More or less by coincidence, I've found myself arguing with human-driven global warming deniers in several venues recently. With the recent hoo-ha over the stolen, selectively released emails from climate scientists, and the subsequent response from the Denialists and their dupes, shills, and supporters, I've come to realize that Denialism is essentially Creationism for otherwise smart people.
More below the fold, where I have laid out the relationship in tabular form
Creationism | Denialism |
Virtually all world's life scientists treat evolution as a fact | Virtually all world's climate and related scientists treat AGW as fact |
All world scientific bodies are evolutionist | All world scientific bodies hold to AGW |
Few scientists not religiously committed support creationism | Few scientists not in pay of fossil fuel firms deny AGW |
Satan is controlling the scientists in a giant global conspiracy | Environmentalists are controlling the scientists in a giant global conspiracy |
No valid Creationist model to explain actual data from earth history | No valid Denialist model to explain current alarming warming trend |
Large, well-funded, primarily right-wing network of bogus institutes and think tanks pushing Creationism | Large, well-funded, primarily right-wing network of bogus institutions and think tanks pushing Denialism |
Real life scientists must operate in the shadow of ongoing program to discredit their work | Real climate scientists must operate in the shadow of ongoing program to discredit their work |
We don't want to face philosophical implications of being just damned dirty apes | We don't want to face lifestyle changes because we're roasting the world to death |
Unremitting repetition of false and long-discredited "facts": Dinosaur tracks and human tracks together, all known non-human skulls are just apes, the eye could not have evolved... | Unremitting repetition of false and long-discredited "facts": global cooling since 1998, warming is due to urban island effects, global cooling was predicted in the 1970s.... |
Constant repetition of: New discoveries cast doubt on evolution! | Constant repetition of: New discoveries cast doubt on AGW! |
Ver. 1.0 Creationism (Earth is under 10,000 years old) morphing to Ver. 2.0 (Intelligent Design) | Ver. 1.0 Denialism (global warming isn't happening, is hoax) morphing to Ver. 2.0 (there is global warming but it is natural so go ahead and drill baby drill) |
"Christianity" | "Free Market" |
....and now |
Piltdown Man | Email Scandal |
...and now we have the latest parallel, the Email Scandal.
What the emails actually show, of course, is science working as it always does, people carrying on discussions, arguing over data, discussing nifty ideas for making graphs convey the information they're supposed to, and so on. What they don't show is anyone getting orders to diddle data or interpretations from some overall commander of the conspiracy (Al Gore? George Soros? Greenpeace?). What they don't show is anyone inventing data or interpretations. What they don't show is that global warming is an invention of the scientists.
What they do show is that, like life scientists, climate scientists have to work in the shadow of a global program to discredit their efforts. To argue that, when scientists position their work in anticipation of having to defend themselves from bad faith attacks powered by fossil fuels, that they are acting in bad faith, is to argue from a standpoint of willful blindness and stupidity, purblind ignorance of how the world is actually working in these sad, sorry days.
For years Creationists have claimed that the saga of Piltdown man shows that scientists are inventing data. Actually, what it shows is that the invented data was eventually revealed for the hoax it was, just as science is supposed to work, once someone got around to performing actual physical tests.
Now what we're going to see is the same crap. Emails show scientists just Make Shit Up! Never mind that they show nothing of the sort -- just as Piltdown shows nothing of the sort. Although the two events are completely different in their details, in the madness of Denialism the Email Scandal will have the same function as Piltdown does for Creationism: it proves that scientists are perfidious, bad-faith inventors of their science.
Denialism: Creationism for otherwise smart people
NASA IMAGE: 2009 fifth-warmest year on record.