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Conspiracism Explained
Author: Dave Sorensen
Date: May 23, 2010 at 15:14
By Dave Sorensen
Conspiracy theories stem from a complex web of ideas, which is constructed over many years, revolving around important historical events and political issues. There are many psychological factors and logical fallacies at work when devising a conspiracy theory and this is what I will try and cover in this essay. First we must go over what a "theory" actually is and why the term "conspiracy theory" has been coined. A theory in science is essentially a body of facts and knowledge used as an explanatory model for a set of phenomena. History uses similar methods but rarely ever refers to events like the Holocaust to be a theory.
We can infer that the holocaust happened because of an extraordinary amount of physical evidence, eyewitness testimony, letters, documents and differences in population demographics from the affected regions in Europe. When there are conflicting accounts of a historical event, we will recognize that there are two or more competing theories each with their own arguments. To contrast with the geological sciences, there was a debate over how the dinosaurs went extinct. While there are more than just two explanations, I will narrow it down for simplicity's sake. You have one camp arguing that an asteroid took out the dinosaurs, and another saying a volcano did. Both have submitted their findings to peer reviewed journals in which they are examined and critiqued by other scientists. A conspiracy theory is played off by true believers as if it's an alternative view that is both reasonable and evidence based. They would probably agree that it's another serious theory that needs to be considered, just like the volcano theory mentioned above. This then seemingly separates their belief from unfounded or weakly-based speculation, and gives them more recognition just because it is called a theory. But this is just a play on words.
There are multiple definitions of the word theory, one which defines most scientific theories, and another version that simply means: "An assumption based on limited information or knowledge."(1) Most researchers who look at CT claims would agree that what they are doing is just weak speculation, and would therefore be considered the latter definition of theory. Their "theory" is said to be reasonable because of a set of arguments used to establish that some form of government conspiracy took place, and in order to justify this you would need some form of evidence. But when a skeptic questions the narrative of a particular CT, it seems that the true believers lack any real answers or have been misinformed about the evidence. One of the main reasons why conspiracy theories prosper is because the true believers think that their view is rational and evidence based. By reading some of the many articles on this site, you will find out that this is not so. From time to time I will hear the line: "If we had any good evidence it would be a conspiracy fact!" But this classic form of conspiracy thinking is contrary to all of their beloved forums and websites, containing lists and videos outlining all of their "smoking gun" evidence.
Whenever it comes to the point of presenting positive evidence for their claims they fail to deliver. They are seemingly ignorant to any of the countless counter arguments and dodge any important questions that they should know the answers to. An example would be Dylan Avery (loose change filmmaker) who when asked 'what happened on 9/11', responded, 'I don't know'. You would think that investigating a historical event for 9 years would lead to some kind of knowledge. Their problem is that they use the wrong kind of skepticism to evaluate evidence, which is something I will get back to later. Not only is lack of any good evidence a problem for an alternative theory, but a good argument also needs to be logically sound. After all it's possible though highly unlikely for a conspiracy to be played out so well that there are no fingerprints left behind, but there needs to be some good reasons for believing an alternative theory to make up for the lack of evidence. This is where argumentation comes into play. The standard rules for argument building consist of first establishing a set number of premises composed of facts and then ending with a conclusion. An oversimplified example would be:
1. Autism rates are rising
2. Vaccines Contain Mercury
3. Mercury is Unsafe and can cause neurological damage
4. Therefore Vaccines cause autism
The problem with this argument is that one of the premises is just wrong and the other two are very misleading. (2) A recent study suggests that autism is found amongst 1% of all age groups which Is not what you would predict if the cause of autism was from thimerosol. The increase in autism comes from better surveillance and a widening of the definition of autism to include Asperger's syndrome and other behavioral disorders. Mercury is safe in small dosages and it's important to note that vaccines use Ethyl mercury. Methyl mercury is the kind found in fish, and this can be harmful if you eat too much. Ethly mercury is much safer and leaves the body after 1-3 days of consumption. Study after study the link between autism and vaccines has failed to show up, even when removing the feared ingredient thimerosol. This conspiracy theory is one of the few that you can actually make solid, testable predictions from. If thimerosol caused autism in infants, removing it from vaccines should show a decrease in autism rates. This prediction was wrong and in fact no alteration to the rates occurred at all. Once you understand why these premises are terribly flawed, the argument falls apart.
The same can apply to the vast majority of conspiracy theories out there. What makes up the premises must be examined with careful scrutiny. You have to weed out any biased or dubious sources and get a simple understanding behind the history and science of the event. Both historians and scientists use peer review, which is the best method in pursuing the truth. One of the reasons why conspiracy theorists have so many websites and books is because they can't make it past other experts without someone questioning their premises. They target people who are unfamiliar with the facts and the science. They also use a reverse scientific method, where they reach their conclusions and then try and jam the "puzzle pieces" together. And their style of argument should stand out as very questionable if you are familiar with common logical fallacies and how science and history actually work.
Authors of "Alternative History" like to attract new people to their works by utilizing a series of techniques. The first is what I like to call the "Long list effect". In almost any conspiracy book you will find somewhere a list of their smoking gun evidence. Sometimes this list gets ridiculously long to a point where the reader stops and begins to think the author must be on to something. As the old saying goes "Its quality not quantity." If they ever had good quality evidence they would be able to convince a lot more people including large political activist groups and also be able to convince lawyers and take these things to court. The attempted lawsuits so far by the truth movement are laughable at best. (Judy Wood and the space beams). David Ray Griffin is a good example of an author who uses such the long list technique. Now I'm not saying that these authors are knowingly deceiving people by using this technique. I'm just describing what it is they do and why it convinces people. Another technique is the argument from historical precedent or the "The complex question fallacy". The CQF is committed when a question is asked (a) that rests on a questionable assumption, and (b) to which all answers appear to endorse that assumption. (3) This is a common tactic used by the 9/11 truth movement. They use Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin and the Reichstag fire as all examples of historical precedents of false flag terror, when anyone who reads up on the events will know that at best they are controversial at worst they have been debunked. (See false flag wiki)
Next up is the "Magic Bullet Argument". "Alternative historians" will often employ this argument to ridicule the official story. "JFK couldn't have been hit by a swerving, dancing bullet. Therefore the official story is false." But no one seriously believes that the bullet behaved that way. There are simple straight lines of trajectory that Oswald's bullet could have taken to kill JFK and injure Governor Connolly, thus eliminating the need for such a ridiculous alternative. Authors also use a variety of non-sequiturs (doesn't follow) , ad hominem insults, and the argument from ignorance. "We don't know what happened on 9/11, therefore we need a new investigation." In other words, they don't know anything about 9/11 because of their unjustified mistrust of any source other than conspiracy sites, books and other like-minded people. The only way someone could be so clueless about 9/11 is if they are using a faulty "Descartian" type of skepticism. This is an extreme form of skepticism which requires us to doubt everything from experience and just rely on words and emotion. But they ignore logic and critical thinking so all that's left is emotion, which is completely unsuitable for scientific inquiry. If you ignore what any disagreeing scientist says, you are not being skeptical at all. A true skeptic would take on any challenges to his belief system and pin point where others who disagree went wrong.
After reading the arguments constructed by conspiracy authors we end up with a jungle of claims. How can one sort through them all knowing which ones are true and false? If the argument is logically fallacious then it's probably not a good argument. If it's not being discussed amongst scientists and historians in the peer review process, it's probably not true. This may seem like an argument to authority, but it is really just showing that having 99% consensus on a single issue must require extraordinary evidence or a really good argument to compensate. The reason why most people subscribe to conspiracy theories is a simple lack of knowledge in the related areas and unfamiliarity with logic. There is also the psychological need to find purpose in one's life, and the preference to believing wildly imaginative myths over otherwise boring accounts. JFK being gunned down by multiple government sponsored mobsters is much more appealing than a lone nut. People often prefer fantasy for truth because sometimes the truth can take the fun out of things. I don't agree with that statement, but I happen to be in the minority.
Individuals who have a general mistrust of others and people who are overly paranoid can use conspiracy theories to explain the world's problems away. In some cases they use them to explain why they themselves cannot succeed in life. The third factor is the appealing notion of possessing secret knowledge that most people lack. This makes individuals feel important and more intelligent than others, giving their life meaning. This also ties into a sort of "rebel complex" where the individual feels like the ultimate bad ass for not buying into the government's lies. But this is where most conspiracy theorists come to a hault. You would think that if foiling the government's evil plans gave them a purpose in life they would go out and do something about it. It seems as if most CT's just like to complain about these delusions to other like minded people constantly using the government as a scapegoat for all their problems. This is unlike any other kind of political activist group. Cognitive dissonance, cognitive closure and hindsight bias are other important psychological effects that play a part in this kind of belief as well.
Lastly, conspiracy theorists hold onto their beliefs, even when thoroughly challenged by skeptics because of what I call the "expanding web theory." Whenever a claim is knocked off their web, another one fills in that spot. "Moving the goalposts" is another popular way to describe this defense mechanism. Even when every claim has been addressed, there is still the cognitive illusion that there is so much counter-knowledge and so the true believer will just continue to be duped, or they will admit they were wrong and become a skeptic. The latter case is extremely rare.
On skepticism
How do conspiracy skeptics manage to sort through the vast information highway that's out there and find out what's true? Skepticism is a methodology, not a belief system so it's not as easy as just hopping aboard the Skeptic's society train and listening to their experts blindly. Although I ended up agreeing with most of mainstream skeptics believe, I arrived at my conclusions by investigating the material on my own. It's important to be open minded, but not so open that your brain falls out. A good way to test this is to write up a narrative of whatever you currently believe happened during a historical event. Sometimes you can only catch the inconsistencies when you put everything together. If you find contradictions in your narrative, you went wrong somewhere. When you come across an extraordinary claim, or even a claim your just not sure about, see what other qualified experts have to say. Do these scientists have an agenda or bias? If they do then compare them to some neutral scientists, who have written papers about something related. An example would be the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. There were plenty of foreign scientific papers written by China, Japan, the UK and Norway that all arrived at the same conclusion as the NIST scientists. Some papers disagreed with technical details but there were no credible teams of scientists that came to the conclusion that there were bombs in the building, and this is a problem that the CT crowd has not solved.
Just to clarify, it would be logically fallacious to assume that all of the NIST scientists, AIA engineers and American Physical Society scientists were all biased because they either work for the government or work in the United States. But this is a common claim made by the truth movement and other conspiracy groups. Anyone who agrees with the official story is either dumb or part of the conspiracy. This is also a classic example of the false dilemma logical fallacy. There is a third option not mentioned because of their cognitive closure, or closed mindedness. But sometimes this argument needs to be broken down in order to understand why it really fails.
