Those who doubt the reality of anthropogenic climate change have rejected, en masse, the descriptive term “denier”, claiming that it insults them by comparing them to Holocaust deniers. (Cut and pasted example of this claim: “Global warming activists deliberately use the word “denier” to liken a sceptic to a Holocaust denier”.)
This is an audacious claim. I don’t think “global warming denier” has any significant relationship to “holocaust denier”. I think the only relationship that exists is the one that was put there by the climate change scepticism campaign (excoriated yesterday by James Hansen – see Hot Topic’s coverage). I think, to be honest, that the “stop comparing us to holocaust deniers” riposte was birthed in a coal-funded spin doctor’s lab somewhere in the United States. It’s an attempt to manipulate how we talk about this issue, and we’ve pretty much let them get away with it. Maybe we had to, maybe you just can’t win when the other side are whining away like that. Regardless, I think its nonsense. I think someone who does not recognise that the evidence for human-caused climate change is overwhelming, at this stage in the game, is in a state of denial. And someone in denial has earned the label, denier.
But that isn’t even what sparked this post. What incenses me is that I can’t call Ian Wishart a denier, not without being accused of intellectual high crimes, but Ian Wishart can strapline his foetid magazine with the accusatory phrase “climate change doctrine” and all those deniers out there, the same ones who pull out the holocaust line to show how unreasonable and vicious I am, nod and accept this as a fair description.
My only comfort, apart from having the support of the dictionary, is that this is the behaviour of a spitting, cornered cat. Among people who matter, the argument is over and has been for a long time. The deniers will be overridden and forgotten by people who can face the coming challenge. They will be forgotten like all the people in history whose fear of change prevented them from facing reality. They’ll be just another footnote.
6 thoughts on “Deniers and Doctrine”
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“This is an audacious claim. I don’t think “global warming denier” has any significant relationship to “holocaust denier”.”
I do: both require a similar level of sheer intellectual dishonesty and deliberate blindness to the evidence. And that’s exactly why I use that comparison.
“They will be forgotten like all the people in history whose fear of change prevented them from facing reality. They’ll be just another footnote.”
If only: but unlike the Holocaust deniers, these people are having a big impact on history, helping to ensure that climate change happens and affects generations to come. That’s not something that people will be easily able to forget. To pursue the analogy to the point of risking Godwin’s Law, these people will be no more a footnote than Chamberlain.
I read through the first paragraph before I could parse “denier” as someone who denies, I was thinking it was a French loan word I hadn’t seen before and was sounding it out a bit like “derriere”. 🙂
I thought you were talking about dernier, which is a measure of the sheerness of pantyhose.
Also, I’ve been called a “warmist” which I find makes me feel like I’ve been called “racist”. Can I whine about that please?
I/S: Uncompromising as ever 🙂
I: Your point is not lost on me. I guess when I wrote that bit, I was expressing a fond desire rather than anything else. my sympathies lie more closely with James Hansen as linked to in the post, really – the disinfo is extremely harmful and dangerous.
M: yeah, now that you say it, I can see that. In fact I can’t unsee it. Stupid French language! Stupid English language! Stupid Romance languages!
J: “warmist” has the same undertones as “doctrine” = that climate change is an ideology involving subscription to a proscribed set of beliefs. It’s bull.
Some of my colleagues are gleeful about their contribution to climate change (interestingly I none deny it), use disposable cups in the caff when ceramics are available and and gloat about their gas-guzzling mega-motors (I think just) to wind me (and others up) up… Have I mentioned that Palmy is weird and I don’t understand the culture?