Over the years, the climate change denying community has used different tactics to play down the threat of global warming. They have continuously brought up a 1975 Newsweek article that predicted an ice age; they have claimed it to be a left wing conspiracy lead by Al Gore; they have also used some unethical scientists, like Willie Soon, who has been
funded by various fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, to provide “expert” denial.
But as the scientific evidence has gotten more and more solid, public figures and politicians have had to resort to dodging strategies rather than outright denial, like saying “I am not a scientist” when asked about the issues. The latest strategy has been to call climate change a cult, and say that the “alarmists” are dogmatic. Potential presidential candidate Rick Santorum has called Obama’s opposition to fossil fuels “quasi-religious,” while Ted Cruz has compared himself to Galileo opposing the consensus that the earth was the center of the solar system.
One of the most quoted of Scientist deniers has been MIT Professor (note how good that sounds) Richard Lindzen, who achieved tenure before climate change became a major issue. Though nobody who says his name along with “MIT” finds it necessary to say what other organizations he has been associated with, like Cato Institute, which was founded by the Koch brothers and receives donations from the fossil fuel industry. So of course, Lindzen has lead the way in comparing climate change to a cultish religion. “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart,” he said “instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical.” The problem with Lindzen’s argument is that the so-called “mythology” is only falling apart on the side of denial, which has indeed caused it to become more fanatical.
So heres the new argument -- the scientific consensus of climate change is not based on evidence, but some cultish movement equivalent to the theological consensus of the sixteenth century. Like all of their arguments, it is desperate and hysterical. And unlike Galileo, they are not denying something because of evidence, they are denying it purely for political reasons. The Galileo comparison was previously made by Wall Street Journal commentator Bret Stephens, to an astonished Bill Maher. “Consensus should not rule science,” said Stephens, “we honor people like Galileo who broke with a certain kind of scientific consensus,” which caused Maher to quickly quip, “No, he broke with religion, he didn’t break with science,” which Stephens then inadvertently conceded to, saying “He broke with an idea, a theological idea that the earth, that the sun revolved around the earth.”
And so Mr.Stephens proved the idiocy of his own argument. Galileo broke with a theological consensus, and it was not the scientific community that arrested him, but the Roman Catholic Church (i.e.religion). He was tried for heresy and forced to spend the last nine years of his life under house arrest, but eventually the scientific consensus became too powerful to deny. The evidence was too strong.
Cults and religions do not back up their movements with evidence, they back them up with wild accusations and illogical assumptions. Sound familiar? Yes, it seems the quasi-religious movement in this story is the denial movement. The cult of denial, we can call them. When the evidence does not back up their claims, they resort to calling their opponents cultish and quasi-religious and compare themselves to figures who previously opposed consensus. But simply opposing a consensus does not make you comparable to Galileo. He did not combat the geocentric model because it was opposed to his political goals; he disputed it because the evidence did not back it up. There have been many other science denialists in history; people who denied that tobacco caused lung cancer, people who denied evolution, people who have since been proven to be completely reactionary and untrustworthy.
Climate change is not some kind of theological belief, it is a scientific fact based on observations, which is why all objective and unbiased scientists agree that it is happening. As the cult of denial continues to face more undeniable evidence, they will continue to become more desperate and delirious, as we have seen over the past decade. But like other denialist movements, this one will eventually fizzle out in light of reality. Unfortunately climate change is not like other scientific issues; it is currently happening, and if we do nothing about it, humanity will no doubt face catastrophe in the future. Previously, denying scientific consensus just slowed down progress, but today, it slows down our chances of limiting the damage the world will face in the future. Ted Cruz and his handful of scientists and commentators can surely continue claiming that they are heroic and brave dissenters, but history will remember them for what they really are, dangerous charlatans.