Climate Science Denial: A rational activity built on incoherence and conspiracy theories
Sou | 7:51 PM
Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo-science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness.
That is the closing sentence of a new paper called: "The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism". Great title! The work is by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Dr John Cook and Professor Elisabeth Lloyd. It's another wonderful read about the lack of coherence in the arguments put forward by climate science deniers as their reasons for rejecting mainstream science.
"Something must be wrong". Four words. "Something is wrong". Three words.
Do either of the above have any meaning on their own? Not really. However they do invite questions.
Do they mean the same thing? No. The first sentence with the "must be" is merely an expression of disbelief. The person saying it might look further to see if they can find ifsomething is wrong, and if so, what is wrong, but may not. The second gives the impression that something is definitely wrong and the person saying it knows what is wrong - and will be able to tell you what it is.
"Something must be wrong" is number 5 of seven characteristics of conspiracist ideation of from the paper, Recurrent Fury. The authors demonstrated how conspiracy theories evolve in the climate conspiracy blogosphere. (I've written a lengthy article about the even more lengthy paper here.)
The seven characteristics used as criteria for assessing climate conspiracy theorisation were:
Nefarious Intent or Questionable Motives (QM): Assuming that the presumed conspirators have nefarious, or at least questionable, intentions. Persecuted Victim (PV): Self-identifying as the victim of an organised persecution.Nihilistic Skepticism or Over-riding Suspicion (OS): Refusing to believe anything that doesn't fit into the conspiracy theory, which in turn can be any hypothesis that can be described as conspiracy ideation. It doesn't have to be a grand conspiracy theory.Nothing occurs by Accident (NoA): Weaving any small random event into the conspiracy narrative.Something Must be Wrong (MbW): Switching liberally between different, even contradictory conspiracy theories that have in common only the presumption that there is something wrong in the official account by the alleged conspirators.Self-Sealing Reasoning (SS): Interpreting any evidence against the conspiracy as evidence for (or of) the conspiracy.Unreflexive Counterfactual Thinking: These included several hypotheses that were "built on a non-existent, counterfactual state of the world, even though knowledge about the true state of the world was demonstrably available at the time".
In a moment, I'll go through the "thoughts" under Eric Worrall's article and see how many of the characteristics are in evidence, and which ones are favoured. First, though, let's look at Eric's article.
The incoherence of climate science denial and the simulation of coherence
Eric Worrall was writing about this new paper but was compelled to misrepresent it, maybe to get past the gatekeepers at WUWT. (Do you like that conspiracy theory?) The paper wouldn't be at all palatable to science denying conspiracy theorists:
In this article, we broaden the enquiry of conspiracist ideation to an analysis of the (pseudo-) scientific arguments that are advanced against the scientific consensus on climate change, and how they contrast with the positions of the scientific mainstream.As the authors wrote in the abstract (which Eric posted at WUWT in full, the bolding is from Eric):
...people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established scientific knowledge) oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.”Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions.The paper was about how science deniers oppose climate science in a piecemeal fashion. They aren't systematic and don't consider what their bits and pieces mean for other knowledge - scientific or just plain fact. Take these typical denier claims, for example (not from the paper):
Saying that CO2 hasn't increased flies in the face of observations taken all around the world that show that atmospheric CO2 has risen by more than 40% in the past 150 years. Saying that atmospheric CO2 has increased but "it's natural" means that the person rejects basic chemistry (burning hydrocarbons produces CO2). It also requires identification of a source for all that CO2, and why it suddenly started being emitted from that source. Saying that atmospheric CO2 has increased but it comes from ocean outgassing ignores the chemical reaction of burning hydrocarbons, and ignores the huge body of evidence that the oceans are absorbing way more CO2 than they are releasing. It also neglects to explain why the oceans would have suddenly started to emit all that CO2.Saying that the oceans are emitting more CO2 because they got warmer brings the denier back full circle. They need to explain what caused the oceans to suddenly heat up. They also need to explain how this can be, when the measurements clearly show that oceans have been absorbing more CO2 than releasing it.
