A Liberal Dose
July 8, 2021
Troy D. Smith
“Slide from Reality, Part 2: Climate Change”
Last Week I talked about some of the factors in the late 20th
century that helped lead to 21st century conservatives no longer
accepting scientific, or other kinds of empirical, facts. The rise of political
talk radio and television and the advent of the internet, both in the 1990s,
made it easier to isolate oneself from alternative points of view. But there
was something else that started happening in that decade, and sped up after the
turn of the century, that specifically spoke to conservatives: denial of
climate science.
I am a historian, not a scientist. But I do teach, and
studied In my doctoral program, environmental history –so I pay particular
attention to this topic. I could explain in detail the (very factual) way the
greenhouse effect works, and why, but you can find that information easily.
It’s not that the facts aren’t out there –it’s that some people have worked
very hard to delegitimize them. 97% of climate scientists agree that Earth’s
average annual temperature is getting hotter each year, and that human activity
is the primary factor causing it. That number has held steady for this whole
century. Do you realize how hard it is to get 97% of academics to agree on
anything at all? Once upon a time in America, if 97% of the experts said
something was happening, probably 97% of the general public would trust them on
it. So what happened?
It was that other 3% -or, more accurately, the people who
funded them. Many of that 3% wound up appearing on television talk shows
–especially, but not limited to, conservative ones –and were employed by think
tanks that were financed by oil and other energy companies. Because some
newspapers, channels, and programs wanted to be perceived as presenting
objective news and not opinion, they would have one scientist on their show who
believed in climate change and one who disagreed, and let them argue about it.
So viewers were exposed to venues that either showed only the 3% point of view,
or one that presented the 3% and the 97% equally. That made it easy to convince
a large number of Americans that the experts were divided and that both points
of view were roughly equal –therefore not reliable.
That process was expedited in 2009 when over a thousand
hacked emails from climatologists were released by conservative activists and
offered as proof that the researchers were making up the whole thing as a way
to get government money. Independent fact-checkers quickly verified that the
emails had been misrepresented and taken out of context and that the
accusation, not the climate research, was actually the hoax. That evidence
didn’t matter, though, to those who wanted to disbelieve in climate change, if
they ever even heard about it. Let me be clear here: climate science became
political because if people believed in it oil companies would lose money, and
it was the oil companies who bought the ads that financed the talk shows and
who donated heavily to politicians (on both sides of the aisle, but especially
on the right). So when the TV/radio pundits and the politicians started
questioning scientific facts, the people in their base who had already gotten
in the habit of only hearing one point of view started doing the same thing. The
result? Such people stopped believing scientists, or scientific fact, and
viewed any fact that didn’t support their party’s current worldview as a
liberal hoax or even a diabolical conspiracy.
Nowadays more people believe in climate change –because we
are literally seeing it. Many conservatives, though, will argue that it is not
because of carbon emissions but is just a natural cycle of the earth. That’s
not what the experts say –but experts no longer seem to matter. People think
twenty minutes on the internet makes them as knowledgeable as someone who
trained for years.
More to come.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog appear HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE.
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