global warming denialism
denialism | March 9, 2017The American Council on Science and Health recently got some exposure on twitter, then a little too much exposure, after publishing this highly problematic (and hysterically bad) op-ed/infographic on twitter and on their site.
This opinion piece, presented as if there is some method or objective analysis, purports to show which are the best and worst science news sites. But this immediately started to fall apart on the most cursory inspection. First of all, notice the x-axis, it's clearly some kind of subjective assessment, and it immediately fails to be credible as the New York Times is…
denialism | May 3, 2015John Cook, of Skeptical Science fame, has created an online course through the University of Queensland and edX, on denialism and climate change. Easy to access and free to take, I found it simple to join from their facebook page, and if you don't want to join you can still see the lectures from their Youtube channel.
Having gone through the materials so far I have to say Cook nails it. His graphic depicting the 5 tactics is very clear and easy to understand.
Also I think he has done a great job of making clear that the problem isn't one of education, facts or knowledge. The problem is…
denialism | April 5, 2013And it may even be more when one considers that there is likely non-overlap between many of these conspiracies. It really is unfortunate that their isn't more social pushback against those that express conspiratorial views. Given both the historical and modern tendency of some conspiracy theories being used direct hate towards one group or another (scratch a 9/11 truther and guess what's underneath), and that they're basically an admission of one's own defective reasoning, why is it socially acceptable to espouse conspiracy theories? They add nothing to discussion, and instead hijack…
denialism | April 1, 2013I still think that list is pretty incomplete, the RationalWiki has more, but it's interesting to see a potential internal ideological conflict as Adams sides with big business and the fossil fuel industry to suggest CO2 is the best gas ever. While he doesn't appear to directly deny CO2 is a greenhouse gas, he's managed to merge his anti-government conspiratorial tendencies with his overriding naturalistic fantasy to decide the government (and Al Gore) are conspiring to destroy our power infrastructure with carbon taxes, and deny the world the benefit of 1000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. His…
denialism | February 26, 2013I've known about this effect for a while as I've been variously accused of being in the pocket of big pharma, big ag, big science, democrats and republicans etc. Now Stephan Lewandowsky, in follow up to his "NASA Faked the Moon Landings – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax." paper, has used these conspiratorial responses to study how conspiracy theorists respond to being studied! It's called "Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation".
Here's the abstract:
Conspiracist ideation has been repeatedly implicated in the…
denialism | February 15, 2013It's fascinating when you catch the start of a new bogus claim enter the denialsphere, bounce from site to site, and echo about without any evidence of critical analysis or intelligence on the part of the denialists. A good example of this was an article by Heartland Institute's contributor to Forbes, James Taylor, falsely claiming only a minority of scientists endorse the IPCC position on the causes of global warming. This new nonsense meme gets repeated by crank extraordinaire Steve Milloy, bounces the next day to Morano's denialist aggregation site, and before long I'm sure we'll be…
denialism | December 14, 2012It's gratifying to see news agencies get it right, when climate change denialists leaked the IPCC draft report and cherry picked a single sentence out to suggest an increased solar component, no one fell for it. To their credit, the journalists have gone to the source who said:
He says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is "ridiculous".
"I'm sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite - that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is…
denialism | November 15, 2012Via Ed I see that Christopher Monckton, the fake expert in climate change who has been repeatedly told by Parliament to stop calling himself an Member of the House of Lords,, claims he's the inventor of a magical disease cure of HIV, MS, flu and the common cold, and recently a birther, has now submitted an affidavit (read here) pushing his bogus birther stats argument. The only problem? I think one could argue he's now opened his factually-questionable statements to legal scrutiny. From his affidavit:
I am over the age of 18 and am a resident of the United Kingdom. The information herein…
denialism | October 2, 2012Via Ed I see that Christopher Monckton is expanding his crankery from denying global warming, claiming to be and MP despite cease and desist letters from parliament asking him to stop, curing HIV, the flu, MS and the common cold to now engaging in Birtherism. It's pathetic when you've been pre-debunked by snopes, but there's no stopping a crank like Monckton.
This reminds me of all the fuss last month over Lewandowsky's study that basically demonstrated crank magnetism, that is, the tendency of those who believe in one kind of conspiratorial nonsense to believe all sorts of other…
denialism | August 24, 2012Timothy Egan nails it, the Republican caucus is composed of crackpots and cranks.
Take a look around key committees of the House and you’ll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri’s Representative Todd Akin’s take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who’s been raped.
