Exposing Climate Denialism - a Guide to Tactics and Tall Tales

The climate denialist industry has been practicing the art of deception with regard to the status of climate science, just as they did for the tobacco industry when they were paying the bills. They have a standard set of old, many times disproven, gems that they pull off the dusty shelf (ignoring the fact that they have already been shown to be lies), but are quick to create new lies at every opportunity. In addition to the many other sources online, over the last year or so I have written quite a few articles demonstrating the tactics and the tall tales - the lies - that the denialists like to employ. This article brings many of them together for easy access, and each contains many links for further support and detail. I'll add new ones as I write more.

Tactics

Global Warming Denialists - The Art of Deception: Some of the basic tactics employed by denialists to intentionally deceive the public, including calling global warming "only a theory," misquoting scientists, and invoking the name of Al Gore.

"Scientific" Debate on Gather: A favorite tactic of denialists is to claim that commenters never attack the science of the denialists. Except the denialists don't actually provide any science, and nothing they say has ever proven to be true. Which is why you can't debate science with people who don't even understand basic scientific principles.

The "Kitchen Sink" Strategy: When one falsehood is debunked, just switch to the next one rather than defending it. That way you can make it seem like there is lots of evidence, when in fact there are just lots of already debunked lies.

How Denialists Use Front Groups: Denialists like to cite groups with "sciencey-sounding" names. Except all are run by non-scientists who have never done any climate research and are funded by ExxonMobil and the free market lobbying groups.

Independent Climate Skeptics? (and with full comments): Denialists like to claim that there are hundreds, no thousands, no "Billions and Billions" of climate scientists who disagree with the consensus. Not really. Most denialists are not even scientists or haven't done any climate research. The very few who have are all associated with non-science free market lobbying groups. A rather odd association for a scientist.

Writing Fake Headlines: What happens when your denialist blog auto-compiler picks up an article that doesn't fit your narrative? Well, write a fake headline that says the opposite of the article, then tag a contrarian article to the end to make it look like the conclusion is different. Clever (but dishonest).

Touting Fake "Experts" and Grasping for Straws: Why calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Blaming Al Gore: One of the most desperate, and most commonly used, tactics of denialists is to blame Al Gore and "Al Gore's Theories" as if he suddenly invented global warming with his Oscar-winning movie "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006. I guess they can simply ignore the 50 years of scientific research that scientists have done, that is, the same research that Al Gore consulted to produce the movie. Can we say "time warp?"

Specific Lies Debunked

The Planet Hasn't Warmed for the Last Decade: A common recent ploy was to cherry pick the only possible two dates within the natural variability that give the denialists the curve they want to see. All the rest of the data just gets ignored "it's inconvenient."

The Fake "Trick" Graphs: More cherry picking, this time taking a few words out of context and creating an entire story line with no basis in reality. Oh yeah, and go ahead and ignore all that other data too.

The Email Edition and The CRU Responds: First, hack one of the major climate research facilities, steal more than 1000 emails, then cherry pick a handful of emails and extrapolate some dodgy wording into a global climate conspiracy spanning a half century and thousands of researchers around the world. It defies logic, and honesty.

A Collection of Denialist Lies: More lies than you can shake a stick at - and all from the comments to just one article! Lot's of links to real data.

Dissecting False Denialist Claims and Intentional Misunderstanding, Misinterpretation, and Misrepresentation: How illogical and jumbled thoughts (a term I used with hesitation) are thrown together to present a mishmash of self-contradictory claims.