Denialists are just plain rude

by Johnny Jet

Deep Climate investigation of denialist and “skeptic” attack on Hockey Stick temperature record

[Via ClimateScienceWatch]

The investigative blogger Deep Climate has been working to set the record straight on how an orchestrated campaign by members of Congress, industry-funded global warming denialist groups and PR operatives, and professional “skeptics” has spread misleading information about the paleoclimate temperature record while launching attacks on the integrity of leading members of the science community. Two recent posts at Deep Climate – “Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, part 1: In the beginning,” and “Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, part 2: The story behind the Barton-Whitfield investigation and the Wegman Panel,” should be read in their entirety, along with Richard Littlemore’s post at DeSmogBlog – “Wegman’s Report Highly Politicized – and Fatally Flawed: ‘Independent’ Hockey Stick analysis revealed as Republican set-up,” and Joe Romm’s post of additional supporting material, links, and references at Climate Progress.

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A very nice discussion of how denialism gets used by political forces, and others, to drive their own agenda. ‘Independent’ critiques by political bodies are often not independent at all. And when lawyerly rhetoric is the tool used rather than actual facts, you should be wary.

The hockey stick has not been debunked by researchers. In fact, several other studies have been done to determine if the initial report was correct and robust. Those have served to strengthen the hockey stick not weaken it. When people fail to include recent research in their debunking, you might be listening to a denialist.

This quote from an op/ed in the Guardian from December describes this as “Zombie arguments”:

More than all that, I can spot the same rhetorical themes re-emerging in climate change foolishness that you see in aids denialism, homeopathy, and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists.

Among all these, reigning supreme, is the “zombie argument”: arguments which survive to be raised again, for eternity, no matter how many times they are shot down. “Homeopathy worked for me,” and the rest.

Zombie arguments survive, immortal and resistant to all refutation, because they do not live or die by the normal standards of mortal arguments. There’s a huge list of them at realclimate.org, with refutations. There are huge lists of them everywhere. It makes no difference.

“CO₂isn’t an important greenhouse gas”, “Global warming is down to the sun”, “what about the cooling in the 1940s?” says your party bore. “Well,” you reply, “since the last time you raised this, I checked, and there were loads of sulphites in the air in the 1940s to block out the sun, made from the slightly different kind of industrial pollution we had then, and the odd volcano, so that’s been answered already, ages ago.”

And they knew that. And you know they knew you could find out, but they went ahead anyway and wasted your time, and worse than that, you both know they’re going to do it again, to some other poor sap. And that is rude.

The goal of this is to make it much harder for researchers to actually do their jobs. And if they show their frustration with the constant bombardment of zombie arguments, so much the better. “Those elitist scientists were rude to me for simply asking a question.”

As a biologist, this behavior is all too familiar. Creationists make it one of their primary tools. That and quote-mining, which is also seen in almost every form of denialism. We have created websites to direct people with actual questions to learn some answers. Skeptical Science is one for climate change. while TalkOrigins is for evolution.

It helps prevent some of the frustration. Denialists should check those sites first then come back with arguments that have not already ben debunked there. That would be very helpful, often because we can then add a new entry to those sites.

More evidence that denialists can not read

Disco Strikes Out Again: Casey Luskin, Kitzmiller, and New Information
[Via Good Math, Bad Math]

For a lot of people, I seem to have become the go-to blogger for information theory stuff. I really don’t deserve it: Jeff Shallit at Recursivity knows a whole lot more than I do. But I do my best.

Anyway, several people pointed out that over at the Disco Institute, resident Legal Eagle Casey Luskin has started posting an eight-part series on how the Kitzmiller case (the legal case concerning the teaching of intelligent design in Dover PA) was decided wrong. In Kitzmiller, the intelligent design folks didn’t just lose; they utterly humiliated themselves. But Casey has taken it on himself to demonstrate why, not only did they not make themselves look like a bunch of dumb-asses, but they in fact should have won, had the judge not been horribly biased against them.

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Denialists so often follow similar paths, no matter what they are denying. Usually it requires them to simply not understand English. Good math, Bad Math does a nice job demonstrating this fact.

As the law saying “When the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. When both are against you, attack the plaintiff.”

If scientists do not have the facts, they stop arguing. Lawyers keep on going, using all sorts of rhetorical tricks to try and win. Because for them, the facts have nothing to do with winning. Destruction of the plaintiff’s reputation can work just as well.

Often you can tell which side is full of denialists because they follow the legal model, often attacking the plaintiff when they have nothing else.

In this case, they attack the judge and anyone connected with the winning side of the case by not apparently knowing what a word means.. Remember, the side that argues like lawyers is usually the side denialists favor.