Climate deniers do many 'impossible things' at once

Anti-carbon tax protesters in front of
 Parliament House in Canberra in 2011.

Sometimes, climate science deniers will tell you that we can’t predict global temperatures in the future. Sometimes, they’ll say we’re heading for an ice age.

Occasionally, contrarians will say that no single weather event can prove human-caused global warming. But then they’ll point to somewhere that’s cold, claiming this disproves climate change.

Often, deniers will tell you that temperature records show that global warming stopped at some point around 1998. But also they’ll insist that those same temperature records can’t be relied on because NASA and the Bureau of Meteorology are all communist corruption monkeys. Or something.

Black is also white. Round is also flat. Wrong is also right?

A new research paper published in the journal Synthese has looked at several of these contradictory arguments that get thrown around the blogosphere, the Australian Senate and the opinion pages of the (mostly) conservative media.

The paper comes with the fun and enticing title: “The Alice in Wonderland mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism.”

Why Alice? Because, as the White Queen admitted: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Read Graham Readfearn’s story on The Guardian - “How climate science deniers can accept so many 'impossible things' all at once.”