Global Warming Denialism on The Huffington Post and Beyond
Two days ago, I wrote about a recent survey that showed that Americans' concern over global climate change had decreased over the last 12 months, and urged the Obama campaign to make it a much bigger priority than it has. Though I did not anticipate this would be a controversial argument, as of now the post has over 300 comments. Even more surprising is the number of commenters who assert that global warming is either a myth or a conspiracy. To cite just a few:
- "If
you're lucky to live long enough, you'll see a lot of these
"scares" come and go throughout your lifetime. This is just the
latest. When the next one comes the chanting crowd will move over and
attach itself to it."
- "In a
few more years Global Warming will be shown to be the scam and money
making scheme that many already know it to be. I'm not going to argue
degrees and post link after link showing the falsehoods."
- "Green
house gases are a myth. A volcano puts out more green house gases with one
eruption than the US puts out in 3 years. Get a new cause - check your
facts."
- "All
this hysteria about global warming is a ruse to allow governments to tax
us more."
- "Americans are finally coming out of the ether. Slowly we are realizing "man made" global warming is one of the greatest lies told to the world. More and more scientist are coming forward with the truth about the flawed science behind it. I'm, as I have been ALL my life, am proud of this country!! We are the best at thinking for ourselves."
There are many more. And these are from readers of The Huffington Post, a group I would have thought would be among the best informed.
However, Huffington Post readers are likely among those Americans who get most of their news from the Internet, and these responses highlight the complex impact of the Internet on public opinion. These commenter are for the most part not uninformed but rather misinformed. They can cite a combination of research that was well-done but is out of date, research that was well-done but has been misinterpreted, research that was badly done, and weird conspiracy theories, all with the support of key conservative institutions and pundits. It is an important reminder that when we discuss how to mobilize our country on the issue of climate change, we must reckon not only with educating the uneducated and mobilizing the inactive, we must also reckon with a surprisingly large group of the active, vocal and miseducated.
The whole stance of climate change denialists has uncanny parallels to that of AIDS denialists, who deny that HIV causes AIDS.
The causative role of HIV in the development of AIDS has
been established and is the subject of scientific consensus. Denialist
arguments are considered to be the result of cherry-picking and
misrepresentation of predominantly outdated scientific data, with the potential
to endanger public health by dissuading people from utilizing proven
treatments. With the rejection of these arguments by the scientific community,
AIDS denialist material is currently spread largely through the Internet. (Wikipedia)
This is a group with whom I have had extensive experience,
as they have had a very public activist presence here in my home town of San
Francisco. As with climate change denialists, AIDS denialists piece together
their arguments from misinterpretations of valid scientific papers, from the
comments of respected scientists venturing out of their specialty and writing
in non-peer reviewed journals, and the political support of conservative institutions.
And again, as with climate change denialism, the whole package gets its
momentum and false air of rigor from being endlessly circulated on the
Internet.
What is most remarkable about AIDS denialism is how it has persevered through 25 years of the epidemic. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, many of the arguments were not so far-fetched. But in 1996-1997, the course of the epidemic changed with the introduction of highly effective medications. People who started taking the medications stopped dying. One would have thought that would have ended the debate. Incredibly, it did not. In fact, many denialists clung to their misunderstandings right through their own deaths – deaths that in many cases could have been avoided had the deceased taken HIV medications that were readily available to them. Ken Anderlini was a co-moderator of the "AIDS Myth Exposed" message board on MSN. Anderlini died in April of 2007. A fellow denialist wrote a death announcement saying: "Over the past couple of years his health had declined rapidly with a strange neurological disease for which nobody could pinpoint the cause (except doctors who claimed it was HIV related, of course)." Another denialist activist, Michael Bellafontaine died on May 10, 2007. His obituary reported that "According to Andrea Lindsay, a friend and fellow activist, Mr. Bellefountaine died of a sudden systemic infection, though the exact cause has not been determined." (AIDSTruth.org has a web page that tracks the deaths of AIDS denialists.)
The spectacle of AIDS denialists clinging to their views right through their own illnesses and up to their very deaths does not bode well for the future of debate on global climate change. Many of us have been asking ourselves at what point the effects of climate change will be so obvious that debate over the basic facts of the matter will finally cease. The course of AIDS denialism suggests that the answer to the question might be never.
