Why do denialists reject the opinions of scientific experts?

First, let's flesh out the analogy a little bit with a couple of scenarios. Scenario 1: Guy has some chest pain, goes to a cardiologist. has some tests run. Cardiologist says the tests show heart disease has developed because of diabetes and the guy's smoking habit, and he needs surgery that is going to cost $50,000.00 or you could die from a heart attack in six months. Guy says I want a second opinion, goes to another cardiologist, same opinion except you could die from a heart attack in three years, goes to another cardiologist and the guy says if you quit eating cookies and quit smoking you probably won't have a heart attack for 10 years. Guy weighs his options, decides to quit eating so many cookies and cut back on his smoking, check back in a year and see if his chances have improved.

Second guy has the same chest pain and habits, goes to the same cardiologists and gets the same opinions. Then he talks to his Aunt Martha, three guys up at the bar and his boss at work. Aunt Martha, the guys at the bar and his boss tell him various stuff...the doctors don't know when you're going to have a heart attack and even if you do they can't tell you how bad it is going to be; they're just trying to keep the insurance money flowing so they're making up your blood sugar numbers and there isn't any real PROOF that smoking causes heart disease, it's all these surveys and studies that are tilted to support the theories of the medical profession. The second guy says screw it...I don't have diabetes, they're making up the numbers and the tests are flawed, therefore I don't have heart disease and my eating and smoking habits have nothing to do with my chest pain. The guy quits going to the doctors and keeps on eating cookies and smoking like a chimney.

The first guy is a skeptic. The skeptic believes that the specialists in the field have the most reliable information but isn't sure that the doctors know what the outcome is going to be, He then chooses a course of action that he feels is a good compromise between the best advice he's gotten and what he personally feels is affordable, in terms of risk to both his health and pocketbook.

The second guy is a denier. Rather than analyze the evidence and advice of the experts to safeguard his health , he chooses to look for advice and evidence from any source that will support his personal wishes and uses that information to decide that medical science is wrong and taints the information it is giving him to get his money, and rejects the advice of the cardiologists in favor of Aunt Martha, the guys at the bar and his boss.

That's the difference between skepticism and denial; the reason people become deniers is they don't want to change their habits or acknowledge there is a problem that needs to be addressed. And that is the answer to your question.

The reason deniers get so upset when they are challenged is because this is a psychological defense mechanism that happens when people are in denial. You can't get a person out of denial any more than you can convince an illogical person of something by using logic; they don't understand that they are in denial and they don't understand that they are being illogical so they get p*ssed at you.

People who are in denial might even be so messed up they wouldn't even be able to answer this question directly. You be the judge.

Why do denialists reject the opinions of scientific experts that the sun revolves around a flat earth. It because of money and fear of the wreath gods of AGW.

You ask for evidence without providing any. Typical extremist rhetoric, which unfortunately you and your brethren will have to deal with.

I'd simply ask myself, and research the particulars. Are there any new techniques, FDA approvals on new drug studies or releases on current medication. It's the only reason my wife is alive. If I went by contemporary thought, she would have been dead ten years ago. I just didn't accept what I was told by current professionals. I found out on my own.

Most people, about 53% in the US, do not believe that global warming is anthroprogenic, according to Gallup Polls, (which also is predicting a Romney victory, we will soon see how that works out), and only about 18% are convinced it is at least partially caused by man's activities. Basically, the issue has becomeissue in the current elections. It is just not that important to most people at this time. Why is it important to you?

Your question would go over better if cardiologists (and other doctors) are correct in thinking that the generally accepted AMA-approved approaches are the safest and most effective approaches. Often, they are not. In fact, there is a 10 to 12 year lag MINIMUM before new information is accepted and trickles down to you, the patient. And there are so-called alternatives that are simply natural methods that address the underlying causes of health problems and solves them at much lower expense and with little - sometimes no - technology. It is not as simple as a doctor is a doctor or a scientist is a scientist.

The human body is complex, and the more we learn, the more apparent it is that a bypass will not solve the problem when other factors are not addressed - including, as we are learning, the very memories that have imprinted themselves onto our cells.

Similarly, we cannot expect climatologists to either have the whole picture, or be able to ever have it. The world does not work in carefully segregated compartments.

Scientists do not agree with one another on the causes of, nor the actions to take in response to, the climate changes we are undergoing. And, interestingly, without any precedent, the scientists with government support have been spraying vaporized aluminum and barium into the skies for well over a decade (denying it continually until a couple of years ago). Over the entire world. Presumably to block out excessive sunlight. We don't know how this has affected our health, our crops, our food supply or.....the progress of the current climate changes.

In the end, as with most things, it is a question of money. The climate is changing. Scientists garner awards and prizes when they are the first with new information, ensuring their job continuance. Businesses with supposed solutions to the problems want contracts. These very real, human factors get in the way of finding out the truth (as well as we can understand it). It does little to help us understand how best to use our dwindling resources (can you say massive debt increases?) to solve it...even if we knew how to solve it. Remember the scandal over the falsified research on climate change? Scientists are not just out there to save the world, but also to profit.

And it is excellent politics to do SOMETHING about problems. Unfortunately, we end up with ignominious defeats with situations like Obama's big fail - giving so much alternative energy companies that are sinking like stones. Others want to depopulate the earth (but have yet to volunteer to be the first sacrifices). Others want to crowd us all into little bitty apartments in metropolitan areas and keep most of the world "off limits." I would suggest that it is likely that those who stand to profit the most will find a way to profit from any of these ideas by implementing programs meant to solve our problems....but the trouble is, we don't really know what will or won't solve our problems.