If someone makes the claim that a group of scientists or even an entire society of scientists are in on the conspiracy, they presuppose that a conspiracy went down. This presumptuousness can lead to their claim being unfalsfiable, which as philosopher of science Karl Popper always said, isn't scientific. An important question to ask believers in CT is "What would falsify your belief?" Or what evidence would convince you otherwise? If they can't answer these questions they can no longer consider themselves skeptics of the official story. They are cynics. Whenever I'm ever accused of being cynical I always say that my beliefs CAN be falsified. And this isn't just true for conspiracy theories but for any kind of claim. Show me a part of the saucer, or get ONE of your claims right! I cannot stress this enough. The one thing conspiracy theorists are competent at is getting claims wrong as I have yet to see them get one significant claim demonstrably right. For people who are stuck in the middle undecided, the best way to understand whether a group of scientists is being paid off is to do a bit of research and then using critical thinking and logic decide what's more probable. If there is no good reason to believe someone is part of a conspiracy, or that a conspiracy even took place, it is more probable that the scientist is just doing his job. Familiarizing oneself with both sides of the argument is probably the best advice I can offer. You get to understand why each side has its set of beliefs and from that you decide which is more convincing, which makes more sense, and all while building up critical thinking skills usable for other belief systems and everyday life.
1) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/theory
2) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=9
3) http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx
Conspiracy theories stem from a complex web of ideas, which is constructed over many years, revolving around important historical events and political issues. There are many psychological factors and logical fallacies at work when devising a conspiracy theory and this is what I will try and cover in this essay. First we must go over what a "theory" actually is and why the term "conspiracy theory" has been coined. A theory in science is essentially a body of facts and knowledge used as an explanatory model for a set of phenomena. History uses similar methods but rarely ever refers to events like the Holocaust to be a theory.
We can infer that the holocaust happened because of an extraordinary amount of physical evidence, eyewitness testimony, letters, documents and differences in population demographics from the affected regions in Europe. When there are conflicting accounts of a historical event, we will recognize that there are two or more competing theories each with their own arguments. To contrast with the geological sciences, there was a debate over how the dinosaurs went extinct. While there are more than just two explanations, I will narrow it down for simplicity's sake. You have one camp arguing that an asteroid took out the dinosaurs, and another saying a volcano did. Both have submitted their findings to peer reviewed journals in which they are examined and critiqued by other scientists. A conspiracy theory is played off by true believers as if it's an alternative view that is both reasonable and evidence based. They would probably agree that it's another serious theory that needs to be considered, just like the volcano theory mentioned above. This then seemingly separates their belief from unfounded or weakly-based speculation, and gives them more recognition just because it is called a theory. But this is just a play on words.
There are multiple definitions of the word theory, one which defines most scientific theories, and another version that simply means: "An assumption based on limited information or knowledge."(1) Most researchers who look at CT claims would agree that what they are doing is just weak speculation, and would therefore be considered the latter definition of theory. Their "theory" is said to be reasonable because of a set of arguments used to establish that some form of government conspiracy took place, and in order to justify this you would need some form of evidence. But when a skeptic questions the narrative of a particular CT, it seems that the true believers lack any real answers or have been misinformed about the evidence. One of the main reasons why conspiracy theories prosper is because the true believers think that their view is rational and evidence based. By reading some of the many articles on this site, you will find out that this is not so. From time to time I will hear the line: "If we had any good evidence it would be a conspiracy fact!" But this classic form of conspiracy thinking is contrary to all of their beloved forums and websites, containing lists and videos outlining all of their "smoking gun" evidence.
Whenever it comes to the point of presenting positive evidence for their claims they fail to deliver. They are seemingly ignorant to any of the countless counter arguments and dodge any important questions that they should know the answers to. An example would be Dylan Avery (loose change filmmaker) who when asked 'what happened on 9/11', responded, 'I don't know'. You would think that investigating a historical event for 9 years would lead to some kind of knowledge. Their problem is that they use the wrong kind of skepticism to evaluate evidence, which is something I will get back to later. Not only is lack of any good evidence a problem for an alternative theory, but a good argument also needs to be logically sound. After all it's possible though highly unlikely for a conspiracy to be played out so well that there are no fingerprints left behind, but there needs to be some good reasons for believing an alternative theory to make up for the lack of evidence. This is where argumentation comes into play. The standard rules for argument building consist of first establishing a set number of premises composed of facts and then ending with a conclusion. An oversimplified example would be:
1. Autism rates are rising
2. Vaccines Contain Mercury
3. Mercury is Unsafe and can cause neurological damage
4. Therefore Vaccines cause autism
The problem with this argument is that one of the premises is just wrong and the other two are very misleading. (2) A recent study suggests that autism is found amongst 1% of all age groups which Is not what you would predict if the cause of autism was from thimerosol. The increase in autism comes from better surveillance and a widening of the definition of autism to include Asperger's syndrome and other behavioral disorders. Mercury is safe in small dosages and it's important to note that vaccines use Ethyl mercury. Methyl mercury is the kind found in fish, and this can be harmful if you eat too much. Ethly mercury is much safer and leaves the body after 1-3 days of consumption. Study after study the link between autism and vaccines has failed to show up, even when removing the feared ingredient thimerosol. This conspiracy theory is one of the few that you can actually make solid, testable predictions from. If thimerosol caused autism in infants, removing it from vaccines should show a decrease in autism rates. This prediction was wrong and in fact no alteration to the rates occurred at all. Once you understand why these premises are terribly flawed, the argument falls apart.
The same can apply to the vast majority of conspiracy theories out there. What makes up the premises must be examined with careful scrutiny. You have to weed out any biased or dubious sources and get a simple understanding behind the history and science of the event. Both historians and scientists use peer review, which is the best method in pursuing the truth. One of the reasons why conspiracy theorists have so many websites and books is because they can't make it past other experts without someone questioning their premises. They target people who are unfamiliar with the facts and the science. They also use a reverse scientific method, where they reach their conclusions and then try and jam the "puzzle pieces" together. And their style of argument should stand out as very questionable if you are familiar with common logical fallacies and how science and history actually work.
Authors of "Alternative History" like to attract new people to their works by utilizing a series of techniques. The first is what I like to call the "Long list effect". In almost any conspiracy book you will find somewhere a list of their smoking gun evidence. Sometimes this list gets ridiculously long to a point where the reader stops and begins to think the author must be on to something. As the old saying goes "Its quality not quantity." If they ever had good quality evidence they would be able to convince a lot more people including large political activist groups and also be able to convince lawyers and take these things to court. The attempted lawsuits so far by the truth movement are laughable at best. (Judy Wood and the space beams). David Ray Griffin is a good example of an author who uses such the long list technique. Now I'm not saying that these authors are knowingly deceiving people by using this technique. I'm just describing what it is they do and why it convinces people. Another technique is the argument from historical precedent or the "The complex question fallacy". The CQF is committed when a question is asked (a) that rests on a questionable assumption, and (b) to which all answers appear to endorse that assumption. (3) This is a common tactic used by the 9/11 truth movement. They use Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin and the Reichstag fire as all examples of historical precedents of false flag terror, when anyone who reads up on the events will know that at best they are controversial at worst they have been debunked. (See false flag wiki)
Next up is the "Magic Bullet Argument". "Alternative historians" will often employ this argument to ridicule the official story. "JFK couldn't have been hit by a swerving, dancing bullet. Therefore the official story is false." But no one seriously believes that the bullet behaved that way. There are simple straight lines of trajectory that Oswald's bullet could have taken to kill JFK and injure Governor Connolly, thus eliminating the need for such a ridiculous alternative. Authors also use a variety of non-sequiturs (doesn't follow) , ad hominem insults, and the argument from ignorance. "We don't know what happened on 9/11, therefore we need a new investigation." In other words, they don't know anything about 9/11 because of their unjustified mistrust of any source other than conspiracy sites, books and other like-minded people. The only way someone could be so clueless about 9/11 is if they are using a faulty "Descartian" type of skepticism. This is an extreme form of skepticism which requires us to doubt everything from experience and just rely on words and emotion. But they ignore logic and critical thinking so all that's left is emotion, which is completely unsuitable for scientific inquiry. If you ignore what any disagreeing scientist says, you are not being skeptical at all. A true skeptic would take on any challenges to his belief system and pin point where others who disagree went wrong.
After reading the arguments constructed by conspiracy authors we end up with a jungle of claims. How can one sort through them all knowing which ones are true and false? If the argument is logically fallacious then it's probably not a good argument. If it's not being discussed amongst scientists and historians in the peer review process, it's probably not true. This may seem like an argument to authority, but it is really just showing that having 99% consensus on a single issue must require extraordinary evidence or a really good argument to compensate. The reason why most people subscribe to conspiracy theories is a simple lack of knowledge in the related areas and unfamiliarity with logic. There is also the psychological need to find purpose in one's life, and the preference to believing wildly imaginative myths over otherwise boring accounts. JFK being gunned down by multiple government sponsored mobsters is much more appealing than a lone nut. People often prefer fantasy for truth because sometimes the truth can take the fun out of things. I don't agree with that statement, but I happen to be in the minority.
Individuals who have a general mistrust of others and people who are overly paranoid can use conspiracy theories to explain the world's problems away. In some cases they use them to explain why they themselves cannot succeed in life. The third factor is the appealing notion of possessing secret knowledge that most people lack. This makes individuals feel important and more intelligent than others, giving their life meaning. This also ties into a sort of "rebel complex" where the individual feels like the ultimate bad ass for not buying into the government's lies. But this is where most conspiracy theorists come to a hault. You would think that if foiling the government's evil plans gave them a purpose in life they would go out and do something about it. It seems as if most CT's just like to complain about these delusions to other like minded people constantly using the government as a scapegoat for all their problems. This is unlike any other kind of political activist group. Cognitive dissonance, cognitive closure and hindsight bias are other important psychological effects that play a part in this kind of belief as well.
Lastly, conspiracy theorists hold onto their beliefs, even when thoroughly challenged by skeptics because of what I call the "expanding web theory." Whenever a claim is knocked off their web, another one fills in that spot. "Moving the goalposts" is another popular way to describe this defense mechanism. Even when every claim has been addressed, there is still the cognitive illusion that there is so much counter-knowledge and so the true believer will just continue to be duped, or they will admit they were wrong and become a skeptic. The latter case is extremely rare.
On skepticism
How do conspiracy skeptics manage to sort through the vast information highway that's out there and find out what's true? Skepticism is a methodology, not a belief system so it's not as easy as just hopping aboard the Skeptic's society train and listening to their experts blindly. Although I ended up agreeing with most of mainstream skeptics believe, I arrived at my conclusions by investigating the material on my own. It's important to be open minded, but not so open that your brain falls out. A good way to test this is to write up a narrative of whatever you currently believe happened during a historical event. Sometimes you can only catch the inconsistencies when you put everything together. If you find contradictions in your narrative, you went wrong somewhere. When you come across an extraordinary claim, or even a claim your just not sure about, see what other qualified experts have to say. Do these scientists have an agenda or bias? If they do then compare them to some neutral scientists, who have written papers about something related. An example would be the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. There were plenty of foreign scientific papers written by China, Japan, the UK and Norway that all arrived at the same conclusion as the NIST scientists. Some papers disagreed with technical details but there were no credible teams of scientists that came to the conclusion that there were bombs in the building, and this is a problem that the CT crowd has not solved.
