The wonderful thing about skepticism, at least as embodied in contemporary American Conservative narratives, is that it has absolutely no self-awareness. You've recycled the same tried and true tactics for decades across the board, but you actually get offended when we point that out (Tobacco *is* Bad, news at 11)
Please peruse the following article -
http://www.wunderground.com/education/ozone_skeptics.asp?MR=1
The good old Ozone layer "debate." Remember that one? The one where all the scientists had a peer-reviewed consensus that CFCs depleted the ozone layer, and yet it just didn't feel truthy to the people who manufactured CFCs? Oh yah, and Republicans were skeptical too, coincidentally.
Notice any similarities in the way debate was manufactured then and now?
My favorite passage:
"In 1995, the year Molina and Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of the CFC-ozone depletion link, the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment began a series of hearings to revisit the issue of ozone depletion, where the issue of peer-review was brought up. During the hearings, Representative John Doolittle, a California Republican, stated, "My own belief, is that the question is still very much open to debate...Theories or speculation about this are not sufficient. We need science, not pseudo-science."
Doolittle was challenged by Lynn Rivers, a Michigan Democrat. They had the following interchange, taken from the Congressional Report, "Hearing on Scientific Integrity and the Public Trust: The Science Behind Federal Policies and Mandates: Case Study 1 -- Stratospheric Ozone: Myth and Realities", 104th Congress, 1st session, September 20, 1995, Report no. 31 (Gelbspan, 1998):
RIVERS: "Have you found in peer-reviewed articles or in the broader scientific discourse that people are saying this is not really a problem?"
DOOLITTLE: "I have found that there is no established consensus as what actually is the problem. I found extremely misleading representations by the government and government officials that are not founded on sound science."
RIVERS: "...[W]hat I was asking about is peer-reviewed articles [by] scientists who are...doing this work on a regular basis. Can you give me an example of some peer-reviewed publications that you consulted in formulating your opinion that there's no [sound] science?
DOOLITTLE: "Well, you're going to hear from one of the scientists today, Dr. Fred Singer."
RIVERS: "Dr. Singer doesn't publish in peer-reviewed documents."
DOOLITTLE: "[I]'m not going to get involved in a mumbo-jumbo of peer-reviewed documents. There's a politics within the scientific community, where they're all too intimidated to speak out once someone has staked out a position...And under this Congress, we're going to get to the truth and not just the academic politics."
RIVERS: "[T]he general way to feel certain that you're getting good science is that you put your ideas out in a straightforward way in a peer-reviewed publication and you allow others who are doing the same work to make comments, to criticize, to replicate your findings. And what I'm asking you, in your search for good science, is what peer-reviewed documentation did you use to come up with your decision? What good science did you rely on?"
DOOLITTLE: "My response to you is, it is the proponents of the ban that have the burden of producing the good science. I do not have that burden."
The denialists were perfectly in synch with their current strategy back then, right up until "Oops! Giant hole above Antarctica! No one saw that one coming..." Did I mention the hole was much *worse* than predicted by scientific models? Yah...Did anyone peep up to publicly say they'd reviewed the evidence and reversed their initial skepticism? Hmmmm, doesn't seem like it...
Here's a simple question for you - when have the skeptics, when faced with a clear consensus from the scientific community based on peer-reviewed and published articles,
EVER
been right?
Pretty simple, wouldn't you agree? I'm sure you can come up with at least one or two examples, no? Because I can think of at least 50 where the skeptics were wrong, on any scale you'd like to imagine. I guess that's my liberal "reality-based" bias kicking in...
Here's another one - how does it feel to be a part of a narrative that is so consistently wrong that you can't even admit it's a pattern?
"DDT - Oops! Smoking - Oops! Ozone layer - Oops! AGW - now this time is different, I swear! I'll swear to that right up until the evidence is so overwhelmingly awful that I have to back down, which I will do as if I never opposed it in the first place...Wait a minute...you are comparing the issues now to the issues 10 or 40 years ago? No fair! How obnoxious!"
Disclaimer: I'm talking about the narrative, not the individual. You, as a person, might agree that DDT is bad for birds, that tobacco had a causal link to cancer, but 50 years ago your narrative never would have admitted that, and if you were a good little soldier you would have toed the party line without questions. The issues have changed, but looking over the thread it really doesn't look like much else has...
How sad.