This blog has intentionally steered away from the day-to-day controversies that bubble up in the climate change debate. This is not because that debate itself is unimportant in awakening the public and our leaders to the threat of global warming. It certainly is. But this blog has always concerned itself with the long view, rather than focusing on flavor of the month controversies.

However, watching public attitudes shift as they have over the past six months, I am reminded that human beings are not reliably logical. In fact, we sometimes respond with panic, mania and ignorance. And given that sad truth, the question then must be asked: How might these impulsive reactions play out in our epic struggle to save ourselves from climate-driven ruin? Such is a worthy topic for this blog.

This winter, as huge snowstorms smothered the US East Coast, the voices of climate change denialists gained resonance with the American public who voiced growing doubt that climate change was even happening. This despite decades of stories in our newspapers about the scientific consensus, new findings by researchers and steadily warming days in our hometowns. Given this, one might reasonably conclude that this consistent communication of the evidence from scientists to the public would have convinced almost everyone that climate change was a real threat beyond any doubt.

But it may be that there really is nothing reasonable about a population under threat. Considering this, we should entertain the idea that frightened populations can be unwilling to face reality, at least temporarily. And so, as we allow doubt to delay timely action, it could very well be that the psychology of fear is paralyzing us right at the moment that action is most needed.

Lately, I’ve been wrapping up my reading of Collapse by Jered Diamond, a book that examines why some historical and contemporary societies make choices that are detrimental to their survival. Among the parade of failed societies he presents are the collapsed civilizations of Easter Island, the Greenland Norse and the Maya, among many others. And behind these failures, he posits four broad reasons why they made the decisions that led to their demise:

1. An inability to anticipate a problem before it arrives
2. An inability to perceive a problem as it is happening
3. A failure to respond after recognizing the problem
4. A failure of an attempted solution of a problem

To me, I see much of Diamond’s framework for failure at work today. But I would like to emphasize the role of the psychology of fear in aggravating the failure to respond after a problem is recognized.

Obviously fear is a potent force to move a population. Fear was an effective catalyst to gain public acceptance of extraordinary powers granted to the executive branch of the US government after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Fear changed entire industries in the 1990s when the ozone hole was recognized for what it was. And sometimes, as many critics of this blog have noted, fear can lead to cynicism and nihilism, that can wreck hopes for change.

But fear can also incite guilt, anger and denial. And, I would argue, that these three emotions are particularly strong signals moving through the public this winter. In fact, as I alluded above, it has been the success of the messaging from climate scientists over the past five years and the build-up to Copenhagen that elicited these fearful, illogical emotions in the first place.

To begin, let’s consider the fear itself. Over the past two decades, climate change has been a periodic annoyance that has threatened our natural optimism for the future, our hopes for our families and our desire to enjoy a trouble-free life. But during the last ten years, the changes that were once only forecasts in newspapers have begun to take on an unsettling reality. Repeatedly, we experience record summer temperatures. Winters come later and are more mild. We find that flowers bloom in our neighborhoods earlier and earlier. And, more and more disasters seem to be occurring with greater frequency, whether they are fires in California, swarms of tornadoes in the US Heartland, or massive Hurricanes in the American South. And all the while, even worse predictions from the same scientists that predicted these now-visible early warning signs reach our ears on a regular basis.

The takeaway here is that the obviousness of climate change has reached a fever pitch.

Enter guilt. As people have had to accept that climate change science is sound and that we really do need to make changes, people naturally begin to examine their own lives. They start to ask: What is my carbon footprint? Do I drive too much? Buy too much? Eat too much? Live too large?

For some, these questions lead to honest self-assessments. Some even begin to make real changes to their lives. They buy efficient light bulbs and canvas shopping bags. They start walking more, eating less meat, burn fewer logs in their fireplace and wear sweaters indoors. Some may even opt to not have children, or opt for adoption instead. And some may become politically active.

For others, however, the fear of climate change and the questions about themselves it provokes leads to anger. This kind of reaction was showcased in the recent documentary No Impact Man, in which a young family in Manhattan experiments for a year with a zero-emission lifestyle. During that year, their story was picked up by national media and broadcast on the husband’s blog, allowing the public to give feedback. But rather than voice words of encouragement or curiosity, much of the public commentary was characterized by scorn and even hatred. The family, of course, was completely shocked by this reaction. And I admit that I too was dumbfounded by it, but upon reflection, it makes perfect sense. Most people worry about global warming, even if subconsciously, and the guilt they feel for their own role in the crisis, manifests as resentment toward anyone that reminds them that they are not doing anything about it.

So, we have a build-up of fear over recent years which leads to guilt across the population, leading in some cases to hostility and resentment.

And into this emotional conundrum materialize two events that offer frightened, guilty and/or angry people an emotional vacation from reality: A trumped-up email scandal dubbed Climategate and a set of huge snow storms on the East Coast. For deniers, these two events provide an opportunity to rescue themselves from the painful thoughts and self-inquiry climate change evokes in them. Quickly, they latch onto denialist rhetoric about sunspots and Medieval ice ages, allowing themselves a respite from logic. It is denial in all it’s Freudian splendor.

Never mind that 2009 was one of the warmest years on record. Never mind that January was the warmest January on record. Never mind that Australia just witnessed a major dust bowl event. Never mind that larger storms and more precipitation (including snow) are exactly what climate science tells us we can expect in the future. Never mind all the data that continues to stream in proving that things are worse than we previously thought.

Never mind all that. This is a season for unreasonable, entitled rebellion against bad news and personal responsibility—a midlife crisis of the soul. Unfortunately, there are consequences to our actions. And the longer we fail to recognize that, the worse those consequences will be.

We have been playing this game of denial for too many years already so that the future is already packed with consequences. But going forward, we will have ample opportunity for more denialist flareups to delay timely action.

There will likely be more cyclical cold years ahead that are the last vestiges of the winters that we used to experience every year. There will likely be enormous winter storms like the Snowmageddon of 2010, driven by increasingly common El Niños and increased moisture in our warming air. And there could even be longer-lived events that fool us into the absolute denialists’ wet-dream, where melting Arctic ice dilutes the saltiness of the North Atlantic, thus shutting down the Gulf Stream which keeps the Northeastern US and Europe warmer than their latitude would otherwise allow. In that scenario, which even the US military has planned for, summer as we know it would not return for many years in those parts of the world. You could imagine the scornful howls that would emanate from some corners as starving refugees from Europe—that bastion of climate change believers—flee to the United States from their frosty cafes and plazas.

At each opportunity the denialists will be there, growing more shrill and panicked the closer we come to catastrophe. They will rant and complain. They will obstruct action. And they may very well doom us all.