Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists

Evidence

Each component of the neoliberal response is firmly grounded in neoliberal economic doctrine, and as such, has its own special function to perform. As we have already learned from historians of the tobacco strategy such as Richard Proctor and historians of climate denialism such as Naomi Oreskes, the purpose of science denialism has been to quash all immediate impulses to respond to the perceived biosphere crisis, and to buy time for commercial interests to construct some other eventual market solutions to global warming. Denying the very existence of global warming is cheap and easy to propagate, can be fostered quickly, and tends to draw attention away from issues of appropriate responses to crisis. The neoliberal think tanks behind the denial of climate change don’t seriously believe they are going to win the war of ideas within academic science in the long run, just as the tobacco strategy never envisioned disproving the smoking-cancer link. Yet, nevertheless, even the existing denial of the science displays its neoliberal bona fides. The first response to a political challenge should always be epistemological, in the sense that the marketplace of ideas has to be seeded with doubt and confusion. This is the core of the agnotological project. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Naomi Oreskes’ Merchants of Doubt and the tobacco-carbon denial parallel; also builds on Milgrom’s treatment of the marketplace of ideas as institutions. — connects to: Think tanks deliberately manufacture public doubt about settled science to shape policy — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 626; Climate skeptics extend denial rhetoric to species extinction — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2790; Tobacco’s manufactured doubt predated and enabled climate denial playbooks — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive: The Complete…, 788 (+17 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘agnotological project’ as the deliberate seeding of doubt and confusion in the marketplace of ideas — a core term introduced here.
• SEED: Essay angle: how the ‘marketplace of ideas’ metaphor was weaponized — the market-as-truth-arbiter doctrine as a standing alibi for denialism.

Broader Connections

• Tobacco’s manufactured doubt predated and enabled climate denial playbooks #corroborates (0.90) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 788
• Climate skeptics extend denial rhetoric to species extinction #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2790
• The tobacco industry’s PR strategy manufactured doubt about EPA science #corroborates (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1670
• Manufactured doubt need not be consciously willed to paralyze economic reform #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 670
• Climate-denial think tanks manufactured the invented ‘climate lockdowns’ threat #exemplifies (0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 486