global warming denialism
denialism | April 30, 2009It's been two years now since we said hello to scienceblogs, and had our introductory posts on Conspiracy, Unified theory of the Crank, and the denialist deck of cards.
Lately reading a recent profile of a crank, Marc Morano in the NYT, which was sent to me by the crank himself. I can't help but be amazed how our initial description has held up.
For one, throughout the article, it's wonderful how wihtout realizing it, Morano exposes the the fact he's living in a bizarre fantasy world. Starting with the questionable reality of his confrontation with Al Gore:
For example, Mr. Morano said…
denialism | March 21, 2009Congrats to Chris Mooney for getting his rebuttal to George Will published in the Washington Post. And kudos to the post for allowing his serious factual answer to an article composed entirely of crank arguments and lies (they also published a rebuttal from WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud dealing with the lies in Will's article)
Mooney does an excellent job, and points out the frank dishonesty not just regarding the sea ice data (the only point the obtuse Ombudsman would even talk about), but also how every other argument in the entire article represents flawed rhetoric. In particular…
denialism | March 11, 2009His choices are interesting but I think he hits the highlights. After all he has fake experts Pat Michaels and Steve Milloy, and of course Christopher Monckton. I might disagree with the inclusion of a nobody like Sarah Palin. She's a twit more than a real purveyor of disinformation like Marc Morano, or S. Fred Singer. He has included Inhofe so I guess that's Morano-inclusive.
What do you guys think? Any glaring omissions?
And check out my piece at the Guardian on how to spot a climate change denialist.
denialism | March 1, 2009Is he being purposefully obtuse? Once again the ombudsman decides to defend George Will, but only on a single point.
A key paragraph, aimed at those who believe in man-made global warming, asserted: "According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979."
Bizarrely, he acknowledges Will was wrong:
It said that while global sea ice areas are "near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979," sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere is "almost one million sq. km below" the levels of late 1979. That's roughly the size…
denialism | February 20, 2009I'm heartened to see a broad disgust with George Will's lies about climate science. After all it's pretty extraordinary when a major syndicated columnist repeats a lie about science, not once, not twice but three times despite being corrected.
PZ wishes he too could just make up his own facts, and Mike too is pleased the disgust is moving beyond the scientific community. Carl Zimmer at the Loom covers the broad mistakes made in the essay, and TPM documents how it was almost all lies. Mark Kleimen has caught on to the fact that in the end, this is just another conspiracy theory on par with…
denialism | February 16, 2009One would think given recent findings that antarctic warming is robust for instance, that the canard of antarctic cooling would go away. Or, that based on the round dismissal of the myth of 1970s global cooling warnings we'd stop hearing about that in the media too. But instead I'm watching TV last night and there's all these unbelievable crank ads sponsored by the anti-regulation ideologues the Americans for Prosperity featuring fake expert John Coleman. His senseless rant against the stimulus and the evils of regulation is accompanied by text on the bottom of the screen declaring "global…
denialism | January 6, 2009Welcome to the new year, and now that I'm back from a little family vacation I'd like to applaud PAL for the excellent job he did summarizing our thesis, and the job he's done in general in the last year. I'm busy doing my last 3rd year clerkship in neurology (even though I'm graduating in 2009 - it's complicated) and it's wonderful to have him at our side fighting the good fight.
Objects of interest in the last couple of weeks include (former?) framing ally Chris Mooney breaking with Matt Nisbett on the necessary language for addressing denialism. In his article defending the Obama…
denialism | December 9, 2008It seems Obama didn't get Nisbet's memo. Just watching on CNN, future president Obama says:
The time for delay is over, the time for denial is over. We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That is what I intend my administration to do. I think what is exciting about this conversation is that it is not only a problem but an opportunity.
I can not be happier that we have a president who is willing to stand up and call global warming denialism what it is.
denialism | November 25, 2008Ever since we began writing here about denialism we've emphasized a few critical points about dealing with anti-science. For one, denialists aren't interested in legitimate debate - they are not honest brokers and the tactics they use exist to artificially extend discussion of settled scientific issues. Second, one of the most time-honored traditions of cranks is claiming persecution in response to rejection of their nonsense. Take for a recent example Coby's exposure of the "environmentalists want to jail global warming denialists" myth. You don't need to do anything to make a crank cry…
denialism | July 28, 2008Everyone this morning should check out a new favorite website of mine the International Journal of Inactivism. Frank Bi has created a wonderful little catalog of global warming conspiracy theories that nicely illustrate the fundamental defects of reasoning used by the denialists. In particular, I enjoyed his genealogy of climate conspiracy theories.
