Climate Change: Skeptics vs. Deniers

by Stephen H. Schneider

Skeptics vs. Deniers

Are you a skeptic or a denier? Stephen H. Schneider's brief essay can help you sort it out.

The Scoop: Underlying the question of whether we have reached or passed "Peak Oil" is another more basic matter of whether we accept what science tells about how fossil fuel burning is changing Earth's climate. Nowadays, that can sometimes mean learning how to separate climate change skeptics from climate change deniers. This brief essay is the most concise I have seen that clarifies the difference. It's republished here, with permission, from the May/June 2009 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
-LO'H

Stephen H. Schneider is a climatologist whose first first book about climate and world problems was published way back in 1976 when he was at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He is now professor for interdisciplinary studies and a senior fellow at the Woods Hole Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. He has long been active in climate policy issues. At this year's [American Association for the Advancement of Science] meeting, he was the invited discussant at the session on media coverage of climate change. The Skeptical Inquirer invited him to elaborate briefly on thoughts he expressed there about skeptics vs. deniers. .

All good scientists are skeptical: I changed my mind from cooling to warming in 1974 when the preponderance of evidence shifted--and is now well established. I changed my views on "nuclear autumn" in 1984, incurring the wrath of the peace movement--again because the preponderance of evidence shifted with study. That is a skeptic, what all scientists should be.

But real skeptics still accept a preponderance of carefully examined evidence even when some elements of a complex systems problem remain unresolved, and they do not pretend that when there are loose ends some well-established preponderances don't exist--that is beyond skepticism to denial, or often political convenience. So a skeptic questions everything but accepts what the preponderance of evidence is, and a denier falsely claims that until all aspects are resolved we know nothing and should do nothing--often motivated by the latter. If you deny a clear preponderance of evidence, you have crossed the line from legitimate skeptic to ideological denier.

Article posted on May 11, 2009

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The views expressed are the author's alone and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Discovery Channel.

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