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The average American is now so scientifically illiterate that only the real scientists can tell the difference between themselves and the fake scientists. To the American public, which gets its world view from TV shows like "24", movies like "Terminator", power-hungry telepreachers, Fox so-called "News", and the constant campaign spinsters of the far right, they all look like "scientists", and it all looks very confusing and controversial. The public doesn't know the AAAS from the NAACP.
This is how a return to peonage looks.
Or they could just look out their own window and see that nothing has changed and form an opinion like that.
Actually... I got a tree in front of my building that for the last four years has been flowering in December to early January... do you think that is normal? Not to mention that all other trees in my area flower three to four weeks earlier on average than they used to... but that's perfectly normal, I guess.
Spoken like someone who never travels. Ever. You probably are from somewhere in the South where you didn't have much variation in the seasons, when it was already pretty warm all the time. Therefor it is easy for you not to notice temperature change. I am from Massachusetts, as did my parents and grandparents. The warming here is TERRIFYING. We used to get snow from October to May; now in October and May we're in T SHIRTS.
Also I am often in Canada, and let me tell you something bub, they are TERRIFIED. My friends and I went on our annual ski trip to Quebec City last January. Up until EXTREMELY recently, Quebec is under 8 ft of snow by then every year. When we went, we could not ski. Why? There was NO SNOW. ON the MOUNTAINS. In CANADA. In JANUARY. It actually was ABOVE FREEZING ON THE MOUNTAIN. We ended up drinking in our sweaters in the lodge bar the whole time. We didn't need winter coats.
Typically in Quebec every year Canadians build something called an "ice hotel" it is built when it freezes in the Fall and is a hotel made completely out of ice. It lasts through the winter and melts in the spring. This is a long standing tradition. Now they can no longer make the ice hotel. It melts. In winter.
"This is how a return to peonage looks"
It's terrifying isn't it? And the worst thing is that Americans are WILLFULLY ignorant. Up until now in history, a populace as in the dark as Americans was kept there intentionally by government or religious institutions; i.e. the Stalinist regime or the Catholic Church pre Vatican II. Americans CHOOSE to remain ignorant of everything except popular television.
Yeah, the Climate Change Deniers are busy at work, as are similar groups attacking mainstream science, science education, and science-based policy in many other arenas.
We can thank, in large part, those Reagan Revolutionists who engineered a scientifically illiterate American public by taking over the textbook industry in the 1980's. Now we have a public which doesn't know how to weigh pronouncements from the American Association for the Advancement of Science against the many Orwellian-named science-pretender groups.
After decades of being taught drivel for science, the public doesn't understand the nature of the scientific community. They don't get the significance of a "researcher" being declared by mainstream science groups to be "outside the mainstream science community". They don't get that's real scientists saying, " Your "work" is a piece of crap. It's not controversial, because it's not science. You are a pretender. "
Yeah, it's the kiss of death in the world of science. But these guys don't care about that! They only care about spinning their crap to the general public, which has no way of evaluating scientific information.
Push for serious campaign finance reform so other reforms will take root.
for decades now americans have been taught what to think instead of how to think.
masses being told what to think = lots of money for big bizness.
that's really what it all comes down to.
Indeed!! We've gone from people to sheeple!
See Bob Ostertag's Profile
Nice!. See my prior post on Obama's Internet Money Machine.
Science & Experts are designed to be proven wrong time and time again.
Maybe they're right and maybe they are wrong.
UnbiasView -
That's how Science works! It's a system that constantly evolves and seeks to find a better answer. No scientist worth his or her salt would ever say something is "proven" beyond a reasonable doubt because the scientific method does little more than try to find an explanation that best explains the facts as they exist and best predicts the future.
Ask yourself.... what if they are right? What if through our inaction today we cause irreparable harm to our planet? If you are willing to take that risk, then fine. I'm not
Educate yourself on the state of the science of climate change today - you have it in yourself to become an "expert."
The earth was once the center of the universe scientifically.... Then the Sun was..... now we live on a corner of a medium sized galaxy on a small patch of the universe.
So of course "Science and Experts are designed to be proven wrong....." Information and theoretical frameworks that explain that information is getting better hourly, daily and weekly.
What should disturb you - is that the more we know, the more "Scientists" and "Experts" are voicing their concerns about the future of this planet.
Interesting article out of University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Seems as the scientific-academic community is split on how to address the controversy.
http://www.sciencecases.org/petition/petition.asp
Anyone who has ever read a scientific study can see this isnt science{the link} but conjecture.Scientific studies dont have"and then bill said"type wording so it proves NOTHING!
