Deniers

Below are links to help you debunk climate change deniers and skeptics.

Here is a good website I recently discovered: Skeptical Science

Scientists Debunk a Favorite Denier Claim about Climate Change

It wasn’t that hard. You may have heard that there were farmers and Vikings in Greenland only a few hundred years ago — the theory that the earth is warming again because of natural “cycles” enjoyed by ancient farmers is debunked and thoroughly explained here.

Seriously, read the article!

It’s really very well established that climate change is happening now, and is caused by human activity. It’s not a mystery or a debate and hasn’t been for a long time. Thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject have been accepted for years.

“Scientists” online who say they are scientists who don’t believe in global warming are frauds. Most if not all of them are not scientists at all, but just people who say they are. Ask them for proof — they won’t have any. Just like Orly Taitz is a real lawyer and I’m the Queen Druid of Stonehenge, deniers who claim to be “scientists” to unsuspecting audiences online are people living in a fantasy world where they pretend to be something they aren’t. They are delusional and dishonest. I’ve dealt with many of these people myself. Some of them are so uneducated they can barely write. Many of them are simply marketing or salesmen of various kinds, often working for “think tanks” or lobbyists or energy companies. If someone online claims to be a scientist who doesn’t believe in global warming, ask them for proof of their degree, their work, their peer-reviewed papers, and ask them to send you their papers — on the subject of climate change. They won’t have any.

Most global warming deniers online who say they are “experts” and “scientists” are either overstating their qualifications or are outright frauds and fakes, including the “denier” politicians. The rest are just ignorant or people who have no respect for science or their own political agenda.

Many online climate change deniers and those who are in denial about global warming (same thing, essentially) are usually operatives for right-wing anti-tax politicians, either formally or informally. They troll websites and comment every where they can, using the same talking points over and over again. There is no originality, which is how you can spot them easily.

Don’t waste your time chasing down their latest petitions or lists of “scientists” who claim that there is no such thing as global warming. This is meant to put people off track, confuse people, and waste your time. These lists and petitions they send you to look at are fakes and frauds, just like the people who put them together. The names on them and the credentials are invented, either completely or in part.

Remember, you can say anything online and get away with it if people are gullible enough. I could say I’m a physicist and who could prove me wrong? Except I’m not. I’m not a scientist at all. But I bet if I said I was, most people would believe me. The fake scientists the denialists invent do it every day and get away with it

The difference is, to be blunt, that people who are worried about global warming are honest and have no motives whatsoever to mislead people. They want to educate and help people understand what a huge problem climate change really is because they care about the future, and that people survive, and as many people as possible survive the climate change yet to come. That outcome is by no means certain at all, and the deniers are hurting the chances of future generations of people surviving climate change.

The skeptics you meet in real life are just people who don’t know any better, that the deniers online and in organizations are trying to influence. It’s our job to educate them.

Below is a great page in general on the consensus about climate change, with quotes from just about everyone.

The Consensus on Global Warming:– From Science to Industry & Religion

How do we deal with Denialists, those folks who claim there is no global warming, or say the earth is warming, but it’s not human’s fault? Just as bad are skeptics, especially if they are loud skeptics. They say it’s “natural”, or sunspots, or solar flares, or volcanoes, or even that the sun’s bubble is shrinking! This is from a national radio show –

“…. [they] noted that the sun’s protective “bubble” has been shrinking, which makes Earth more susceptible to harmful cosmic rays (view related graphics). We’ve been seeing dramatic weather events, with extremes in cold and heat, and more floods and drought…..”

causeofclimatechangeweb

Illustration by Shelly

Imagine the sun’s protective bubble shrinking! If that were true, it sounds like it would be very dangerous, but that’s not what’s causing climate change and severe weather events. Human activity is causing climate change to take the sharp upturn it’s taken in the last 50 years. Now the question is, can we stop it? In order to stop it, we might have to deal with Denialists. They are a strange breed. There seems to be no logic to their denial, just contrarianism. That’s a tough one to debate. I hope the following resources help. First, from ExxposeExxon. They haven’t updated their site in a long time, but this advice is good, and it’s still there. Follow the links for more info.

Some links to denialist organizations from the Union of Concerned Scientists is here.

Skeptical Science has a good debunking page.

Global Warming Deniers and ExxonMobil

WHY the confusion? | WHAT is a denier? | WHO are they? | HOW do we counter them?

WHY the confusion on global warming?

For more than a decade, the best science has been telling us that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate with even more alarming consequences. Extreme droughts and floods and longer-lasting and more frequent tropical storms are on the horizon. The consensus among scientists has been that the prime cause of warming is the emissions of heat-trapping gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels. So why has global warming been largely covered in the U.S. as a debate?