On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom. Congress incubates…
denialism | May 25, 2012Today I read about two individuals who decided on political defections over perceived anti-science amongst their former political allies- one due to climate change, the other for anti-GMO. From the right, we have Michael Fumento, who in Salon describes his break with the right, spurred by Heartland's campaign comparing those who believe in climate change with the Unabomber, as well as a general atmosphere of conspiratorial crankery and incivility. And from the left, we have Stephen Sumpter of Latent Existence leaving the Greens over their support for the misguided anti-scientific campaign of…
denialism | May 17, 2012Many of the climate change denialist sites have been up in arms by comparisons of climate change denial to holocaust denial. In particular Marc Morano at climate depot has had multiple articles attacking and expressing hysterical outrage at these comparisons.
We know they don't like the comparison, but the question is, is it apt?
One article in particular from Micha Tomkiewicz, who is himself a holocaust survivor, has earned the ire of climate denialists around the web because in addition to the comparison of the tactics of global warming denialists and holocaust deniers, he additionally…
denialism | March 26, 2012He had to realize Nisbett's framing was worthless and write a whole book on defective Republican reasoning to realize it but it sounds like Chris Mooney has come around to the right way to confront denialism:
The only solution, then, is to make organized climate denial simply beyond the pale. It has to be the case that taking such a stand is tantamount to asserting that smoking is completely safe, no big deal, go ahead and have two packs a day.
Sounds a little bit like what I wrote in 2007 when I pointed out denialists should not even be debated:
The goal instead must be to enforce standards…
denialism | March 8, 2012I think it's a nice, succinct description of the problem of climate change from one of the leaders of the field.
On a related note the nation of Kiribati is relocating to Fiji as their island nation is disappearing.
denialism | March 1, 2012About a month ago I asked if denialism is truly more frequent on the right or is it that the issues of the day are ones that are more likely to be targets of right wing denialism? After all, one can think of slightly more left wing sources of denialism like GMO paranoia, 9/11 conspiracies, altie-meds, and toxin fear-mongering. The mental heuristics that cause people to believe, and then entrench themselves, in nonsense seem generalizable to humanity rather than just those attracted to conservative politics. Why should those who identify as liberal be any different? Wouldn't they just…
denialism | February 16, 2012Everyone is writing about desmogblog's leak of internal documents from the Heartland Institute. But to me I think leaked documents are nothing compared to their fully public, out-in-the-open history of being openly contemptuous of science, funding cranks with advanced degrees (though not in climate) to disparage the field, and their hosting of denialpalooza.
James rightly points out that much hay is being made of a single sentence that, could "easily be the result of sloppy editing, or at perhaps a Freudian slip." This is of course is a sentence describing a curriculum developed by the HI…
denialism | February 9, 2012 The states in Green have gone for Rick Santorum, who besides having a a Google problem also believes in one of the wackiest conspiracy theories there is - the climate change hoax. That is, the belief that there is a shady group of Illuminati that have power over thousands of climate scientists from all over the world, and in their greed for sweet sweet grant money scientists uniformly falsify all their data to serve this power-hungry cabal. Is that an exaggeration? Nope, that's what people who believe in the "hoax" ascribe to (see skeptical science's thorough debunking of Evans here).…
denialism | January 14, 2012Being inactive for the last couple of years I still read about denialism being mentioned in some interesting places. Two in particular I thought I share.
Peter Gleick in Forbes write on "The Rise and Fall of Climate Change Denial is interesting largely because it's in Forbes. And predictably, for publishing in a right-wing magazine, the comments are basically 100% against Gleick, a national academy member, accusing him of everything from incompetence to dishonesty. It's actually pretty remarkable. But at least the scientific viewpoint is starting to infiltrate the literature of the right…
denialism | January 7, 2012And get's it wrong
What's amazing is they rank Newt first at the same time acknowledging he destroyed the Office of Technology Assessment.
Jon Huntsman may have the most rational scientific and technological policies of anyone in the field, but Gingrich, sometimes called Newt Skywalker, has far more passion. As Kelefa Sanneh argues in the current issue, the philosophy of Gingrichism is nothing but a combination of the idiosyncratic views of the man himself--which include his beliefs in the virtues of space exploration and his opposition to regulating the Internet, even when it comes to porn.…
denialism | May 24, 2010Luckily they don't make the mistake of actually debating denialists. The feature of last weeks issue, "Age of Denial" is a series of articles by skeptics and one laughable rebuttal, discussing the nature of denialism and tactics to use against it. They do quite a good job covering the basics, starting with Deborah MacKenzie and her article "Why Sensible People Reject the Truth":
Whatever they are denying, denial movements have much in common with one another, not least the use of similar tactics (see "How to be a denialist"). All set themselves up as courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt…