Denialism Blog

Category: Global Warming Denialism

  • George Will Controversy Now Over – Mooney Cleans His Clock

    Congrats to Chris Mooney for getting his rebuttal to George Will published in the Washington Post. And kudos to the post for allowing his serious factual answer to an article composed entirely of crank arguments and lies (they also published a rebuttal from WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud dealing with the lies in Will’s article)

    Mooney does an excellent job, and points out the frank dishonesty not just regarding the sea ice data (the only point the obtuse Ombudsman would even talk about), but also how every other argument in the entire article represents flawed rhetoric. In particular I enjoyed how Mooney made an issue of the denialist tactics that were used, the cherry-picking of data, the use of inappropriate sources, etc. His final point I agree with very strongly:

    In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult. Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself.
    …
    Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists — following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence. That, in the end, is all that good science really is. It’s also what good journalism and commentary alike must strive to be — now more than ever.

    We can’t just hope people will recognize good scientific information when they hear it. It is important that those who present the information in the media have good standards by which they evaluate scientific information, and standards for the presentation of scientific results. The Washington Post initially failed to do so in this instance, hopefully they will evaluate Will’s factual claims more rigorously in the future, and subject his sources to a greater deal of scrutiny.

  • George Monbiot's Top Ten Climate Change Denialists

    His choices are interesting but I think he hits the highlights. After all he has fake experts Pat Michaels and Steve Milloy, and of course Christopher Monckton. I might disagree with the inclusion of a nobody like Sarah Palin. She’s a twit more than a real purveyor of disinformation like Marc Morano, or S. Fred Singer. He has included Inhofe so I guess that’s Morano-inclusive.

    What do you guys think? Any glaring omissions?

    And check out my piece at the Guardian on how to spot a climate change denialist.

  • WaPo's ombudsman just doesn't get it

    Is he being purposefully obtuse? Once again the ombudsman decides to defend George Will, but only on a single point.

    A key paragraph, aimed at those who believe in man-made global warming, asserted: “According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”

    Bizarrely, he acknowledges Will was wrong:

    It said that while global sea ice areas are “near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979,” sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere is “almost one million sq. km below” the levels of late 1979. That’s roughly the size of Texas and California combined. In my mind, it should have triggered a call for clarification to the center.

    But according to Bill Chapman, a climate scientist with the center, there was no call from Will or Post editors before the column appeared. He added that it wasn’t until last Tuesday — nine days after The Post began receiving demands for a correction — that he heard from an editor at the newspaper. It was Brewington who finally e-mailed, offering Chapman the opportunity to write something that might help clear the air.

    Will’s column is grossly dishonest, as we and others pointed out it wasn’t just sea ice, but the repeated misquote of a scientific paper and a whole host of dishonest statements. He’s apparently been misquoting one paper to push this “global cooling” nonsense since 1992 and basically recycling this same BS article for almost two decades!

    Alexander may be correct there is fact checking “on multiple levels”, but that does not change that it was incompetent, missed willful errors, and that there has not been a correction of Will’s mistakes or a repudiation of his incessant repetition of falsehoods like the myth of global cooling.

    For yet another week the Washington Post has failed to demonstrate accountability for its errors.

  • George Will – We must not allow his dishonesty to be ignored

    I’m heartened to see a broad disgust with George Will’s lies about climate science. After all it’s pretty extraordinary when a major syndicated columnist repeats a lie about science, not once, not twice but three times despite being corrected.

    PZ wishes he too could just make up his own facts, and Mike too is pleased the disgust is moving beyond the scientific community. Carl Zimmer at the Loom covers the broad mistakes made in the essay, and TPM documents how it was almost all lies. Mark Kleimen has caught on to the fact that in the end, this is just another conspiracy theory on par with HIV/AIDS denialism ( would add anti-vax denialism, 9/11 trooferism, or evolution denialism and every other kind – they’re all ultimately the same).

    It’s reassuring to me to see that people are catching on. When we hear pseudoscience drivel, it’s never unique. It always follows a specific method – the pseudoscientific method. We happen to call that method denialism.

