Twice in the recent past

I have come across the phrase "global warming deniers." "Global warming deniers" yields 238k results on Google and searching the exact phrase (" 'global warming deniers' ") yields 133k, so the phrase is in fairly wide usage. It struck me as a very powerful thing to call someone, for several reasons.

The first is the word "deny." To deny, in this sense, is to be contradictory, to refuse acknowledgment or recognition or to refuse to admit the truth or existence of something. So, right off the bat, a 'global warming denier' is a pretty stubborn and obstinate person, certainly no one pleasant.

"Deny" also has a pretty strong connotation of a guilty party trying to protect their ass, as it's most often seen in a legal context: "O.J. Simpson denies the allegations against him;" "Michael Jackson denies any inappropriate contact;" "City accountants deny any knowledge of wrongdoing."

(As a quick aside, doesn't "wrongdoing" have a wonderfully Orwellian feel to it?)

"Deny" coupled with "global" intensifies these meanings. You're accusing someone of refusing to admit to something as large as the Earth itself. Using the two words together makes the scale of someone's denial ludicrous; it's like denying the moon or Africa. What kind of a stubborn ass do have to be to refuse the existence of Africa?

Finally, what makes 'global warming deniers' such a powerful appellation is it's similarity to "holocaust deniers" (451k results. Holocaust denial nets 1.18 million), something so heinous that even holocaust deniers themselves understand it's not something to be known as; they seem to prefer the term 'revisionist.' Weather intentional or not, global warming activists are subtly comparing their opponents to Nazis, and I think the negative connotations associated with 'global warming deniers' are powerful enough that it will be difficult for people to shake the label, once applied. In most debates, playing the Hitler Card, as I call it (comparing Bush to Hitler, comparing abortionists to Nazis, etc.) instantly removes the argument from the realm of rationality and, unless they want to spend a tremendous amount of time and energy repudiating it, all the defender can do is deny it.

Correlation Does Not Equal Causality

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Signs I Don't Think Like a Kid Anymore

We actually had a decent snow here a few weeks ago. Several inches, lasted more than an hour (couple days in fact) all in all a kind of rare treat for us down in the valley.

Anyway, it wasn't until I saw the rain-eaten remains of a snowman yesterday that I realized it never occurred to me to make a snowman. It never occurred to me to go sledding or make snow angels or have a snowball fight or any of the other things that kids think about when they see the first winter snow.

The first and pretty much last thing I thought about the snow was, "Thank God I don't have a car and don't have to drive in this shit."

The Birth of Prejudice

My friend and I have a theory that there may be an evolutionary component to prejudice. Bear in my I do not submit this as means for someone to excuse their prejudice, or to try and make prejudice OK, merely as an attempt to explain why prejudice in humans is pretty much universal, and so easily acquired.

First off, we define prejudice: as a noun, prejudice is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (online) as "an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts." You can be prejudiced about anything, not just people.

On with the theory:

Early humans roaming their world did not have the time or the resources to approach every single thing they encountered without any bias whatsoever: some things are too dangerous to deal with more than once, and so the next time it's encountered it's simply avoided. Our capacity for language and teaching things to others makes it unnecessary to experience things first hand. I have never been to Italy, but a number of people who have tell me there's a tower in Pisa that leans at a startling angle and I take them at their word.

Imagine this scene: You are lost in the woods and hungry. Seeing some red berries, you eat them, and several hours later throw them back up. Will you taste the next red berries you find? Probably not. This is not prejudice because you have direct experience.

Seeing signs of what you think is a town nearby, you head for it eagerly, but encounter a bruised and bloodied man coming the other way. You explain your situation to him and ask if you might find help in the town. He says he's lost too, and when he tried to get help there, the townsmen beat him and threw him out. You thank him and as he leaves you warn him about the red berries.

Do you still go to the town for help? If not, prejudice is born, not of any desire to see harm come to a particular group, but out of a simple need to survive.

Viewed this way, it's easy to see how prejudices can be so easily formed and passed around. I'm sure you can think of time when someone made a bad first impression and you told all your friends what an ass your new boss is, planting the seed of prejudice in their mind, or times when you gave into prejudice and avoided a business or person because of something someone else had said.