The real term is Climate Change not Global Warming, Global Warming is for amatuers as climate is long t term and associated with areas. The last great climate change happened when the earth probably reached an average temperature increase of 3 degrees. This was short and probably caused by a solor flare. The increase in temp stopped the esclator current and the decrease in ocean temperature in the North Alantic caused a mini ice age in Europe that lasted 300 years, this was from about 1300 to 1600 or the dark ages. Millions of people died from disease and starvation, the church blamed witchcraft. The same people that think Climate Change is a hoax believed that the hole in the ozone was a hoax. The current temperature increase is only about one degree C and can be reversed with some minor adjustments like keep the trees stupid, make energy efficeint houses and buildings, turn off the lights, shut down city lights, drive sanely, think about your grandchildern for a change not just your own personal greed. the end amen.
what did you drive to work today? just curious...
fumes, you think you're making witty remarks, but you're coming off as an idiot. Great job if that is your intention...
snicker. lose the ''we''! you're wrong on both points, how can that be?
clever, the literal in me fell for it!
There was recently some quibbling about climate change shutting down the gulf stream. Some back and forth as the issue was better understood. Maybe the same wrt Climate Change as the issue is better understood.
http://tinyurl.com/5c9vjw
I thought the most interesting parallel with the denial crowd isn't with AIDS research, but with tobacco. If you'll remember, almost as soon as the Surgeon General's report came out in 1964, there was a steady stream of "information" casting doubt on the statistics and catch phases like "the science isn't settled". Sound familiar? Evne though study after study showed smoking to be, ahem, an unwise health choice, there was a steady chorus of deniers. And when it was shown that, for some reason, smokers were less likely to develop Parkinson's, well, see, there are health benefits.
An interesting connection here is a fellow named Steve Milloy. In the 90's, he took seed money form Philip Morris and started the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. The TASSC prometed the ideas that smoking really wasn't that bad for you and second hand smoke is not a health issue. Sound Science, indeed. You can catch Steve these days as the Junk Science man on Fox (where else?) where he spews his bilge on, amongst other things, global warming hysteria. It's a small world after all.
See Bob Ostertag's Profile
Nice! Thanks!
I didn't know about this Malloy character nor that he is currently on Fox. Thanks for the catch!
Something that others have said and I will repeat it as well. Simply saying they are Huffpost readers as though all of us are of the same political bent is completely wrong.
There are a TON of trolls here who come and jump all over a variety of subjects BUT bring up Al Gore and they go berserk. I mean seriously berserk.
The Flat Earthers are like the Brooks Brothers army that showed up to disrupt the recount. They figure if they swarm and swarm they can outshout those who know the truth.
Flat Earthers are just dumb. They can spout all the babble from the Exxonmobile bought off "scientists" until the cows come home, but the rest of us know the truth.
Must suck to be a Flat Earther.
It must suck to be a flat earther...It must suck to know that at one time there was a "scientific consenus" that the earth was flat.
It must suck for you guys that the earth temp has gone down by 1 degree and erased all warming for the last hundred years.
It must suck that the probes that NASA and NOAA put in the oceans in 2000 were checked out and showed no abnormal warming.
It must suck to operate all the time without acknowledging some of the facts, not just a computer model.
It just must suck
say shaunhammer, just curious but what on earth do you think made all the ice disappear that once covered her? do you think that that process has just now conveniently stopped?
Actually Hammer you are wrong about any so called scientific consensus about a Flat Earth. There were those who claimed the earth was round by observation but because of POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS pressure were forced to retract their statements or else were just plain ignore because all you had to do was look out the window to see the world was flat. It was considered heresay to go against what the church said or what the power in charge believed.
BUT those who knew said as much for centuries. So please become informed yourself.
AS well one has to remember that NON Scientists were in charge of telling us whatever NASA found was. They lied constantly and were called out on it. IN some NASA papers one could actually read where the NON scientists would scratch out real science and put in their own words.
I'll believe the reports when we get the real reports and not those that just like the Flat Earth believers once upon a time, where we are told what to believe because of a president more beholden to oil companies than the truth or America and who forced changes in NASA and other government reports ALL BECAUSE OF POLITICAL PRESSURE.
Sound familiar...Flat Earther?.
