The history of science reveals how to talk to science deniers – Quartz

The article talks only about climate change, not other sorts of "science denial". The problem with this is that issue of climate change is not typical of actual science, but rather more like engineering.

Suppose that Boeing decided that test flights for new aircraft were too expensive. Instead, they propose to just simulate the performance of the aircraft on a supercomputer. If the simulation says the aircraft works well, they just build it and load paying passengers for the first flight.

Of course, everyone would see this as ridiculous. Even though the basic science underlying aerodynamics is well-established, the application of this science to a complex system like an aircraft (and the environment it flies in) is far from straightforward, involving both approximations necessitated by computational limits and uncertainty in simulation inputs. There is no reason to place any great trust in the results of the computer simulation.

There is similarly no reason to place great trust in the output of the climate models that are the basis for predictions regarding warming due to CO2. In fact, there's less reason than for aerodynamic simulations, which can be tested on existing aircraft, whereas we don't have a supply of other planets for testing climate models (not earth-like ones, at least). Furthermore, the sociology of this scientific field is unfavourable, with large potential for bias due both to ideological preferences and the huge financial impacts of policy decisions (including impacts on levels of scientific funding, as for many fields).

Of course, the basic science does tell us something. CO2 does have a warming effect. The direct effect from plausible increases in CO2 is not negligible, but not particularly alarming. The alarming predictions come from models with positive feedbacks, but the magnitude of the net feedback is highly uncertain. That's why the IPCC range for the equilibrium effect of doubling CO2 is from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C - from not too worrying to significantly worrying (though not catastrophic - that comes from unhinged activist propaganda).

It is striking that this consensus range for the effect of doubling CO2 has stayed the same for about 30 years - that is, there has been essentially no scientific progress on the central question underlying this debate for decades. Perhaps the best scientific minds don't go into this field?

There are people working on the actual science of science communication. This blog http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/ has some interesting summaries on that work. I see none of that knowledge reflected in this article. People advocating for science, and against alleged science deniers, do not seem terribly interested in the science of science communication, or what has been empirically determined in this regard.

For example, it has been well demonstrated that conservatives and progressives who have higher levels of science literacy, have HIGHER levels of disagreement about climate change, than conservatives and progressives who have lower levels of science literacy. This article would not lead you to suspect any such thing.

This article reads like its own satire due to the rhetorical oxymoron phrase "science denial".