Is climate denial a religion?

Hey, Edward, you've got some great answers so let me try a different tack. Climate denial, while it shares many aspects of religion, is not an actual religion. It has no intellectual or moral footing that could boost it to that status. It is, instead, far more like a cult. Compare the deniers to the group of people who are going around telling everyone today is the Rapture, the earthquakes are scheduled for 6:00 pm, and the end of the world is October [or is it November?] 21, 2011. The complete absence of any supporting evidence for their beliefs, and actual evidence against their beliefs is irrelevant. When they are proved wrong, this will not stop them, it will only make them more dedicated to pushing the next foundationless idea of their leader[s].

Look at the comments on realist and denier websites. Places like RealClimate and SkepticalScience have both affirmers and deniers writing comments, and often an active discussion or three going on. The denier sites are 90%+ comments like "gee, your (sic) right again, Big Denier Name!" or "How stupid those warmers are! (occasionally followed by "someone specific should be jailed!") It's all just constant affirmation of the basic idea of denying, with a strong undercurrent of patting themselves on the back for being "smart enough to see through all this science stuff". There is far less argument and dissent on denier websites. Cults control what their people can say or even hear. ;-)

This idea of a cult covers even those deniers who are contrafactual in their arguments. Take the "coolers", for example. In serious organizations, people who constantly maintain contrafactual positions are gotten rid of (or at least put into Marketing [and who could doubt Marketing is contrafactual] where they can't do any harm to the actual day-to-day operating of the company.) What sort of people willingly work with ... well, let's call them contrafactualists, other than the desperate and the fanatical? Desperation sets in when one side is clearly losing, and the deniers are. Fanaticism allows people to be totally sure, or certainly act that way. Here at Y!A and other places I've frequented, realists, in my experience, admit and express the uncertainties in what they are discussing. The deniers always point out all sorts of actual and imagined errors and error sources in anything realists say, but are always totally positive about their own positions, claiming each and every one is 100% accurate, even though many contradict others.

Climate denial is a cult.

Nah, though I do notice a lot of similarities between arguing with AGW deniers and young-Earth creationists, and a lot of the same kinds of posts (questions or answers) on Yahoo answers.

Posts claiming that those who accept the theory are deluded/fools.

Posts claiming that the theory is a "religion".

Posts suggesting that scientists are rejecting the theory in droves.

Posts suggesting that things the theory *doesn't even say will happen* not happening is proof that there's a flaw in the theory (for example, "It snowed this winter, this disproves AGW" vs "Humans haven't evolved wings, this disproves evolution").

Posts listing evidence against the theory that is anywhere from misinterpreted to unconfirmed to flat-out lying...

Though I think the evolution debates get a little more heated, or at least get heated in a different way.

I suspect the problem, for both, is confirmation bias, as per this article: http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-s...

Not a religion, per se, although it shares some properties.

Consider this as a conflict of "memes", two sociological concepts that propagate through society.

The first meme, which is incumbent, is: Economic growth equates to progress.

The second meme, which challenges it, is: Our lifestyle is causing damage to our planet.

The likeliest reason that climate change and Peak Oil are so far denied is because they directly challenge the mantra of endless material growth. No one wants to believe that we have limits to material growth. But ya know...Earth is a finite, spherical planet.

Not only that, but you've got insidious tactics by the powers that be to sway public opinion. A fantastic film on this is called "Astroturf Wars".

So, I think that's where the real resistance comes from. People's lifestyles and ideologies are threatened and are becoming defensive about it. But now that Peak Oil's settled in, it'll only be a matter of time until denial is no long an option. We'll see how long it takes for Americans to realize that our energy-hungry lifestyle is beginning to eclipse our planet's ability to provide it. People are not fools forever.

No, I don't think it's religious at all, although some religious groups are prone to denounce it more than others.

It's mostly about economics, deniers vehemently oppose various ideas put forward to mitigate the effects or reduce AGW, so they convince themselves (or just lie) that the science is faulty. They also convince themselves that people like Lord Monckton, Anthony Watts and John Coleman are the real experts on climate. These people also seem incapable of assessing their own knowledge on the subject. It's amazing how many people that are completely untrained in climate science, atmospheric science, meteorology and physics somehow believe they know more than people that do it for a living. They're in need of a serious reality check.

It is as much a religion as are Ponzi schemes, heroin addiction, Holocaust denial, and juvenile vandalism.

No half-way self-respecting religion is as infused with the kind of sick sense of humor by which "top contributor" pathological liars here denying climate change science call themselves "scientists." The stupidity of people who can rack up 17,000 YA points and still think that a .300 batting average player going 0 for 4 in numerous individual games means that baseball is a hoax DOES fit well with religious fanaticism, but intellectual laziness and loud-mouthed idiocy are certainly not religion per se.