We need people to question what we are fed as "truth." Always. As long as it is in human nature to seek pleasure, there will be those who will do it without worrying about the consequences to others. And we need people to think outside the box. Honestly, was it right for the governments of the world to spray barium and aluminum all over us (and they are still doing it) in the off-chance that it might protect us from...what? But it probably helped a manufacturer profit instead of taking a loss from getting rid of toxic debris. Just like the fluoride in your water profits the manufacturers who no longer has to deal with toxic fluoride left over from his manufacturing processes. It is a complete and utter lie that it helps with tooth decay. It is a poison causing a slow, stealthy poisoning of the American people, with some being affected more than others (messes up the thyroid).

The earth is warming up in certain areas -- cooling off in others. The magnetic poles are shifting at the rate of 3 miles a month (more/less) and so, for example, the USA is shifting to the southeast bit by bit. So we have to talk about climate change. But "global warming?" No. And you place far too emphasis on "expertise." So many people who are known as "experts" have so often been wrong in their deductions. I listen to the "experts" and then i wait and see. It is clear, though, that the entire planet is not warming up. And it's become fashionable (and considered "intelligent") to blame the warmer weather on gases from spray cans and fuel exhaust, but that's too easy. There is something else going on that is quite beyond our control -- the planet has its own agenda, so to speak and we're just a bunch of germs living on its surface right now. For how much longer i do not know but we do tend to give ourselves far more credit -- for good or for bad -- than we deserve. I understand that some people automatically reject certain ideas without investigating - they just say, "Oh, that's not true" without knowing anything about the issue. But some of us are paying attention and listening closely to what the scientific community is saying or trying to say. Sometimes they make sense; sometimes, though, they jump to conclusions, and we ought to be able to tell the difference ...

Crash: Scafetta is not an "expert climatology scientist" he is a physicist. Physics does have a lot to do with global warming, yes, but do not try and pass him off as something he is not. His number of 50% to 70% of the warming within the last century due to the Sun is extremely high and does not meet with other papers dealing with the same thing. What it appears he's attempting to do in the first part is attribute the warming to cycles of solar activity, even though the frequencies involved with the warming lie outside of the Sun's blackbody radiation spectrum. He also goes on and on about the 'IPCC climate models' when the only climate models the IPCC uses are those already in the scientific literature that were published in individual scientific papers. What he is attempting to do is draw a comparison between the peak of the 1940s and the peak of 1998.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2...

He seems to ignore the reasoning behind it. Here is a link to the full paper.

http://www.syntrillium.net/sigasaswelt/ressource/p...

And for some reason he states there was a peak in 1880 when there wasn't. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation describes the '60 year natural cycle' better than the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter and their gravitational effects after all data is taken into account. He speaks about the 60 year cycles as it relates to TSI. As we have been measuring TSI since about 1979 and the claim is that in 2000 there was a peak we can look at the data itself.

http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite...

Do you see a peak in 2000? I sure don't.

Livia: Why on Earth did you include shingles in your list? I've had shingles. It is caused by a low immune system. When your immune system is low, if you have had chicken pox in your life, the virus stays in your system until your immune system is low and then shows itself in the form of shingles. Quite often your body can fight off the shingles virus by itself, just as mine did, if your immune system recovers. Claiming it is 'incurable' or what have you is complete nonsense. The medication I took was to dull the pain until my immune system recovered. (My immune system was low due to me fighting off an ecoli infection.) Dealing with diet to combat shingles, if you eat foods that will increase your immune response then yes, it will force the virus to go back into hiding. But don't pretend that some unknown miracle herb has effects that are unknown to the scientific community in getting rid of it.

Because the activist climatologists are forsworn. Once upon a time the weather turned cold and the climatologist environmentalists screamed we were causing an ice age with our wanton industrial prosperity. Then the weather turned warm and the climatologist environmentalists screamed we were causing a catastrophic global warming with our wanton industrial prosperity. Conclusion: they don't like our industrial prosperity and will lie to get where they want. And have been caught at it since except the environmentalist types dismiss such evidence out of hand because they don't want to hear it.

EDIT (In light of later posts):

New replacement energy sources do not yet exist. AGW enthusiasts are suggesting one step out of a boat before the plans of the replacement are even agreed upon. If the concerns about carbon dioxide are genuine, then the proposal to reabsorb the carbon into the ecosystem whence it came by fertilizing the oceans with iron and causing massive algal blooms should be the subject of considerable interest. The hostility and silence with which this inexpensive alternative is greeted is an example of public bad faith that reveals the political motivations of the environmental alarmists.

For the past couple of years, people at Yale University have interviewed Americans and developed a segmentation study to understand how different segments view global warming. Among the six segments, many of the viewpoints are not surprising; they tend to align with political leanings and overall environmental concerns.

But what I found most interesting is that the far right segment, which the study calls the "Dismissive" segment does not trust anybody or anything. This group is about 10% of America. They don't trust any scientists. 23% of them "Strongly distrust" scientists other than "climate scientists". 37% strongly distrust climate scientists. 82% of them say that even knowing that 90% of climate scientists agree could not impact their beliefs. But these people tend to distrust everyone and everything: Of course they strongly distrust Barack Obama (82%) but 32% of them strongly distrust Romney while only 8% strongly trust him. About half strongly distrust all companies. 31% of them strongly distrust their own primary care doctor!

There is no appealing to this segment rationally. There is no acceptable evidence of anything to them -- they believe that all information is made up, or that the rest of the world is out to get them.

The 5 segments that make up the other 90% of America are more closely aligned on trust but there is still a correlation between trust in science and belief in climate change.

The denial industry does not use any discernible logic to formulate their thoughts. Most that will deny the science behind the AGWT do so only because they do not expect to live long enough to experience the worst effects of a changing climate. This, in my opinion, would make the majority of them sociopathic and at the very least, narcissistic.