Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
Posted on 30 May 2011 by John Cook
The ABC Drum have just published my article Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier? Right now, there are no comments but I imagine the discussion will get fierce shortly so be sure to keep an eye on it (expect to see all the traits of denial I describe rear their ugly head in the comments and be quick to point them out). An excerpt:
In the charged discussions about climate, the words skeptic and denier are often thrown around. But what do these words mean?
Consider the following definitions. Genuine skeptics consider all the evidence in their search for the truth. Deniers, on the other hand, refuse to accept any evidence that conflicts with their pre-determined views.
So here's one way to tell if you're a genuine skeptic or a climate denier.
Read full article...
Skeptical Science and our book Climate Change Denial have been popping up elsewhere in the media over the last few weeks. My co-author Haydn and I appeared on Robyn William's Science Show a few weeks ago - you can listen to streaming audio or download the interview in mp3 format. The Science Show webpage also has a transcript of the whole interview.
On the morning of the Sydney book launch, I did an interview with John Stanley from the Sydney commercial radio station 2UE. You can listen to an mp3 of the interview here. Many thanks to 2UE for letting me republish the interview here on Skeptical Science and thanks to John just for having the interview - I wonder how many angry emails he received from 2UE listeners afterwards.
After our Sydney and Canberra book launches (more on that in a future post), Haydn and I returned to Sydney to record an interview with James Valentine at ABC 702. This interview gave us the opportunity to do something I've been looking forward to for a while - respond to talk-back callers. Sure enough, the first caller was a geologist enquiring about past climate change!
[DB] Tom elquently has made the case that the resistance to the term denier by equating it with Holocaust denial/Nazism/fascism/NWO is a patently transparent attempt to reframe the struggles of those espousing science vs those espousing non-science as a "debate" wherein it is possible that both "sides" may be right.
Since that is clearly not possible, can we all put an end to the references to Holocaust denial/Nazism/fascism/NWO? If one wishes to forego what the science and logic tells us is happening in the physical, measurable world, that is their right. But then the appellation "denier" sticks by default.
[DB] The point is, those who deny that our climate is changing, that our way of life is helping cause that change, that doing nothing about it will make things worse are the ones shifting the focus of the conversation away from the science and are attempting to reframe it as a debate where both "sides" may have equal validity. Their viewing things first through the lens of labels is empty rhetoric and spin only.
Since they have no science to support their "do nothing" approach they attempt to dissemble and prevaricate and obfuscate and deny. A spade is a spade; a rose, a rose. To call them by labels other than what they are is also denial.
[DB] Off-topic link snipped (which, I add, you have already posted on at least 3 other threads now).
- Asbestos Denialism
- Vaccine Denialism (and Vaccine Skeptics -- get that? They already grabbed the word "skeptics," too)
Can anyone think of others?[dana1981] Most of your examples here are simply wrong. For example, see the rebuttals to Renewable energy investment kills jobs and CO2 limits will hurt the poor. "Denying" a falsehood doesn't qualify as denial.
[dana1981] No, a denier denies facts. You're entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
an honest mana skeptic, I'll let you know. But I will call a denier what he is, and the fact that he recoils so forcefully from the name exposes the bare, frightening truth behind the label. They don't like it, and they deny it, because it is what they are.