Are you living under a rock? It was all over the news for MONTHS that NASA SCIENTISTS were going nuts because the Bush administration flat out lied about NASA'S findings. The main scientist to howl the louded was a CONSERVATIVE, James Hansen, who has always voted Republican and is a fiscal and social conservative. The White House then went on a major smear campaign against NASA and painted Hansen as a raging liberal with a political agenda to embarass the White House. Then NASA actually released their actual original reports and news agencies like the Washington Post got the White House edited version and they showed them side by side, and the White house had literally just crossed out with a sharpie half of the reports information until the reports seemed to disprove global warming.
In response to this the Union of Concerned Scientists penned a huge Defense of Science petition trying to stop government interferance with scientific research. This group's entire existance is based around stopping government politicians from editing the SCIENTIST'S research.
Bob, you hit this one right out of the park with the bases loaded. BRAVO!
Look mate, don't bother with the drivelers. If you're new to the internet we call them trolls: the willfully ignorant who post just to prop up the semblance of a significant antithetical position when in fact there aren't that many.
Huffpost has its share of them. None of them ever speak anything true. Keep doing what you're doing mate, we hate'em too. Spread the good word.
Unfortunately too many Americans are greedy and will deny climate change because they can't come to terms with having to consume less.
we all know that adding salt to water doesn't change it's freezing poit. so it is with the atmosphere, add carbon dioxide or methane or any other organic compound to it and the ability of it to sequester heat is not affected.
Actually those of us who took high school chemistry know that adding salt to water does change its freezing point. We also know that carbon dioxide and methane are not organic compounds.
"we all know that adding salt to water doesn't change it's freezing poit."
If by "we" you mean just you, then yes you are correct. As for the rest of world, we know that salinity DOES indeed affect both the freezing and boiling points of water.
clever! the literal in me fell for it, ojorae. (how's that speakeasy?)
The Venusians thought global warming was a myth too.
I couldn't have put it better myself.
a Trillion dollars over 10 years, will replace nukes, coal and imported oil with clean solar and wind.
See my profile for details and links.
What!?! If we spend that much money on the future, how are we going to afford our wars now? Get real.
I've seen the light. andhakari. Let's scrap (recycle of course) all our weapons and build windmills. If we just say "PEETH", the rest of the world will reflexively follow us and say "PEETH" too. All conflict will cease. And we wil all live happily forever and ever and ever and ever.
The illusion of a large number of ignorant or misinformed commenters is mostly conjured up by a small number of individuals using multiple IDs as "sock puppets" to echo all the fake studies and findings supplied by lobbyists and industry wonks. There are no actual, credible scientists who dispute the global warming crisis, but there are plenty of people with political and economic agendas which center around continued dependence on carbon fuels and control of access to those resources.
There's big money at stake, and the carbon clique isn't going to let a little thing like global environmental collapse get in the way of wringing the last pennies from the dying hands of the human race as our extinction is made a certainty.
And there is obviously a number of "loyal Bushies" who can't stand the fact that Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for doing important work to benefit all humankind, while their boy George W. Bush was shown to be a lousy crook and a war criminal. So their agenda is simply to proclaim all global warming data as some sort of scam being perpetrated by Al Gore. That's pure envy at work.
So I don't think that the science-deniers posting at HuffPo actually believe what they're saying, they're just following orders from the people who pay them to spread the disinformation.
There are no, credible scientists who dispute global warming?
Are you suuuure about that?
just for fun - here are some
http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Qualifications_Of_Signers.html
no denier here.
really only interested in the solutions.
but I was welcomed as one of the few "warmers" when I posted a comment on the carbon tax at
"carbonchangedebate,org"
Only a few "warmers" dare enter there.
They seem to know what they're talking about.
I'm not saying I agree.
Only that it seems that way.
Unlike the Aids denialists, we, and especially our descendants, are going to die right along with the deniers. They aren't just risking their own future.
I'm very relieved our government is beginning to take this more seriously than some of their constituents are.
Great article.
Dude or Duder, find one peer review paper that proves climate change
either isn't happening or that proves CC is occurring and isn't principally caused by human activity.
Forget the sun activity, forget Mars and Pluto, forget the record ice caps that are not, forget the Moon
walk that didn't happen, forget the New World Order, the 1980's iceage, just link to peer reviewed research that proves the above.
Let's assume you are right. No global warming.
We have, however, proven that increases in CO2 are man-made.
And we've proven that increases in CO2 are causing the acidification of the oceans.
And we've proven that acidification of the ocean is bad for life there.
So -- Should we still dump tons of CO2 into the air?
Mike
The Anti "Man-Made" Global Warming Resource
http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Technology/index.php?showtopic=2050
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