New Scientist has a barrage of articles on “denialism”, including one from DeSmog Blog misinformer Richard Littlemore, who runs with the tired old comparisons of today’s skeptical public to tobacco industry campaigns. He bashes what he calls “manufactured doubt” while at the same time ignoring the billions poured into the climate industry, including the funding he and his namesake publisher (Hoggan and Associates PR firm, who run DeSmog Blog) receives from that industry. It’s quite the sanctioned hatefest going on there. It is truly sad that like Scientific American, New Scientist has become nothing more that a political science mouthpiece, and a shell of its former self.
Here’s links to all the New Scientist articles on “denial”. They did include one article from Michael Fitzpatrick that is a feeble attempt at balance, but even it too strays into the ugly territory of comparing climate skeptics with AIDS deniers.
- Special report: Living in denial Opinion > Special Report p35 From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march. Why do so many people refuse to accept the evidence?
- Living in denial: When a sceptic isn’t a sceptic Opinion > Special Report pp36-37 There are clear lines between scepticism and denial, but telling them apart can be tricky in the real world, says Michael Shermer
- Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth Opinion > Special Report pp38-41 Denialism satisfies deep emotional needs. That makes it easy to encourage and hard to counter, says Debora MacKenzie
- Living in denial: How corporations manufacture doubt Opinion > Special Report p41 If the truth is inconvenient, put up a smokescreen instead. It works wonders for big business, argues Richard Littlemore
- Living in denial: Unleashing a lie Opinion > Special Report pp42-43 It’s easy to send a lie flying around the world, and almost impossible to shoot it down, says Jim Giles
- Living in denial: Questioning science isn’t blasphemyOpinion > Special Report p44 Michael Fitzpatrick argues that calling an opponent a denier is illiberal, intolerant and ineffective
- Living in denial: The truth is our only weapon Opinion > Special Report p45 We must let denialists be heard, and respond with patience, vigilance and tireless rebuttal, says Michael Shermer
Scepticism has contributed a great deal to science and humanity over the centuries. It is a natural component of scientific inquiry and, as such, should be sought after, not reviled. It is incomprehensible why a scientific journal would seek to legitimise this distorted view of scepticism.
A large part of my unpringing was being taught to observe my world and question why. I believe truth is relative to social and intellectual constraints and, as such, is not a constant, but something we should always be seeking to advance and enrich.
Articles such as, “Why sensible people reject the truth” and “The truth is our only weapon” demonstrate a blatant unwillingness to advance scientific knowledge.
I would argue denial is very real, but it is not exclusive to sceptics. In our modern, secularised society, it is not surprising Environmentalism has become the new religion; sceptics the heretics who are threatening its foundation. I sincerely believe history will chronicle today’s treatment of climate change sceptics as another example of persecution through millennia.
“Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.” —Andre Gide
I don’t deny the existence of ManBearPig; I simply haven’t seen any evidence for it yet.
Maybe what is needed is a series on “Living with Climate Phobia” or “The Modern Social Illness of Climaneurosis”. Fear of C02 is simply unnatural. I’m guessing the issues involved may be Oedipal, but further investigation will be necessary.
Quick Note to the New Scientist:
We the skeptics do not deny that the climate is changing, climate change is as certain as water change on a river bend. We the skeptics are skeptical about the ability to know where climate is going to be next year, next decade and next century and even more skeptical that any warmist actually understands the mechanisms of climate to know what was driving climate last year or last decade or last century.
I personally understand that every generation will have it’s own group of hubristic phrenologists who are certain beyond doubt (and reason) that they have solved some aspect of the complex world. At this point, however, we are leaving the somewhat quaint realm of phrenological quackery and into the truly regrettable push for climatologically driven economic eugenics.
You will be stopped. Truth will win out. Try just once to lose with some damn dignity.
Wow. Just… wow!
Let me just set the record straight. I have never denied that the Earth’s climate changes. On the contrary, the climate of this planet IS changing, and has been since it was formed billions of years ago. I accept that as an immutable truth – the climate IS changing.
What I cannot accept, is that humans are causing the Earth’s climate to change merely by our paltry emissions of carbon dixode through use of our burning of various fuels in order to keep our lives and livelyhoods going forward.
