Global warming and climate change are happening. The vast majority of major independent scientific groups that are not affiliated with or funded by a corporation that wants to promote skepticism believe it is happening. A quick trip to the NASA website will show you compelling evidence. Or, look to the highly respected (and now online) independent periodical Scientific American for recent articles that do a nice job explaining this complicated science to non-scientists. Most of all, as hinted at above, take a deeper look at the scientists and studies that claim to disprove global warming and you will see that their funding very often comes from those with a vested and preexisting interest in promoting denial.

Our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay the price for this problem, yet there are many very smart people who seem motivated to deny its existence. In many cases those who are denying global warming are not themselves in bed with corporations. In fact, ironically many people who deny global warming are also very skeptical about corporate greed and hidden agendas. All of this suggests that there must be an "honest" reason for this denial, a psychology behind why some people want to think that global warming does not exist.

There is a group of people who we will call "deep conservatives" who identify themselves as "conservative" on a very wide range of issues. We are not referring to people who are merely "fiscal conservatives" who come to their positions out of intelligent insight about economics and finance, and we are also not referring to "social conservatives" who arrive at their positions due to their personal ideals and spiritual beliefs. Instead we are focusing on a group that seems driven by an overall general psychology that is fixed and wide ranging, a psychology that biases their rational perception of new evidence across any number of areas.

These deep conservatives strongly desire order in their world and prefer black and white presentations of facts. They prefer leaders, both in politics and the media, who are not "thinkers" but rather "deciders". A leader's intelligence or education will be less important than the purity of his or her thought with regard to certainty and order.

With regard to global warming and climate change, the issue itself presents a direct threat to the desire for certainty and order, and, unfortunately, there are not always black and white presentations of facts because the science is quite complicated. In addition, corporate special interest money knows exactly which buttons to push to stir up skepticism and denial among those who have an underlying need to feel in-control and comfortable with the status quo. Thus an already existing tendency to be skeptical of any science that that threatens order and certainty is exponentially and purposely magnified by corporate money.

One bit of proof of all of the above is that many of those individuals who are not part of the corporate lobbying arms but are actively promoting denial and skepticism almost always have many other conservative beliefs. These individuals almost always fought for other conservative causes both within and outside of the scientific realm before global warming and climate change become big news. If there was not a psychological bias and motivation behind their global warming denial then one would expect that the skepticism among this group would not be so sudden, universal, and widespread.