The Existence of Climate Change Skeptics Doesn't Mean There's a "Debate" on the Subject
Frequent commenter and smart guy Tim Kingston writes:
Hi Craig. I’d be interested in your take on Anthony Watts, featured in “Climate Change without Catastrophe.”
You can still find a few people with extremist and contra-scientific viewpoints like Watts; in fact, it’s possible that you’ll always be able to find a few.
PBS’s FrontLine found him in a big, embarrassing way last fall – a way they wish they hadn’t. When the show’s producers aired a “balanced” news article, providing Watts with equal time against the viewpoints of the vast majority of real scientists on the subject, they took a considerable shellacking from thousands of people like me who wrote things like this.
The fact that there is a handful of people with fringe views (Watts is not a scientist, but a TV weatherman) on climate change does not mean there is a “debate” on the subject, any more than there is a debate about the holocaust or the theory of evolution or plate tectonics or quantum mechanics.
I prefer the term “denialist” to “skeptic”.
There’s no valid logic behind the “skepticism”. Being skeptical is usually considered in a positive light – a person who demands verification… Meanwhile, someone in denial is usually associated with delusion and completely lacking a valid understanding of the world.
So I like the term “denialists” rather than “skeptic”.
Excellent point.