Climate Sunday: Climate Change Denialism is the New Red-Baiters

With a new climate assessment released by the White House, it sure does seem like there has been a lot of denialism hitting the airwaves. It struck me that as recently as six or seven years ago, you could still find conservatives who supported things like cap and trade, or acknowledged that global warming was real, at least, but it just doesn't seem to be the case anymore. The position on the right seems to have devolved somewhat,  And it's really bloody boring, because I feel like I have seen this kind of thing before.

Take Charles Krauthammer, who thinks climate science is a religion or a superstition, or like rain dances. So either he wants to denigrate religion (nice work, fella!) or he simply has no earthly idea how science works (and please don't bug me with his having been educated as a doctor, because just go and watch Youtubes of Paul Broun or Phil Gingrey and ask yourself if that means someone understands a daggone thing about science).  This is patently absurd because science is driven by observation and experimentation--not faith. Science either works, or it doesn't. Results can be reproduced, or they can't. He's been on this nonsense for a while now,  but it has never made sense. No--if Krauthammer thinks there is evidence that refutes the current consensus regarding climate change, he needn't speculate abut whether the science world or the environmentalist world would change--he just needs to bring it. But he hasn't got any, and it makes him feel bad. So he mouths some shit about rain dances, because naturally, you can't be snotty and denigrating about environmentalism without also putting down Native American culture, because, I presume, if you're an ass, you're an ass all the way....



But let's move on to George Will because, wow.

There is a sociology of science. Scientists are not saints in white laboratory smocks. They have got interests like everybody else. If you want a tenure-track position in academia, don't question the reigning orthodoxy on climate change. If you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this country, the federal government, don't question its orthodoxy. If you want to get along with your peers, conform to peer pressure. This is what's happening.

Because the oil and coal billionaires could not possibly outspend the government grant process, and because there is no such thing as peer-review, where, if your work is basically just bad, the other scientists pick on you and tell you you are sciencing wrong and stop it, please.  (No, seriously--if you are doing bunk science, other scientists will actually find out because, duh. They know how, okay? And checking each others' work is kind of how consensus happens.) Also, Will bases an awful lot of his denialism message on "global cooling" because this one time, he read an article in Newsweek circa 1979. From 1940 to 1970, there was a localized cooling trend that may have had to do with aerosols. We don't use those as much as before, because chlorofluorocarbons, a major propellant of aerosols, stopped being used because of the ozone layer--which we were putting a hole in and realized we needed very much, all things considered. The whole global cooling scare was kind of Slate-pitchy and not really a consensus on the drift of climate science. As early as the fifties, people kind of knew what end was up and did reference warming as the problem. Seriously, he reads one article in 1979 in Newsweek (or was it Time--not a peer-reviewed journal, anyways) and now he can debunk climate science? That is rich. That is almost Al Gore, Inconvenient Truth royalties rich, but, missed it by this much.




My people call it accepting facts, conservative people seem to think it's called bullying, when they are outclassed and don't know how to respond because they have a kind of illiteracy problem.

But I think I see the unifying factor when I see how the climate change denialism is wrought through the communications of religious right figures like Pat Robertson, and 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls like Marco Rubio: the worry is, it interferes with capitalism. It's an obvious commie plot, because it might hurt profits for some people sometimes.  And hurting profits is bad, and bad things that hurt profits are Communist, so, ermm, I guess they are saying an environmentalist is like a watermelon--green on the outside, red on the inside. 

Except we aren't. I think the propaganda has been to label environmentalism as sort of commie and job-destroying because that is the very worst thing in the Righty lexicon. But of course people who sell solar panels and other clean energy solutions are also looking to get paid, and just think their viewpoint needs equal time. Like, when I, as a liberal, hear Al Gore is rich, all I think is, no duh and probably  because people care about the environment.

No to all this--scientists aren't cooking up ways to economically strap the US. O no, They are just discussing what they think will happen. It really isn't that political.