AGU Needs To Sever Ties With ExxonMobil's "Blood money"

When I joined the American Geophysical Union more than 30 years ago, I did so to be part of a professional organization of scientists at the forefront of research from space physics to climate change.  Indeed, from the time the AGU position on climate change first came out, followed by a mild revision, e.g.


http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf


It has been encouraging to see at least one major scientific organization out in the open stating clearly the extent to which climate change-global warming is real and a threat to all of us on this planet.

Therefore, it was somewhat shocking to read in a recent issue of Eos: Earth & Space Science News (December, page 8, 'AGU Should Sever Ties With ExxonMobil') that the research organization to which I belong has actually been taking money from the most arrogant and deceptive climate change deniers for the past 15 years.  This according to the three authors of the article: Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, and Kerry A. Emmanuel.

As the authors note:

"For decades, ExxonMobil has engaged in a campaign of disinformation: funding individuals and organizations committed to portraying climate change as highly uncertain, if not a hoax; questioning the motives of climate scientists; and targeting researchers for personal attacks aimed at discrediting their findings.

ExxonMobil executives have repeatedly suggested in speeches, in interviews, and in “advertorials” that climate science was too unreliable to be trusted as a basis for policy making. Flying in the face of peer-reviewed economic studies, they have also insisted that the costs of mitigating climate change would be greater than the benefits.

Accepting ExxonMobil money violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation. Given these facts, it baffles us that the American Geophysical Union (AGU) continues to accept money from ExxonMobil. The more than half a million dollars of ExxonMobil money that AGU has accepted over the past 15 years violates AGU’s own policy on accepting funding from groups that peddle misinformation.

Last month, AGU reaffirmed its perplexing stance. On 23 September, its Board of Directors chose not to sever ties to ExxonMobil funding, despite receiving a detailed report from AGU members that demonstrates that ExxonMobil is still in the business of disinformation."


These opening sentences left me with mouth agape and in near disbelief. How on earth could an organization to which I'd committed more than 3 decades of time, energy (and money!)  have made such an awful, near sighted decision? I mean, why accept "blood oil money" from a bunch dedicated to denying what your own position statement displays?  Have even the most venerable professional scientific organizations been perverted by "Trumpdom"? Well, of course, that can't be a factor given it's been going on for 15 years. This elicits the question of whether the money given was that important to AGU carrying out its mission.

I doubt it, given that a half million bucks over 15 years is, let's be clear, essentially "chump change" compared to the tens of millions collected in regular professional fees, membership fees. I mean, we're talking about  $33,300 a year. Is that really all it takes for a scientific organization to sell its principles, its very "soul"?   

These questions are even more to the point given, as the authors point out (ibid.):

"ExxonMobil’s systematic attacks on climate science are well documented. They have been detailed by our fellow scientists, as well as us—indeed, we ourselves have been targets of ExxonMobil’s repeated attacks. ExxonMobil’s assault on climate science has been documented in the scholarly research of historians and sociologists who have taken up the issue of attacks on science as a question of academic scholarship. The attacks have also been heavily explored by journalists, science advocacy organizations, and filmmakers.

What’s more, ExxonMobil’s attacks on climate science are not a thing of the past. A report by AGU members sent to AGU’s Board on 25 March 2016, ahead of their 6–7 April Board meeting, documented an exhaustive body of evidence supporting the fact that ExxonMobil “continues to generate its own misinformative comments, fund groups that promote climate science misinformation, and financially support more than 100 climate-denying members of Congress.”

Moreover, “despite stating publicly in 2008 that it would no longer support climate science misinformation, ExxonMobil has continued to make public statements disparaging the validity of climate science and to financially support others who do the same.”"

The most trenchant point of all is perhaps:


"The fact that AGU accepts this money is a clear violation of AGU’s Organizational Support Policy. The policy states, “AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.”

Adding:

"It is precisely because ExxonMobil so clearly fails to meet the standard of this policy that more than 100 leading AGU members, including the three of us, were signatories to an open letter last February urging AGU to sever its ties with the company. The letter noted that “AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action. But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU’s institutional social license to help legitimize the company’s climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of its own members.”

