forum and sees a multitude of different but mutually contradictory ‘denialist’ positions expressed, that isn’t Kettle Logic either; that’s just people disagreeing. The reality is that the Kettle Logicians are denizens of the dreamworld, a figment of the imagination that has been used as a cartoon depiction of denialism – a depiction created to convince the world that climate change scepticism is nothing more than an abandonment of basic logic in pursuance of wish fulfilment. But here comes the twist: like the urban spaceman baby, we don’t exist.

Now for some pot-calling-the-kettle-black logic

And yet it isn’t the trumped-up charge of denialist Kettle Logic that I find the most annoying thing here. It’s the underlying assumption that only climate sceptics have wishes to fulfil and are prepared to throw away logic in their pursuit. What would have been so wrong with AI offering ‘examples’ in which the alarmists were fraternising with Kettle Logic? Because, believe me, they are not hard to find.

For example, what about the argument that the transition to green energy will be incredibly cheap and save everyone money immediately, but we must be prepared for significant economic sacrifice and degrowth to save the planet? Or how about the view that renewables are already more efficient than fossil fuels, so the market will naturally switch on its own, whilst it also seems quite okay to have massive state intervention? And then there is the argument that we have passed the point of no return because the feedback loops are already locked in, yet we still have 10 years left to save the world (every fraction of a degree we prevent makes a massive difference, so we must never give up). As for the required technology, we already have all the technology we need to solve global warming today, which presumably is why there is the call for a ‘Manhattan Project’ level of massive investment in new R&D to find solutions! And finally, my personal favourite: there is supposed to be this thing called the genius-idiot denier, who suffers the Dunning-Kruger effect but is still so clever that he can use his intellect to hide his own irrationality from himself (feel free to change the miscreant’s gender if it makes you feel more comfortable).

Far from being a paragon of logical consistency, the world of alarmist proselytising is a gish gallop of arguments that are often perfectly inconsistent and yet proffered nevertheless because there is a wish to be fulfilled. It’s no more Kettle Logic than is the denialist collective, but it is very telling that alarmism is allowed to get away with such incoherence without so much as an AI’s inkling. Why is it that we can so readily believe in the real-life existence of a logic-defying sceptic – one that ought only to exist in our dreams and jokes – and yet we can’t see the possibility of an alarmist being similarly afflicted?

How did we get here?

Should we be surprised that the alarmist position is so seemingly incoherent and yet blithely accepted? Well, not really. At least not here in the UK, particularly when one considers the basis upon which the government formulates its climate strategy. I think it is well-known that UK governments are now just gimps to the dominatrix that is the UK Climate Change Committee, an organisation that owes its raison d’etre to Professor Nick Pidgeon with his report of the APPCCG inquiry. To compile the report, Nick and his team undertook a ‘data synthesis’ that involved little more than the collation of views solicited from both experts and members of the public (at least those who could be bothered to respond to the questionnaire – mostly readers of The Independent as it turned out). For that reason, we find several contradictory views sharing the same page. For example, the idea that we should all be prepared to accept the hardships of a ‘war footing’ can be found alongside the one that net zero will make all our lives a lot easier. It was a classic case of throw all you have at the wall to see what sticks. In fact, taken as a whole, the report is the very definition of Kettle Logic. At least it would be if its thoughts and recommendations were all taken on board without discretion – which of course they were!

So, to conclude, I think Kettle Logic is a much-misunderstood concept that has little or no relevance outside the world of Freudian psychoanalysis. But it is an alluring idea that has gained a real-life potency, since the allegation of Kettle Logic can be readily aimed at any group that embraces a multiplicity of ideas. Traditionally, victims of such target practice are the outgroups, such as climate change sceptics. True to form, psychologists seem to have led the way here, simply because talk of Kettle Logic sounds a bit sciencey and because the downfall of climate scepticism seems to be part of any typically left-wing liberal’s wish list. I’m not very impressed by any of this, and I am even less impressed that the alarmist case has escaped scot-free when it comes to the Kettle Logic allegation, whereas (if anything) it should be first in the firing line.