User:Scribe/Denialists are idiots

A cautionary tale about futility

Why arguing with denialists is pointless and silly
I've been editing various articles on global warming related topics on Wikipedia for a while. Like most scientists in the field, I believe anthropogenic global warming is real and extremely important (although I am not an atmospheric scientist, merely well read in the area). However, I've faced some very tendentious and determined denialist editors who clearly think the whole issue is nonsense, and feel strongly enough about it to edit against it, in one way or another, obsessively. I had an email exchange with one of them (Alex) because despite his claims of employment as a computer programmer in real life, he clearly had plenty of time to edit Wikipedia and oppose me and many others at every turn on climate-related pages. In fact, there is no way he could be fully employed and doing what he was doing, looking at his edit history. Now there are literally billions of dollars, perhaps even trillions, at stake over carbon trading schemes around the world. Just here in Australia we've seen mining executives say that any emissions trading scheme would, in its first five years, "cost the Australian coal and gold mining sectors $5 billion and $850 million respectively". So my suspicion was, and is, that these vested interests are paying people to edit wikipedia to put their case, just as the tobacco industry did. Anyway, during our email exchange (listed below, with my emphasis added in red ), my interlocutor implied that the overwhelming scientific consensus over anthropogenic global warming was the result of scientists being too frightened to say what they really feel and voice their real doubts. He sent me a paper by scientist Jeffrey Kiehl as an example of a climate researcher who was hinting at doubts with a nudge and a wink, if you read between the lines. I called his bluff and wrote to the scientist, asking him what his true feelings are. See what happened below.

LESSON LEARNED