Just to clarify, it would be logically fallacious to assume that all of the NIST scientists, AIA engineers and American Physical Society scientists were all biased because they either work for the government or work in the United States. But this is a common claim made by the truth movement and other conspiracy groups. Anyone who agrees with the official story is either dumb or part of the conspiracy. This is also a classic example of the false dilemma logical fallacy. There is a third option not mentioned because of their cognitive closure, or closed mindedness. But sometimes this argument needs to be broken down in order to understand why it really fails.
If someone makes the claim that a group of scientists or even an entire society of scientists are in on the conspiracy, they presuppose that a conspiracy went down. This presumptuousness can lead to their claim being unfalsfiable, which as philosopher of science Karl Popper always said, isn't scientific. An important question to ask believers in CT is "What would falsify your belief?" Or what evidence would convince you otherwise? If they can't answer these questions they can no longer consider themselves skeptics of the official story. They are cynics. Whenever I'm ever accused of being cynical I always say that my beliefs CAN be falsified. And this isn't just true for conspiracy theories but for any kind of claim. Show me a part of the saucer, or get ONE of your claims right! I cannot stress this enough. The one thing conspiracy theorists are competent at is getting claims wrong as I have yet to see them get one significant claim demonstrably right. For people who are stuck in the middle undecided, the best way to understand whether a group of scientists is being paid off is to do a bit of research and then using critical thinking and logic decide what's more probable. If there is no good reason to believe someone is part of a conspiracy, or that a conspiracy even took place, it is more probable that the scientist is just doing his job. Familiarizing oneself with both sides of the argument is probably the best advice I can offer. You get to understand why each side has its set of beliefs and from that you decide which is more convincing, which makes more sense, and all while building up critical thinking skills usable for other belief systems and everyday life.
1) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/theory
2) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=9
3) http://www.theskepticsguide.org/resources/logicalfallacies.aspx
wiki 911 hijackers still alive
Author: Muertos
Date: May 21, 2010 at 23:26
"Alleged 9/11 Hijackers Still Alive" Conspiracy Theory
Author: Muertos
The Claims:
This specific claim is a subset of 9/11 conspiracy theories in general. Believers in the general 9/11 conspiracy theory ("9/11 Truthers" or simply "Truthers") claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA were either caused by some nefarious agents--usually the Bush Administration, Israel, or the New World Order--or deliberately permitted to take place. The "hijackers still alive" subset is a claim that one or more (9 is the most common number, but 7 is often heard) of the men identified by the FBI and the 9/11 Commission as the hijackers of the four planes are in fact still alive somewhere, thus supposedly proving or tending to indicate that the "official story" of 9/11 is false.
"The hijackers are still alive!" is not in and of itself usually used by Truthers as a primary argument at the core of the conspiracy, but it is often thrown in as an extra. For example, after spinning the usual controlled demolition claims or attacking the "official story" in one way or other, Truthers will often add, "And, by the way, several of the hijackers are still alive," as if this last bit is supposed to convince those of us who are not immediately won over by their theories about exploding paint or space beams.
The reason this claim is being treated individually apart from other 9/11 material on this site is because of its unique status as having virtually 100% acceptance by all 9/11 Truthers--and also because it's an interesting example of a conspiracy theory that arose from one single source as opposed to a myriad of origins. Ironically, Truthers often disagree on the core basics of the 9/11 conspiracy mythology--witness, for example, the public and visible split between advocates of Steven Jones, who believes the towers were brought down by some incendiary compound hidden in the paint used at the World Trade Center, and Judy Wood, who believes "directed energy weapons" were used. However, virtually all Truthers believe the hijackers are still alive. (I say "virtually" because while I have never met a Truther who does not believe the hijackers are still alive, I can't categorically state that there isn't one lonely LIHOP'er out there who concedes that they're dead). Suffice it to say that "the hijackers are still alive!" is one of the least controversial claims in the 9/11 conspiracy mythos.
Conspiracy Theorists Who Promote This Claim:
As stated, almost all Truthers believe the hijackers are still alive, so you can find dozens of repetitions of the claim with a simple Google search. These are only a few representative examples.
Rebuttal Part One: Facts
All of the 9/11 hijackers are deceased. Not one of them has been seen alive since September 11, 2001, much less conclusively proven to be alive. Not one.
The "hijackers are still alive" meme seems to have started from one single source: a BBC article run on September 23, 2001, barely two weeks after the disaster. (The article is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm) In relevant part, the BBC stated:
The problem, however, is that the FBI was "referring" to several people named "Waleed al-Shehri," and it was clear from the very beginning that there was more than one person with that name that the FBI was interested in, if only to narrow the list down to the one who did 9/11. A press release dated September 14, 2001 (available here: http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/091401hj.htm) shows that the FBI was tracking up to three men possibly named "Waleed al Shehri," one from Hollywood, one from Orlando and one from Daytona Beach:
As it turned out, the Waleed M. Alshehri who sat in seat 2B on American Airlines Flight 11--the one who was born in 'Asir Province, Saudi Arabia on December 20, 1978--had not trained at a flight school in the United States. He was a "muscle" hijacker. (Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/waleed_al-shehri.htm) But there was also a man called Waleed A. Alshehri who had graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1997, and he was identified by the FBI and later cleared. In the early days of the investigation, before Waleed A. Alshehri was cleared, Embry-Riddle reacted to the inclusion of its alumnus on the FBI list, stating "The fact that one of the perpetrators of this massive crime may have once been here is appalling." (Source: http://www.erau.edu/er/newsmedia/newsreleases/2001/link.html) The "Waleed al-Shehri" quoted in the September 23 BBC article was that Waleed al-Shehri, who was totally different than the one who boarded American Airlines Flight 11. Indeed the innocent (and alive) Waleed al-Shehri quickly contacted American authorities in Morocco, and later gave an interview (transcript available here: http://www.ncmonline.com/content/ncm/2001/oct/1005identities.html" target="_blank">http://web.archive.org/web/20040707010907/http://www.ncmonline.com/content/ncm/2001/oct/1005identities.html</a>) in which he stated:
Because they figured (rightly) that most of the hijackers had some sort of flight training, the FBI was looking for men with this credential, which was why they focused, quite naturally, upon Waleed A. al-Shehri who they knew had trained at an aeronautical university. Media outlets picked this up, found a picture of the innocent Waleed al-Shehri and ran it, which was why his photo appeared. When they realized he was not the guy, the FBI moved on, and no action was ever taken against Waleed A. al-Shehri--who, of course, had done nothing wrong.
So what about the Waleed M. al-Shehri who the FBI eventually realized was their man? Neither he nor his brother, Wail al-Shehri (interesting; the Waleed A. Al Shehri who graduated from Embry-Riddle in the 1990s did not have a brother named Wail) have been seen anywhere since September 11, 2001. Their families certainly have not seen them. Members of the al-Shehri family--the right al-Shehri family--haven't seen them since 2000, and when interviewed by a British newspaper (see here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1407285/The-six-sons-of-Asir.html) their cousin seemed not only to accept that they were involved in 9/11, but in fact he was proud that his relative had committed mass murder:
Okay, so al Shehri was clearly a case of mistaken identity. What about the other hijackers mentioned in the September 23 BBC story...
...such as Abdulaziz al-Omari? Mistaken identity, compounded by possible identity theft (as reported shortly after the attacks here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/1341391/Revealed-the-men-with-stolen-identities.html). The Abdulaziz al-Omari who protested he was sitting at his desk in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 9/11/2001--the one who works for the Saudi phone company--is a totally different guy than the Abdulaziz al-Omari whom the Saudi government identified as being one of the 9/11 hijackers (source here: http://www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm?qid=12&sid=6" target="_blank">http://web.archive.org/web/20031026101720/http://www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm?qid=12&sid=6). That Abdulaziz al-Omari has, not surprisingly, never been seen anywhere since September 11, 2001.
...such as Saeed Alghamdi? Mistaken identity. The Saeed Al-Ghamdi who was a pilot for Saudi Airlines, and protested his innocence, was clearly not the Saeed Al-Ghamdi who made a suicide tape shortly before 9/11 (story here: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/09/12/hijack.tape/index.html) in which he warned Americans, "God will punish you in a big way. And we promise the United States of America that we will stop you, that we will hurt you."
...such as Khalid al Midhar? Mistaken identity, compounded by identity theft. A radiologist from Texas named Badr Mohammed Hamzi was detained by the FBI in 2001 because he used the name "Khalid al Midhar." (Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/21/afghanistan.september112) He was later released when it was discovered he had nothing to do with the attacks. (Source: http://multimedia.belointeractive.com/attack/investigation/0927vaman.html) He is presumably still alive. One of the other people in the world who happened to have that name--the Khalid al Midhar who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1975 and arrived in the US in Los Angeles in January 2000 (source: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/DCI_18_June_testimony_new.pdf)--eventually wound up on American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. There have been no reports of him turning up alive later on either.
When the BBC realized that its infamous September 23 report was being used by conspiracy theorists to bolster their claims, it issued a statement in October 2006:
There you have it. All clearly cases of mistaken identity and same or similar names. So much for these four guys. What about the other hijackers that conspiracy theorists insist are still alive?
Mohammed Atta, the remorseless, steely-eyed killer who was the operational leader of the 9/11 attacks and who evidently shouted "Allah is great!" gleefully as the plane he hijacked was about to slam into one of the WTC towers, is often claimed by Truthers to still be alive. Why? Probably because Atta's father gave an interview to a British newspaper (here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/02/september11.usa) in which he claimed:
"September 12 at around midday" would have been about 5AM September 12 in New York, so clearly if this happened, it occurred after the attacks. This sounds like conclusive proof that Atta must have been alive at that time, doesn't it?
Not quite. First, Atta's father kept changing his story. A week after the attacks, he told a Saudi newspaper that he had not heard from Mohammed since the attacks (here: http://archive.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=9482&d=19&m=9&y=2001)
Note: as you'll see from that article, he is "confident" not because he claims to have seen his son after 9/11 or knows that he had an alibi, but simply because the father couldn't believe that his son would do something so horrific. Sorry, Dad. He did. In addition to all the other evidence of his guilt, the man caught on a security camera boarding Flight 11 (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atta_in_airport.jpg) is very clearly the same man issued a visa in 2000 (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MohamedAttaVisa.jpg) and who was also the same man identified by the FBI as one of the hijackers (his most famous picture, file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mohamed_Atta.jpg).
