AGW is grossly refutable. It relies on computer programmers and their assumptions about climate. Computer climate models belong in circus sideshows. Data collectors for the computer models are placed with frequent negligence, and the majority of them stopped reporting (especially in Russia) in the last 10 years.

If your AGW religion ever reaches into my wallet, I will create an air passage between your eyes.

Goods points. Yes I lump conservatives together, they belong in the same stinking tent. The buisness types have convinced the churchies to begrudge a single mother some cash to buy food while cheerleading excessive executive pay. (trickle down) Business types needs votes…so they sing Onward Christian Soldiers and preach the gov’ment is all bad…except the Pentagon.

But to the deeper question, science upsets their belief system. They refuse to accept the data, that input does not compute with them, blows up their program. So rather than changing the program, they just refuse the data. I will never forget my youth ‘minister’ (cough cough) telling me that my decision to be a physics major in college was a bad idea. Cuz my mind would get clouded with bad ideas. He was right in a sense, physics was a lousy major for me…but only because I got a D in Early Quantum theory! He was also right, physics can lead to Godlessness.

Why DO conservatives instinctivly abhor science? It is fear of proving away religion? Is it their paymasters in the coal bidness? And why do they embrace nookular science while denying climate trends?

‘conservatives’ do not abhor all science – only science that tells them they have made bad decisions, or conflicts with other pre-existing belief systems. In this they are much like other people, but a bit more extreme. And they like nookular science because it brought us the most destructive weapons so far deployed.

I don’t think there’s a single answer as there a multiple groups within the conservative tent.

There are the religious conservatives who experience conflict between scientific discoveries and their traditional religious beliefs. It goes back at least the the flat earth concept, God stopping the sun in the sky so that the Israelites could whoop up on their enemies, and continues through data that says that teaching only their views on sex does not stop the spread of aides or prevent unwanted pregnancies.

There are corporate conservatives who oppose science because it points out the damage that they do to others in their quest for additional wealth.

And there are the knuckle-dragger conservatives who have no idea why they oppose science, but do so because their talking-head mullahs tell them to do so.

I just don’t get it.

“2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently large values of 2′

which is funny to people who had a certain type of teacher in calculus class.

More seriously, thanks again for this article. It is important to keep the focus on who the deniers are and what they are doing, in order to get the public discussion on track with the facts.

Best,

D

It could also be because environmentalists have a scientific bent, and may even be scientists, so words have solid, agreed-upon, definable meanings, like temperature, carbon, glacier, etc. “Global warming” means “global warming.”
“Climate change” means the climate is changing.