“Denialism” is a pretty broad brush. By the standards of those who want to paint everyone who disagrees with the scientific/media consensus as evil, Fred Seitz was a denier, yet he noted that CO2 might be a problem https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/seitz.html and reasonably suggested that nuclear energy would be part of the solution– and Oreskes vigorously attacked that sensible solution (but isn’t the planet at stake?) Seitz did not deny effects of CO2; I don’t know of any denier who denies that CO2 absorbs infrared. What they deny is that the hysteria over CO2 is justified and there are excellent, rational, and peer-reviewed scientific reasons supporting alternative theories for why the planet is about 1C warmer than it was in 1900– if we can even depend on the temperature record being accurate enough to say we have a 1C rise.
But no, we’re supposed to swallow alarmism whole-hog and only then can we enter into the church of believers and turn away from evil. Why do Republicans tend to be more moderate about climate change and not alarmists? Because they’re not Democrats, who are a bit soft-in-the-head with the kumbaya that says that industrialists are evil and to be resisted by the virtuous people who are all-too-keen to live in nice houses with nice cars and go to nice museums built by industrialists and go to hospitals that might have been funded by industrialists, not to mention fly off to vacation lands in jets built by big bad companies run by men who have no children or elderly to care for, don’t go to ball games or operas or concerts, and never go to church or contribute to their community in any way. Or, in the case of Rockerfeller University and Fred Seitz, accept about 45 million given by oil money to fund scientific research, one of which ended up winning a Nobel Prize.
People who disagree with the radical alarmist consensus have been demonized. Think about that.
Are all oil executives evil? Do they not have parents, cousins, brothers and sisters, and children that they love and care for? Are the people who work on oil rigs doing evil, or are they hard-working folks helping to supply the country with the energy it demands? No, for those who have swallowed the leftist kumbaya– and I used to be one– the only virtuous ones are the ones who like to use everything the industrialists produce but would also like to bite the industrialists’ hands.
The left is not completely wrong. But, neither is the right. We’re all people, first. Good, sensible people can have different views– it really is as simple as that. Oreskes and company would make alternative views a crime if they could.
Dems tend to believe the science? I think Jim D is confusing a biased consensus paradigm with an objective assessment of the evidence. Consensus is not science and never has been, and the notion that consensus = scientific truth is at the core of Oreskes’ deception.
