Chris Mooney is a journalist, author of The Republican War On Science and generally a kick-ass advocate for real science being part of public policy. He has a post up at Huffington (a non-mercury causes autism post so it's OK) about how the real problem with Republicans not accepting mainstream climate science is the denialism industry that has been created to oppose it.

Inspired by Jonathan Chait's recent column in the LA Times, there's been some renewed commentary about why so many Republicans reject mainstream science on the issue of climate change.

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However, the picture is more complicated, and I'd like to suggest that we consider some other factors:

1. The broad and longstanding conservative distrust of academia and "leftwing" campus intellectuals, including scientists. This allows many Republicans to dismiss large bodies of scientific research as essentially politicized and therefore safe to ignore.

2. The growth of ideological think tanks which provide alternative "facts" and alternative "knowledge" tailor-made for conservatives. It's not just that many Republicans reject mainline "science"; they actually have their own.

3. The growth of a rightwing media that quotes the think-tank "experts" and puts them on the air regularly--so that the sealed off alternative knowledge environment becomes complete and very hard for mainstream science to penetrate (especially when scientists themselves do not speak in a language designed to appeal to political conservatives).

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If you cling to these information sources, you can continue to ignore mainstream climate science no matter how much certainty--and it's now at 90 percent--gets ascribed to the conclusion that humans are cooking the planet.

I think Mooney is dead on. The machinery that has been created by the denialists is impressive. Multiple "think tanks" constantly railing against science, news networks who, while promoting "balance", only speak to one side. And a generalized distrust of those smarty-pants intellectuals. But what this really means, is that to really defeat the denialism in this context, the denialist support structure - the think tanks - need to be roundly discredited.

I hope we can help.

Labels: Chris Mooney, global warming denialism