| | | It’s Easy to be Tricked by a Climate Denier
Here’s what to watch out for…
Willard MacDonald
Apr 21 · 28 min read
I was compelled to write this article when my father sent me the book Inconvenient Facts — The Science that Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know by Gregory Wrightstone. He said it contained compelling arguments for why climate change is not really a problem and, in fact, demonstrates that we are being misled by a liberal agenda to scare the world into fighting a false threat. My father has an MBA from Harvard, an engineering degree from Cornell, and has been CEO of half a dozen companies. He’s smart, accomplished, and well-read. He’s also an open-minded man willing to adjust his own opinions in light of new information he encounters. Prior to reading this book, he believed that climate change was real, man-made, and required urgent attention. He and I even started a solar company together, both of us motivated by the desire to help address climate change.
My initial response to my father’s assertions about the book was surprise that he would question the truth about climate change. But then, as I thought about it, I became excited that maybe it could be true, and the world is, in fact, not heading toward climate disaster. I have a lot of fears about what we are doing to our world, and I hoped that Wrightstone was actually right. Maybe he had written the most important expose in modern times. Wouldn’t that be wonderful for us all? So, I read the book.
Wrightstone’s book has two basic messages: 1) climate change is happening, but it’s not human-caused so there’s no point in modifying our behavior; and 2) global warming is, in fact, a good thing because historically human societies perform better in warmer climates, crops grow better with more CO2, and because it will help counter the next ice age. The back cover reads, “The book’s 60 “inconvenient facts” come from government sources, peer-reviewed literature or scholarly works, set forth in a way that is lucid and entertaining. The information likely will challenge your current understanding of many apocalyptic predictions about our ever-dynamic climate“ (see: Wrightstone, 2017 in references at bottom).
I was compelled, as I read the book, to check his claims and interpretations of his sources. I pulled up the same raw data sets and scientific articles he cites. What I found was a fascinating and tragic window into the world of climate denial.
Inconvenient Facts claims, over and over, to be based in science and emphasizes the importance of the scientific method; however, the author does not, himself, use the scientific method in his own analysis. There are no references to any peer-reviewed journal articles by Wrightstone himself. Many of his “inconvenient facts” are non-controversial statements. In fact, most of them are actually true. It’s the conclusions that he draws from the “facts” that are not supported by peer-reviewed journal papers — they’re just his own misleading opinions....
medium.com@willardm22/its-easy-to-be-tricked-by-a-climate-denier-a87ba4b4a087
"Religion is a bad substitute for science."
Heartland is religion. It's based on the non-factual belief that it ain't happening. Science, with facts, shows otherwise. |
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