In an email exchange a few months ago for another story, historian Naomi Oreskes counseled me that climate denial would only get more bold and unhinged as the impacts of climate change became more obvious.
With their rhetoric around the Paris climate talks,
anti-science firebrands are making their nemesis, Dr. Oreskes, seem prescient.
Attorney Arkady Bukh, guest blogging on
Anthony Watts' go-to website for climate denial, drew a lengthy analogy between
advocates of action on climate change and the “People’s Temple”
religious cult.
Leader Jim Jones, a former San Francisco
street preacher, ordered over 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide in
Guyana in 1978. They complied. Now, 37 years after their tragic demise,
they’re being compared to the science community, defense strategists,
environmental activists, and a pope.
Over at Breitbart, James Delingpole was
slightly more restrained, dismissing climate scientists as “talentless
low-lives who cannot be trusted.”
I reached out to the Climate Scientists’ Underground Lair, but their voicemail said they were all out selling drugs at middle schools.
A hardy perennial among denier memes is
flourishing: President Obama, they say, is a hypocrite because he arrived at
the Paris meet via a fuel-guzzling jet.
I can remember encountering this one as
far back as 1985, when a chemical industry exec told me that because I, too,
had used an aeroplane, I had no moral authority to write about anyone else’s
pollution. But I’m no Obama, and he’s drawn heavy flack as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck,
the National Review,
and others beat this dead horse.
I’m willing to give Obama some slack for
using Air Force One: Perhaps the carbon-neutral Presidential trireme is
back in drydock.
Rush Limbaugh postulated that “deranged people
…..and most of them are leftists” would take Obama’s embrace of climate
action as a cue to start America’s next mass shooting.
Lord Monckton, the theatrical British
peer, offered a different perspective: Instead of one-off acts of domestic
terrorism, he said, Obama’s game was teaming up with “malevolent
scientists,” using the climate summit to establish
a world totalitarian government.
Another central theme from the
denial-o-sphere is that distributing as much coal as possible throughout the
developing world will be the key to beating “energy poverty.”
Peabody Energy, who couldn’t lick
Appalachian poverty even while mining a century’s worth of its coal, is big on this one.
And Peabody’s learning a thing or two about its own poverty: Its
stock traded at $112 a share in 2001, and right now, it’s hovering at $10.
Patrick Moore, an early Greenpeace
leader who has spent the last quarter century in the employ of the chlorine
industry, the timber industry, the nuclear industry, the aquaculture industry
and others who need an environmental PR boost, officially weighed in as an ocean acidification
denier.
In a report that appears to contain no
original research or indication of peer review, Moore defies a growing body of
research as well as a basic understanding of chemistry by pronouncing that
“alarmism” is responsible for findings—original research and peer-review
included—that the pH balance of the oceans is beginning to change.
Hopefully you get the gist of this by
now.
These people are crazy. Detached
from reality. Off the deep end. Not rowing with both oars in the
water. And while the U.S. media hasn’t entirely stopped giving them
oxygen, they’re now largely quarantined onto Fox News.
On Monday, a conference at an ironically-named Paris venue drew Moore, Monckton, and a host of denial cohorts, but according to Reuters, filled “just a handful of the 70 seats." Yes, there was plenty of room at the Hotel California.
On Monday, a conference at an ironically-named Paris venue drew Moore, Monckton, and a host of denial cohorts, but according to Reuters, filled “just a handful of the 70 seats." Yes, there was plenty of room at the Hotel California.
These people are crazy. Detached from reality. Off the deep end.
Not rowing with both oars in the water.
So why am I spending time on them?
They’re also the enablers of crippling
denial at the highest levels of the United States Congress, and at the core of
the Republican race for the 2016 Presidential nomination.
On Tuesday, Ted Cruz held a hearing
titled “Data or Dogma?” The
Senator and presidential hopeful teed up four denier faves to testify:
scientists John Christy, Judith Curry, William Happer, and, incredibly, Mark
Steyn.
Steyn is a conservative blogger who is
facing a defamation lawsuit for likening Penn State climate scientist Michael
Mann to Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach and convicted
serial child rapist.
Dr. Happer jumped the mother of all
sharks last year, when in a TV interview he likened the “demonization” of CO2 to the treatment
Jews received
under Hitler.
Their testimony, and that of Rear
Admiral David Titley, the lone witness from outside the deny-o-sphere, is here.
Steyn’s is particularly striking: In a
written statement prior to the testimony, he takes a swing at the National
Science Foundation and manages to work in references to the “Communist regimes
of Eastern Europe” and “the Baathist tyranny of Saddam Hussein.” He also
repeated the charge that got him hauled into court.
Sen. Cruz kicked things off by ticking
off a laundry list of oft-refuted claims: Polar ice is not declining, there’s
been no warming in 18 years, and, of course, that he’s all about science.
He also introduced Steyn as a “human
rights activist” for his role in toppling a Canadian anti-hate speech law.
Meanwhile, House Science Committee Chair
Lamar Smith continues his much-criticized witch-hunt of government scientists,
doubling down on threats to grill NOAA’s scientists and leadership.
Eight science organizations have
condemned Smith’s crusade. Perhaps more significantly, Mike Mann pointed
out in a New York Times op-ed that
reasonable Republicans would also condemn such forays, but not anymore.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
worked overtime to undermine U.S. efforts to push for an accord. And Cruz
is hardly alone among the GOP presidential contenders.
Only three longshots—Jeb Bush, John
Kasich, and Chris Christie—have made occasional acknowledgements that
maybe-just-maybe we’ve got a climate problem. Last week, Christie flew
with the pack, blurting out “Hell No!” when
asked if the U.S. should lead on climate change.
Climate-denying demagogues are far from
the only reason that denial is grossly overrepresented in American politics.
An irrational campaign finance and primary system and underperforming
political journalism are major players, too.
But I neither expect nor want the Tom
Steyers and Mike Bloombergs of the world to outbuy the tsunami of money coming
from their ideological opposites. Nor do I expect the Lamar Smiths or Jim
Inhofes in Congress to feel unsafe in their denial—they routinely coast to
re-election by margins of three to one or better.
But maybe we’re reaching peak denial.
Maybe the ideology, money, and irrational fear that a cabal of scientists
and hippies are poised to take over the world are getting tired. Maybe
the crackpots will move on, as they’ve partially done with marriage equality.
Humor me on this, please.
The Daily Climate is an
independent, foundation-funded news service covering energy, the environment
and climate change. Find us on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email editor Brian Bienkowski at
bbienkowski [at] EHN.org. Find more Daily Climate stories in the TDC Newsroom