Depressive realism and climate change

In a somewhat interesting essay at AEON which talks about depression as perceived by philosophy and psychotherapy, I read this (my bold):

Despite its turn toward positivity, psychological theory includes one branch with a focus on the pessimistic philosophical tradition embraced by Freud himself. Called ‘depressive realism’, it was initially suggested by the US psychologists Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson in a paper subtitled ‘Sadder but Wiser?’ (1979). The authors held that reality is always more transparent through a depressed person’s lens.

Alloy, of Temple University in Pennsylvania, and Abramson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tested the hypothesis by measuring the illusion of control. After interviews with a set of undergraduates, they divided the students into depressed and nondepressed groups. Each student had a choice of either pressing or not pressing a button, and received one of two outcomes: a green light or no green light. Experimental settings presented the students with various degrees of control over the button, from 0 to 100 per cent. Upon completing the tests, they were asked to analyse the degree of control their responses exerted over outcome – that is, how many times the green light came on as a result of their actions. It turned out that, the sadder but wiser students were more accurate in judging the degree of control they exerted. Alloy and Abramson concluded that depressed students were less prone to illusions of control, and therefore showed greater realism. The nondepressed students, on the other hand, overestimated the degree of their control, and therefore were engaged in self-deception in favour of enhancing self-esteem.

The ‘depressive realism’ hypothesis remains controversial because it calls into question the tenets of CBT, which assert that the depressed individual has more thought biases and hence has to be healed in order to become more realistic. But subsequent studies have bolstered the idea. For instance, the Australian social psychologist Joseph Forgas and colleagues showed that sadness reinforces critical thinking: it helps people reduce judgmental bias, improve attention, increase perseverance, and generally promotes a more skeptical, detailed and attentive thinking style. On the other hand, positive moods can lead to a less effortful and systematic thinking style. Happy people are more prone to stereotypical thinking and rely on simple cliché. They are more likely to ‘go with the flow’ and are prone to making more social misjudgments on account of their biases.

This tied in with something that I've meaning to say for a while now:   while I don't think it is fair to say that those who accept climate change is a serious problem are all depressed characters (even though it has become increasingly popular for young people to claim things like the situation is so bad they will not have children), it does seem a particularly annoying feature of climate change deniers that they hold their attitude with glee - they are like silly "good time Charlies" who positively laugh in the face of the scientific evidence staring them in the face.

Think of characters like Tim Blair, James Morrow, Rowan Dean, smugmaster Andrew Bolt, and James Delingpole in the UK - a very large part of their shtick is that they are make fun of the most serious human created environmental issue the planet has ever seen, and deride those who believe the scientific warnings (and the Left generally) of having no sense of humour.   You find a very similar attitude amongst most of the denying dopes at Catallaxy.  

This AEON article provides a possible explanation - maybe they are not just trolling the scientists and those who accept the consensus;  it might be that they suffer from too much positivity in their moods such that they can't see the danger in front of them.

But this is a pretty generous theory;  it is also possible they are just offensively trolling twits too stupid to do what's right for their children and all of our descendants.