It seems I'm just a dumb Joe The Plummer type

The really, really, really, really smart climate change types have it all figured out: you're too stupid to actually understand Global Warming. Probably you're a tea bagger, too. Whatever.

Anyhoo, I left a comment over there, which hasn't been published. Maybe they moderate comments; I don't have any idea, since nothing said the comment was being held for moderation. Maybe they just hate Denier scumbags like me. Since I have my own blog, here's my comment in case they deep-six it:

Unfortunately environmentalists and scientists have been approaching the climate change issue as though it were simply a matter of insufficient knowledge on the part of the general public; what Naomi Oreskes refers to as the “information deficit model.” Since the problem is understood as there not being sufficient information, the ’solution’ is obviously to provide more information.

Yes, please - give us more information. Only this time, please don't give us garbage:

- Himalayan glaciers that actually aren't disappearing.

- We're not losing 40% of the Amazon rain forest, as claimed in the IPCC AR4.

- Hurricanes are not worse than before.

Those are just a sampling of the errors in the IPCC AR4 report on Climate Change. You know, the one that we were assured contained only peer-reviewed science but which in reality consists of 30% or more student papers, Greenpeace press releases, "background" papers from the WWF, newspaper stories, etc.

If you dig deeper, you find the games that Mann played with his R2 value in the statistics behind his MBH98 "Hockey Stick" paper, the Yamal tree rings from ten (!) trees, and the ClimateGate emails, which include this from one of the scientists:

Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know f**k-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know f**k-all).

By all means, please give us more information. Actual solid science (instead of stonewalling and "we lost the raw data") would be very refreshing indeed.

But then again, I'm probably one of those Joe The Plummer types who's too dim to understand anything that isn't spoon fed to me in a 20 second sound bite.

Martha in the comments hits on a brilliant suggestion - you're not dumb (well, probably you are, but that's not important), you're a victim!

I think it is unlikely that the average denier is fearful or insecure (beyond the usual). It makes more sense to see deniers as being like most members of society in the sense that they are exploited by the system.

Just remember everyone, these people are really, really, really, really smart. That's why they're in the Elite, and you're not.

UPDATE 16 April 2010 11:56: They didn't publish my comment. What is it with lefties not being able to debate and defend their positions?