Posts
Some issues, however, are particularly
contentious. While evolution and vaccines do have their detractors, no
topic consistently evokes such rude, uninformed, and outspoken opinions
as climate change.
Instead of the reasoned and civil
conversations that arise in most threads, when it came to climate change
the comment sections became a battleground. Rather than making
thoughtful arguments based on peer-reviewed science to refute man-made
climate change, contrarians immediately resorted to aggressive
behaviors. On one side, deniers accused any of the hard-working
scientists whose research supported and furthered our understanding of
man-made climate change of being bought by “Big Green.” On the other
side, deniers were frequently insulted and accused of being paid to
comment on reddit by “Big Oil.”
After repeated interactions with climate change deniers, the
moderators of the science subreddit decided that they were not
interested in having an informed debate. Instead, the climate
change-deniers simply parroted talking points that even a novice could
poke holes in:
As a scientist myself, it became clear to
me that the contrarians were not capable of providing the science to
support their “skepticism” on climate change. The evidence simply does
not exist to justify continued denial that climate change is caused by
humans and will be bad. There is always legitimate debate around the
cutting edge of research, something we see regularly. But with climate
change, science that has been established, constantly tested, and
reaffirmed for decades was routinely called into question.
Over and over, solid peer-reviewed
science was insulted as corrupt, while blog posts from
fossil-fuel-funded groups were cited as objective fact. Worst of all,
they didn’t even get the irony of quoting oil-funded blogs that called
university scientists biased.
http://www.care2.com/causes/its-time-to-stop-portraying-climate-change-as-a-debate.html
No comments:
Post a Comment