  • The Global Warming Cranks – George Will officially in their ranks

    One would think given recent findings that antarctic warming is robust for instance, that the canard of antarctic cooling would go away. Or, that based on the round dismissal of the myth of 1970s global cooling warnings we’d stop hearing about that in the media too. But instead I’m watching TV last night and there’s all these unbelievable crank ads sponsored by the anti-regulation ideologues the Americans for Prosperity featuring fake expert John Coleman. His senseless rant against the stimulus and the evils of regulation is accompanied by text on the bottom of the screen declaring “global warming it is the hoax” and “it is the greatest scam in history”. It is amazing in this day and age that this shameless conspiracy theory is being broadcast on national television. There is no way that one can on the one hand describe anti-AGW denialism as skepticism, and at the same time be a proponent of such an absurd conspiracy that thousands of scientists around the world, and journals, and editors, and politicians are all in cahoots to falsify data about climate.

    But if there is a truism about crankery that I can come up with to explain the persistence of debunked arguments, it is that good ideas may come and go, but we’re stuck with the bad ones forever. For instance, we saw this weekend that George will still thinks there were predictions of global cooling in the 1970s. Scibling James decries George Will’s inability to read what he cites, but this is nothing new. George’s Willful Ignorance on this topic has persisted for years this isn’t the first time he’s misquoted that exact same article, or the second time either despite being corrected by others. His incompetence at judging sources, and his inability to stop citing false information shows he’s simply unwilling or unable to differentiate between legitimate and false information, or even read for comprehension for that matter.

    What can be our response to this consistent dishonesty from Will? A repeat of a cherry-pick not once, or twice, but three times despite this being clearly false? I think the only thing you can say about someone like this, a man who can’t be turned, is that they’re a crank.
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  • Chris Mooney on the deniers

    Welcome to the new year, and now that I’m back from a little family vacation I’d like to applaud PAL for the excellent job he did summarizing our thesis, and the job he’s done in general in the last year. I’m busy doing my last 3rd year clerkship in neurology (even though I’m graduating in 2009 – it’s complicated) and it’s wonderful to have him at our side fighting the good fight.

    Objects of interest in the last couple of weeks include (former?) framing ally Chris Mooney breaking with Matt Nisbett on the necessary language for addressing denialism. In his article defending the Obama administration’s appointment of real scientists like John Holdren or Jane Lubchenco, Mooney writes:

    Use of the Term “Denier. Holdren’s aforementioned op-ed, published in the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, is strongly worded about the problem of global warming “skepticism” or “denial”–and rightly so. It prompted a large volume of response, and Holdren has, in turn, answered his critics. It’s important to note that the op-ed wasn’t written when he was a representative of the president, and I would imagine that his language might not be as strong in the future. But in any event, I want to defend his, and anyone’s, right to use the term “denier” in a global warming context, something The Rocky Mountain News (among others) objects to. I am continually baffled by attempts to rule a perfectly good word out of bounds under the strange pretense that any use of it implies some type of connection with the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, which is the central complaint that global warming “skeptics” tend to make.

    “Denier” is defined in the dictionary as meaning “one who denies.” You will note that there are no Holocaust references. The verb “deny” means (among other things) “to refuse to recognize or acknowledge; disown; disavow; repudiate.” It does not specifically refer to the Holocaust either. Perhaps that’s because the word is massively older: As Dictionary.com notes of the etymology (relying on the online etymology dictionary):

    c.1300, from O.Fr. denier, from L. denegare, from de- “away” + negare “refuse, say ‘no,’ ” from Old L. nec “not,” from Italic base *nek-“not,” from PIE base *ne- “no, not” (see un-).

    Why should we not properly use this time honored word? In particular, the idea that calling someone a “global warming denier” is an implicit comparison with Holocaust denial is absurd. When one uses words like “denier,” “denial,” and “deny,” there is no necessary reference to one particular species of the broader phenomenon, and thus no more invocation of Holocaust denial than of those who denied Christ or those who are in denial about their crumbling marriages. Global warming deniers do not have the power to redefine words that long preceded them, and that will long outlive them.

