A journey into the weird and wacky world of climate change denial
CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE: Professors Stephan Lewandowsky and Michael Ashley step into the twilight zone of climate change scepticism: where the sun is made of iron and the royals are out to get you.An Effort to Clarify the Climate Conversation - [Revkin sounded hopeful about this two-week series when it started] - NYTimes.com
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Climate deniers, by contrast, seem to avoid the peer-reviewed literature or publish by sometimes abusing the system. Nor do the deniers turn up and present their ideas at any of the many international scientific conferences, open to anyone, where these issues have been explored for decades.
...what explains the tiny handful of deniers with verifiable academic credentials?
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With very few exceptions, academic climate deniers are male and either retired or close to retirement.
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But seriously, why doesn’t Carter, or any of the deniers, simply write a coherent outline of their best arguments against the expert consensus and publish it in the peer-reviewed literature?
Why don’t they turn up to the relevant scientific conferences and give a talk on their theories?
The answer is simple: they don’t have any arguments that have any scientific merit.
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At a time when the oceans are accumulating heat at the rate of five Hiroshima bombs per second, are conspiracy theorists the people whom a nation should entrust with the future of our children?
The so-called “debate” on climate change has been over for decades in the peer-reviewed literature. It is time to accept the scientific consensus and move on, and to stop giving air-time to the cranks.
I credit these researchers, even if I differ with their style, for experimenting with a new kind of outreach. There’s no sign of Randy Olson’s “nerd loop” here.
In the end, the full two-week series of pieces will be more informative than the opening manifesto.
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