Why do Republicans so easily attribute despicable motives to climate scientists?

[Jackpine Radical]

Why do they assume that 98% of climate scientists are engaged in some great conspiracy to perpetrate a massive hoax on the world?

The answer is fundamentally simple, I think. They're projecting their own lack of conscience and greedy natures onto others. They find this easy to do because, being themselves bereft of compassion, empathy, concern for the universe outside themselves, and a love of objective knowledge, they cannot understand how others might be thus motivated. Humanitarianism is for suckers. Since scientists are presumably too smart to be suckers, they must be driven by base and self-serving motives.

[Warpy]

1. Projection. NT

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Yup. (nt)

[Warren Stupidity]

17. absolutely

[Gothmog]

36. Agreed

Projection explains a great deal here

[arcane1]

2. Exactly.

[kentuck]

3. Sounds logical.

[Bragi]

4. The deniers have no other choice, really

I don't think it's that complicated. The facts, and those who know and care about facts, are almost all against the deniers chosen misinterpretation of reality.

So all that's left in the deniers toolbox are ad hominem attacks against scientists via the invention of a massive conspiracy amongst them.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. They're trying to protect the American Dream.

[jamzrockz]

7. Simple

Because it might increase taxes and govt is the solution. Had it been any different, republicans wouldn't care

[villager]

8. Their entire politics is based on projection

the "Other."

This is what they've always done, and what they'll always be.

[immoderate]

9. Climate observance evokes cognative dissonance in "market fundamentalists."

It's where climate science runs up against the "free market."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_fundamentalism

--imm

[Jackpine Radical]

11. The Spelling Police have asked me to inform you

that it's "cognitive."

[immoderate]

12. Uh-oh. If I correct it now, it will look like I "knuckled under."

My browser doesn't check spelling in title frames.

--imm

[Jackpine Radical]

13. They say they'd have gone lighter on you, but it was your second offense

involving the same word today.

[immoderate]

15. I once was a spellling champ, but since the spell checker was invented...

I am relegated to a total dependency.* (*Whew, I got through that one.) Perhaps it's the multiplicity of phonemes we are responsible for. Ya' know?

I question though, whether it counts as a second offense, if it's on the same word. (I bet they were both in titles, dammit! )

--imm

[Cirque du So-What]

10. Those who operate without a moral compass

automatically assume that everyone else is just as amoral as they are. Projection and cynicism in one toxic mixture.

[Enthusiast]

31. We see it every day.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Jackpine Radical.

[greatlaurel]

16. Very well said.

There is a lot to what you said. Every time I hear one of those nuts accuse scientists of being greedy and self serving, I know they are talking about themselves. Most people think everyone thinks like them.

[H2O Man]

18. Recommended.

I agree.

[Half-Century Man]

19. You view the world through the filter of yourself.

If you are prone to lying and hoaxes, you see lies and hoaxes in others.

Of course, you could just be ignorant (multiple causes, some self inflicted some not) and assume that things outside of your narrow band of "true knowledge" are attempts to deceive you for reasons unknown.

[Mariana]

20. If they didn't believe that

they'd have to admit they've been wrong. Not bloody likely.

[logosoco]

21. I think that Upton Sinclair quote fits a lot of them..

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Sure, they could make money elsewhere, but I don't think they have much of a conscience to begin with.

[Gman]

22. It's worse than that

I believe there are many in the oil and coal companies as well as the GOP who know full well that man made global warming is real. They're idiots but they are NOT stupid. The tobacco industry knew and knows now cigarettes are dangerous but they continued to lie in the face of overwhelming proof. Then they settled lawsuits without admitting guilt.

It's the same thing. Attacking scientists is much like saying if your wife has pictures of you in bed with another woman deny it. Because she'll always have that little but of doubt that it's actually true. And they know their blindly faithful who ARE stupid will echo the attacks because their leaders would never lie to them.

There are trillions of dollars at stake to lose if they don't lie.

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Actually, I'm in full agreement with you; I was mostly talking about the followers,

the teabag sheep, rather than the super-cynics who manipulate them (who have in effect bought off almost the entirety of the remaining 3% of "scientists" who continue to profess skepticism in return for what amount to flat-out bribes.

[MNBrewer]

23. Projection! Exactly!

EVERYTHING those right wing nutcases accuse others of doing is exactly what THEY are doing. The motives they ascribe to their political opponents are exactly the motives that THEY have.

[Dreamer Tatum]

25. Same reason many DUers stop at nothing to discredit negative marijuana research

Because they are religiously devoted to their belief, however nuanced reality might actually be.

[treestar]

26. It is to promote One World Government

Wasn't that the plan?

[Jackpine Radical]

28. Oh, yeah, that's right.

As opposed, I guess, to One World Corporate Anarchy.

[Louisiana1976]

27. In one word: greed.

[noiretextatique]

29. because their corporate masters tell them to?

[Enthusiast]

30. Kicked and recommended! You nailed it!

They're projecting their own lack of conscience and greedy natures onto others.

[Dirty Socialist]

32. One Thing that Frosts Me

Scientists make perhaps $100,000 per year. The Koch brothers made a combined $18 BILLION last year. Who has more to lose here? You tell me!

[pampango]

33. Some (mostly on the right) choose the policy first, then fit the acceptable "facts" to it.

If climate scientists believe that climate change exists, they must be a part of a grand (liberal) conspiracy. Their opinions can be disregarded since they do not fit with the chosen policy.

Paul Krugman: It’s not just facts that have a liberal bias; so does careful, open-minded analysis.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/yellen-wages-and-intellectual-honesty/

[JHB]

34. Decades of training

On the Evangelical side, they've believed that teaching evolution was part of a satanic socialist conspiracy to lure souls away from Real True Christianity. No trouble at all to add climate change to the list. Most of the denying tactics are the same.

More secular, but heavily overlapping, is the cultivation of the "don't trust the liberal media" mentality. Denial is real easy when it's "liberal scientists" on one side and trusted "I'm telling you the real deal that the liiiiiiiibbbbbbeerrrullls don't want you to hear" on the other.

[applegrove]

35. That's it exactly. They blame others for who they are.

[gollygee]

37. Plausible denialbility

That's all they go for.

[hatrack]

38. Two reasons: One, projection (as noted earlier in the thread)

Two, science shows us that we live on a small dot in a very, very big universe, and that we are products of, and subject to, powerful and indifferent forces that do not respond to prayer, belief, wishes, flags, citizenship or ideologies.

For many conservatives, it's just easier to ignore this beautiful and indifferent reality, and double down on just how incredibly, super-duper important and powerful they believe themselves to be.