    I tend to agree, although I of course have a bias towards referring to their tactics in general as denialism – or the systematic use of distracting tactics to prolong debate over settled science and historical facts.

    I’d also like to point out some fun items from my denialist RSS feeds over the last couple of weeks. For one HuffPo deserves credit for debunking some odious historical revisionism by Fox News on the Great Depression and this nonsense that FDR prolonged it. We should give credit where credit is due.

    And I couldn’t resist noting some hysterical nonsense from crazy Joe Mercola. At the same time he decries a war on the public by modern medicine he in the next breath suggests that you forgo food and obtain all your sustenance by staring at the sun. I can’t make this stuff up.

    HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore has died from AIDS and I won’t hedge and say it was merely likely it was from AIDS. A 52 year old HIV positive individual with bilateral pneumonia treated multiple times in 6 months has AIDS until proven otherwise. This woman and her daughter were killed by her foolish ideology and I have no sympathy for her similarly deluded husband. I dislike discussing the medical diagnoses of individuals (even public ones) on a blog, but in the case of HIV/AIDS denialism this is an important public health issue, and it’s important the denialists don’t get away with further revising history and science by suggesting this was anything other than what it obviously is – another death from HIV/AIDS denialism. As Ben Goldacre mentions in his coverage, HIV/AIDS denialism may be responsible for as many as 340,000 deaths so far. This is denialism that kills.

    Finally for Michael Egnor (who no doubt would find our attacks on HIV/AIDS denialism to be “arrogant”) I’d suggest reading this Lancet article on adaptive evolution and antibiotic resistance. The real arrogant ones aren’t the ones fighting for legitimate scientific discourse but those that reject the most established fields in science simply because they “see design.” The issue includes several articles on the impact of evolution on medicine and is a wonderful read.

    With school, travel and interviews things will be slow at first this year, but hopefully they’ll ramp up before long.

  • Obama Meets With Gore, Rejects Denial

    It seems Obama didn’t get Nisbet’s memo. Just watching on CNN, future president Obama says:

    The time for delay is over, the time for denial is over. We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That is what I intend my administration to do. I think what is exciting about this conversation is that it is not only a problem but an opportunity.

    I can not be happier that we have a president who is willing to stand up and call global warming denialism what it is.

  • Cranks cry persecution, Nisbet listens

    Ever since we began writing here about denialism we’ve emphasized a few critical points about dealing with anti-science. For one, denialists aren’t interested in legitimate debate – they are not honest brokers and the tactics they use exist to artificially extend discussion of settled scientific issues. Second, one of the most time-honored traditions of cranks is claiming persecution in response to rejection of their nonsense. Take for a recent example Coby’s exposure of the “environmentalists want to jail global warming denialists” myth. You don’t need to do anything to make a crank cry persecution, if they have to they’ll just make up some persecutory event or tale.

    So, I don’t have a lot of tears to shed for global warming denialists who insist they are being falsely compared to holocaust deniers. In that they use the same tactics as holocaust deniers to create the false appearance of debate, they are the same, true, but the comparison largely ends there. Unlike holocaust deniers their ideological motivations are different. And, of course, any reasonable person realizes that holocaust denial has not made the use of the term “denial” itself an assertion of antisemitism. If a doctor confronts an alcoholic about their denial of their alcoholism, they’re not suggesting they hate Jewish people too. When a psychiatrist tells their patient they’re in denial, that’s hardly comparing them to the Nazis. When we say a public figure has issued a denial of some scandal, we’re not suggesting they advocate a new holocaust. And finally, when we suggest any number of other people are denying reality, whether it be holocaust denial, evolution denial, HIV/AIDS denial, etc., the point is clear that we are referring to their methods more than their motives which are necessarily varied. It should also be clear that holocaust denial has not ruined the word deny or denial or denier for any number of other applications – this is just another example of denialists claiming persecution after being called on their BS.

