What is it about the global warming debate that spurs people to demonize each other by playing the Nazi card?
“Mussolini had his blackshirts. Hitler had his brownshirts. Now we have to deal with the U.N. greenshirts, and they are every bit as dangerous,” one blogger intones in a post that derides Maurice Strong and Al Gore for supporting wind farms as a way to reduce carbon emissions.
The “Greenshirt” versus “Climate Change Denialist” bit has been going on for quite some time, and I had no intention of posting about it today until I spotted the following message sent to a list-serve I subscribe to. It was from Muriel Strand, who runs a blog called Sacramento’s Sustainable Future (I have her permission to reprint it here):
“One way to explain the oddity of scientists who deny the magnitude of the human forcing function relative to all other planetary trends and variations is to say that, ‘yeah, and some historians are Holocaust deniers.’”
We can dismiss the greenshirt post as bloviation. Meanwhile, depending on where you sit politically, Strand’s comment may seem civil and reasonable in comparison. But it makes no less a fallacious comparison — one that actually inhibits reasoned and civil discourse.
After all, if you are, say, a meteorologist who just does not buy the output of climate models because you have been burned by model output many times, you will have no incentive to engage with someone who thinks you are no better than a Holocaust denier. It may well be true that this meteorologist is ignoring multiple streams of evidence, and in so doing could be encouraging an outcome that one might legitimately compare to the Holocaust. But if all that is the case, what’s your best approach as someone who cares about avoiding the worst outcomes of climate change?
It turns out that a significant percentage of television weather forecasters express some degree of skepticism over the IPCC’s conclusions. A survey of 121 weather forecasters by Kristopher Wilson of Emory University found that 34 percent disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusion that global warming is unequivocal. (For a more detailed description, go here.) Of course they’re wrong, but what purpose does demonizing them serve? Doing so won’t get us any closer to effective solutions to climate change.
Wilson has argued that Americans get a significant amount of their science news and knowledge from television meteorologists. So if your goal is to spur action on global warming by improving public understanding of climate science, is your best approach to compare them to deniers of such atrocities as injecting gasoline into the hearts of living people, placing homosexuals under heat lamps until their skin fried, and deliberately harnessing modern industry to exterminate six million people?
That’s certainly not going to help television meteorologists convey climate science more accurately.
So why does the Holocaust denial comparison keep coming up? Roger Pielke, Jr. at the Center for Science, Technology & Policy Research addressed this issue here, invoking something called Godwin’s Law, which states, “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
When discussion gets difficult, people simply take the easy, tribal way out. It’s much easier to invoke Nazis than do the truly difficult work of acknowledging the humanity of your adversary and engaging in honest debate.
I do see a significant distinction, however, between comparing the effects of doing nothing about climate change to the horrors of the Holocaust, versus comparing people who disagree with the IPCC to Holocaust deniers. The former dramatizes what science suggests could happen if we do nothing to stem our ever increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. The latter seeks to shut down discourse by demonizing people.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen came in for bitter criticism when he made the former comparison. Here’s a snippet of what he said:
“If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.”
Hansen is not accusing anyone here of being just like deniers of Nazi atrocities. He is trying to shake up his audience with a disturbing image that he believes is consistent with scientific findings about the impact of climate change on species.
If you’re interested to hear more about this issue, Andrew Revkin addressed it thoughtfully in this Dot Earth post, as did David Roberts here at the Huffington Post. You might also check out this UCAR quarterly story on climate skepticism among meteorologists.
Lastly, I promised Muriel Strand that I would include a bit of her reply to my criticism on the journalism listserve: “It’s been a decade since a wise old coyote and activist started pointing out to me how people use their upset to derail a rational discussion.” I think she was referring to my comment on the listserve that comparing global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers was offensive. In saying that, my intent was never to derail rational discussion. Quite to the contrary, my intent was to point out that rational discussion would have a greater chance of occurring if we dropped the demonization.
I suspect, though, that Godwin’s Law will continue to prevail.