AGU must understand that this is not merely a matter of cosmetics or optics. The fact that money - in any amount - is being accepted from ExxonMobil, actually undermines credibility in AGU's position statement and its commitment to serious climate science.

At the same time this schizoid behavior may need a broader explanation. As Naomi Klein has noted ('This Changes Everything') while insurance and re-insurance companies are at the forefront of concern over climate change, i.e. Ms. Klein quotes  (p. 49)one Swiss re-insurer (Swiss Re Americas):

"What keeps me up at night is climate change."

Many still contribute "substantial sums of money" to climate denier think tanks like the Heartland Institute. Ms. Klein offers no convincing reason for such contradictory behavior, but it could well be explained by a divergence between individuals in a company and the opinion of the whole Board of Directors.  In any case, as climate change disasters ramp up this split will have to end, given insurers will be bleeding more and more money.

In any case, one hopes AGU will soon see the gross error of its ways and send these ExxonMobil spinners and their money packing.

See also:

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

EPA Backs Off On Claim That Fracked Water Has No Adverse Effects

It is deeply disturbing to discover the content and quantity of toxic chemicals, like benzene and lead, being injected into the ground without the knowledge of communities whose health would be affected."
 - Sen. Diana DeGette,  commenting on 2010 fracking report

After six years and $29 million spent, the EPA - facing a Trumpist takeover- has admitted there is no way to say for sure that fracking poses no risk to drinking water. A new report issued last Thursday said that fracked water is a risk to drinking water "in some circumstances"  but a lack of definitive information precluded a definitive statement on how severe the risk is.

The exact wording of the report is:

"Because of the significant data gaps and uncertainties in the available data, it was not possible to fully characterize the severity of impacts nor was it possible to calculate or estimate the national frequency of impacts on drinking water resources".

This is at least an improvement on its earlier position in a misguided draft from last year, saying that "fracking had not caused widespread, systemic harm to drinking water in the United States".

But this was always in contradiction to an inquiry by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2010-11, which report found that fourteen of the nation's most active hydraulic fracturing companies used 866 million gallons of chemical fracturing products, and more than 650 of the chemicals named in the report were known carcinogens, supposedly regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. (Which was rendered toothless for fracking by lobbyists) Among the most toxic of the chemicals used (11.4 million gallons in all) were: benzene, toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene.

Among the toxic fracking chemicals and their adverse effects uncovered by the inquiry:

-Benzene: a powerful bone-marrow poison (aplastic anemia) associated with leukemia, breast and uterine cancer

- Styrene, which may cause eye and mucous membrane irritation, neurotoxic effects in the central and peripheral nervous systems.

- Toluene, which may cause muscular incoordination, tremors, hearing loss, dizziness, vertigo, emotional instability and delusions, liver and kidney damage, and anemia.

- Xylene, with cancer-causing (mainly in the kidneys, liver) and neurotoxic effects, as well as reproductive abnormalities.

- Methylene chloride, which may cause cancer, liver and kidney damage, central nervous system disorders and COPD



Then there was the 2014 study, from Yale University and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, surveyed 492 people living in 180 randomly selected households in southwestern Pennsylvania, an area containing more than 600 active natural gas wells. A full 39 percent of those living less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) away from a well, researchers found, said they’d experienced upper respiratory symptoms, including coughing, itchy eyes and nosebleeds, compared to 18 percent living 2 kilometers away or more. And 13 percent of those living close to wells reported skin conditions like persistent rashes and unexplained hair loss, compared to just 3 percent of the others.

In Pennsylvania, where drilling has exploded in the past eight years, whistle-blowers  accused the state Department of Health of deliberately ignoring health complaints. Critics added that the state has yet to conduct even one study on fracking’s potential health risks.  Clearly, the state has been in the paws of the fracking industry.

In other words, there's no issue on the harm, and the only responsible reaction has to be invoking the precautionary principle.  That is,  it is the frackers' job to prove their chemicals are harmless, not the job of environmentalist to prove they're harmful.

