The Committee to Nuke Elysium

Adam Frank levels a strong polemic against denialism — those that deny scientific findings that have been overwhelmingly supported by the evidence — like human evolution and anthropogenic climate change. 

Adam Frank, Welcome to the Age of Denial

In 1982, polls showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created human beings in their present form. Thirty years later, the fraction of the population who are creationists is 46 percent.

In 1989, when “climate change” had just entered the public lexicon, 63 percent of Americans understood it was a problem. Almost 25 years later, that proportion is actually a bit lower, at 58 percent.

The timeline of these polls defines my career in science. In 1982 I was an undergraduate physics major. In 1989 I was a graduate student. My dream was that, in a quarter-century, I would be a professor of astrophysics, introducing a new generation of students to the powerful yet delicate craft of scientific research.

Much of that dream has come true. Yet instead of sending my students into a world that celebrates the latest science has to offer, I am delivering them into a society ambivalent, even skeptical, about the fruits of science.

[…]

Today, however, it is politically effective, and socially acceptable, to deny scientific fact. Narrowly defined, “creationism” was a minor current in American thinking for much of the 20th century. But in the years since I was a student, a well-funded effort has skillfully rebranded that ideology as “creation science” and pushed it into classrooms across the country. Though transparently unscientific, denying evolution has become a litmus test for some conservative politicians, even at the highest levels.

Meanwhile, climate deniers, taking pages from the creationists’ PR playbook, have manufactured doubt about fundamental issues in climate science that were decided scientifically decades ago. And anti-vaccine campaigners brandish a few long-discredited studies to make unproven claims about links between autism and vaccination.

Denialism has lead to a policy gridlock around mitigating climate change, when our only hope have become worse hurricanes and increased drought to shake the disbelievers out of the propaganda trance they’re in.

Welcome to the postnormal, where the postmodern era’s voodoo versions of economics, climate science, and business management are deeply embedded in the discourse about our future, and it will likely take us a generation or longer to rewire our society, and defuse the IED that the deniers constructed out of everyday bits of discourse.

(via stoweboyd)