Here’s another one I thought worth chewing on.
Mal A. at 09:24 AM on 2 January, 2018 I'm baffled by the confidence displayed by both deniers of anthropogenic global warming and conspiracists. What follows may be sloganeering, but I'm taking the chance on fooling myself that it isn't ;^). As the son of a science professor, educated in the public schools of a university town, I came early to regard science first and foremost as a way of trying not to be fooled ("The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." -R Feynman). Half a lifetime later, it's still all too easy to fool me, but AFAICT AGW deniers aren't even trying. They make no serious effort to distinguish real from fake news, because they fail to acknowledge how easy it is to fool them. Conspiracist AGW-deniers, especially, seem uncomfortable with ambiguity, and readily succumb to the appeal of certainty. They may be wrong, but at least they're sure, and they don't 'do' nuance! Genuine skeptics, OTOH, learn to quantify ambiguity, and give up on absolute certainty. They are willing to consider action based on what's most likely, despite known unknowns, and with awareness of the potential role for self-aggrandizement. Non-specialists may lack effective skills to evaluate genuine expertise; but why would a soi-disant 'global warming skeptic' be suspicious of working climate scientists, and not at least as suspicious of anyone else? IOW: yes, it's remotely possible AGW is a 190-year-old hoax, but it's more likely the conspiracists are fooling themselves.