Given the preceding, it was no surprise that in the wake of the EPA reversal industry groups and their PR affiliates went bonkers. A number of these groups claimed that the Obama administration had yielded to political pressure on its way out the door.   But this is lame. More probably, the Obama administration recognized that with the revival of Rick Perry as head of DOE, in conjunction with the Trumpista EPA picks , the result could be destruction of the key  files showing the adverse effects - so decided to expose them now before the takeover - given the "barbarians" are at the gate.

This is especially important now given the Trumpistas also plan to kick millions off Obamacare. So when they do get seriously ill - including cancers - from fracked water, they will have no way to recover.  At least now they will know one reason for those cancers if they are in proximity to fracking wells.

One oil industry exec called the EPA report "absurd reversal "  and insisted it "changed a science-based conclusion to one based on political ambiguity". 

Erik Melito, a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, quoted in The Denver Post, claimed:

"The agency has walked away from nearly a thousand sources of information from technical reports and peer-reviewed scientific reports demonstrating that hydraulic fracturing does not lead to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources."

Of course, this is hogwash and what you'd expect from an oil industry PR hack. Anyone likely to believe this asshole or his cohort really needs to get hold of Naomi Oreskes' work 'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming'  - on the PR Departments that serve the  frackers and their lot.  All of which are reminiscent of the vermin PR meisters exposed in Toxic Sludge is Good for You, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, based on the 1990s tactic of toxic industries to try to soft sell the use of their sludge in fertilizers. .

Oreskes explained that the job of corporate PR depts. is not to necessarily show they're right, but merely to spur and stir phony debate. Once the debate is consolidated, it becomes a matter of endless back and forth, "he said, she said" etc, and the ruse succeeds by staving off regulation because, hey, "the issue isn't settled". But in reality it is, as much as the fact that 6 million Jews perished in a holocaust.

But one thing we know is that PR must bow to physical reality. That includes the videos of fracked water set on fire,  as it comes out of water taps  e.g.
Scene from the Josh Fox documentary ‘Gasland’ in which a homeowner lights his tap water.

Never mind the squeals of the stuck pig fossil fuelers, John Noel of Clean Water Action, puts it in perspective:

"We are glad the EPA resisted the oil and gas industry spin and delivered the facts".

As for Melito and his ilk, he's been exposed after he said, quoted in the Post:

"We look forward to working with the new administration to instill fact-based science into the public policy process."

Translation: "We look forward to Trump's EPA appointees destroying all the data and files for the fact-based science so we can have carte blanche in wasting the water supplies of the nation with our proven, toxic shit."

Sadly, the deluded Trump voters who make light of Rick Perry's DOE appointment, as well as Scott Pruitt's to the EPA, appear unaware of how all these impact the well being of their kids and grand kids. These and millions more will have to live in the wasteland world the Trumpistas leave us. For those of us getting on in years it makes little difference as we already lived our lives, and one more condition - say on top of existing cancers - won't make a lot of difference.  But for the youngest citizens to now be faced with a host of diseases - many from exposure to fracked water- is something that ought to outrage any normal, sane mind.  Especially as their health care will now be dismantled as well, preventing them from coping with what's coming.

Union of Concerned Scientists Exposes The Fraudsters On Climate Change

Part of the document retrieved from the fossil fuel doubt merchants on when "victory will be achieved."


The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)  includes thousands of genuine research scientists devoted to educating the public on actual scientific findings and what they portend, and exposing the science charlatans who seek to cloud the public mind to unfolding realities. One of the latter is that the planet is indeed getting hotter with the month of July now in the record books as the hottest ever. This as yet more research (published in Science) shows the warming "pause" never happened and hundreds of fires scorch the West with over seven million acres burning - giving a horrific preview of the world to come in the era of the runaway greenhouse (except in that case the fires will ravage the whole country and last through the year)

Their other achievement has been accessing documents that prove the climate deniers (exposed in the Naomi Oreskes' book The Merchants of Doubt) have been determined to hoodwink the public on climate change - its validity and its peril.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-zuesse/63515/the-latest-science-on-global-warming



Readers will recall how I've exposed Willie Soon as one of these merchants of doubt, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-climate-scientist-fake-exposed.html

But as the latest UCS Bulletin noted, Soon is only a small part of a much bigger story, as disclosed in the UCS Report, The Climate Deception Dossiers.  The latter is the product of a year's review and analysis of a wide range of internal corporate and trade group documents.

