In a recent article, titled “How the Existential Terror of Hurricanes Can Fuel Climate Change Denial,” Discover Magazine (DM) posits that the fear induced by hurricanes like Helene and Milton leads individuals to deny climate change. [emphasis, links added]

The authors suggest that existential dread drives people to reject the reality of climate change as a psychological defense mechanism.

This is false.

This climate narrative lacks empirical support and appears to serve more as a scare tactic to motivate action and to explain away why the public increasingly rejects climate alarmist arguments rather than a substantive argument.

The DM article leans heavily on something called “terror management theory,” a psychological theory that explains how people cope with the fear of death, proposing that the fear of mortality compels individuals to deny climate change.