This thing has 16 Comments
I think it clear that using any nazi comparison is dangerous when discussing climate change – even when it’s just about the validity of denial from nah-sayers. The mention of holocaust deniers brings up very emotional conclusions and is not effective as we, the journalists, attempt to project rational discussion. So – subject over: It’s not a good analogy to the public. However,the emotional reaction that I witnessed on that listserv is definitely noteworthy for journalists. Why did so many take it wrong?
I propose it’s because human psychology wants a “good guy/bad guy” scenario and defaults to think that way. Some assumed the comparison was that the quote from Muriel Strand was claiming nah-sayers were just as much “bad guys” as the holocaust deniers. That was an incorrect assumption. But they reached that conclusion and they wouldn’t take any more rational discussion.
Therefore, I think it’s part of the job for us journalists to consider the psychology of “why” under the banner of achieving “rational discussion” about climate change. Bottom-line: Does environmentalist reporting tend too much towards projecting “good vs evil” in a lot of our reports and therefore welcomes rational people (readers) to become irrational?
Put it this way: When someown owns a hummer, I don’t think he/she is a “bad guy”, just an ignorant one.
Some context:
After reading several onlist discussions about the difficulty of explaining to readers/viewers the true scientific view on climate change, i asked if comparing “the oddity of scientists who deny the magnitude of the human forcing function relative to all other planetary trends and variations” to the oddity of “historians [who] are Holocaust deniers” was a useful analogy. I am not talking about ordinary people, but about scientists and historians.
Not buying into model output because you have been burned by models is one thing, and ignoring multiple streams of evidence is quite another. A scientist who is uncertain seeks more information, s/he doesn’t just ignore evidence! Ignoring evidence is, for me, analogous to the holocaust.
But what is the best approach to avoiding the effects of climate change? I don’t think that assuming we have finished learning the lessons of the holocaust is a good approach, especially given Israeli and U.S. foreign policy since then. In a sense, we are still holocaust deniers. Tom left out an important part of my response:
“Reading and research since then have led me to conclude that any of us are capable of behavior that would be as considered as evil as any which was earlier described in this thread – under the right set of circumstances. Of course, some people are more immune that others, but all are vulnerable, myself included. Zimbardo’s book is more accessible online (www.prisonexp.org/ and http://www.lucifereffect.com/) but there are many others out there.
**The dehumanizing potential of applied fear (i.e. terrorism) should not be underestimated.**
So i guess the question is whether environmental journalism includes talking about our feelings – about psychology/anthropology. i’m also confused why my other post [citing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw is not equally bad.”
From Pielke’s blog:
[ The phrase "climate change denier" is meant to be evocative of the phrase "holocaust denier". ]
This is what I see much more often – righteous indignance & playing the victim in an attempt to derail the discussion.
“Denier” isn’t some sort of ad hominem slight, it is a descriptive term like skeptic. What else should you call somebody who denies knowledge presented to them based on nothing more than belief?
Jeremiah-
You write:
“What else should you call somebody who denies knowledge presented to them based on nothing more than belief?”
Let me toss this back at you:
“What else should you call somebody who accepts knowledge presented to them based on nothing more than belief?”
Rejection or acceptance of knowledge claims, for most every one of us on most every topic is based on beliefs grounded in trust and authority, as most every one of us is a non-expert. What is your PhD in?
Tom is right, symbols matter enormously in political debates. If I call you a b*st*rd, or a n*gg*r, or a f*gg*t in a discussion that will likely cause a ruckus. “Denier” is a similarly laden term. Not for everyone, certainly, but for people who grew up knowing people with numbers tattooed on them, it matters, a great deal.
How about this: why don’t we just argue about what policies make sense rather than what labels to bestow upon our opponents?
Kudos to Tom. It is the right position to take.
You referred to my blog in your post. Thanks for the consideration.
I’m not comparing these people to each other. Just posting the results of my research.
I take nothing at face value especially when it is being promoted the global warming has been.