I am still convinced that – as it has been for billions of years before – the planet’s climate changes are entirely due to “natural” causes, that we live on a non-sentient rocky planet that simply is completely indifferent to the needs of the human race. It doesn’t have a consciousness therefore it doesn’t care about us one iota. The planet doesn’t need “saving” as the greenies say it does, and that anyone who says “we need to save the planet” is suffering from a mental illness of a disturbing and dangerous kind – i.e. dangerous to all the other human beings on this planet who care about getting on with their lives and those of their offspring.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about my local environment. Not at all, I care very much about pollution, and by that I mean that it is important not to poison our food, water, and air – for the sake of myself, my family and others around me.
But these guys! There they go again, calling me and my ilk “deniers”, as if I’m some kind of crazy guy, where in fact it is they who are the crazy ones, expounding doom and gloom and exclaiming that The Panet Must be Saved.
I also stopped subscribing to New Scientist a few years back, as I realised that it was becoming nothing more than a mouthpiece for these crazies.
Wow. Just… frackin’ wow!
I remember specifically being called a “denier” and promoter of “hate speech.” There is an aspect of the the AIDS issue that is quite analogous to the AGW hysteria:
When I was in medical training in the early 1980’s, AIDS came on the scene along with a mnemonic: “the 4 H’s of AIDS—-Homosexuals, Hemophiliacs, Heroin Addicts, and Haitians”. No one understood the disease at first. HIV had not yet been discovered. AIDS was seen almost exclusively in these 4 groups. So the epidemiology was front and center in helping to study the disease, as well as in helping to diagnose it in individual patients with vague symptoms.
In the mid-80’s, a coalition of the self-interested, specifically gay activists and the AIDS research community, developed a loose organized push to scare the hell out of the general population. They promoted the frightening notion, in every way they could get away with, that AIDS was soon going to be as common among Heterosexual, non-drug addicts, as Herpes and that soon millions of regular folks would be getting the bad news form their doc’s.
This was always a fraud, and a grab for research and treatment dollars. The widespread heterosexual AIDS in Africa and parts of Asian could already then be traced to high risk sexual behavior prevalent in those affected cultures. Americans who simply avoided the high risk behaviors never had more than a miniscule risk of AIDS. Yet the push worked. AIDS became what I call a “sacred disease” and AIDS research was funded way out of proportion to the risk it presented for the average person. This funding that did not go to the more widespread, if mundane threats, like lung, colon, and prostate cancer, heart disease, and stroke, which together are hundreds of times more important diseases than AIDS in terms of real risk for average people.
So AIDS gained religiosity and political distortion thereby, much like AGW today.
R. de Haan says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:13 am
Cap & Trade is on the Senate floor again, with the compliments from Maurice Strong, George Soros, Al Gore and all the other hacks who belong behind bars
Don’t blame these ambitious kids by its bad behaviour, they are just diposable servants, butlers, stewards. They are convinced a ruling post will be asigned to them. This is the most funny part: They will be discarded as useless after the Global Governace is approved in Cancun, as it always has been and it always will be.
Poor Al Baby!…so brave, handsome and intelligent he thought he was!
Special Report p35 From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march. Why do so many people refuse to accept the evidence?
17 years later, I’m still waiting to see some that is conclusive. I’m not alone either, there’s now 14 others in my circle who are debating the issue amongst ourselves now that it’s out in the open. I’m not sure if it’s relevant or not, but several of these people were very reluctant (if not afraid) to speak up about the topic, as most people on the green side of the coin are under quite a bit of pressure to accept and support the narrative. Derision and ridicule are the order of the day when we stray off-message.
Isn’t the psych term for this projection?
What an embarassing pile of anti scientific garbage.
The only people still in denial are those who are denying that the risks and problems of AGW has not been vastly over stated.
From the article:
New Scientist has a barrage of articles on “denialism”…
Psychological projection. It is Al Gore’s acolytes who wrongly believe the climate was static for a thousand years before anthropogenic CO2 emissions increased.
They base their belief on Michael Mann’s repeatedly debunked Hokey Stick chart.
This is simply evidence that skeptics are winning the debate. Look for the alarmists to become more shrill as time marches on. It’s interesting how backwards their arguments are. I know of no skeptic that assumes the climate is static. Quite the contrary, skeptics know our climate is dynamic and is always changing and it should. It is the alarmists that seem to believe the climate would be basically static if it weren’t for mankind and his evil ways of interfering with the “natural” cycles.
