Why Cold Facts Are Winning Against Climate Change Science

Deniers are murdering the truth with O.J. tactics, says McKibben

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In a very clever riff on climate change deniers, author Bill McKibben compares their tactics to those used by defense lawyers to get O.J. Simpson off the hook: bury the smoking gun facts in a haystack of trivial facts and then focus on the trivia. After awhile, trivia becomes truth and the suspect walks free in blood-stained shoes.

Example: the brutal East Coast winter. For deniers, this proves their main point, that the earth isn’t getting warmer, it’s getting colder and flatter. As Americans shiver in their doubts, says McKibben, the deniers move in with an "enormously clever, and enormously effective" campaign against climate science.

You gotta read McKibben’s full treatise on the denier movement. As he puts it, "It’s worth trying to understand how they’ve done it."

From 2006–2014, Terry was managing editor for Earthjustice's blog, online monthly newsletter and print Earthjustice Quarterly Magazine.