re: #27 publicityStunted

I would like to add that there’s a huge, huge difference between people who are genuinely confused, and the willfully ignorant. How do you spot that difference? Easy - if you patiently explain the facts using language and terms that are accessible, genuinely confused people will modify their position accordingly. The willfully ignorant will ignore all evidence that contradicts their beliefs, and continue spouting their BS as if it had never been refuted at all.

Willfully ignorant global warming deniers are no better than 9/11 truthers, moon-landing-was-fakers, rabid anti-vaxxers and holocaust revisionists.

They’re better than the last group, because the last group is worse. Those revisionists’ real agenda is to kill the Jews Hitler missed. That’s evil, raw and sulfurous.

The denialists’ agenda is to get rich in the here and now, or to avoid paying even a modest price in the here and now (depending where they stand on the economic totem pole) and let the future sort itself out. They might imagine that geoengineering will save the day. They might imagine that it wouldn’t be all that bad. They might think that everybody’s lying and so they’ll just pursue their own interests like everybody else.

You cannot say with surety that they really expect things to be all that bad, and are deliberately working to that end. It’s a mistake to impute demonic motives to people when other explanations, more innocent, are available if you take a charitable view of the facts.

It’s a tactical mistake, and it’s a moral mistake. You inflame and embitter your heart against people who are not necessarily mortal enemies deserving of annihilation. And you inflame them against you, and make your own side’s political challenge that much more difficult.