Month 12, Day 30: It’s Only A Movie?

The Gisbourne Herald (NZ) runs an article asserting that there is “Clear scientific consensus that we are cooking the planet . . .”

Many of the other letters and articles in this paper (of which I’ve never heard) are full of denialist stupidity. So I thought I’d address that a bit. The movie analogy is new; I look forward to refining it in days to come.

Cui bono? Who benefits? When reading the assertions of climate-change deniers, we should investigate each position’s sources of money. On one side, scientific establishments: chronically underfunded, staffed by people deeply interested in their fields of expertise, with a system of fact-checking and theoretical rigor (peer review) that remains the world’s standard of intellectual quality. On the other side, big energy companies — making billions of dollars in profits, with a proven track record of disregard for the common good, and a system of misinformation and propaganda that includes heavily funded “think tanks” and access to the world’s most influential media. So-called “skeptics” are imagining the wrong movie. This isn’t a thriller where a cabal of mad scientists attempt to take over the world; this is the one where dedicated researchers attempt to alert humanity to a clear and present danger, but are mocked by short-sighted, profit-hungry corporate sociopaths.

Warren Senders