CAN WE STOP CALLING THEM SKEPTICS…?
December 7th, 2009Science is central to humanity’s response to our role in altering Earth’s climate via global warming. Those who argue that either a. global warming does not exist (this group has pretty much gone the way of the anti-evolution folks) or b. global warming is taking place, but it is a natural process and humans play a minor to no role in that change (this group is akin to the creationists who attempted to paint their willful ignorance with a patina of science), are not skeptics.
A skeptic is a person who examines the scientific data and discovers flaws in the collection or analysis of that data. The people spewing lies about climate change and global warming are no more skeptics than those people a generation ago who argued that no evidence of a connection existed between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. They are simply people with an economic or political agenda that benefits from slowing a global response to global warming.
So, when I read the non-story this morning in the New York Times under the headline: In Face of Skeptics, Experts Affirm Climate Peril on page A1, I wanted to take writers Andrew C. Revkin and John M. Broder to task and remind them skeptic is an honorable term, and that there is nothing honorable about conspiracy theorists clinging to any birther-like myth that there is anything even remotely hinky about the scientific data or the conclusions reached by the analysis of that data.
Andrew and John, the people you mis-label are opponents, not skeptics.
Very good point, Jeff.
Shalom Sherry,
Thank you.
The religious wrong has mastered one aspect of controlling the debates in which they wish to engage, and that is to control the words used. We have to not allow them control of those words.
A spade is still a spade and their roses don’t smell all that sweet.
B’shalom,
Jeff