Denial is like the hydra (the Greek mythical creature of many heads) the point of the many theories is similar to the many heads cut one off and two grow back. That is actually the point of the many theories, that are meant to appeal to various splinter groups (like the anti communists)

As to the claim "it's a religion" it doesn't really have any weight as AGW itself is coming from a very large number of scientists (real ones jim) who base what they say on evidence, and there is now a very wide range of evidence from a wide field of science disciplines (including geologists) and claims that one or two or even a handful of scientists are fooling all the others is just nonsense.

It is telling that all these (a couple of dozen) denier scientists from around the world who claim continually that they are not paid to say what they say, all started to spouting the same line "it's a religion" about the same time as they did several other of the often repeated denier theories.

Australian geologist Ian Plimer also put forward the Lord Mockingtone theory of high Co2 levels 500 million years ago, strange, because as a geologist he should be well aware that the Earth was markedly different in a number of ways that would have easily offset higher Co2 levels.

On that point I note our pretend geologist has nothing to say, despite it being raised here many times, as it seems the limit of his knowledge is to rant about communists and to rather poorly try to twist things that clearly apply to deniers back onto 'alarmists' and when those don't work he just makes up stories like "antarcticice's ID used to say he was born in Antarctica" which it never has said.

His own words show him for what he is, a liar.

An objective look at denial, shows a group who have progressively supported one theory (and conspiracy theory) after another, they seem to have no problem shifting from one to the next and back again, as long as those theories support the idea that AGW is not happening. They continue to claim scientists are lying or "doing it for the money" when quite clearly the oil & energy industry are the one who stand to lose trillions with action on AGW, these very same groups are the same ones funding the very blogs and website & Institutes that are supplying deniers with most of the information they think? is the true.

These actions are not that dissimilar to the actions of the Christian church 2000 years ago, which regularly absorbed celebrations from various pagan groups to try and attract new followers many of the well known events in the current christian calendar are based on ancient pagan rites and holidays.

What deniers (at the higher levels) seems little different to me. I parts of the US they have a ready following of several generation who already have been raised on a distrust of science over the theories of Darwin.

So actually I do see similarities between denial and religion in their blind faith to follow absurd and constantly changing theories, and the idea they are now trying to project we are the region is almost comical projection. Projection is, like denial, another term associated with Physiology, I wonder if they will also try to link that to the Holocaust.

Then there's all the errors they keep talking about, strip away the hype and what have they really found one misquoted reference in one IPCC report related to Himalaya melt and a couple of small statistical errors in temperature data for the U.S. wow.

They seem to have gone very quite on other points they used to spout like Amazongate, I hear no sorry, that it was a mistake and retracted (quietly) by the very denier friendly newspaper that first published it.

Or Dutchgate which they tried to blame the IPCC for, they even fooled the Dutch into starting an investigation, but rather embarrassingly the Dutch found they had made the mistake in the data they supplied to the IPCC.

Then there's Climategate, if you look at the original handful of emails (out of thousands) in full (not the edited versions, taken out of context) there never was much to this, which is exactly what several inquiries found.

I agree with pegminer, but will also add that many of them think AGW is an excuse intentionally invented so liberals can tax people.

Then there are people like Larry Lawrence who seem to have adopted lying as a personal lifestyle and who reject truth, empirical evidence, and science.

>>It's getting colder, Edward. Is CO2 causing that?<<

No, it's getting warmer, Larry:

1980 through1989 was the 3rd warmest decade on record.

1990 through 1999 was the 2nd warmest decade on record,

2000 through 2009 was the warmest decade on record.

2005 and 2010 are tied as the warmest individual years on record.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/28/hottest-deca...

And the top 11 warmest years on record have all been in the last 13 years.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/07121...

I guess it is. Feel better now? It is what it is, and no amount of YAK YAK will change the facts.

My state has cooled down since 1998. We are now back to where we were 20 years ago. I guess we missed it. Lucky us. I guess the CO2 went other places only. Strange.

Nice try ,but agw isn't based on science,it's faith based nonsense and it's supporters are religious zealots.

It isn't skeptics that are making up theories to explain climate change. It is alarmists who attempt to blame every little nuance of climate on their political nemesis, capitalism and the west. Those who are skeptical of cultists cannot reasonably be called cultists.

There are plenty of religions that try to grab the mantle of science as their own. Scientologists and Christian Scientists are a good examples not that I know much of either.

I wouldn't say that all alarmists are cultists but they sure act in similar ways at times. As a scientist, I bristle when someone tries to get me to believe something without a healthy degree of skepticism.