January 15, 2014 by David K. Sutton
Reality Is Unkind To Climate Change Deniers And Fox News Viewers
Reality is an inconsiderate and harsh place for climate change deniers, so they must exist outside it. One of the things a conservative climate change denier (and is there any other kind?) might say to you, if you are ever so lucky to be in such a debate, is that you can’t trust the scientists. They will ask you why we should believe what climate scientists tell us. Or alternatively, and inconsistently, they will tell you that not all scientists agree the planet is warming and/or humans are responsible. Although on that last point, assuming they’re attentive to the tactics of right-wing media, they are “usually” careful to say “scientist” and not “climate scientist.”
This is how Fox News gets away with putting a “scientist” on air who refutes anthropogenic global-warming, even though he is not an expert in the field of climate science. It’s good enough for Fox News that there’s some scientist out there (never mind his field of expertise) willing to state an opinion on climate science. But then again, Fox News has never been above condescending to their own audience.
Climate change: Another study shows they don’t publish actual papers. — Here’s the thing: If you listen to Fox News, or right-wing radio, or read the denier blogs, you’d have to think climate scientists were complete idiots to miss how fake global warming is. Yet despite this incredibly obvious hoax, no one ever publishes evidence exposing it. Mind you, scientists are a contrary lot. If there were solid evidence that global warming didn’t exist, or that CO2 emissions weren’t the culprit, there would be papers in the journals about it. Lots of them.
So out of 2258 peer-reviewed climate articles by 9136 authors, how many of these authors refute man-made global warming? There’s a chart for that:
Yes, just one.
You can tell those conservative climate change deniers that skepticism is a good thing, but denialism is not. And opinion does not trump deference to expertise. While nobody should be offered blind trust, we can’t just pick and choose what we want to believe based on convenience of religious or political beliefs. I don’t think global warming is real because I’m a liberal, it’s real because climate scientists have reached that consensus view. It’s as real as the gravity that keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground.
So being skeptical of science is one thing, but saying global warming is a hoax created by liberals (for God knows what reason) is quite another. Conservatives are guilty of rationalizing when it comes to their climate change denialism. Anthropogenic global warming is antithetical to their belief in one of two things, or both. It’s in contrast to their belief in the invisible hand of the free market that has the ability to solve the problems of mankind without the aid of so-called “big government.” And it’s also directly opposed to many conservatives’ belief of man’s dominion over the Earth, a belief that God gave man the Earth, and we are free to rape it any way we see fit.
But back on planet reality, there is a science that studies the climate, we call this climate science. Of the scientists in this field of climate science, nearly all of them have concluded that the globe is warming and man is the cause. If you offer greater skepticism of climate science than say medical science (where you must trust people know what the hell they are doing for the sake of your life), then you must offer a better reason for this skepticism than simply your opinion, or an assessment rooted in the frailty of your dogma. It’s not good enough to deny global warming because it would be, well, a bummer to your political ideology. You say climate science is political? Well who do you think made it political? It wasn’t the climate scientists.
There is skepticism, which any good scientist possesses, and then there is denialism, which on the issue of climate change, is in excess supply among many on the Right.
