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Wednesday 10 February 2010

This is the context in which we should reconsider the Climate Change Denial Movement. While murky in its scientific assertions — (some claim the Earth isn’t warming, while others say the ice-free Arctic won’t be any of our doing) — the core contention remains remarkably consistent. It holds that the 99% of atmospheric scientists who believe in GCC are suborned, stupid, incompetent, conspiratorial or untrustworthy hacks. As part of a more general assault on the very notion of expertise, the narrative starts with a truism that is actually true: “Not every smart person is wise…” only then extrapolates it, implicitly, to a blatant falsehood “all smartypants are unwise, all the time; and my uninformed opinion is equal to any expert testimony.” Does that sound like a polemical stretch? But it is precisely the implied subtext - a perverse kind of populism - at all levels of the War on Science. In the specific case of GCC, since almost all top atmospheric scientists accept human-propelled climate change, they must be all cretins, corrupt, or cowards. David Brin

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