Eric clearly took issue with the statement in the abstract that it is only at a highly abstract level that one can hope to achieve any coherence between mutually contradictory notions. For example (not from the paper), "it's not warming" may be rationalised by deniers arguing that:
the data is faked (on no evidence except they read it somewhere on a denier blog), andurban heat island (the data cannot be assumed as faked if it is argued that it is showing the urban heat island effect), andit's El Nino (again, the data cannot be assumed as fake if it is argued that it is showing warming from El Nino).
At the highly abstract level, the three above statements have some coherence "it's not warming". In the detail, there is no coherence between statement a and statements b and c.
The paper gives more extreme examples. A former geology academic, Professor Ian Plimer, wrote in the same book that in past warming events plant species shifted into higher (cooler) latitudes and this would be expected in future warming events. Elsewhere in the book he wrote that plant species "will not feel the need" to move into cooler regions if it's warming now. (Let's not dwell on the feelings and thought processes of plants.) He also wrote in his book Heaven and Earth:
“CO2 keeps our planet warm ....” p. 411“Temperature and CO2 are not connected.” p. 278
These logically incoherent positions are typical in the deniosphere.
Eric Worrall's straw man
Instead of exploring what was in the paper and in the abstract that he quoted, Eric Worrall decided to build a straw man. (Logical fallacies are Telltale Technique No. 2 of climate science denial.) Let's put the statement that Eric bolded on top of what Eric wrote beneath (my bold):
Lewandowsky16: Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, ...
Worrall WUWT: This has got to be one of the most ridiculous claims Lewandowsky has ever promoted. “Something is wrong” with the current theory is a perfectly valid scientific position. A demonstration that a theory is useless at prediction does not have to be accompanied by a settled alternative theory – simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough.
Here is some of the illogic.
The Lewandowsky16 authors wrote that any coherence in the denialist position that "something must be wrong" can only be achieved at a highly abstract level. ("Something must be wrong" refers to a characteristic of conspiracist ideation, signalled by the quotation marks). Eric built a straw man. He refuted a position that the authors didn't take. He turned what they did write into claiming, wrongly, that the authors argued that to say "something is wrong" is not a valid scientific position. (Scientists often work through trial and error, identifying that something is wrong, and figuring out what it is, and correcting it.)
Lewandowsky16 said nothing about the need for a settled alternative theory being required to demonstrate that another theory is useless at prediction. That was Eric building a straw man. What the authors did point out was (my emphasis):
People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking.This is not the same as demonstrating that a particular theory is useless at prediction. For example:
The greenhouse effect predicts that if greenhouse gases are increased in the atmosphere, and all else is equal, then the planet will warm. They haveincreased and the planet is warming as a consequence. The evidence is consistent with physics.The hypothesis that atmospheric CO2 is increasing from ocean outgassing, and not from burning fossil fuels, is useless for prediction because the two premises are wrong. Neither of them is supported by evidence.
So, empty words and armwaving from Eric Worrall. Either he didn't understand what he copied and pasted, or he did and his logical fallacy was the best he could come up with as a rejoinder.
Eric as the persecuted victim
There's more. Eric took it on himself to imply that this paper was a psychiatric assessment of science deniers. It wasn't. That's just Eric playing the "persecuted victim". He wrote:
The increasingly frantic efforts to “medicalise” criticism of climate orthodoxy has taken a new turn, with a claim that theories cannot be disproven in of themselves. Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.Again, there are two things wrong with this paragraph. First, as I said, the paper is not a psychiatric assessment. (Is Eric projecting his personal fears?) There is no effort to "medicalise". It's essentially a paper about logic and reason and their corollaries (and was published in a philosophy of science journal, Synthese).
The second thing wrong is the same as before. Eric misrepresented the argument about the incoherence of arguments put forward by science deniers, claiming that it was something else. Eric claimed, wrongly, that the authors were arguing that theories can only be disproven by people who can provide a settled alternative theory. They didn't. The word "settled" does not appear in Lewandowsky16. The authors do give several examples of contradictory arguments put forward by deniers, as examples of the lack of coherence.
Eric's argument is wrong because his depiction of what the authors wrote is way off beam. It's also wrong because, despite Eric playing the "persecuted victim", the paper isn't a medical paper and advances no medical theories.
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