Second, Mohammed Atta was never seen again after September 11, 2001, anywhere in the world. As years went by and Mohammed didn't call or come home, the elder Atta eventually accepted that his son was one of the hijackers and that he was dead, prominently hanging a picture of his son on his front door, and went to CNN praising the July 7, 2005 London terror attacks and demanding $5,000 for an interview, which CNN declined to pay him. (Source here: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/19/atta.father.terror/index.html)
Okay, scratch Atta then. What about the other four? (Truthers have had no luck quote-mining or obfuscating about some of the hijackers, so nine is their limit). Unfortunately for them the Truthers have already expended the best of their ammunition.
Mohand al-Shehri? Dead. The suggestion that he was alive was raised by the Saudi embassy shortly after the attacks, and subsequently dropped; an interview with his father indicates that he accepted from the beginning that his son was involved. (Source: http://911myths.com/index.php/Mohand_al-Shehri_still_alive%3F) In addition to no other Mohand al-Shehris claiming they were falsely accused, the real Mohand al-Shehri has never been seen anywhere in the world since September 11, 2001.
Salem al-Hazmi? Dead. Confused initially with a Salem al-Hamzi (different spelling) who was a Saudi petrochemical worker whose whereabouts in Yanbou on September 11, 2001 can clearly be accounted for. (Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/1341391/Revealed-the-men-with-stolen-identities.html) Salem al-Hazmi has never been seen anywhere in the world anywhere since September 11, 2001.
Ahmed al-Nami? Dead. Mistaken identity, compounded by likely identity theft. The Ahmed al-Nami who was 33 in 2001 and worked for Saudi Airlines clearly was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. (Source: same as in the above paragraph). The Ahmed al-Nami who was 23 in 2001--and who fought in Chechnya and was last heard from by his family in June 2001--was on United Airlines Flight 93. That Ahmed al-Nami has never been seen anywhere in the world since September 11, 2001. (Source: http://911myths.com/index.php/Ahmed_al-Nami_still_alive%3F)
Wail al-Shehri, the brother of the Waleed M. al-Shehri discussed above? Dead. The suggestion of Wail al-Shehri still being alive is due entirely to the association with his brother, about whom, as you saw above, there was considerably more confusion than with any other 9/11 hijacker. Wail al-Shehri appears on a martyrdom video recorded in Afghanistan (source: http://www.webcitation.org/5bTYljW3y) and was last seen by his parents in December 2000 (source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1407285/The-six-sons-of-Asir.html). Wail al-Shehri has never been seen anywhere in the world since September 11, 2001.
As if this all was not evidence enough, the bodily remains of 13 of the 19 hijackers have been found and identified by the FBI in the rubble of the attacks they caused. (Source: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/79402/Exclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-found) Yes, 13 of 19. That means that the conspiracy theorists must be wrong on no fewer than three of their claims, since they claim nine are "still alive." But the fact that three remain unidentified doesn't mean that they're not there--there are still hundreds of victims of the 9/11 attacks whose remains are also unidentified. The fact that (A) those victims are conclusively established to have been at the WTC, the Pentagon or on Flight 93 at the time of the disaster, combined with (B) they have not been seen anywhere alive since, means that they must have died in the disaster. Even Truthers don't generally claim that Barbara Olson or Todd Beamer are still out there walking around (I say "generally" because I vaguely recall some Truther nimrod claiming that Barbara Olson is alive and living in Mexico. I'm sure Ted Sorenson would be interested to know that).
Therefore, it is clear that since all of the hijackers were conclusively placed aboard the flights and none of them have been seen alive since September 11, 2001, this means that all of them died in the attacks. There is no other possibility. Not 10 of them. All 19.
Rebuttal Part Two: Logical Analysis
Truthers make a great many ridiculous claims. But "the hijackers are still alive!" is probably one of the stupidest--which makes it all the more astonishing that it has 100% acceptance in Truther circles, even among those who are thought to be the "intellectuals" of the movement. In fact, even a perfunctory examination of the logic (or lack thereof) involved indicates strongly that, even without the evidence presented above, the 19 hijackers are dead, and that belief otherwise is self-delusion on the highest order.
In evaluating conspiracy theories it's always helpful to look at the theory, step back and imagine what would have to happen in order for the theory to be true. Here, the Truthers want you to believe that all of the following must be true:
Does this make any sense at all? The Truthers called "no-planers," who believe that aircraft did not strike the WTC or the Pentagon in real life at all, are forced to explain the fact that the passengers and crews of the un-hijacked (according to them) planes never came home by suggesting that they must have been killed (usually gassed) or otherwise silenced. But to believe that "nine hijackers are still alive!" you must necessarily believe that, whatever was done to get the passengers of the four planes out of the way, it was not done with respect to the hijackers! No, according to Truthers, they're still out there leading perfectly normal lives. Why would the perpetrators do this? They're willing to kill 3,000 innocent Americans to prop up the hijack story, but they care so much about 19 random Saudis that they're willing to give them a total pass?
Logically, it is much easier to prove that a particular person is alive than it is to prove that he or she is dead. First of all, assuming there is an official record of our existence (such as a birth certificate, driver's license etc.), we are presumed to be alive until proven otherwise. (If I were to vanish today with no trace or explanation, legally I could not be declared "dead" until 2017!) Secondly, if a person is mistakenly believed to be dead, all he or she needs to do is show up and say, "No, here I am." If there's some question about mistaken identity, then a living person could provide numerous different types of evidence--fingerprints, DNA, paper-trail records like credit card receipts or mail, photographs, etc.--to either clear up the mistake or to establish conclusively that the judgment that they were dead is erroneous.
On the other hand, if I were to vanish today with no trace or explanation, how could you prove that I'm dead? You could do it with, (A) my body, which can furnish conclusive evidence (fingerprints, DNA, dental records) or, (B) barring that, some pretty unimpeachable circumstantial evidence that I'm dead, such as, an eyewitness report of me jumping off Victoria Falls, combined with a suicide note in my own hand, and the fact that I have never been seen anywhere again since the date and time this supposedly happened.
Applied to the 9/11 hijackers, in category (A), we have the remains of 13 of them, and for the remaining six, there is evidence in category (B), most unimpeachably the fact that they were established to have been on the planes and have never been seen again, thus proving that all 19 are dead.
But if just one of them was really alive--not a different man with the same name, not a different man whose identity might have been stolen years before--if just one of the hijackers really was still alive, it would be very easy for that person to conclusively establish this fact. If Waleed M. al-Shehri really is alive, why doesn't he call a press conference to trumpet his innocence, fax his fingerprints and dental records to Al-Jazeera, and lodge an official protest with the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia?
Conspiracy theorists will say, "It's because he knows the U.S. government will rub him out if they know where he is, dummy!" But that makes no sense either. If the U.S. government falsely claimed that Waleed M. al-Shehri was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, and then the selfsame Waleed M. al-Shehri walks into an Al-Jazeera TV studio in 2010 (or on September 15, 2001) carrying a file of his fingerprints and dental records, that would conclusively prove the U.S. government is wrong. If the gubbermint rubbed him out after the story was out, what good would that do? You could still conclusively prove that Waleed M. al-Shehri was not aboard American Airlines Flight 11, and that the government hit him for blowing the whistle on their story. It'd be easier to leave him alive. So Waleed M. al-Shehri would have absolutely no incentive not to go public--particularly considering that a genuine and provable "9/11 Hijacker Still Alive!" story would be the scoop of the century and he could command millions of dollars for interviews across the Arab world, if not the West.
Furthermore--and this may be the most damning point of all--if any of the hijackers were still alive, how come not a single 9/11 Truther has ever interviewed one?
Assume for the sake of argument that Waleed M. al-Shehri is still alive, and that nobody in the mainstream media cares (which is ludicrous, but just assume it). If it's so obvious that he's alive and walking around just fine, why doesn't Alex Jones, Peter Joseph Merola, David Ray Griffin, Dylan Avery or Jason Bermas hop a flight to Riyadh, get an exclusive interview and shout from the rooftops that this is conclusive evidence that the "official story" is fake? Or at the very least try to email him and get an official statement? If 9/11 was an inside job, wouldn't al-Shehri and his family have a vested interest in proving that? Even if no one in the mainstream media gives a damn--which again is a silly assumption--there are plenty of conspiracy outlets on the Internet that would slash each other's throat to get an exclusive on that story.
But not one 9/11 Truther has ever claimed to have spoken to or contacted one of these "alive" hijackers, and none of the "alive" hijackers have tried to contact them. Not one. Not a single instance. Zero. Trust me, I've looked. There's not a one.
Ask a Truther, "If you believe the hijackers are still alive, why don't you try to contact one?" and, if you get an answer at all, what you get will be some sort of excuse, brush-off, or frontal attack. No Truther has ever explained why their movement has no interest in contacting any real hijackers--unless of course it has been tried, and whatever gullible Truther tried it discovered in short order what the rest of us already know: that the 9/11 hijackers are dead. All 19 of them.
Summary
"The hijackers are still alive!" is a totally 100% false claim, demonstrably deceptive, as well as insulting to the intelligence to maintain. All of the media reports that Truthers point to as "proof" of this claim are reports of confusion regarding mistaken identity. None of the hijackers identified in the 9/11 Commission Report or established by the FBI more than a few months after the disaster have ever been seen alive again. None of them. Try as they might, Truthers cannot produce a single accused hijacker who is still alive. Furthermore, U.S. authorities have recovered and identified physical remains of at least 13 of them (as of January 2009).
Belief that any of the hijackers are still alive requires an abrogation of logic so total that it leaves the believer open to a serious question of their cognitive abilities. In order to accept this claim you have to believe that the 9/11 conspirators were so careless or incompetent as to leave alive and completely unimpeded at least 9 people who can easily and conclusively prove that they're still alive and obviously did not die in the 9/11 attacks. That the conspirators would have done so is ridiculous. Furthermore, the complete failure of the 9/11 Truth movement to produce even one of these men, or even to try to interview them or contact them in any way, indicates that even Truthers, deep down, cannot seriously maintain that they are still alive--and that their shouting to the contrary means either they haven't investigated the facts, or haven't thought about them deeply enough to realize how moronic this claim actually is. This in itself demonstrates that the Truthers who make a big deal out of trumpeting how thorough and well-sourced their claims are--Peter Joseph Merola, David Ray Griffin and Dylan Avery all fall into this category--are in fact either inexcusably sloppy in their scholarship, or deliberately deceptive in the claims they choose to present to the public hoping you'll buy them.
The hijackers are dead. Every single one of them.
Author: Muertos
The Claims:
This specific claim is a subset of 9/11 conspiracy theories in general. Believers in the general 9/11 conspiracy theory ("9/11 Truthers" or simply "Truthers") claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA were either caused by some nefarious agents--usually the Bush Administration, Israel, or the New World Order--or deliberately permitted to take place. The "hijackers still alive" subset is a claim that one or more (9 is the most common number, but 7 is often heard) of the men identified by the FBI and the 9/11 Commission as the hijackers of the four planes are in fact still alive somewhere, thus supposedly proving or tending to indicate that the "official story" of 9/11 is false.
