Diamond Planets? Why Global Warming Deniers are Dishonest

Why can we say with confidence that global-warming deniers are for the most part dishonest? Because they try to hold honest climate-change researchers to an impossible scientific standard.

Here's a wonderful article that illustrates it perfectly. A couple weeks ago, astrophysicists announced they had discovered a diamond planet! No joke. It was orbiting a pulsar, and the nature of its orbit and its history made it almost certain it was crystal – that is, diamond.

But the astrophysicist went a big step further in the name of science.

Our host institutions were thrilled with the publicity and most of us enjoyed our 15 minutes of fame. The attention we received was 100% positive, but how different that could have been.

How so? Well, we could have been climate scientists.

Imagine for a minute that, instead of discovering a diamond planet, we’d made a breakthrough in global temperature projections.

Let’s say we studied computer models of the influence of excessive greenhouse gases, verified them through observations, then had them peer-reviewed and published in Science.

Instead of sitting back and basking in the glory, I suspect we’d find a lot of commentators, many with no scientific qualifications, pouring scorn on our findings.

People on the fringe of science would be quoted as opponents of our work, arguing that it was nothing more than a theory yet to be conclusively proven.

There would be doubt cast on the interpretation of our data and conjecture about whether we were “buddies” with the journal referees.

If our opponents dug really deep they might even find that I’d once written a paper on a similar topic that had to be retracted.

Before long our credibility and findings would be under serious question.

But luckily we’re not climate scientists.