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by oh_sigh
3158 days ago
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Keep in mind that there are many viewpoints which are covered under "climate change denial' - some of which are more reasonable than others. Some people don't believe that humans can have any impact at all on the larger environment Some people think maybe humans are having an impact, but it is super tiny and dwarfed by other natural phenomenon Some people think humans are having an impact, but it isn't worth doing anything about Some people think humans are having an impact, but are suspicious that any economic response will have the intended effect. |
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Unfortunately, when viewed from a "who benefits" perspective, global warming theory does not look good to your average libertarian small-government cynic:
- Climate change researchers are virtually all academics.
- Academics are strongly incentivised to make the grandest, scariest claims possible because that is what unlocks large streams of grant money.
- The claim they're making in this case is literally "the world is going to end unless you give us lots of research money".
- They have been wrong before, c.f. global cooling.
- Many of the proposed solutions look suspiciously like excuses for vast government power grabs to monitor and micro-manage every aspect of one's life and business. Such people tend to assume the powerful are always looking for convenient excuses to become even more powerful still, and "we must take away your trucks and your meat against your will to save the world" looks like the ultimate power grab.
These concerns are not entirely meritless. A typical example of the genre can be found here:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/ocean-acidification-yet-...
I haven't looked into the claims in depth but they sound plausible, in particular, the notion that certain kinds of papers showing negative results don't get published, the notion that entire fields of study that appear to have hundreds of peer reviewed papers can nonetheless fall apart when subjected to rigorous meta-review. We have seen this in other scientific fields like psychology so it is not implausible that it could happen in climate science as well.
Ocean acidification is not the same thing as regular global warming. But you can see why doubt sets in given the alignment of interests involved. For people who have lost their confidence in the academic establishment, climate change is effectively invisible.