When we first started here, our first post after the introduction was on the non-parsimonious conspiracy as one of the primary indicators of pseudoscientific argument. Frank Bi has done a wonderful job showing just how dependent the global…
denialism | July 21, 2008Those reading Deltoid's coverage of the APS fiasco are probably up to date on this issue, but I feel like we need to discuss the APS failure in more detail. For those unaware of the latest in global warming denialist nonsense, the American Physical Society made the foolish mistake of entertaining global warming denialists by giving Christopher Monckton space in their newsletter to "challenge" global warming. As Lambert demonstrates in his post, the factual and calculation errors are a joke, but the strategy error is demonstrated by the fact that every global warming crank from tobacco…
denialism | April 17, 2008One of the most salient features of cranks is their inconsistency. A major difference between someone who is trying to reason scientifically and someone who has a fixed belief they are trying to defend against rational inquiry is the scientific thinker is looking for synthesis. They want things to fit together nicely, to make sense, and incorporate as much of the data as possible into a cohesive picture or theory that is convincing to ones peers so they adopt your view.
A crank, on the other hand, doesn't care about internal consistency, presenting a cohesive picture of any kind, or…
denialism | April 2, 2008Part III of our discussion of the history of denialist movements is on one that should tie things together and one I hope some of my fellow sciencebloggers will realize speaks to the necessity of challenging denialists on every front.
My work in this instance is made extremely easy as Naomi Oreskes has done it all for me. Please watch her discussion on the history of global warming denialism, it takes a bit of time, but it is dead on and is one of the best discussions of the methods and strategy of denialism (not to mention free-market fundamentalism) I have seen to date.
For those of you…
denialism | March 7, 2008There is no way I could let the Heartland Institute's Global Warming conference go by without comment, especially since it's so beautifully conformed to my expectations of what a gathering of cranks would be like. I think DeSmogBlog's coverage has been the best.
But back to my expectations, we have experts of dubious quality speaking to a group of people that clearly have no ability to judge sources (from the WSJ ):
Given that line-up, and the Heartland Institute's stated mission--"to discover and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems"--two of the presentations seem…
denialism | December 21, 2007I want to point out two things about the anti-consensus report the anti-AGW denialists are spreading as if it is an actual scientific document. For one, if the first place I read about it is when it's promoted on Uncommon Descent, you immediately lose about 99.9% of your credibility. I'd be a little embarassed if my staunchest allies were people who historically denied the link between cigarettes and cancer - like Milloy and Singer - or those who deny evolutionary science - like the cranks at UD. Maybe they need to stop, try developing some insight into why this is happening, and maybe…
denialism | November 14, 2007 Richard Black investigates the common crank claim that science is just an old boys network designed to throw sweet, sweet grant money at their friends. Guess what? The evidence of this conspiracy is lacking.
I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal editors, heads of department, conference organisers, funding bodies and the original plaintiffs.
I envisaged major headaches materialising as I tried to sort out the chains of events, attempting to decipher whether claims had any validity, or were…
denialism | November 9, 2007Just watching CNN, and saw them mindlessly parrot the latest rant from a crank. In this instance it's the founder of the weather channel John Coleman, now a San Diego meteorologist, who peels off a doozy.
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motivesmanipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further…
denialism | November 5, 2007It's the latest idiotic attack on the science of global warming, Joe Queenan tells us it was great for the Vikings! Why the LA Times publishes this crap is beyond me.
So the argument is, the Vikings had a merry old time the last time it was warm like today, therefore, why worry? Global warming is good?
Well, take a look at temperature reconstructions for the last 2 thousand years or so (1):
The Vikings supposedly roamed the northern Atlantic around the year 1000 AD +/- 200 years.
Can you see the problem? We're at happy Viking now (and that's if you except the top, end of the…
denialism | October 17, 2007I've postponed writing about Gore/IPCC Nobel largely because I wanted to see how the denialists would respond, and it has been interesting.
The problem is worsened by what Paul Krugman called Gore Derangement Syndrome:
So if science says that we have a big problem that can't be solved with tax cuts or bombs -- well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investor's Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious…
denialism | September 28, 2007Tim Lambert has coverage of the latest in the denialist attempt to discredit global warming science - the smearing of scientist James Hansen. Using the bogey-man of George Soros, they try to suggest that Hansen has been funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute, which gave him "legal and media advice"?
That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $…