Year 2, Month 2, Day 13: I Lit Out From Reno, I Was Trailed By Twenty Hounds…

In the Reno Gazette-Journal, a columnist named Cory Farley discusses the inability of denialists to look a fact in the face.

It’s a good piece, and therefore makes not an iota of impact on the commentariat. Sheesh.

While Cory Farley does a good job of skewering the mindset of climate-change deniers, it’s probably not going to change any minds. At this point, the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is so overwhelming that no further proof is needed for anyone who’s actually paying attention; on the other hand, the evidence against it is so fragmented, internally contradictory, and riddled with conflicts of interest that acceptance requires a huge suspension of critical thinking. How many times must a right-wing talking point be debunked before it stops appearing? For example, one favorite line is “scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s. Now they’re predicting warming. Therefore scientists can’t be trusted.” Actually, scientific opinion on climate forty years ago was totally different from today’s. A few scientists published articles speculating on possible consequences of atmospheric changes; a few of them raised the possibility of cooling (including one paper suggesting cooling trends over the next twenty-thousand years). The popular press exaggerated the importance of these papers, and now it’s denialist gospel that “everybody” predicted an ice age. No; not “everybody,” not even a majority of climatologists — and certainly nothing like today’s overwhelming consensus. But facts no longer matter to deniers. Alas.

Warren Senders