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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Deniers != Skeptics

Author David Brin has a nice essay up about the difference between Deniers and Skeptics of Human Generated Climate Change. Here's an intro:




What factors would distinguish a rational, pro-science "skeptic" - who has honest questions about the HGCC consensus - from members of a Denier Movement who think a winter snowstorm means there's ni net-warming of the planet?

Is such a distinction anything more than polemical trickery?

Well, in fact, it happens that I know some people who do qualify as climate change "skeptics." Several are fellow science fiction authors or engineers, and you can quickly tell that they are vigorous, contrary minds, motivated more by curiosity than partisan rigor. One who I could name is the famed physicist Freeman Dyson.

(In fact, if truth be told, there are some aspects of HGCC that I feel I want clarified -- that seem to be poorly-justified, so far. I am an ornery, contrarian question-asker, of the first water!)

After extensive discussions with such folk, I found a set of distinct characteristics that separate thoughtful Skeptics from your run of the mill, knee-jerk Denier dogma puppet.

Here's the first one:

The first, second, and last, can be found at Contrary Brin.
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1 comment:

  1. I'm a sceptic, but hardly a denier! Our earth has been through so many rounds of climate change, why should it not continue to do so? Yes, we're warming, and definitely that's a problem for life as we know it. But what are the causes...

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