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Originally Posted by Clippo
Unionist wrote:-
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but I find the use of the term denial offensive…. & at the very least suggesting irrationality.
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Well, I didn’t coin the word ‘denial’, or deniers, or denial-ers or doubters or sceptics or any other word used in the context of the GW debate, or to describe those people who don’t subscribe to the comprehensive majority world view on other topics. In this case it is being used in a classic psychological context. People can be in ‘denial’ of many situations. As you’ve suggested like Holocaust deniers (are you one of those? If not do you worry about calling one of them that?) – what about alcohol / drug abusers, smokers, Diana’s death, in fact pretty much any conspiracy theorist, etc etc. |
You miss the point. The Holocaust is a well proven historical fact and denial of this is completely wrong and would usually be associated with anti-Semitism. Man-made global warming is a theory that is open to legitimate argument. To suggest any sort of equivalence is to equate denial of the evidence in one case with searching for the evidence in another.
I did not at all suggest that you coined the term but rather that the term was coined to provoke the sort of repulsion that we all feel for Holocaust denial and thus delegitimise debate. To suggest that those who do not buy into the GW thesis are in denial is a gross insult since they are simply trying to establish the validity or otherwise of the evidence.
The term also cheapens the true examples of 'denial' in the case (for example) of those who deny the historical fact of the Holocaust.