The Rise Of The Deniers

Good article. The fact that fighting climate change may actually create jobs and generate revenue may hopefully be the ultimate (or at least the pre-penultimate) nail in the denier coffin. As for wooing the staffers, I wish I were a staffer on the Hill; I could then enjoy all the tasty luncheons and then boot the proposals at the end. As I learnt as a graduate student, no sacrifice too great for free food.

What's interesting to me is the deniers that have quietly jumped off the bandwagon. I thought there'd be more publicity attached to Patrick Michaels' public confession, as quoted by Ron Bailey in ReasonOnline (this was at last year's Heartland-sponsored skeptical party, called a global warming conference, in New York):

"Michaels began by telling the audience, "Global warming is real and people have something to do with it." He also noted that one should not care a wit about the fact that humans are causing temperatures to increase. Rather, one should care how much the increase is likely to be."

And this toned-down version was actually from the Heartland Institute:

"The evening's keynote speaker, Dr. Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute and the University of Virginia, began by warning the audience not to argue that recent cooler temperatures were proof global warming had ended, since other climatic factors could change resulting in resumed warming. (He was challenged by several audience members during the question-and-answer period following his talk.) I'll bet he was.

"Michaels also dissected claims of "unprecedented" sea ice melting in the Arctic and warming in the Antarctic, showing evidence that temperatures were warmer in the Arctic during the 1930s and the vast majority of Antarctica is cooling. He also demonstrated that the most realistic forecast for future warming was a linear increase of about 0.17 degrees F per decade, well below even the most conservative estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Note how Heartland took out the part that humans have something to do with it!!!!!

Similar stuff has been heard from Roger Pielke Jr., and even gadfly Steve McIntyre doesn't deny that it's happening. Anthony Watts is still pretty committed to the "no human influence" position.

Even though Michaels has fudged a lot of data and graphs in the past, he's apparently still sufficiently a scientist to be forced to accept reality.

Center for Public Integrity had this, noting the trend:

"The latest CEI campaign is representative of a shift in the skeptic rhetoric, said Greenpeace's Davies. First, there was complete denial of the science, and then a more nuanced casting of doubt on the science. The current message from skeptics, Davies says, is that human-induced global warming may be a reality, but mitigation strategies are simply not economically viable."

Reminds me exactly of the same trend from the tobacco industry. And they bought scientists, too.

We all live in an information bubble. I most recently heard that term from a talking head commenting on Rush Limbaugh fans. Still, I recently had a message from a Green Party activist in Butte County, CA who forwarded the link to a supposed documentary that started with a statement from Dr. Tim Ball.

On the other hand, those of us who follow intersection, or climate progress, or Revkin's dot earth have little awareness of just how strongly these messages resonate through a citizenry that no longer trusts corporate media but implicitly trusts what they get from the internet, especially those messages framed as exposés.

I guess Sheril hasn't realized yet that it is counterproductive to use the defamatory word "Denier".

http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/11/listen_to_this_radio_se…

After all, you do not want to be a Name Caller?

http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2008/11/is_name_calling_an_effe…