As with the case of fracking, the perpetrators will never own up to their slimy dishonest tactics themselves, or the damage they're doing. You have to expose them by exposing their actual documents that they themselves wrote and - in essence- wherein they've admitted the havoc they're wreaking.

Like the climate deniers, the frackers were exposed in Naomi Oreskes' book, particularly the PR Departments that serve the frackers and their political backers lot.    As for documents retrieved, in one, from Southwestern Energy, the diagram clearly shows that the gas well has a cement barrier with a casing that prevents gases from migrating upwards. But this isn't a Powerpoint about well casings but rather about how cement and casings fail and allow methane gas and other substances to migrate into aquifers.  Thus, we see from their own documents how cement fails.

In the case of the climate deceivers, the UCS team drew on evidence culled from 85 documents pried loose by leaks, lawsuits and FOIA requests. It almost reminds one of the extraordinary efforts that had to be invested to pry loose the JFK assassination documents (after the JFK Records Act) that showed the fell hand of the CIA and NSA in the assassination. 

What the UCS team unearthed is absolutely appalling. Spanning three decades, the documents reveal a mammoth cover up on a par with the cover up and disinformation in the Kennedy assassination. The UCS obtained documents expose that the world's largest fossil fuel companies: BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Shell  and Peabody Energy - were fully aware of the reality of climate change but continued to spend tens of millions of dollars to sow doubt and promote contrarian arguments they knew to be wrong.

Taken together, the documents show that the six companies, in conjunction with the American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil and gas industry's premier trade association - and a host of front groups - colluded to intentionally deceive the public.

One eye -opening formerly secret document revealed that scientific experts commissioned by the fraudulent "Global Climate Coalition" - had actually warned that heat-trapping gases were indeed causing global warming. But as the segment of attached document shows, these charlatans didn't want to hear it. It was more important to bamboozle the gullible public - who'd then be set against those of us with the scientific facts.

Thus, the GCC ignominiously ignored its own scientists and continued to conduct a public relations campaign to undermine national and international efforts to address global warming in a serious fashion. Among the chestnuts used by these fraudsters:

"the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood."

Another tactic was to attribute the main cause of global warming to "solar activity" - a canard that's long since been dismissed in the astrophysics, solar physics and climate science communities. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/06/new-evidence-sun-is-cooling-salvation.html

Those who want to access all 340 pages of the 'Climate Deception Dossiers' can go here:

www.ucsusa.org/decadesofdeception

How Global Warming Deniers Get the Better of American Brains

The graphic shown above depicts one of the classic examples of anti-global warming  twaddle I've encountered over the years.  The most incredible aspect is that it didn't emanate from your ordinary clueless, under-educated dummy, but from a member of Mensa. A guy by the name of Evan J. Wright. He firmly believed  I was "writing nonsense" (in one Mensa Bulletin letter) because I noted the much higher absorption of CO2 in the oceans. According to Wright: "That's preposterous! If the oceans absorbed carbon dioxide they'd all turn into carbonated liquid, or soda pop! Does anyone see that? NOOO!"

One wonders how some folks ever got into Mensa! One further wonders how Wright (and his equally know-nothing offspring, Jon Wright, who rushed to his dad's defense, equally uninformed) manage to account for the documented fact of higher acidity of the oceans, arising directly from....tada.....the absorption of enormous amount of CO2 since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. There is now about 30% higher acidity as a result of the chemical reaction: H2O + CO2 -> H2CO3, in other words, the production of carbonic acid.