I meant exactly what I said and I stand behind it.
“Mussolini had his blackshirts. Hitler had his brownshirts. Now we have to deal with the U.N. greenshirts, and they are every bit as dangerous,” one blogger intones in a post that derides Maurice Strong and Al Gore for supporting wind farms as a way to reduce carbon emissions.
Hi Tom
Please can you give your reasons for the last clause here (“Of course they are wrong,..”)esp. with ref. to “unequivocal”?:
“A survey of 121 weather forecasters by Kristopher Wilson of Emory University found that 34 percent disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusion that global warming is unequivocal. (For a more detailed description, go here.) Of course they’re wrong,…”
Also for info. here is an extract:
“CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”
from this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/23/climatechange.carbonemissions
Sorry if this is covered in any of the material you link to – time pressure means I haven’t researched them – but it does seem to be calling for strong, war crime like treatment for fossil energy company bosses based on a presumption that they are “deniers”.
Good post, and a valid observation. But I also disagree with the point that it’s less offensive to invoke the Holocaust when describing the potential effects of global warming. Still sounds pretty close to calling deniers Nazis, to me, because the implication is that they’ll be as bad as Hitler if global warming happens and they weren’t part of the solution.
I’ve just started a garden variety science blog, and wrote about another controversial subject yesterday — the Creation/evolution meltdown. I have only anecdotal evidence for thinking this, and not much of it — but is there overlap between the anti-evolution camp and the global warming camp? And if so, is the latter more or less an outgrowth of the former, or is there a separate faith-based reason that people deny global warming? I’ve been curious about this for some time. Anyway, my blog is at anneminard.com, if anyone’s interested.
We’ve never encountered a situation like climate change, and our attempts to put it into a moral framework are awkward. The Holocaust is so emotion-laden, it derails the discussion and I don’t find it useful as a metaphor.
Sometimes it’s better just to state the case directly:
1. People oppose the concept of climate change for a variety of reasons: scientific, business, political-ideological, psychological. Each of these is a separate case.
2. This is not a theoretical discussion. If the forecasts of a number of scientists and groups are correct, the lives of many millions of people are at risk. Hence, there is a moral dimension.
3. The effects of climate change will almost certainly be felt disproportionately by poor people in the Third World, especially through droughts, agricultural failure and famines.
4. US journalism typically does not cover the Third World very well. The price of gas, for example, receives much more coverage than do the reports about the future effects of climate change on Africa and Asia. As a result, the average American may think of climate change as something to do with polar bears and beachfront property, not seeing what the human cost is likely to be.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
energybulletin.net
Bart: Excellent comments. Thank you for weighing in.
I would add this: The price of gas in the United States receives much more coverage than do many, many important issues, including reports about the terrible impact of poverty and disease in Africa and Asia. I personally do not believe there is a dichotomy between dealing with poverty and reducing risks from climate change. (And climate change could well exacerbate tropical diseases.) But some people disagree. They believe reducing impacts from malaria, schistosomiasis, etc., and raising living standards should be a higher priority than mitigating climate change. I would be the first to argue with them (when I’m not writing about the issues as a science journalist). But are they the equivalent of Holocaust deniers? Evidently folks like Muriel believe so. But as someone who grew up in a neighborhood that was home to several people with numbers tattooed onto their arms, I find the comparison offensive.
I say that not to end the conversation, as Muriel contends. I say that to BEGIN the conversation. If we demonize people we disagree with on issues such as this, the conversation will never start in any meaningful way. We certainly will not achieve the new tone that President Obama spoke about tonight in his press conference. And we will make little progress on malaria, schistosomiasis, poverty, or climate change. We will instead continue to throw bricks and accomplish nothing but injuring each other.
Let me just add that people who advance specious, unsupported arguments out of greed or a desire for pure political gain deserve vociferous denunciation. But we should do it with facts and evidence, not meaningless labels.