"The hijackers are still alive!" is not in and of itself usually used by Truthers as a primary argument at the core of the conspiracy, but it is often thrown in as an extra. For example, after spinning the usual controlled demolition claims or attacking the "official story" in one way or other, Truthers will often add, "And, by the way, several of the hijackers are still alive," as if this last bit is supposed to convince those of us who are not immediately won over by their theories about exploding paint or space beams.
The reason this claim is being treated individually apart from other 9/11 material on this site is because of its unique status as having virtually 100% acceptance by all 9/11 Truthers--and also because it's an interesting example of a conspiracy theory that arose from one single source as opposed to a myriad of origins. Ironically, Truthers often disagree on the core basics of the 9/11 conspiracy mythology--witness, for example, the public and visible split between advocates of Steven Jones, who believes the towers were brought down by some incendiary compound hidden in the paint used at the World Trade Center, and Judy Wood, who believes "directed energy weapons" were used. However, virtually all Truthers believe the hijackers are still alive. (I say "virtually" because while I have never met a Truther who does not believe the hijackers are still alive, I can't categorically state that there isn't one lonely LIHOP'er out there who concedes that they're dead). Suffice it to say that "the hijackers are still alive!" is one of the least controversial claims in the 9/11 conspiracy mythos.
Conspiracy Theorists Who Promote This Claim:
As stated, almost all Truthers believe the hijackers are still alive, so you can find dozens of repetitions of the claim with a simple Google search. These are only a few representative examples.
- Peter Joseph Merola, creator of the conspiracy film Zeitgeist: The Movie (Link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197# [ffwd to 47:07; shows David Ray Griffin making this claim)
- David Ray Griffin, retired theologian (Link: http://davidraygriffin.com/articles/the-911-commission-report-a-571-page-lie/)
- Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, creators of the conspiracy film Loose Change (Link: http://www.loosechangeguide.com/lcg5.html#Are some alive? Note: this link is to the debunking "viewer's guide" which contains a written transcript of the movie, produced here to show where in the film this claim is made)
- Alex Jones, conspiracy radio talk show host, frequently makes the claim (Example from his website: http://www.prisonplanet.com/seven_of_the_wtc_hijackers_found_alive.html)
- "Killtown," notorious Truther (Link: http://killtown.911review.org/911smokingguns.html#patsies See item 256)
Rebuttal Part One: Facts
All of the 9/11 hijackers are deceased. Not one of them has been seen alive since September 11, 2001, much less conclusively proven to be alive. Not one.
The "hijackers are still alive" meme seems to have started from one single source: a BBC article run on September 23, 2001, barely two weeks after the disaster. (The article is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm) In relevant part, the BBC stated:
"Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well. The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having carried out the attacks are now in doubt. Saudi Arabian pilot Waleed Al Shehri was one of five men that the FBI said had deliberately crashed American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Centre on 11 September. His photograph was released, and has since appeared in newspapers and on television around the world. Now he is protesting his innocence from Casablanca, Morocco. He told journalists there that he had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington, and had been in Morocco when they happened. He has contacted both the Saudi and American authorities, according to Saudi press reports. He acknowledges that he attended flight training school at Daytona Beach in the United States, and is indeed the same Waleed Al Shehri to whom the FBI has been referring."
The problem, however, is that the FBI was "referring" to several people named "Waleed al-Shehri," and it was clear from the very beginning that there was more than one person with that name that the FBI was interested in, if only to narrow the list down to the one who did 9/11. A press release dated September 14, 2001 (available here: http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/091401hj.htm) shows that the FBI was tracking up to three men possibly named "Waleed al Shehri," one from Hollywood, one from Orlando and one from Daytona Beach:
"2) Waleed M. Alshehri - Dates of birth used: September 13, 1974/January 1, 1976/ March 3, 1976/ July 8, 1977/ December 20, 1978/ May 11, 1979/ November 5, 1979; Possible residence (s) : Hollywood, Florida/ Orlando, Florida/ Daytona Beach, Florida; Believed to be a pilot."
As it turned out, the Waleed M. Alshehri who sat in seat 2B on American Airlines Flight 11--the one who was born in 'Asir Province, Saudi Arabia on December 20, 1978--had not trained at a flight school in the United States. He was a "muscle" hijacker. (Source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/waleed_al-shehri.htm) But there was also a man called Waleed A. Alshehri who had graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1997, and he was identified by the FBI and later cleared. In the early days of the investigation, before Waleed A. Alshehri was cleared, Embry-Riddle reacted to the inclusion of its alumnus on the FBI list, stating "The fact that one of the perpetrators of this massive crime may have once been here is appalling." (Source: http://www.erau.edu/er/newsmedia/newsreleases/2001/link.html) The "Waleed al-Shehri" quoted in the September 23 BBC article was that Waleed al-Shehri, who was totally different than the one who boarded American Airlines Flight 11. Indeed the innocent (and alive) Waleed al-Shehri quickly contacted American authorities in Morocco, and later gave an interview (transcript available here: http://www.ncmonline.com/content/ncm/2001/oct/1005identities.html" target="_blank">http://web.archive.org/web/20040707010907/http://www.ncmonline.com/content/ncm/2001/oct/1005identities.html</a>) in which he stated:
"[I]n the morning of Sunday last my friend called me to say that CNN had shown a picture of me. I was dumbfounded. I decided then to go back to Casablanca and get in contact with the Saudi embassy. The ambassador Dr. Abd-ul-Azeez Khoja received me on Tuesday last and showed great concern about what was happening. He said that the foreign minister Prince Sa'ud al-Faisal was personally investigating the situation. Then I went to the American embassy in Rabat and told the people there what my situation was. I told them I was quite alive though I was reported as dead. I was supposed to have died in the suicide attack against the World Trade Center. They apologized to me for the confusion that had occurred. They were interested in flight schools in Florida that trained pilots."
Because they figured (rightly) that most of the hijackers had some sort of flight training, the FBI was looking for men with this credential, which was why they focused, quite naturally, upon Waleed A. al-Shehri who they knew had trained at an aeronautical university. Media outlets picked this up, found a picture of the innocent Waleed al-Shehri and ran it, which was why his photo appeared. When they realized he was not the guy, the FBI moved on, and no action was ever taken against Waleed A. al-Shehri--who, of course, had done nothing wrong.
So what about the Waleed M. al-Shehri who the FBI eventually realized was their man? Neither he nor his brother, Wail al-Shehri (interesting; the Waleed A. Al Shehri who graduated from Embry-Riddle in the 1990s did not have a brother named Wail) have been seen anywhere since September 11, 2001. Their families certainly have not seen them. Members of the al-Shehri family--the right al-Shehri family--haven't seen them since 2000, and when interviewed by a British newspaper (see here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1407285/The-six-sons-of-Asir.html) their cousin seemed not only to accept that they were involved in 9/11, but in fact he was proud that his relative had committed mass murder:
"'When we read their names we were very proud because the black hand of Americans are in everything,' said their cousin. 'I don't think my cousins were exploited. I think they did it out of their own convictions.'"
Okay, so al Shehri was clearly a case of mistaken identity. What about the other hijackers mentioned in the September 23 BBC story...
...such as Abdulaziz al-Omari? Mistaken identity, compounded by possible identity theft (as reported shortly after the attacks here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/1341391/Revealed-the-men-with-stolen-identities.html). The Abdulaziz al-Omari who protested he was sitting at his desk in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 9/11/2001--the one who works for the Saudi phone company--is a totally different guy than the Abdulaziz al-Omari whom the Saudi government identified as being one of the 9/11 hijackers (source here: http://www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm?qid=12&sid=6" target="_blank">http://web.archive.org/web/20031026101720/http://www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm?qid=12&sid=6). That Abdulaziz al-Omari has, not surprisingly, never been seen anywhere since September 11, 2001.
...such as Saeed Alghamdi? Mistaken identity. The Saeed Al-Ghamdi who was a pilot for Saudi Airlines, and protested his innocence, was clearly not the Saeed Al-Ghamdi who made a suicide tape shortly before 9/11 (story here: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/09/12/hijack.tape/index.html) in which he warned Americans, "God will punish you in a big way. And we promise the United States of America that we will stop you, that we will hurt you."
...such as Khalid al Midhar? Mistaken identity, compounded by identity theft. A radiologist from Texas named Badr Mohammed Hamzi was detained by the FBI in 2001 because he used the name "Khalid al Midhar." (Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/21/afghanistan.september112) He was later released when it was discovered he had nothing to do with the attacks. (Source: http://multimedia.belointeractive.com/attack/investigation/0927vaman.html) He is presumably still alive. One of the other people in the world who happened to have that name--the Khalid al Midhar who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1975 and arrived in the US in Los Angeles in January 2000 (source: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/DCI_18_June_testimony_new.pdf)--eventually wound up on American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. There have been no reports of him turning up alive later on either.
When the BBC realized that its infamous September 23 report was being used by conspiracy theorists to bolster their claims, it issued a statement in October 2006:
"A five-year-old story from our archive has been the subject of some recent editorial discussion here. The story, written in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was about confusion at the time surrounding the names and identities of some of the hijackers. This confusion was widely reported and was also acknowledged by the FBI.... The confusion over names and identities we reported back in 2001 may have arisen because these were common Arabic and Islamic names."
There you have it. All clearly cases of mistaken identity and same or similar names. So much for these four guys. What about the other hijackers that conspiracy theorists insist are still alive?
Mohammed Atta, the remorseless, steely-eyed killer who was the operational leader of the 9/11 attacks and who evidently shouted "Allah is great!" gleefully as the plane he hijacked was about to slam into one of the WTC towers, is often claimed by Truthers to still be alive. Why? Probably because Atta's father gave an interview to a British newspaper (here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/02/september11.usa) in which he claimed:
"He is hiding in a secret place so as not to be murdered by the US secret services... My son called me the day after the attacks on September 12 at around midday. We spoke for two minutes about this and that. He didn't tell me where he was calling from. At that time neither of us knew anything about the attacks."
"September 12 at around midday" would have been about 5AM September 12 in New York, so clearly if this happened, it occurred after the attacks. This sounds like conclusive proof that Atta must have been alive at that time, doesn't it?
Not quite. First, Atta's father kept changing his story. A week after the attacks, he told a Saudi newspaper that he had not heard from Mohammed since the attacks (here: http://archive.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=9482&d=19&m=9&y=2001)
"Atta's father, a lawyer, said he had not heard from his son since the attack, but was confident he had nothing to do with the carnage."
Note: as you'll see from that article, he is "confident" not because he claims to have seen his son after 9/11 or knows that he had an alibi, but simply because the father couldn't believe that his son would do something so horrific. Sorry, Dad. He did. In addition to all the other evidence of his guilt, the man caught on a security camera boarding Flight 11 (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atta_in_airport.jpg) is very clearly the same man issued a visa in 2000 (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MohamedAttaVisa.jpg) and who was also the same man identified by the FBI as one of the hijackers (his most famous picture, file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mohamed_Atta.jpg).
