Conspiracists Concur: Climate Change Is a Colossal Cover-Up (Read comments - rejection of AGW)

MIT Technology Review ^ | July 10, 2015 | Richard Martin

[Titus-Maximus]

Why science denialism and conspiracy theory walk together, suspiciously.

A group of social scientists headed by Stephan Lewandowsky has released a study of online blog comments, concluding that climate-change deniers are strongly prone to conspiratorial thinking. That climate deniers are also conspiracy buffs might seem like one of those dog-bites-man findings for which social scientists are often ridiculed (“People in love do foolish things, study concludes”). But the background to this study is actually more interesting than its conclusion.

Published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, the new paper, “Recurrent Fury: Conspiratorial Discourse in the Blogosphere,” is based on an examination of blog comments in response to the authors’ previous paper, “Recursive Fury: Conspiracist Ideation in the Blogosphere”—itself a follow-up to their original study, “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science,” published in Psychological Science in 2012. In other words, commenters responding (mostly angrily) to two studies of conspiratorial thought have accused the authors of being part of a massive conspiracy.

[Titus-Maximus]

A BS article using the Soviet technique of questioning the mental capacity of political opponents - i.e. those who speak against AGW. I post since the comment section is lopsided against the religion of Global Warming. MIT Technology Review is a decent scientific newsletter but toes the green left line - yet obviously the readers don't. Read the comments and realize that the false science of Anthropogenic Global Warming is crumbling under its own weight of propaganda. They cannot debate, their facts suck.

Posted below, is a flavor of the comments:

stocks1959 2 days ago

10-15 years from now theory of Global Warming will die, and then same people who was preaching it, will be silent. Few years later will claim that Global Cooling it is that they was saying not Warming, and we are wrong. New All Gores will be born as main preacher because they have to believe in something. Do they need facts? I don't thing so, but just in case they will be laud and will create few fibs. FlagShare 3LikeReply ocschwar 1 day ago

@stocks1959 The theory of global warming dates all the way back to 1824. Unfortunately, it's been backed by evidence from 1864 onwards. That is why it will not die. FlagShare 1LikeReply falstaff 21 hours ago

@ocschwar @stocks1959 "The theory of global warming dates all the way back to 1824. Unfortunately, it's been backed by evidence from 1864 onwards. That is why it will not die."

The discovery by Fourier in the 1820s and then Tyndall in the 1860s showed that i) the earth is warmer than it otherwise should be simply from the sun's radiation on a gas-less body in space, and then that ii) water vapor was primarily responsible for this effect. So you are correct that these discoveries will not die, but, by themselves, these discoveries are also irrelevant to the suite modern global problems.

What matters is how much additional CO2 might warm the planet in conjunction with all the other processes ongoing in the atmosphere.

Likewise, the following facts all will not "die": enormously high electromagnetic radiation levels can cause brain damage, enormously high levels of sodium can cause heart problems, enormously high levels of carcinogens cause cancer. Yet those facts are also irrelevant, because the average level of sodium in the diet, of cell phone radiation, and level of carcinogens in the environment are harmless, though all these effects were responsible for scares for some years, backed by (eventually debunked) scientific publications of the time.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/08/09/the-top-5-bogus-public-health-scares FlagShare 1LikeReply Kathryn Hatcher 2 days ago

The conflict may stem from a breakdown in the standard for proper scientific referencing and review, rather than from deficiency of the people asking questions.

Over 30,000 scientists and engineers have signed the Petition Project, which says that there is no convincing scientific evidence that CO2 causes a global warming problem. The honorable way to respond is to provide the proper reference to the scientific article for the study (data, methods) testing the hypothesis that CO2 causes global warming, with proper scientific discussion and authors' response. The dishonorable way to respond is to attempt to smear and silence the people raising questions, and confuse the issue by switching hypotheses.