Hi Tom
Following on from your last para in the comment above I thought of this article:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/02/06/tabloid-fossil-fuel-shill.aspx
- it seems to qualify, especially as it contains a self promoting plug:
“(for a lay-person’s guide to this report, you might check out my recent book Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming published by DK/Pearson)”
What is the best way to “vociferously denunciate” this type of thing? Do you think responding in blogs is sufficient? Or do think a letter of complaint should be written to the author/editor requesting that supporting facts and evidence are provided?
To add to Bart’s #3, a study came out last week about the effects of climate change on fishing nations. Here’s a summary:
A study in the February issue of the journal Fish and Fisheries has pointed out individual countries that are most vulnerable to the impact of climate change on fisheries. The at-risk nations include Malawi, Guinea, Senegal and Uganda in Africa, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan and Yemen in the Asian tropics and two South American countries: Colombia and Peru.
“From a strictly environmental perspective, countries in the higher latitudes will see the most pronounced impact from climate change on fishing,” said lead author Edward Allison, director of policy, economics and social science at WorldFish. “But economically, people in the tropics and subtropics likely will suffer most, because fish are so important in their diets and because they have limited capacity to develop other sources of income and food.”
The researchers urge teaching vulnerable countries to adapt to climate change possibilities such as loss of coral reefs and drought-hammered lakes.
Hi Googler: If you’re implying that Michael Mann is greedy and that this somehow leads him to falsify data, you’ll have to count me out of that discussion. I’m trying to advocate civility and rational discourse here.
Hi Tom
No, it is not a comment on greed or data and I support your advocacy of civility and rational discourse.
The reference came to mind in the context of your statement:
“Let me just add that people who advance specious, unsupported arguments out of greed or a desire for pure political gain deserve vociferous denunciation. But we should do it with facts and evidence, not meaningless labels.”
My comment is that, as far as I can see, in the uncivil and unsupported attack made in the article titled:
“Fossil fuel industry shill Solomon continues to lie to public”
(the National Post link has disappeared at the moment, the article also appears on Google News: http://news.google.com/news?btcid=8fffb63511dd67ae )
there is no evidence presented to support the claims made. It does not reflect the findings of the Wegman report or the NAS report, which as I understand it concurred with Wegman, who were unable to reproduce the findings of Mr Mann and there are accusations of lying and funding for which evidence is not provided.
To my mind it reads as a political piece intended to discredit someone who has challenged Mr Mann by branding them as, effectively, a corrupt liar. As far as I understand it this is exactly the sort of attack your post is critiscing. The fact there is a plug for his own published work supports the view personal gain is a motivating factor.
As you know I support your work to improve the journalistic coverage of climate change issues and I wonder what will really make a difference? There is good coverage of many of the issues and shortcomings of some of the scientific work on many blogs but there still does not seem to be any critical editorial line appearing elsewhere.
Free press is a good thing but to run a piece like that linked with IMO such extreme allegations and without supporting evidence is little more than a slur.
As far as critical examination goes that is the point of my first post on this thread – why are the weathercasters wrong “of course”? This presents the picture of certainty about AGW which at the moment many serious scientists do not share – a atarting point can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
If the article by Mr Mann is representative then are these people also to be accused of lies and corruption? or are their arguments worth investigating?
Thank you for accepting alternative posts – IMO all part of civil and rational discourse.
Kind regards
I agree that name calling doesn’t help the discussion, however–
There is good reason to use the term denier. When someone is motivated out of political ideology rather than science, then he/she is not a true scientific skeptic.
This is probably the basis for the majority of climate change “skepticism”, which is evidenced by how often Al Gore is used as a scapegoat, as if he were the source of the climate science affirming AGW.
See: “Why Climate Denialists are Blind to Facts and Reason: The Role of Ideology”
by Johnny Rook
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/12/143145/743/173/513430
When someone continues to repeat arguments that have long ago been debunked, they are no longer a scientific skeptic, but a denier.
President Obama’s new scientific advisor John Holdren comments on this.