But the Wright's follies are small potatoes compared to the ways the anti-global warming establishment has used well-defined tactics to attempt to bamboozle the American people. The sad fact is that they actually seem to be working given how 10-12 percent fewer Americans now accept anthropogenic global warming compared to 10 years ago. It is instructive therefore to examine some of these methods:


1) Distorting and framing Uncertainty:

This is perhaps the biggest tactic in use and has to do with what has been called 'agnotology'.  This term,  derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).  Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends .

The agnotologist and his ilk succeed once the following trope is emitted and embraced by the power structure:

‘There is still so much uncertainty, we shouldn’t invest money to solve the climate problem,’

But this is egregious on so many levels that it boggles the rational mind. First, any modern scientific pursuit must include uncertainty. Uncertainty is acknowledged every time I perform a measurement - say of the solar diameter- and express it with plus or minus kilometer values. It signifies that final measurement cannot be presumed free of measuring error which is inherent in all our physics, astronomy etc.

The matter of "too much uncertainty" is also the wrong way to look at the issue for any scientific model or measurement, because they can as easily UNDER-estimate a potential threat or occurrence as over estimate it. Let's take the case of city -busting asteroids which were the topic for discussion today on the CBS Early Show,  with physicist Michio Kaku.  Kaku reported that in fact we have had to readjust our estimates of asteroid impacts based on new observations. Where we once expected a city-buster (say one that could take out a city like New York) every 150 years, we now have to expect it such a killer every 30 years!

In a similar vein, the uncertainty attached to climate models could also be in the direction of under-reporting or under-estimating the full impacts. Thus, the uncertainty could well be such that the runaway greenhouse effect could erupt fifty to one hundred years earlier than previously thought. Or the rising of the sea level owing to melting Arctic (and Greenland) ice sheets could incept a 10m rise as opposed to a 3 m one. This is why uncertainties are expressed as plus and minus values at the end of the measurement.

My point is that the trope expressed above doesn't take into account that the uncertainty implies that the problem is more likely to be worse than expected in the absence of that uncertainty.

It is for this very reason that one would be more justified in applying Dick Cheney's "one percent solution" to the case of both asteroids and global warming. (Cheney's one percent solution was that even if there is a 1 percent chance of a terror attack we must go all out to defend against it).  The reason for adopting the 1 percent solution to climate change and asteroids is because the consequences - should the event occur - would be so horrendous that the costs of repair would vastly exceed the costs of precautionary preparation.

Uncertainty, especially as the asteroid example illustrates, is therefore a reason to do much more to protect against the occurrence as opposed to delay or doing much less.

2) Misrepresenting Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW):

This tactic has worked because too many Americans are not aware of the real consensus among real climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is a FACT that must be acted upon. Perhaps the first researcher to scientifically and statistically establish this was science historian Naomi Oreskes - who first published an initial survey of global warming literature, entitled  “Beyond The Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.”

Oreskes analyzed “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change.’” She found that 75 percent of papers accepted the consensus view “either explicitly or implicitly,” while “25 percent dealt with methods or paleoclimate,” and took no position on AGW.  Remarkably, she found that none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.  

Later studies have found a small sliver of dissenting views, but the more the consensus has been studied, the sturdier it appears, while the dissenting literature is dogged with repeated problems. For example, in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22 , P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24)

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

A 2010 paper, Expert credibility in climate change, reconfirmed the 97 percent consensus figure, and found that “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC [or AGW] are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.” A 2013 paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, examined “11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011” and found that “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position,” while a parallel self-rating survey found that “97.2 percent endorsed the consensus.”

Despite that, another Mensan (what's with these characters?) Marty Nemko, in a prominent Mensa Bulletin piece in 2010, actually posed these questions:

- Why does the media imply that the IPCC report reflects the consensus of thousands of scientists, when – as reported by CNN – there are dissenting scientists, like Richard Lindzen of MIT?

- If there’s consensus, why on Dec. 20, 2007, did the U.S.  Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Policy issue a report that 400 scientists now believe the evidence doesn’t support that “consensus"?

