Conspiracists Concur: Climate Change Is a Colossal Cover-Up [View all]

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/539286/conspiracists-concur-climate-change-is-a-colossal-cover-up/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Conspiracists Concur: Climate Change Is a Colossal Cover-Up[/font]

[font size=4]Why science denialism and conspiracy theory walk together, suspiciously.[/font]

By Richard Martin on July 10, 2015

[font size=3]A group of social scientists headed by Stephan Lewandowsky has released a study of online blog comments, concluding that climate-change deniers are strongly prone to conspiratorial thinking. That climate deniers are also conspiracy buffs might seem like one of those dog-bites-man findings for which social scientists are often ridiculed (“People in love do foolish things, study concludes”). But the background to this study is actually more interesting than its conclusion.

Published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, the new paper, “Recurrent Fury: Conspiratorial Discourse in the Blogosphere,” is based on an examination of blog comments in response to the authors’ previous paper, “Recursive Fury: Conspiracist Ideation in the Blogosphere”—itself a follow-up to their original study, “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science,” published in Psychological Science in 2012. In other words, commenters responding (mostly angrily) to two studies of conspiratorial thought have accused the authors of being part of a massive conspiracy.

The thinking of conspiracy believers is, of course, recursive by nature: all evidence that contradicts their thesis is simply more evidence confirming the nefarious cover-up at work. The Warren Commission report, which in 888 exhaustive pages demonstrated conclusively that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy, confirmed that the CIA, or Cuba, or the Mob, was actually behind the murder. The latest report on global warming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is—aha!—proof that a shadowy one-world-government body, or the Trilateral Commission, or Hillary Clinton, is perpetrating “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”

…

The British newspaper The Telegraph has helpfully compiled a list of the most widely cited climate-change theories that shows how ecumenical deniers are in their thinking: among the top theories are a plot against the United States, a plot against Asia, and a plot against Africa. A vast right-wing conspiracy, or a dark plot from the left. Perhaps my own favorite is the notion that climate change was dreamed up by Margaret Thatcher as part of her campaign to break the U.K. coal unions.

…[/font][/font]