“We should really call them ‘deniers’ rather than ‘skeptics’, because they are giving the venerable tradition of skepticism a bad name.”
“As my original reference to ‘the venerable tradition of skepticism’ indicates, I am in fact well aware of its valuable and indeed fundamental role in the practice of science. Skeptical views, clearly stated and soundly based, tend to promote healthy re-examination of premises, additional ways to test hypotheses and theories, and refinement of explanations and arguments. And it does happen from time to time — although less often than most casual observers suppose — that views initially held only by skeptics end up overturning and replacing what had been the ‘mainstream’ view.”
“Appreciation for this positive role of scientific skepticism, however, should not lead to uncritical embrace of the deplorable practices characterizing much of what has been masquerading as appropriate skepticism in the climate-science domain. These practices include refusal to acknowledge the existence of large bodies of relevant evidence (such as the proposition that there is no basis for implicating carbon dioxide in the global-average temperature increases observed over the past century); the relentless recycling of arguments in public forums that have long since been persuasively discredited in the scientific literature (such as the attribution of the observed global temperature trends to urban-heat island effects or artifacts of statistical method); the pernicious suggestion that not knowing everything about a phenomenon (such as the role of cloudiness in a warming world) is the same as knowing nothing about it; and the attribution of the views of thousands of members of the mainstream climate-science community to ‘mass hysteria’ or deliberate propagation of a ‘hoax’.”
“The purveying of propositions like these by a few scientists who do or should know better –and their parroting by amateur skeptics who lack the scientific background or the motivation to figure out what’s wrong with them — are what I was inveighing against in the op-ed and will continue to inveigh against. The activities of these folks, whether witting in the case of the scientists or unwitting in the case of their gullible adherents, have nothing to do with respectable scientific skepticism.”
related comment:
“Scientific skepticism is a healthy thing. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge, improve their understanding and refine their theories. Yet this isn’t what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and yet eagerly, even blindly embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog, study or 15 year old that refutes AGW”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Even common sense should tell you that the following may not be good for us and the environment.
According to the new book “The Carbon Age” by Eric Roston:
from The Carbon Age by Eric Roston
“Humans have sped up the global carbon cycle at least one hundred times faster than usual, transforming the world into one that we eventually might not recognize as our own. Manmade global warming is a geological aberration, nearly meteoric in speed.”
According to Roston, it took 60 million years for all the carbon to accumulate in the form of coal in the earth, through the natural process of the carbon cycle. What we are doing, is releasing this 60 million years worth of carbon accumulation into our atmosphere in a geological blink of an eye, of 150-200 years.
Explain how that is part of a natural cycle that the earth has been through before.
Hi Richard
Could you expand on this please:
“Explain how that is part of a natural cycle that the earth has been through before.”
Why have you asked this? Who is claiming this is the case and what has it to do with AGW?
Also in your post I didn’t find any data or evidence – only quoted opinion. Do you have a source which provides a reference supported and fully worked deriviation of the W/m2 power forcing associated with CO2 in climate modelling? I have tried to find this without success and would welcome a link.
Thanks
Tom, on a prior post you acknowledged that you didn’t “know” why the term denier was “invented”. It is your “opinion” that it has “used” to draw analogies with the Holocaust. Might I point out that the very first person to ever propose such a fanciful etymological explanation was none other than….Roger Pielke Jr.
Roger Pielke Jr.: Let’s be blunt. The phrase “climate change denier” is meant to be evocative of the phrase “holocaust denier”. In fact, this post precedes the column you cite by Ellen Goodman by more than a few months.
So Pielke was already out there seeding the idea with the right wing blogs. Which, of course, ran wild with it once Goodman wrote her article.
Why does this always happen to RPJr?
And I do hope you understand that fumbled excursions into etymology also include tripping yourself up with one of the many corollaries of Godwin’s law which states, “Godwin’s Law itself can be abused, as a distraction or diversion, that fallaciously miscasts an opponent’s argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.”
How….Roger….How….Pielke….how….Roger Pielke Jr.