Internet Warfare

These people are almost as bad as Truthers, and also almost always of the same nationality. There must be something in the North American water supply that makes people think like this. One would think that there’s a big incentive in actually finding the truth behind all of this, but that’s where you encounter the incredibly diverse culture that is the United States. While the large majority is sane, there is a vocal minority that manages to compensate for its size by being very loud.

Fact is, we don’t know for sure, but we have a pretty good idea and it looks to be mostly likely that us humans have been doing no good to the planet, and that we’re pretty much likely to be the cause of the change in global climate that’s going to come. So anyway, there are two kinds of deniers, the former is full of loonies, and the latter is full of selfish people.

Type I actually denies that there’s any warming going on, and pretends that the global average temperature is actually not going up, and that everything is just fine. Of course, we know that this is not true. Whether we like to face it or not, global temperatures are going up and going all Mariastella Cosentino isn’t going to help. You can identify Type I nutcases by their affiliation, they’re likely to be free-marketer anarcho-capitalists, to the point that they will actually distrust scientific measurements because they come from a government institution. Sometimes, you’ll hear gems like the following:

Actually this whole nutty global warming business got started in the early 1980s when Margaret Thatcher’s government hired a bunch of scientists to counter the theory of global cooling so she could push her anti industrialism agenda. It snowballed from there.

Type II’s are more complicated, and the more intelligent of the lot are actually acceptable people simply erring on the side of cynicism. They acknowledge that the Earth is warming, but claim that human beings are simply not the cause. There are many libertarians among this group too, and they occupy the lunatic fringe on the verge of Type I-space. Do not mistake a clever Type I for a Type II though, for there are those from the former group who will claim to have carefully analysed and reached a conclusion while not having done anything of the sort. These will try to make broad statements: From the believable Volcanoes will stay global warming, and no model accounts for them. to the outrageous The Earth has actually been cooling over the last century.. This will probably be followed up by a copy-pasted list of scientists who think that humans aren’t the cause of global warming. Often, a few of these will be from discredited institutions.

Fortunately, only a few of those who think like this are actually literate enough to compose a sentence. Unfortunately, they will all descend upon any social networking site in a swarm. Approach with caution.