“Denialism satisfies deep emotional needs. That makes it easy to encourage and hard to counter”
You mean the “deep emotional need” to avoid the UN imposing 23 trillion in “climate debt” on developed nations, based on acausal, unfalsifiable, voo-doo climate science? That deep emotional need?
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
May 14, 2010 at 9:11 am
“So what is it about millions of us who believed in global warming hysteria for years but then realised it didn’t add up? Did an evil corporation put something in my tea that killed my Marxist leanings?”
_______________________________________________________________________
Like the rest of us you grew up. All the discrepancies you had ignored finally added up to being just too much. Once you actually started to examine those discrepancies you realized you had been fed a pack of lies with just enough truth to keep you credulous, at least that is what happened to me.
Although I saw the fallacy in Marxism at age ten after listening to my brother and father arguing for a summer.
I ran a small company in the uk, for 25 years and tried as best i could to give my customers the best service possible. My products and services included a 10 year guarantee and because i fulfilled all of my obligations to my customers, i never made the fortune that others in the same business made. The best advice that was ever given to me was “never ever be seduced by your own advertising” It seems to me that NS is suffering from just such a malady. Phrases like “THE TRUTH” have no place in science magazines and the fact that they dont realise this is to their detrement.
I would be interested to know if their circulation is rising or falling. The latter would be frightening.
watch out for guest posts in NS from Chris Hune (Misspelled I Know) the new minister for climate change in the UK. Very very depressing.
I did of course mean, the former
As I have stated before with alarmists, its not that we deny that climate changes, that was never in dispute and they know it. We question that humans are driving the climate in a disastrous and measurable way that can be scientifically proven in repeatable observations (climate models are not evidence).
More to the point we also question the merit of any taxation scheme that claims to be able to control world climate for the better.
New Scientist must be run by Tiny Tim fans who sang this song too much when they were kids or stoned hippies
New Scientists Maturity Level = 0
Only children should argue by calling names.
It’s sad edition for a well loved magazine. They seem to have fallen for the sad tactic of ” if you can’t challenge the idea, attack the person” However we need to stop confusing politics with science. As a European style lefty and evironmentalist , I have grave concerns with climate theory. That does not make me right wing. If we accuse proponants of climate theory as “lefties” they could refer to us as right wing capitalists which just destroys constructive debate based on good evidence.
Al Gore’s Weather (AGW) :
Ah am not now; nor, have Ah ever been a member of the AGW Party. Ah was, howevah, Treasurer of the Wobblies when Ah was a green youth.
This is a whitewash. Here is the reason: “when unknown hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mails”.
…-
“The Climategate Chronicle
How the Science of Global Warming Was Compromised
To what extent is climate change actually occuring? Late last year, climate researchers were accused of exaggerating study results. SPIEGEL ONLINE has since analyzed the hacked “Climategate” e-mails and provided insights into one of the most unprecedented spats in recent scientific history.
Is our planet warming up by 1 degree Celsius, 2 degrees, or more? Is climate change entirely man made? And what can be done to counteract it? There are myriad possible answers to these questions, as well as scientific studies, measurements, debates and plans of action. Even most skeptics now concede that mankind — with its factories, heating systems and cars — contributes to the warming up of our atmosphere.
But the consequences of climate change are still hotly contested. It was therefore something of a political bombshell when unknown hackers stole more than 1,000 e-mails written by British climate researchers, and published some of them on the Internet. A scandal of gigantic proportions seemed about to break, and the media dubbed the affair “Climategate” in reference to the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon. Critics claimed the e-mails would show that climate change predictions were based on unsound calculations. ”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,694484,00.html
New Scientist has become nothing more that a political science mouthpiece, and a shell of its former self.
Typo – should read than.
They’ve almost reached the point were they’re going to blame the skeptical movement on the International Jewish Banker’s conspiracy. We’ve already been called Nazis so what else is there?
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram says:
May 14, 2010 at 10:06 am
New Scientist must be run by Tiny Tim fans who sang this song too much when they were kids or stoned hippies
LMAO!
What a visionary (LSD).
I can’t even get myself to read the linked articles… because I know they just frustate me and thoroughly piss me off by insulting my intelligence.
I do have to admit that for me, watching these guys is like watching the reality-TV shows my wife watches…curled toes caused by replacement-shame.
What gall. What incompetence. At least, N Sc no longer had a reputation to lose.