By Jo Nova
It could be the most rigged survey I’ve ever seen
The Lancet “Planetary Health” poll of young Americans looks as contrived as anything in our fake academic and media world.
The survey, funded by AVAAZ (a $20 million dollar political activist “NGO“) is clearly an industrial scale psychological mining operation to find Politically Useful Statistics. It is amazing the survey passed ethical approval, because some 15,793 people aged 16 to 24 were allegedly subjected to a relentless series of unhinged and unbalanced suggestions. The sheer repetition of doom mongering is a form of abuse. It’s works like hypnosis — imagine being asked, “How much, if at all, does climate change make you feel the following? Then being offered 10 shades of pain: Anxious, Powerless, Afraid, Sad, Angry, Despair, Ashamed, Grief, Depressed, Guilty, and finally Indifferent, or Optimistic.
Not only was there no chance to say climate change made you feel Bored, Lectured, Cajoled, Hen-pecked, Conned, and Scammed, but the response list itself was like a hypnotic suggestion, do you beat your wife, how often do you beat your wife, and how do you feel when you beat your wife?
The hapless victims of this interrogation couldn’t escape by picking just one of these words — for every single word on the long list they had to answer on a scale of agreement: “Not at all, A little, Moderately, Very much, Extremely”. It’s a loaded scale. There’s no option to “disagree, moderately, very much or extremely.” It was like saying “Do you agree a bit or a lot”?
It must have been clear from the start to every participant that the researchers wanted to hear how bad things were. It would have taken some wherewithal to reply “Not at all” to 26 versions of “Do you see the doom”? And there really were 26 versions — after the first question the second was “How much, if at all, does climate change make you feel the following?” To which the options included “Humanity is doomed” “I question whether the work I put into my career, job, or vocation, will matter” and Climate change will threaten my life”. After 15 (fifteen!) questions of malcontent and fear, there was the option to be hesitant about children, and finally “climate change will make my life better”.
All of these horror-show questions were listed in the supplementary file with data. (Links below).
Just imagine how many millions of dollars were wasted asking 15,000 people loaded questions?
Tellingly, there is no soul searching despite the supposedly dire results. If two thirds of young adults and teens felt the species was doomed, and half truly didn’t want children, it’s a crisis that can’t wait til 2050. But the whole Lancet “Planetary Health” poll is reported on like just another reason to build wind towers (which was probably the point of the paper). There’s no call for a more balanced education, for a more rational discussion or reminders that compared to the last 100,000 years, we all won lotto. Here we are on Planet Earth with more people, living longer than ever, with more food than we can eat, and we get to sit in machines that go zoom. But no, the only solution here is to cool the planet.
Discussion:
This emotional response represents a substantial burden on wellbeing and might also increase the risk of mental health problems. Youth can benefit from opportunities to share their distress and to act in response to climate change, including in their families, schools and universities, and communities, and through participation in policy development. The findings indicated that the young people in our sample were dissatisfied with the current actions of those in positions of power, in government and in business, and wanted these stakeholders to act to address climate change. In addition, individuals endorsed plans to respond to climate change with their votes and choices about their purchases, lifestyle, and career. These findings reinforce a theme identified in other research that climate change-related distress will continue to increase while climate change remains insufficiently addressed.67 Accordingly, the response to address this distress must be for industries, governments, and policy makers to act at the necessary scale.
It almost has a flavour of hostage negotiation — build the wind towers schmuck, or the kids get suicidal, right?
Ironically, the lead researcher was a Lewandowski (but not that Lewandowsky), and this must be the first, zeroth, volume of the all new Lancet Planetary Health Journal. Straight out the mill, it’s a machine for deceit and political propaganda. Welcome to modern “science”. Just a tool for political activists to score points off opponents and get reckless headlines out of the Guardian, while exploiting some young and naive teens and adults who probably do have some mental health issues. Shameless “The Lancet”.
Science has become a paper mill that serves people with lots of money.
REFERENCE
Lewandowski et al (2024) Climate emotions, thoughts, and plans among US adolescents and young adults: a cross-sectional descriptive survey and analysis by political party identification and self-reported exposure to severe weather events, The Lancet, Planetary Health, Volume 0, Issue 0. PDF (560.58 KB)