Nemko interprets “consensus” in these questions to mean 100% agreement, but this isn’t the case at all.  A consensus in the accepted English definition means the concurrence of an overwhelming majority. We have always known a certain minority hard core of scientists (the contrarians – who probably want more attention than being lumped in with others) have existed. People like S. Fred Singer of the University of Virginia and Richard Lindzen of MIT.  These outlier oddballs will always exist because it's in their interest to object, since either they are part- funded by the fossil fuel industry (Singer) or they are able to carve out a contrarian niche in a field otherwise dominated by concurrence (Lindzen).

But by confusing the meaning of "consensus" they seek to try to make the public believe the issue isn't settled when it is.  It would be analogous to a fundie claiming there's no consensus that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old because a few oddball naysayers, like Jason Lisle and D. Russell Humphreys, choose to differ. This despite the fact that we can actually use radioactive decay to obtain an excellent estimate that puts the Earth's age at 4 1/2 billion years.

As for Nemko's second question, the answer ought to be obvious: it's because the Senate is largely comprised of people who lack any credentials in climate science – and hence are not informed or educated enough to offer a professional scientific opinion – only a political one. Thus, they would not have been able to recognize that most of the 400 scientists "who don't believe the evidence supports a consensus" were not climate scientists.

3) Conspiracist ideation in science rejection:

To summarize this one: when all else has failed in trying to knock down a scientific consensus, then pull out the conspiracy card.  Indeed, when one looks at the history of science denial, there is plenty of evidence that a firm scientific consensus drives deniers into postulating conspiracy — from the opposition to tobacco and industrial chemicals and contamination (as in the Erin Brockovich case) to climate change.

Thus, for the firm climate change consensus, the rejoinder is : "CONSPIRACY! All the scientists are in it together that's why they agree!"   Of course, these pinheads will then look for any supporting "evidence" to support their whacky claims, and no surprise they found it - or what they wrongly thought qualified - in the leaked emails some years ago at East Anglia, and the Univ. of Pennsylvania, which became known as "climate gate".   (Think of Watergate, as in Watergate conspiracy.)

Fortuitously, a voice of reason soon sounded. It arrived with Myles Allen of Oxford University and delivered in a  public comment (Financial Times, July 29, 2010) that it was clear from the accumulated work of climate scientists that human-engendered greenhouse gases was the problem. and in his words (ibid.):

"Climategate never really brought climate science into question at all."

In other words, a storm in a teacup. No "conspiracy" at all. The product of a paranoid embolism erupting in the brains of the ....paranoid!   The leaked emails themselves were simply attributed to an understandable hyper-reactionist tendency in the scientists - tired of seeing their work maimed and misrepresented by the flat Earthers.


A second reason conspiracist ideation crops up  and is invoked in resisting science is that it has greater explanatory reach than science, because it’s not constrained by “the criteria of consistency and coherence that characterize scientific reasoning.”  The recent news that according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll  51 percent question the Big Bang theory discloses that scientific reasoning is alien to most 'Muricans. Indeed, I doubt that any of those who question the Big Bang theory even took a high school physics course.

Getting down to cases, it's interesting that as one salon.com source put it:

“Deniers will claim in the same breath (or within a few minutes) that (a) temperatures cannot be measured reliably, (b) there is definitely no warming, (c) the warming isn’t caused by humans, and (d) we are doing ourselves a favor by warming the planet. The four propositions are incoherent because they cannot all be simultaneously true — and yet deniers will utter all those in close succession all the time.”

Yet, any such string of statements ought to be obviously incoherent to any critical thinker - even one who's never taken a physics course. For example, if (a) is granted as true then how in the hell can (b) be accepted? If you can't measure temperatures reliably how can you assert "there's definitely no warming"?   And if you grant that statement (c) is true - warming exists but not human-caused, how can you also assert (b) is true? It's total poppycock!

Finally, conspiracist ideation is also  immune to falsification, because contradictory evidence (e.g., climate scientists associated with 'climategate' being exonerated of accusations) can be accommodated by broadening the scope of the conspiracy (exonerations are a whitewash), often with considerable creativity.

Until and unless we can effectively parry these tactics it will become increasingly difficult to get the public to support concerted action.