Why, indeed?

John Quiggin has a sharply insightful post on agnotology, or what's being called epistemic closure in the blogdom. It's the practice of manufacturing and "maintaining ignorance" on the political right.

As an example, he considers the Oregon climate change petition, which conservative flog about to prove there is no climate change ("31,000 scientists signed it"):

The Oregon Petition has been around since the 1990s, so it’s had plenty of time to to be checked out. A 1998 version attracted 17000 signatures, and a subsequent effort in 2008 brought the total to 31000.

Here’s the Wikipedia article, a further debunking from DeSmogBlog and here’s my own investigation from 2002. Some basic points

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  “Scientist’ In this petition means anyone who claims to have gone to university (initially, they had to claim some study of science subjects). The number of actual (PhD with published research) scientists who reject any part of the mainstream consensus on climate change is far smaller (Wikipedia provides a list of such scientists who have at least one published article). The number of such scientists with relevant expertise, who are not obvious cranks, ideologues or hired guns, is small enough to be counted on the fingers of one hand.

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  The petition and its reporting are dishonest in obvious ways (fake PNAS style, misreporting of the content) etc

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  The promoters, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine are obvious fruitcakes

...So, with something like the Oregon petition, the archetypal rightwinger would simultaneously advocate all of the following:

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  The petition shows that 31 000 scientists reject AGW (lots of examples above)

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  There is no scientific consensus supporting AGW, so even if lots of the petition signatories aren’t really scientists, the main claim behind it is correct (see, for example,here)

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  The scientific consensus supporting AGW is wrong, and its proponents are dishonest, so its OK to present non-scientists as scientists if that will promote the truth Here, particularly in comments

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  AGW is being used to promote statist policies, so, even if the hypothesis is true, it should be criticised in order to undermine support for such policieshere

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  Even if policies like emissions trading schemes aren’t really statist, and are a response to a real problem, they have been put forward by environmentalists and liberals (people who are Not Like Us) and must therefore be opposed by any means necessary. (implicit in just about everything written on this topic – can anyone locate an explicit version of this?)

Quiggin ends with an interesting pair of thoughts:

...I’d like to end with the rhetorical question of whether, given the extent to which the US rightwing movement relies on the deliberate promotion of ignorance, anyone, regardless of their philosophical views on conservatism, libertarianism and so on, can associate with this movement and maintain any intellectual integrity. The converse question for the left, is whether there is any benefit in engaging intellectually with anyone who is, in the end, promoting ignorance and dishonesty by virtue of their affiliations.