So far, I have not found any CO2-control advocates taking the honorable approach, giving the key reference. I will form an opinion after I read the key reference with the scientific evidence (which, btw, is not an icecore graph showing how temperature drives CO2, is not result from a non-validated model, and is not result from unpublished class experiment).

That reference was not provided in the AAAS journal Science editorial (on July 3, by the editor-in-chief) which called for CO2 emission controls (no other solutions mentioned), stated that "The time for debate has ended" and referred to Dante's Hell for treacherous offenders. I wonder what is going on with journals like Science and TR, which should be setting a good example for truth seeking, honorable behavior and high editorial standards.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Bkmrk.

[Old Sarge]

Globull Warming has all the characteristics of a religious cult:

It has its own prophets and high priests;
It declares any unbeliever a sinner beyond contempt;
You can achieve redemption through profession of faith;
It cherry-picks information to support its holy writ;
You can purchase indulgences for remission of sin;
Anyone who disbelieves is an infidel who must be destroyed;
Apostates to the religion must also be destroyed;

[fruser1]

You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

As misguided as communists are, they are not to be underestimated.

[Bobby_Taxpayer]

It was always taught in schools when I went through them (in chemistry, physics and math) that a theory is only that, a guess, until proven. So, all you so called bullsheet scientists, where’s the proof? Not some malarkey isolated BS selective statistics, because we all know what stataticians do, but some proven scientific facts.

[glorgau]

MIT review is funded by MIT (it's a "loss leader"). Climate change is now an official policy at MIT - see

REPORT OF THE MIT CLIMATE CHANGE CONVERSATION COMMITTEE.

There are lots of jobs on campus and research grants. Always follow the money.

[Hostage]

? “A group of social scientists headed by Stephan Lewandowsky has released a study of online blog comments, concluding that climate-change deniers are strongly prone to conspiratorial thinking.”

And the denialist backing by Big Oil is not conspiracy thinking?

[sonofagun]

Global Warming, now known as Climate Change, is and always has been a scheme to massively redistribute wealth from wealthy industrialized nations to non-industrial third world nations.

It's THAT SIMPLE!

[VanShuyten]

The fun thing in the comments is that AGW supporters resort to conspiracy theories to explain away the science provided by the “deniers”.

[GOPJ]

Chris Cuomo did an ABC Special some years back where he proclaimed Manhattan would be under water by 2015!

Is that nuts or what?

[Malone LaVeigh]

Anytime that I’ve found myself in a discussion of this issue I’ve always suggested that we “follow the money”. Who stands to profit from perpetuating this hoax? It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find out that many of these climate change proponents are positioned to benefit from any legislation that advances this fraud. If any of these people are acting in accordance with each other, that qualifies as a conspiracy to deceive us.

[Mrs. Don-o]

This is an enormously useful and valuable article-— especially the comments section. Thanks for posting it.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

They cannot debate, their facts suck.

True but in the long run, probably not relevant.

"Global Warming" is just the latest anti-capitalist propaganda campaign by the left. Before this there was the "Ozone Hole", "Acid Rain" and of course "The Coming Ice Age". The continuing meme is that evilgreedycapitalism is destroying the world and and if something isn't done RIGHT NOW!!! will kill us all. To them, it is not debatable. It is (Marxist) holy writ.

Eventually the media will grow tired of having their credibility made a mockery of and will stop covering the "issue" - this already seems to be happening to some extent. This won't make any difference. The left will just move on to the next thing they can blame on the evil greedy capitalists who are destroying the world, the press will march forward in lock step and the whole thing will start over again.

[justa-hairyape]

Everything the left does is a conspiracy. The issue is not the issue. Global warming is not the issue. The issue is changing and controlling capitalism by destroying freedom. The UN has admitted such through multiple officers. So here is a case of a known admitted conspiracy to defraud, and these brilliant MIT scientist cannot even see the forest for the trees.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

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[GOPJ]

It’s been 21 years since there’s been ANY global warming.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/17/satellites-earth-is-nearly-in-its-21st-year-without-global-warming/