Science Deniers - Understanding the Denialist Rhetoric

In reading Merchants of Doubt and watching the so-called debate put forward by the climate change science deniers, you start to wonder what motivates these people.  I've had some discussions with a few of them, and they are absolutely fierce in their insistence that:

• a) there is no climate change, or 
• b) if there is climate change, it's nothing new - the climate has been changing for centuries, or 
• c) climate change will be good for us and the economy, or 
• d) human activity can't be the cause of it.

Now, of course, you might wonder which one of these is most important in their minds, but it doesn't seem to matter.  Any of them.  All of them.  Depends on the situation.  Naomi Klein examines this in some detail in the first chapter of her book, This Changes Everything. 

As Klein points out (p 46), climate change deniers most often are conservative, white males, who tend to have higher than average incomes.  They are also very confident of their views, no matter how wrong they are shown to be.  The underlying reason is that this group of people have occupied positions of privilege, power and wealth in our current economic system.  Dealing with climate change would probably challenge their status and the status of the industrial complex that they are part of.

There is complete dismissal of anything the IPCC has to say, because it's "government", part of the discredited UN.  There is strident antipathy to more government and more regulation, both of which will be needed to effectively deal with climate change.  If you think the free market will do it, you're probably very wrong.  The unregulated, free market is completely why we are in the situation we're in today.

Other articles have examined why, in the face of all the evidence, so many people simply do not believe that climate change is happening or some variation of that.  One article that examines this can be found here.

And this is one article that explains how science deniers like to argue using false equivalency.

There are also scholarly articles and studies about this.  Examples: here, here and here.

Free Market Fundamentalism is another ideology that underpins much of the climate change denial position.  The extended Cold War in the USA fostered a strident anti-Communist mindset.  Some of the individuals who have been (and still are) active in the climate denial business were employed in the weapon developments that were part of the American defense system.  When the Cold War ended, environmentalism was targeted as the new great threat.  We've seen it in statements from Canadian politicians: "environmental extremists".  Green on the outside, red on the inside.  In their view, any movement to address the ozone hole, global warming, the effects of tobacco smoke, acid rain, would require government regulation to deal with free market failure, and regulation was what these people hated most.  Regulation was seen as the "slippery slope to Socialism, a form of creeping Communism".  The only way to keep our "freedoms" is to believe that free markets are the only way to run our economies.  It's been called "free market fundamentalism", the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest.  It's an article of faith.

Some people are ardent believers in something called Cornucopianism.  This is a belief that technology can solve all of society's problems.  Technological innovation can indeed develop many solutions to the problems of society, to do more with fewer resources.  Cornucopians, however, firmly believe that this will always be true.  Keep the markets free and everything will sort itself out.  Optimism is the order of the day.  Environmentalists are fussbudgets, "...Rachel Carson was wrong about DDT, global warming isn't a problem and our forests are doing fine."

One thing does seem true - we are wasting our time discussing climate change with such people.  They will NOT change their minds.  It's not a lack of knowledge or facts.  They have the same facts as the rest of us do.  They just choose not to believe them, or they are blinded by a deep fear that doing something about climate change will affect their position.

What is more useful is to become better acquainted with the facts and possible solutions and then convince others who are more amenable to being convinced by the facts.  As the numbers of these people grow, governments will have to take action.  Some governments already are and more will follow.