For years, a network of organizations have worked together to block action on global warming. In the words of the U.K.’s Royal Society, one of the most prestigious scientific academies in the world, these groups “misrepresent the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence.” This network has been consistently funded by ExxonMobil. Since at least 1998, ExxonMobil has spent $17 to $23 million to bankroll these groups.

Today, ExxonMobil is the only known oil giant directly bankrolling global warming denier groups. The funding is part of its continued involvement in an orchestrated plan to manufacture uncertainty around climate science.

The plan, made public by The New York Times in 1998 (see clip at right), and retold recently by the Union of Concerned Scientists, employed the same strategy and some of the same personnel as the tobacco industry. The memo laid out a plan to “identify, recruit and train” a small team of unknown scientists and declared that: “Victory will be achieved when uncertainties in climate science become part of the conventional wisdom” for “average citizens” and “the media.” Until now, the plan was successful. (Read more)

WHAT is a denier?

Global Warming Denier [di-nahy-er] An individual or organization that denies and distorts the science and urgency of global warming as assessed by the world’s foremost authority on global warming, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC is the U.N. body that was set up in 1988 to comprehensively assess all the published climatic research. The IPCC has issued four comprehensive assessments since 1990. In 2007, after six years of work completed by 2,500 scientific expert reviewers from 130 countries, the IPCC concluded with 90 percent certainty that emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities have caused “most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century.” (Overview of 2007 IPCC assessments.)

WHO are the deniers?

The network of global warming deniers includes corporate lobbyists, front groups and free market anti-government organizations that try to affect public opinion and policy on global warming. They work together to form an echo chamber of views that appear to be coming from a large, unrelated constituency. In reality, they sit on each other’s boards, publish each other’s writings, form coalitions, use the same scientists, lobby Congress, and spread identical arguments. They often opine on additional environmental issues including, repealing the Endangered Species Act, opening up the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling, promoting liquid coal, and bringing back the toxic pesticide DDT.

Now, advice from Climate Progress, who wrote a three part series on this.

Part 1 — Use figures of speech
Part 2 — Use Irony
Part 3 — Master Metaphor

Part 4 — Extended Metaphor

Also, increase your debating skills with persuasion:

See Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1 and

Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”

P.S. Climate change and global warming are real.

~~ And now the mother of all skeptic studies, if you have the time to go through it all (it’s almost like a course of study) — Grist’s page on How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic ~~

Series Intro

Below is a complete listing of the articles in “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming. There are four separate taxonomies; arguments are divided by:

This is only the beginning. To really delve into this topic (it seems to involve advanced psychology, not to mention patience), GO HERE!

For more informative information, see: (thanks for this list to greenfyre)

The Psychology of Climate Denial

Academic

Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults’ mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter

Just for fun

Denier Myths

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Statement of Futurism Now

June 29, 2010

Futurism Now is a pro-science and pro-environment website. It’s pro-action on climate change. The purpose of this site is not to host discussions or debates. The purpose of this site is to put out information that educates people on climate change and environmental issues. Its purpose is also to counteract climate change deniers, so the public will support action on climate change and other things that protect the environment.

This is not the site of an organization, this is not a big news website, this is not a forum, this is not a “fair and balanced” news organization. This is the website of one person. Like other blogs and privately owned websites, I run this site exactly as I want to and do not claim to be a news organization. I delete climate change denier comments because part of the purpose of this website is to undo the damage climate deniers have done to the world. I’m proud that I am a gatekeeper for insane pronouncements by ignorant, stupid, short-sighted people who don’t believe in climate change or global warming and simply exist on the anti-science dregs of the internet for their information on the biggest crisis in human history. More people should delete denier comments. The world would be better off if they did.

I firmly believe that climate change deniers have blood on their hands and will continue to harm the world until they are stopped. So I will continue to delete climate change denier comments. I don’t have to accept any comments from anyone at all, and I do so only to allow the smart, pro-science people who come across this website to add something positive to it. I make no apologies whatsoever for Futurism Now doing its microscopic part to try to save the world and counteract climate change denier nonsense.

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Borrowed from The Age of Stupid:

“Any comments from climate deniers/sceptics will be deleted. The debate about whether climate change is partly man-made is over. One of the key reasons we are now so desperately short of time in which to act to avert runaway climate change is that decades were lost to the deniers’ pointless, ill-informed, obfuscating arguments. See Climate Denial for more.”

That applies to this website. Now for the rest . . . . . .