Something has puzzled me for a long time about the psychology of those who deny climate change—about the denialists, as they’re called. I’m talking about the serious climate change deniers, the ones who go around making “research” presentations on the matter, likeLord Monckton. But I think I’ve just recently started to grasp what’s going on in their heads.

起初，否认者似乎有些理性:他们根据他们实际看到的证据碎片来做出否定，即使整体证据的重量对他们不利。从这个观点来看，这并不是什么难题。根据他们所知道的证据，否认是合理的。Perhaps they think thoughts like this: ‘Richard Lindzenholds that climate change hasn’t been proven, so—given his scientific authority—it is rational for me not to believe in it.’ Or: ‘The polar ice caps grew in size from September 2007 to September 2009, so it is rational to believe they are not melting.’ Is this what’s going on? Let’s call this the Rationalizing Reconstruction of denialist psychology: the fragment of evidence they know causes the denier’s belief.

如果“合理化重建”是正确的，否认者只需要更多的证据来治愈。They only have some evidence—so the story goes—but a broader array will fix this and hence fix theirapparentlyirrational beliefs. Point out to them that the overall size of the ice caps has decreased20% since 1979. Point out that there are manymorescientists他们肯定，气候变化已得到高度信任的证明。有了这些证据，他们会改变主意的，对吧?

The problem with this model is that we know its hoped for solution doesn’t work. AsDan Kahan has shown, simply giving denialists more evidence doesn’t get them to change their minds. And perhaps we should have expected this, in light of the results on motivated reasoning that Ziva Kunda brought to light in1990.

The natural thing to say, of course, is that the evidencejust doesn’t matterto the denialists. They don’t care about it one bit. Call this the Pure Motivation view of denialist psychology.

But this view leaves something out. Many climate change deniers have an intense focus on various bits evidence about climate change. Lord Monckton and James Inhofe, in their presentations, do come equipped with pertinent facts, albeit facts that have been cherry picked and misleadingly arranged. And the Pure Motivation is unable to account for this fascination with at leastsomeof the evidence.

所以我们陷入了两难。如果“合理化重建”是正确的，我们无法解释为什么否认者的观点没有根据更多的数据改变。如果纯粹动机的观点是正确的，我们就不能解释为什么他们如此关注证据。

当我们考虑到以下令人清醒的事实时，我们的困境变得更加紧迫。为了获得并整理那些似乎完全支持他们的论点的证据，否认气候变化的人将不得不从与他们的否认相反的大量证据中筛选出来。

Think about this for a moment.

In order for Lord Monckton (say) to find the years in which the ice caps grew back some, he would have had to sift through the data of many more years in which they shrank, otherwise—without sifting through that data—he would not haveknown to throw out the years in which they shrunk. Likewise, in order to find the year out of the last fourteen that isnotamong the fourteen hottest years on record (2008 at #16), one has to look at the average earth temperatures of the other years,all of whichare(2001-2014, minus 2008). In short, only by scouring data thatsupportsclimate change can one find the bits of evidence that seem to go against it.

So we should have known from the start that the Rationalizing Reconstruction couldn’t be sustained. The very gathering of the deniers’ “evidence” requires cognition of even more evidence to the contrary of their “beliefs.”

在最后一段，我把“证据”和“信念”用引号括起来，因为我想指出，这其中有其他的原因。

Kendall Waltonhas discussed the role ofprops在虚构的游戏和小说中。A prop toy horse, for example, is something that prescribes that youimaginea toy horse, according to certainprinciples of generation在某些虚构的游戏中，然后相应地与之互动。你也可以为任意对象分配道具状态。举一个来自《Walton》的著名例子，你可以玩一个将树桩“算作”熊的游戏，这样每当你在树林中看到树桩时，你就必须将其想象成一只熊并假装成熊。

My suggestion is that the cherry-picked climate data function in the minds of climate denialists in ways similar to props in make-believe. The cherry-picked data constitute a set of props for the denialist. The principle of generation then is for the denialist to form ideologicalimaginingsthat comport with those props. This gives the denialists their semblance of rationality. They draw trend lines and make inferences in accordance with the props they have chosen, just as the children in the woods draw inferences about the concentration of ‘bears’ in various parts of the woods.

How willful is this process? And how good is the denialists’ metacognition of the game of make-believe that is going on in their own minds? I’m not sure we know the answers to these questions. The murky answers for now must be “semi-willful” to the first question and “poor” to the second.

But I think we can say that the game they are playing is motivated—typically—by the need to belong to a certain in-group (in this case: conservatives); that’s why Kahan uses the phrase “identity-protective cognition.” Thus to defeat the denialists, we can’t just lay out more evidence—the new pieces of data simply won’t be taken up as props—we have to motivate them to play a different game. How to do that, as far as I can tell, is completely unknown. But at least themorally importanttask is a bit clearer.