Last week I noted that, when it comes to the debate over gay marriage, the left has decided that they're tired of arguing over the issue and have instead chosen to simply delegitimize opponents of gay marriage as nothing more than bigots. They have done this because you don't need to debate a bigot, their views being seen as inherently unreasonable.
This is, of course, not the only case of such delegitimization. Something very similar is taking place in the debate over climate change. There is a growing consensus on the left that there is but one appropriate position to take when confronted with the realities of climate change: PANIC. Mind-numbing, pants-crapping terror. It is so bad—the future is so scary, the threat so dire—that we must radically alter our economy and retard human progress in order to save the planet. Americans must learn to live sans air conditioning, drive tiny cars, endure rolling blackouts, convert their roofs to solar energy manufacturing power plants, etc.
And if you're not interested in doing so? If you doubt the dire straits we are in? If you think that it's possible—nay, likely!—that humans are contributing to the warming of the planet bit but do not think it's worth retarding centuries of human progress in order to (extremely minimally) reduce the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the air? If you think that we're better off spending that money improving the lives of our fellow men and raising the standard of living in foreign countries, fighting things that actually kill people today like disease and hunger?*
Well, then you are a "denier," no better than an anti-Semite who suggests the Holocaust never took place. You are akin to a 9/11 Truther, the sort of person who rejects simple video evidence and engages in conspiracy theorizing. You are a money-grubbing monster willing to destroy the planet for a buck. For the most concise version of this argument, see Lee Fang:
Are 9/11 truthers any different than anthropogenic climate change deniers? Other than the fact a wealth industry backs them up?
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) March 5, 2014
That's a spectacular amount of delegitimization crammed into 140 characters or less! He hits on the truther, denier, and money grubber angles all at once. I'm not even mad. I'm impressed.
The argument over climate change is slightly more difficult to delegitimize than the debate over gay marriage, in part because there are actual facts and figures at play rather than pure emotion. But the emotional component, as noted above, is a key front in the climate wars. When you need to induce policy change through panic, the only way to get people to acquiesce is to keep them panicking. So when you have someone such as Roger Pielke Jr. noting at the data-driven FiveThirtyEight that the alarmists, the media, and our politicians are all wrong about the costs of climate change, it's bound to provoke a response.
That's why ThinkProgress' climate alarmists issued this sputtering response that doesn't really bother addressing Pielke's facts, instead aiming to tar him as an unreliable. He has "a long history of data distortion" and hasn't quietly acquiesced to the consensus, instead choosing the gauche path of engaging in "confrontations" with climate scientists. Quelle horreur!
ThinkProgress, unable to dispute Pielke's actual argument, instead tried to delegitimize the arguer. It is a smear he has long faced. Fortunately, the voices of intolerance have yet to silence him for his heresies.
At least ThinkProgress and the Twitter trolls are limiting themselves to invective (for now!). As J.D. Tuccille notes over at Reason, some are literally calling for the imprisonment of those with whom they disagree on the issue of climate change:
In 2012, in a proceeding straight out of the Inquisition, an Italian court convicted six scientists for providing "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" in the lead-up to the earthquake. Now, a philosophy professor says that case may provide a worthwhile example for the treatment of scientific dissenters—specifically, "climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus." ...
If you're trying to figure out how that doesn't threaten the free exercise of speech, Torcello assures us, "We must make the critical distinction between the protected voicing of one’s unpopular beliefs, and the funding of a strategically organised campaign to undermine the public’s ability to develop and voice informed opinions."
So ... You can voice a dissenting opinion, so long as you don't benefit from it or help dissenters benefit in any way?
Silly Tuccille. Didn't you know? Error has no rights.
(Hat tip to Scott Lincicome on the Pielke stuff.)
*In other words, if you take the Bjorn Lomborg view of things.