Follow up: How a liberal vegan environmentalist made the switch from climate proponent to climate skeptic

/ November 14, 2015
Guest essay by David Seigel
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On October 16, I launched a 9,000 word essay on my conversion from a climate-change believer to skeptic. Anthony liked it and decided to run a short summary on WUWT.

That page now has over 450 comments, the essay has been viewed over 50k times, and it has had over 9k reads. It has led to discussions across the web, and, via the survey at the end of the essay, has led to a surprising 46% conversion rate of people becoming climate skeptics. These are small numbers, but they are also small steps toward an important goal. My essay is capable of reaching liberals, challenging their assumptions, and getting them to change their views.

The essay prompted a group of global-warming enthusiasts to write a long rebuttal essay, titled Climate Change is Real, and Important.

It starts with a large picture of a menacing fire in 2006, which the authors presumedly believe represents the fire and destruction of human-caused climate change. They have also attacked me on Twitter, using the standard name-calling and association techniques that have come to be the norm.

The rebuttal is long, unsurprising, misleading, and vague. It’s written in the smug tone of those who think they are right and suffer no fools. People like this – true believers – have no incentive to look at the facts. They won’t change their view no matter what the data tells them. Dan Kahan and his collaborators have found that politics distorts our ability to reason.
People respond to the same data in different ways, depending on political conditioning.
Since that rebuttal came out on October 29, two people volunteered to help me answer the attacks. We have prepared our response. It’s for people interested in this story. I ask two things:
My essay still hasn’t been seen by mainstream audiences like Huffpo, Slate, Forbes, The Atlantic, and others. I ask you to reach out to more people to help promote the original essay, which is at climatecurious.com. I hope some journalists will discover it and want to cover it as “news.”

If you’re interested in the rebuttal and our response, please go to Climate Change: Is it Real and Important

We hope you find it worth reading.

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