    Nisbet disagrees, and he sides with Timothy Ball of all people who is very upset that he’s being called a “denier” in this PRI segment. Cry me a river. Bizarrely Nisbet suggests that in this radio segment he is so persuasive that we will never use the word “denier” again. I disagree, and it sounds like the reporter, Jason Margolis, disagrees as well:

    The relevant section follows (forgive transcription errors):
    (more…)

  • A blog recommendation

    Everyone this morning should check out a new favorite website of mine the International Journal of Inactivism. Frank Bi has created a wonderful little catalog of global warming conspiracy theories that nicely illustrate the fundamental defects of reasoning used by the denialists. In particular, I enjoyed his genealogy of climate conspiracy theories.

    When we first started here, our first post after the introduction was on the non-parsimonious conspiracy as one of the primary indicators of pseudoscientific argument. Frank Bi has done a wonderful job showing just how dependent the global warming denialist arguments are on these absurd premises. Here’s to hoping he keeps it up.

  • The APS should have known better

    Those reading Deltoid’s coverage of the APS fiasco are probably up to date on this issue, but I feel like we need to discuss the APS failure in more detail. For those unaware of the latest in global warming denialist nonsense, the American Physical Society made the foolish mistake of entertaining global warming denialists by giving Christopher Monckton space in their newsletter to “challenge” global warming. As Lambert demonstrates in his post, the factual and calculation errors are a joke, but the strategy error is demonstrated by the fact that every global warming crank from tobacco apologist Steven Milloy to creationist William Dembski at UD is now celebrating the supposed end of a consensus on climate.

    Milloy leads with a story that “APS ENDS CONSENSUS MYTH!” and all the other cranks with no regard for disreputable sources have happily followed suit. Creationists like Dembski, happy to promote any conspiracy theory about “mainstream” science that they think oppresses cranks like him cheerfully joins in. This is despite the fact that the APS has not changed it’s position on global warming, the article itself is a joke, and it is not even in the peer-reviewed literature. Monckton is crying foul because he thinks that a piece in a newsletter represents peer review. How embarrassing is it for them that because the piece was subjected by a review by an editor that he thinks this is peer review? Do we really have to explain what peer-review actually is to these people? Are they so ignorant? Clearly the answer is yes.

    Peer review means that your paper is shared with experts in the field and they are allowed to challenge statements made in the paper and the author has to rebut or provide more data to address their concerns. Peer review is not having a single editor look over the paper for egregious errors; if this were actually a peer-reviewed publication, such a review would represent a massive failure of the review system to have a publication with only an editor reading over the paper. For those that haven’t been through the process, peer-review is usually grueling, must involve more than just an editor looking over the paper – often several leading researchers in a field – and usually requires an author to address substantive challenges to their argument. Monckton’s stunning ignorance of the process is telling.

    That being said the bigger failure here is that of the APS not realizing they were dealing with a den of snakes when they opened up any publication to the likes of Monckton. Never mind that Monckton’s paper is about as big a challenge to the theory of anthropomorphic climate change as a poodle wearing boxing gloves is to Mike Tyson; as has been said before, denialists aren’t interested in debate, they are only interested in the appearance of debate. This non-peer-reviewed publication in a newsletter is being touted by cranks all over the internet as proof that global warming is being debated in the halls of academia because it is under the auspices of the APS. When the APS clarifies, correctly, that this is not an example of peer-reviewed publication, they get attacked by Milloy and others as stifling debate and caving to the global warming conspiracy.

    To sum up. Monckton has published tripe that is clearly nonsense, is not peer-reviewed, and in no way has APS changed it’s position on global warming. The lesson is that when dealing with crooks, the truth doesn’t matter, and they will twist the truth to serve their purposes if you give them an opening. The APS has failed to realize that these people are not honest brokers in a debate. There are few clearer examples of this phenomenon than this blatant prevarication by the likes of Monckton, Milloy and others promoting this “end to consensus” or cover-up by the APS. This is not debate, this is denialism, and APS has learned the difference the hard way.