Distance, discord dupe us into denying doom

Why are we humans so bad at thinking about facts, facts such as those on climate change, even when more and more research proves them?

The answer is provided by Pep Espen Stoknes, the author of What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming. Stoknes studied hundreds of peer-reviewed social science studies and identified five main barriers that prevent climate messages from drawing people's attention as much as they should.

He calls them "the Five Ds": Distance, Doom, Dissonance, Denial, and iDentity. "I had to cheat a little bit with the last D - I lost one there - but it was the closest I could get," he admits.