Anyone who wants to debate a science denier often needs a thick skin, especially concerning topics like global warming. They often hurl words like leftist, socialist, communist, fascist, sheeple, useful idiot, and worse at you. Though why a political ideology is used as an insult still is something that I don’t understand. At most you’ll get a slightly annoyed roll of the eyes from me when you label me as something that I’m not.
But the one that truly puzzles me is when I’m accused of having a religious like faith in science. Science isn’t a religion, certainly not when you accept the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). To me it’s climate science denial that looks more like a faith position.
Continue reading Climate Science Is Based On Evidence, But Science Denial Is Based On Faith
Climate science deniers tend to be quite touchy when you call them a climate science denier, or denier for short. In my case this has even led to someone threatening to sue me for libel because I used the term climate science denier in a private email. Which wasn’t even aimed at them, I just used the term to describe the type of arguments that were being used.
The term also is quite simple in its origin, it means that you deny something. I use the term to state that climate science deniers dismiss or even flat-out deny the evidence climate scientists have found. You have similar versions of the term denier for those that reject the science behind vaccinations, AIDS, Evolution, etc.
I expect climate science deniers to not respond well when you use the term, that’s why I only use it when it’s truly earned. What I didn’t expect was that the usage of this term would lead to Dr. Roy Spencer writing the blog post ‘Time to push back against the global warming Nazis‘ (archived here):
Continue reading Roy Spencer, In Denial About What Science Denial Means
After I published the response I received from the KNMI I did a few pokes on Twitter towards Anthony Watts and Marcel Crok to see if they were willing to respond to it.
So far I haven’t received a response from Watts, but Marcel Crok was kind enough to engage me in his comment section. I’ll be going through his responses to me in this post and my take on them.
Before I do that though I have to compliment Crok for being respectful and civil towards me, despite me being quite critical towards him. It’s something that’s often severely lacking from any public exchanges that take place. Being able to engage someone while being quite critical and at the same time having a civil exchange was a breath of fresh air. It’s just sad that this is the exception.
Now lets start with his first response towards me, which I found a bit strange:
Continue reading Marcel Crok Responds To The KNMI Statement