Second, Mohammed Atta was never seen again after September 11, 2001, anywhere in the world. As years went by and Mohammed didn't call or come home, the elder Atta eventually accepted that his son was one of the hijackers and that he was dead, prominently hanging a picture of his son on his front door, and went to CNN praising the July 7, 2005 London terror attacks and demanding $5,000 for an interview, which CNN declined to pay him. (Source here: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/19/atta.father.terror/index.html)
Okay, scratch Atta then. What about the other four? (Truthers have had no luck quote-mining or obfuscating about some of the hijackers, so nine is their limit). Unfortunately for them the Truthers have already expended the best of their ammunition.
Mohand al-Shehri? Dead. The suggestion that he was alive was raised by the Saudi embassy shortly after the attacks, and subsequently dropped; an interview with his father indicates that he accepted from the beginning that his son was involved. (Source: http://911myths.com/index.php/Mohand_al-Shehri_still_alive%3F) In addition to no other Mohand al-Shehris claiming they were falsely accused, the real Mohand al-Shehri has never been seen anywhere in the world since September 11, 2001.
Salem al-Hazmi? Dead. Confused initially with a Salem al-Hamzi (different spelling) who was a Saudi petrochemical worker whose whereabouts in Yanbou on September 11, 2001 can clearly be accounted for. (Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/1341391/Revealed-the-men-with-stolen-identities.html) Salem al-Hazmi has never been seen anywhere in the world anywhere since September 11, 2001.
Ahmed al-Nami? Dead. Mistaken identity, compounded by likely identity theft. The Ahmed al-Nami who was 33 in 2001 and worked for Saudi Airlines clearly was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. (Source: same as in the above paragraph). The Ahmed al-Nami who was 23 in 2001--and who fought in Chechnya and was last heard from by his family in June 2001--was on United Airlines Flight 93. That Ahmed al-Nami has never been seen anywhere in the world since September 11, 2001. (Source: http://911myths.com/index.php/Ahmed_al-Nami_still_alive%3F)
Wail al-Shehri, the brother of the Waleed M. al-Shehri discussed above? Dead. The suggestion of Wail al-Shehri still being alive is due entirely to the association with his brother, about whom, as you saw above, there was considerably more confusion than with any other 9/11 hijacker. Wail al-Shehri appears on a martyrdom video recorded in Afghanistan (source: http://www.webcitation.org/5bTYljW3y) and was last seen by his parents in December 2000 (source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1407285/The-six-sons-of-Asir.html). Wail al-Shehri has never been seen anywhere in the world since September 11, 2001.
As if this all was not evidence enough, the bodily remains of 13 of the 19 hijackers have been found and identified by the FBI in the rubble of the attacks they caused. (Source: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/79402/Exclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-foundExclusive-Remains-of-9-11-killers-found) Yes, 13 of 19. That means that the conspiracy theorists must be wrong on no fewer than three of their claims, since they claim nine are "still alive." But the fact that three remain unidentified doesn't mean that they're not there--there are still hundreds of victims of the 9/11 attacks whose remains are also unidentified. The fact that (A) those victims are conclusively established to have been at the WTC, the Pentagon or on Flight 93 at the time of the disaster, combined with (B) they have not been seen anywhere alive since, means that they must have died in the disaster. Even Truthers don't generally claim that Barbara Olson or Todd Beamer are still out there walking around (I say "generally" because I vaguely recall some Truther nimrod claiming that Barbara Olson is alive and living in Mexico. I'm sure Ted Sorenson would be interested to know that).
Therefore, it is clear that since all of the hijackers were conclusively placed aboard the flights and none of them have been seen alive since September 11, 2001, this means that all of them died in the attacks. There is no other possibility. Not 10 of them. All 19.
Rebuttal Part Two: Logical Analysis
Truthers make a great many ridiculous claims. But "the hijackers are still alive!" is probably one of the stupidest--which makes it all the more astonishing that it has 100% acceptance in Truther circles, even among those who are thought to be the "intellectuals" of the movement. In fact, even a perfunctory examination of the logic (or lack thereof) involved indicates strongly that, even without the evidence presented above, the 19 hijackers are dead, and that belief otherwise is self-delusion on the highest order.
In evaluating conspiracy theories it's always helpful to look at the theory, step back and imagine what would have to happen in order for the theory to be true. Here, the Truthers want you to believe that all of the following must be true:
- Someone decided to "do" 9/11 and make it look like hijackers took over the four planes.
- Whoever did this evidently chose Arab names at random, or selected as the "hijackers" at least nine real people who had nothing to do with Al-Qaida.
- The perpetrators identified these (at least) 9 innocent people to the FBI as the hijackers.
- The perpetrators of 9/11 persisted in their identification of the (at least) 9 fake hijackers despite the fact that every one of them would presumably be able to come up with an airtight alibi.
- The perpetrators went to the time and trouble of faking martyrdom videos of several of the innocent people that they intended to claim were responsible for 9/11.
- After 9/11, the perpetrators were so unconcerned about the possibility of the real persons whose names they used as "hijackers" coming forward to claim they were alive that the perpetrators did absolutely nothing to stop them. They let the nine innocent people accused of being the hijackers carry on with completely normal lives and made absolutely no attempt to silence, intimidate or assassinate them.
- None of the people involved in the perpetration of this fraud either got cold feet and blew the whistle, or screwed up and inadvertently allowed evidence of their deception to leak out.
Does this make any sense at all? The Truthers called "no-planers," who believe that aircraft did not strike the WTC or the Pentagon in real life at all, are forced to explain the fact that the passengers and crews of the un-hijacked (according to them) planes never came home by suggesting that they must have been killed (usually gassed) or otherwise silenced. But to believe that "nine hijackers are still alive!" you must necessarily believe that, whatever was done to get the passengers of the four planes out of the way, it was not done with respect to the hijackers! No, according to Truthers, they're still out there leading perfectly normal lives. Why would the perpetrators do this? They're willing to kill 3,000 innocent Americans to prop up the hijack story, but they care so much about 19 random Saudis that they're willing to give them a total pass?
Logically, it is much easier to prove that a particular person is alive than it is to prove that he or she is dead. First of all, assuming there is an official record of our existence (such as a birth certificate, driver's license etc.), we are presumed to be alive until proven otherwise. (If I were to vanish today with no trace or explanation, legally I could not be declared "dead" until 2017!) Secondly, if a person is mistakenly believed to be dead, all he or she needs to do is show up and say, "No, here I am." If there's some question about mistaken identity, then a living person could provide numerous different types of evidence--fingerprints, DNA, paper-trail records like credit card receipts or mail, photographs, etc.--to either clear up the mistake or to establish conclusively that the judgment that they were dead is erroneous.
On the other hand, if I were to vanish today with no trace or explanation, how could you prove that I'm dead? You could do it with, (A) my body, which can furnish conclusive evidence (fingerprints, DNA, dental records) or, (B) barring that, some pretty unimpeachable circumstantial evidence that I'm dead, such as, an eyewitness report of me jumping off Victoria Falls, combined with a suicide note in my own hand, and the fact that I have never been seen anywhere again since the date and time this supposedly happened.
Applied to the 9/11 hijackers, in category (A), we have the remains of 13 of them, and for the remaining six, there is evidence in category (B), most unimpeachably the fact that they were established to have been on the planes and have never been seen again, thus proving that all 19 are dead.
But if just one of them was really alive--not a different man with the same name, not a different man whose identity might have been stolen years before--if just one of the hijackers really was still alive, it would be very easy for that person to conclusively establish this fact. If Waleed M. al-Shehri really is alive, why doesn't he call a press conference to trumpet his innocence, fax his fingerprints and dental records to Al-Jazeera, and lodge an official protest with the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia?
Conspiracy theorists will say, "It's because he knows the U.S. government will rub him out if they know where he is, dummy!" But that makes no sense either. If the U.S. government falsely claimed that Waleed M. al-Shehri was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, and then the selfsame Waleed M. al-Shehri walks into an Al-Jazeera TV studio in 2010 (or on September 15, 2001) carrying a file of his fingerprints and dental records, that would conclusively prove the U.S. government is wrong. If the gubbermint rubbed him out after the story was out, what good would that do? You could still conclusively prove that Waleed M. al-Shehri was not aboard American Airlines Flight 11, and that the government hit him for blowing the whistle on their story. It'd be easier to leave him alive. So Waleed M. al-Shehri would have absolutely no incentive not to go public--particularly considering that a genuine and provable "9/11 Hijacker Still Alive!" story would be the scoop of the century and he could command millions of dollars for interviews across the Arab world, if not the West.
Furthermore--and this may be the most damning point of all--if any of the hijackers were still alive, how come not a single 9/11 Truther has ever interviewed one?
Assume for the sake of argument that Waleed M. al-Shehri is still alive, and that nobody in the mainstream media cares (which is ludicrous, but just assume it). If it's so obvious that he's alive and walking around just fine, why doesn't Alex Jones, Peter Joseph Merola, David Ray Griffin, Dylan Avery or Jason Bermas hop a flight to Riyadh, get an exclusive interview and shout from the rooftops that this is conclusive evidence that the "official story" is fake? Or at the very least try to email him and get an official statement? If 9/11 was an inside job, wouldn't al-Shehri and his family have a vested interest in proving that? Even if no one in the mainstream media gives a damn--which again is a silly assumption--there are plenty of conspiracy outlets on the Internet that would slash each other's throat to get an exclusive on that story.
But not one 9/11 Truther has ever claimed to have spoken to or contacted one of these "alive" hijackers, and none of the "alive" hijackers have tried to contact them. Not one. Not a single instance. Zero. Trust me, I've looked. There's not a one.
Ask a Truther, "If you believe the hijackers are still alive, why don't you try to contact one?" and, if you get an answer at all, what you get will be some sort of excuse, brush-off, or frontal attack. No Truther has ever explained why their movement has no interest in contacting any real hijackers--unless of course it has been tried, and whatever gullible Truther tried it discovered in short order what the rest of us already know: that the 9/11 hijackers are dead. All 19 of them.
Summary
"The hijackers are still alive!" is a totally 100% false claim, demonstrably deceptive, as well as insulting to the intelligence to maintain. All of the media reports that Truthers point to as "proof" of this claim are reports of confusion regarding mistaken identity. None of the hijackers identified in the 9/11 Commission Report or established by the FBI more than a few months after the disaster have ever been seen alive again. None of them. Try as they might, Truthers cannot produce a single accused hijacker who is still alive. Furthermore, U.S. authorities have recovered and identified physical remains of at least 13 of them (as of January 2009).
