Conspiracists Concur: Climate Change Is a Colossal Cover-Up

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/539286/conspiracists-concur-climate-change-is-a-colossal-cover-up/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Conspiracists Concur: Climate Change Is a Colossal Cover-Up[/font]

[font size=4]Why science denialism and conspiracy theory walk together, suspiciously.[/font]

By Richard Martin on July 10, 2015

[font size=3]A group of social scientists headed by Stephan Lewandowsky has released a study of online blog comments, concluding that climate-change deniers are strongly prone to conspiratorial thinking. That climate deniers are also conspiracy buffs might seem like one of those dog-bites-man findings for which social scientists are often ridiculed (“People in love do foolish things, study concludes”). But the background to this study is actually more interesting than its conclusion.

Published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, the new paper, “Recurrent Fury: Conspiratorial Discourse in the Blogosphere,” is based on an examination of blog comments in response to the authors’ previous paper, “Recursive Fury: Conspiracist Ideation in the Blogosphere”—itself a follow-up to their original study, “NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science,” published in Psychological Science in 2012. In other words, commenters responding (mostly angrily) to two studies of conspiratorial thought have accused the authors of being part of a massive conspiracy.

The thinking of conspiracy believers is, of course, recursive by nature: all evidence that contradicts their thesis is simply more evidence confirming the nefarious cover-up at work. The Warren Commission report, which in 888 exhaustive pages demonstrated conclusively that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy, confirmed that the CIA, or Cuba, or the Mob, was actually behind the murder. The latest report on global warming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is—aha!—proof that a shadowy one-world-government body, or the Trilateral Commission, or Hillary Clinton, is perpetrating “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”

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The British newspaper The Telegraph has helpfully compiled a list of the most widely cited climate-change theories that shows how ecumenical deniers are in their thinking: among the top theories are a plot against the United States, a plot against Asia, and a plot against Africa. A vast right-wing conspiracy, or a dark plot from the left. Perhaps my own favorite is the notion that climate change was dreamed up by Margaret Thatcher as part of her campaign to break the U.K. coal unions.

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[MisterP]

1. "888 exhaustive pages demonstrated conclusively that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone"

that's probably why CTs circulate so freely

since their opponents write like this

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. How many “Conspiracy Theorists” do you suppose have read the report?

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/20/magazine/the-warren-commission-why-we-still-dont-s-believe-it.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]THE WARREN COMMISSION: Why We Still Dont's Believe It[/font]

By David W. Belin; David W. Belin, a senior partner in the Des Moines law firm of Belin Harris Helmick Tesdell Lamson McCormick, was counsel to the Warren Commission. He adapted this article from ''Final Disclosure: The Full Truth About the Assassination of President Kennedy,'' to be published this month.
Published: November 20, 1988

[font size=3] THE TRUTH IS that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who murdered President John F. Kennedy and Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit on that tragic Friday afternoon, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Yet 25 years after the event, a majority of the American public does not believe the truth. Rather, polls have shown that most Americans believe President Kennedy was assassinated as an outgrowth of a conspiracy.

Over the years, conspiracy theories have ebbed and flowed. During the late 1960's, claims focused on an alleged conspiracy by so-called right-wing conservatives. In the 1970's, the conspiracy buffs concentrated on the Central Intelligence Agency. More recently, the dominant theme has been that the Mafia was in some way involved, with Jack Ruby as the ''hit man.'' A common effect of many of these allegations has been to tarnish the name of the late Chief Justice Earl Warren and to create the conviction that the Warren Commission was a ''blue ribbon cover-up.''

Having served as counsel to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President Kennedy, and as executive director of the Rockefeller Commission investigating the C.I.A., in which capacity I had access to all C.I.A. files relating to the Kennedy assassination, I know that the right-wing conspiracy theories, the C.I.A. conspiracy theories and the Mafia conspiracy theories are pure fiction. Why are they believed by a majority of the American public? How can it be that an investigation headed by Earl Warren - a man whose integrity was above reproach - has failed to gain the public's confidence?

The easy answer is that there is a general mystique about conspiracy - a mystique encouraged by the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby on Nov. 24, 1963. In fact, when I first went to Washington to serve as counsel to the Warren Commission, I felt that the killing of Oswald by Ruby, a man with underworld connections, might have been some sort of a ''hit'' ordered to silence the President's assassin.

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