Belief that any of the hijackers are still alive requires an abrogation of logic so total that it leaves the believer open to a serious question of their cognitive abilities. In order to accept this claim you have to believe that the 9/11 conspirators were so careless or incompetent as to leave alive and completely unimpeded at least 9 people who can easily and conclusively prove that they're still alive and obviously did not die in the 9/11 attacks. That the conspirators would have done so is ridiculous. Furthermore, the complete failure of the 9/11 Truth movement to produce even one of these men, or even to try to interview them or contact them in any way, indicates that even Truthers, deep down, cannot seriously maintain that they are still alive--and that their shouting to the contrary means either they haven't investigated the facts, or haven't thought about them deeply enough to realize how moronic this claim actually is. This in itself demonstrates that the Truthers who make a big deal out of trumpeting how thorough and well-sourced their claims are--Peter Joseph Merola, David Ray Griffin and Dylan Avery all fall into this category--are in fact either inexcusably sloppy in their scholarship, or deliberately deceptive in the claims they choose to present to the public hoping you'll buy them.
The hijackers are dead. Every single one of them.
ConspiracyScience.com Addresses Global Warming Denial
Author: Muertos
Date: May 18, 2010 at 17:12
By Muertos (muertos@gmail.com)
One of the things this site is known for is Edward Winston's very detailed refutations of deceptive conspiracy films, most notably the Zeitgeist films and various Alex Jones movies. Because of this, we've gotten several requests from people who believe that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a "hoax" to include Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth on ConspiracyScience.com as a "deceptive" conspiracy film in the same vein as Zeitgeist or The Obama Deception. In investigating the movie and the phenomenon of climate change hoax allegations in general, we have come to the conclusion that not only is An Inconvenient Truth NOT appropriate to be listed as a conspiracy film, but in fact "global warming is a hoax" claims themselves qualify as a conspiracy theory that should be debunked on this site.
As of late last week, therefore, we now have an article available in our Wiki section that addresses "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theories in general, and the claims of deception in An Inconvenient Truth in particular. (Link: http://conspiracyscience.com/blog/wiki-global-warming-denial/)
As the Wiki article explains, AGW is not a hoax. It is based upon science that has been thoroughly researched and vetted. The vast majority of the world's scientists, including (poll results) 97.5% of climatologists who have published research on climate change, agree that climate change is really happening and that it's caused primarily by human activity. The claims to the contrary--that somehow AGW is a "fraud" cooked up by (take your pick) Al Gore, the International Panel on Climate Change, a cabal of greedy scientists, or even anthropologist Margaret Mead--are false.
The article is not intended as a comprehensive debunking of every claim made by AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists. (If you want that, you should go here, here or here). In our article, I address a few of what I've encountered as the most representative and favorite claims of the "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theorists:
The sources supporting our refutations of these arguments are in the Wiki article. If you're an AGW denier conspiracy theorist, don't write to me saying "You didn't source anything!" because this blog is not the refutation--the Wiki article is the refutation that contains the sources.
Because AGW is a political issue, I'm sure there will be some people out there who claim that our posting of this article constitutes ConspiracyScience.com taking a political position, for instance, that we must "love" Al Gore or that because we have debunked "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theories that we must support carbon taxes or cap-and-trade legislation. This is not true. The purpose of this article is not to endorse one or another position regarding climate change policy or what should be done to mitigate climate change. The purpose of this article is to answer three specific factual, not political, questions:
For the record, speaking only for myself, I'm not a huge fan of Al Gore. I didn't vote for him and I don't think he would have made a good president. That's my personal opinion, not the opinion of ConspiracyScience.com, which neither endorses nor denounces politicians--unless they happen to promote conspiracy theories, as some do. But, as our article explains, the issue of climate change does not center around Al Gore's political beliefs, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade or the Kyoto Accords. As a factual matter, climate change is happening. What we should do about it is beyond the scope of what we're trying to do here at ConspiracyScience.com. We debunk conspiracy theories. "Global warming is a hoax!" is a conspiracy theory. Consequently, we have debunked it, and we believe our facts are sound.
So, in short, quit asking us to "debunk" An Inconvenient Truth. It has errors but it is not a conspiracy film, certainly nothing even close to Zeitgeist or The Obama Deception. For a fuller and more in-depth analysis of AGW denial as a conspiracy theory, please go to the Wiki article.
One of the things this site is known for is Edward Winston's very detailed refutations of deceptive conspiracy films, most notably the Zeitgeist films and various Alex Jones movies. Because of this, we've gotten several requests from people who believe that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a "hoax" to include Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth on ConspiracyScience.com as a "deceptive" conspiracy film in the same vein as Zeitgeist or The Obama Deception. In investigating the movie and the phenomenon of climate change hoax allegations in general, we have come to the conclusion that not only is An Inconvenient Truth NOT appropriate to be listed as a conspiracy film, but in fact "global warming is a hoax" claims themselves qualify as a conspiracy theory that should be debunked on this site.
As of late last week, therefore, we now have an article available in our Wiki section that addresses "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theories in general, and the claims of deception in An Inconvenient Truth in particular. (Link: http://conspiracyscience.com/blog/wiki-global-warming-denial/)
As the Wiki article explains, AGW is not a hoax. It is based upon science that has been thoroughly researched and vetted. The vast majority of the world's scientists, including (poll results) 97.5% of climatologists who have published research on climate change, agree that climate change is really happening and that it's caused primarily by human activity. The claims to the contrary--that somehow AGW is a "fraud" cooked up by (take your pick) Al Gore, the International Panel on Climate Change, a cabal of greedy scientists, or even anthropologist Margaret Mead--are false.
The article is not intended as a comprehensive debunking of every claim made by AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists. (If you want that, you should go here, here or here). In our article, I address a few of what I've encountered as the most representative and favorite claims of the "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theorists:
- There is no scientific consensus that climate change is happening or that it's caused by humans. (Sorry, there is--an overwhelming consensus).
- The "hockey stick" (meaning graphs of projected global temperatures showing a marked upward swing in recent years) is broken. (It's not--every study shows exactly the same thing).
- CO2 can't be a pollutant because far greater levels of CO2 are emitted by natural processes such as oceans and vegetation than by human activity. (Misses the point--it's about the rate of absorption, which cannot keep up with human-generated CO2 emissions).
- Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth is deceptive and fraudulent. (Sorry, it isn't--the errors in the film are minor and do not affect the scientific basis for its conclusions regarding AGW).
- The hacked emails from East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit are proof of a conspiracy by climatologists to fabricate AGW evidence. (No, they're not--every single one of these claims involves a statement taken out of context or misunderstood, and in fact the CRU has been exonerated by a recent investigation).
- Over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition stating that they disagree with AGW conclusions, which indicates a serious lack of consensus. (The petition is fraudulent, and even if it wasn't, 31,000 is a tiny minority of the scientists out there).
- AGW can't exist because the idea of the greenhouse effect violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Sorry, but that's ridiculous--a total misapplication of thermodynamics and climate process in general).
- It's cold today. Therefore AGW is a hoax. (Ignorant and ridiculous--there's a difference between weather and climate).
The sources supporting our refutations of these arguments are in the Wiki article. If you're an AGW denier conspiracy theorist, don't write to me saying "You didn't source anything!" because this blog is not the refutation--the Wiki article is the refutation that contains the sources.
Because AGW is a political issue, I'm sure there will be some people out there who claim that our posting of this article constitutes ConspiracyScience.com taking a political position, for instance, that we must "love" Al Gore or that because we have debunked "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theories that we must support carbon taxes or cap-and-trade legislation. This is not true. The purpose of this article is not to endorse one or another position regarding climate change policy or what should be done to mitigate climate change. The purpose of this article is to answer three specific factual, not political, questions:
- Is climate change really happening? (Yes).
- Is it caused primarily by human activity? (Yes).
- Are allegations that global warming is a hoax or conspiracy true? (No).
For the record, speaking only for myself, I'm not a huge fan of Al Gore. I didn't vote for him and I don't think he would have made a good president. That's my personal opinion, not the opinion of ConspiracyScience.com, which neither endorses nor denounces politicians--unless they happen to promote conspiracy theories, as some do. But, as our article explains, the issue of climate change does not center around Al Gore's political beliefs, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade or the Kyoto Accords. As a factual matter, climate change is happening. What we should do about it is beyond the scope of what we're trying to do here at ConspiracyScience.com. We debunk conspiracy theories. "Global warming is a hoax!" is a conspiracy theory. Consequently, we have debunked it, and we believe our facts are sound.
So, in short, quit asking us to "debunk" An Inconvenient Truth. It has errors but it is not a conspiracy film, certainly nothing even close to Zeitgeist or The Obama Deception. For a fuller and more in-depth analysis of AGW denial as a conspiracy theory, please go to the Wiki article.
wiki global warming denial
Author: Muertos
Date: May 14, 2010 at 23:48
"Global Warming Hoax" Conspiracy Theory
Author: Muertos
The Claims:
Believers in this conspiracy theory claim that the idea that the Earth's climate is warming as a result of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, caused predominantly by human activity ("anthropogenic global warming" or "AGW"), is unsupported by science and is actually a hoax perpetrated by scientists and politicians (notably Al Gore) for economic or ideological reasons, or to "scare" populations and governments into enacting measures (such as carbon taxes) that would be difficult to implement by other means.
This is by no means the only articulation of the "global warming hoax" theory, but is one of the most common broad-based claims. This article is intended to debunk the broader themes of AGW denial, involving a few specific examples of claims that have been refuted. By no means is this article intended as a comprehensive refutation of all individual claims made by AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists, as there are thousands of them, but these are the most important and the most representative.
It is important to note that, although climate change is a contentious political issue, this article is not intended as a political statement. ConspiracyScience.com does not take any stand on the political issues involved with global warming, such as cap-and-trade, carbon taxes etc., nor is this article intended as a statement of political agreement with Al Gore or political disagreement with AGW deniers who are also politicians, such as Ron Paul. This article is concerned with answering three questions: is global warming happening as a factual matter, is it primarily caused by human activity, and is it a conspiracy or hoax? The answers to these questions are, respectively: yes, yes, and no.
Notable AGW Deniers and/or Conspiracy Theorists:
Rebuttal of Specific Claims
Claim: "There is no scientific consensus either that (1) climate change is happening, or (2) that humans are causing it."
Rebuttal: False. The consensus that AGW is real is overwhelming. In 2009, a poll organized by Dr. Peter Doran of the University of Illinois, whose results were published in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, questioned 10,257 scientists on whether they believe that human activity is a contributing factor in changing global temperatures. Eighty-two percent of all scientists polled said yes, but among climatologists who have published research on climate change, 97.5% said yes. (Source: http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf)
Furthermore, a 2004 survey of peer-reviewed scientific literature considered 928 peer-review articles on climate change published between 1993 and 2003. Of those nearly 1000 papers, not a single one rejected the consensus position that AGW is happening. A skeptic, Benny Peisner, attempted to discredit this survey, and claimed to have found 34 peer-reviewed papers rejecting the AGW theory; in fact, after it was revealed that this claim was not true, Peisner retracted his criticism of the survey.
(Sources: (Survey: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686#) (Peiser's retraction: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1777013.htm) (Further discussion on survey results: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=24))
Claim: "The 'hockey stick' is broken."
Rebuttal: False. The "hockey stick" is a famous graph reconstructing global temperature from extant records as set forth in a 1999 paper by Michael Mann (no, not the movie director; he's a scientist at University of Massachusetts). (The paper is here: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/research/ONLINE-PREPRINTS/Millennium/mbh99.pdf) The projections of rising global temperatures resemble a hockey stick in that they swing dramatically upwards in recent years. Since then there have been various critiques of the study, focusing mainly on the methods Mann used to reconstruct global temperature from hundreds of years ago, a doctrine known as palaeoclimatology which uses tree rings, ice cores and other indicators to project what temperatures actually were in times before weather records were kept reliably. Although Mann's methods were primitive by modern standards, every new method used to reinvestigate historical temperatures since 1999 has resulted in the exact same hockey stick-shaped graph, for example, boreholes (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~peter/Resources/Seminar/readings/Huang_boreholeTemp_Nature'00.pdf) and stalagmites (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/smith2006/smith2006.html). All of these studies confirm the "hockey stick" phenomenon. Not some of them. All of them.
Further discussion on this issue, with links to various studies: http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Claim: "Far greater levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) are emitted by natural processes such as plants and the ocean than by human activity...it's ludicrous to think that it's harmful!"
Rebuttal: It's not about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but the rate of absorption. Natural emissions of CO2, such as from plants, are absorbed by natural processes (also oceans and plants) in rough balance. It's the human emission of CO2 that is the problem--because it's overwhelming the planet's ability to absorb the additional CO2. In fact, only about 40% of human CO2 emissions are being absorbed at all--the rest is going into the atmosphere and staying there.
(Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1178296)
Claim: "Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth is deceptive and exaggerated."
Related Claim: "The movie Inconvenient Truth was judged to be fraudulent by a British court."
Rebuttal: There are errors in Al Gore's film, two of which stand out. The first is the film's assertion that the disappearance of snow on Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro can be directly attributable to AGW. The second is where Gore asserts that CO2 projections and temperature graphs are an exact fit. As to Kilimanjaro, the cause of glacial retreat is subject to fierce debate in the scientific community. Suffice it to say, while it may be caused by AGW, it may not be, and thus Kilimanjaro's glaciers should not be used as direct evidence of AGW. (Lengthy discussion of this issue here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/tropical-glacier-retreat/). As to the temperature graphs, Gore conflated the 1999 Mann "hockey stick" graph with the East Anglia CRU's surface temperature measurements.
Neither of these errors affect the basic thrust of Gore's film: that global temperatures are rising and human activity is the cause. Indeed, very much like the CRU email hacking incident (discussed below), AGW deniers seized upon the errors to denounce the basic thesis of the film as a whole--entirely without evidence.
Because Al Gore is so publicly and universally associated with AGW and efforts to mitigate it, AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists often believe that attacking and discrediting Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth is tantamount to discrediting the science behind AGW itself. Of course this is silly. Al Gore is not a scientist, and the scientific basis of AGW did not originate with him. Even if An Inconvenient Truth was a total fabrication, the science behind AGW would still be overwhelmingly convincing.
Discussion of Inconvenient Truth errors is available here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/10/the_boring_truth.php
Related Rebuttal: The UK High Court of Justice, in an October 2007 decision (which is available in full here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html), did not find Gore's film to be "fraudulent." The issue was whether, under UK law, An Inconvenient Truth was a science film, suitable for presentation in public schools, or a political film, which would require an accompanying guide clarifying certain points if it was shown in schools. That was the only issue. The court found it was a political film and that it must be accompanied by a guide--but that its science was sound. In fact, the court found that:
This is hardly surprising, considering Al Gore is a politician, not a scientist; I think very few people would disagree that An Inconvenient Truth is, and was always intended to be, a political film. Clearly it is.
The court also found:
So, in other words, the British court ruled that the four main scientific bases of An Inconvenient Truth were accurately presented, and the nine specific errors discussed in the judgment (for a list of them, go here: http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/Gorejudgment.htm) do not impugn the basic scientific integrity of the film.
Claim: "Emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) prove that AGW is a fraud and that scientists are trying to hide it!"
Rebuttal: False. Conspiracy theorists love to engage in "quote-mining," that being the taking of particular quotes out of context to support a predetermined conclusion, and this is exactly what happened in the CRU case. This conclusion has been validated by an independent investigation by the British House of Commons.
Here's what happened. In November 2009, just before the United Nations Copenhagen summit on climate change, somebody hacked into the CRU's computer system and illegally downloaded emails from the database that had passed between prominent climate scientists. The emails were posted on an Internet blog for AGW deniers. Taken out of context, the quotes appear to indicate the scientists are hiding something. This is the most famous of them, from Phil Jones, then head of the CRU:
Sounds suspicious, doesn't it? Especially when he uses words like "trick" and "hide." However, he is not referring to "trick" in the sense of a deception. What he is referring to is the method of correlating data from various sources that use incompatible phenomenon into an intelligible picture. The "trick" that Jones is referring to is set out in a 1998 paper, again by Michael Mann and published in Nature (hence the "Nature trick"), discussing how to do precisely this--and it's not deceptive at all. (The paper is here: http://www.elmhurst.edu/~richs/EC/FYS/Mannetal.OriginalPaper.pdf) The British House of Commons report, released in March 2010 (read it here: http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HC387-IUEAFinalEmbargoedv21.pdf) is very clear in stating:
And what about that "decline?" AGW deniers insist he means a decline in temperatures; in fact he is referring to the decline in the sensitivity of data culled from tree rings (called dendrochronology) to indicate temperatures in more recent years, because (ironically) of climate change. In other words, the more recent the tree-ring records you're looking at, the less accurate they are going to be, which means that if you're plotting tree-ring temperature records from recently against those from hundreds of years ago, you will have to recalibrate one set of figures or the other so that they're measuring the same thing. This is what "hiding the decline" means. But don't take my word for it. The House of Commons report addresses this specific point:
Another hacked email from Kevin Trenberth, who wrote much of the IPCC report, contains a statement, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." Again, this sounds very suspicious, doesn't it? In fact what Trenberth is talking about is not that it's a "travesty" that the planet isn't as warm as he would like it to be; in fact what he's actually expressing is the exact opposite--that scientific measurements can't explain why the Earth isn't already warmer than it is! This has to do with the planet's "energy budget." We know the Earth is getting hotter, but, calculating all the warming sources all over the planet, mathematically the Earth should be trapping more heat via the greenhouse effect than it already is. Trenberth is not certain why that is, but he feels it extremely important that the answer be found--a conclusion I doubt anyone would disagree with. Again, do not take my word for it. Trenberth already published a peer-reviewed paper on this subject. (It's here: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf) Thus, it is clear that he is not part of a conspiracy to "fudge" data showing AGW. All of the emails pointed to by AGW deniers are quote-mined. Not some of them. All of them.
The House of Commons report made several good points, such as calling for greater transparency in the sharing of climate change data by the CRU, especially given the political and economic importance of the AGW issue. The House also criticized the CRU's handling of Freedom of Information Act requests. Those appear to be quite reasonable criticisms. But as far as the CRU emails showing a conspiracy, the House of Commons is extremely clear that they do not:
More discussion on the CRU email issues, and other issues raised in this rebuttal, here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kevin-Trenberth-travesty-cant-account-for-the-lack-of-warming.htm
Claim: "Over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition disputing that AGW is real. This clearly represents a significant lack of consensus in the scientific community regarding AGW."
Rebuttal: No, clearly it does not. Furthermore, the petition itself is misleading and in many respects an outright fraud.
The petition in question was once known as the "Oregon Petition," the first time it surfaced in 1998. It's called that because it was the brainchild of an organization called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which embarked on a project with Dr. Frederick Seitz to circulate a petition to get as many scientists as possible to sign off on opposition to AGW. [Note: I live in Oregon, and I find it interesting that the "Institute" that created the petition has the acronym OISM, which is a letter-switch for another organization called OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Whether this was a deliberate attempt to invite confusion I have no idea, though as you will see in the next paragraph, there was evidently a deliberate attempt to invite confusion as to whether the petition was connected to the National Academy of Sciences]. Basically, OISM shotgunned the petition to thousands of scientists of various disciplines, hoping for as many positive responses as possible. This was done while the U.S. government was considering ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Accords which impose voluntary caps on greenhouse gases.
The materials enclosed with the original 1998 petition included a paper--which was not peer-reviewed--arguing that more CO2 is actually good for the environment. The paper was printed in the same format and typeface as used by the National Academy of Sciences' official journal and accompanied by a cover letter signed by Dr. Seitz, who had been NAS president years before (in the 1960s). The confusion was significant enough to cause the NAS to issue a press release (you can read it here: http://144.16.65.194/hpg/envis/doc97html/globalssi422.html) bluntly dissociating itself from Dr. Seitz's efforts. The NAS stated:
Over the years the "Oregon Petition" has surfaced again and again, and gained new traction in 2009 when it was featured on Congressman Ron Paul's website (scroll to where Ron Paul is listed above for a link to that site). However impressive the "31,000" figure seems, three things are evident about it:
These points in turn. The first two are closely related. OISM called for "scientists" to sign the petition, but it defined "scientist" as "obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields." The scientific fields that are listed as "appropriate" include such things as computer science, aerospace engineering, zoology, electrical engineering or metallurgy as well as climate science and more appropriate studies. (Source: http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php) But the OISM does not indicate the qualifications of the individual signers--just their names and the states they live in. (Example: http://www.petitionproject.org/signers_by_state_main.php) How many zoologists in California have signed the petition? We don't know. How many electrical engineers in Delaware? No idea. What does seem clear is that the number of signers is far less impressive when one realizes that they include experts on chimpanzee behavior or silicon circuit designers who have not studied climate science. What is also clear is that 31,000 is a drop in the bucket when you're talking about people who have "obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher" in the fields identified by the OISM as their target demographic. According to U.S. Department of Education statistics (have fun searching them here: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables_3.asp#Ch3aSub4), nearly eleven million people have done this in the United States since 1970. Thirty-one thousand people--almost all of whom are not climatologists--out of almost eleven million science graduates does not seem particularly impressive, especially when one considers that the petition has been collecting signatures for 12 years.
Furthermore, the Oregon Petition's qualification and gatekeeping functions are clearly deficient. Environmental groups have snuck names such as "B.J. Hunnicutt" (Mike Farrell's character from the old M*A*S*H TV show) and one of the Spice Girls onto the list with success. They have since been removed, but we have no idea how many other fake names that might not be so recognizable are on the list. How many real climate scientists are there who are willing to go on record as supporting the Oregon Petition? Thirty-nine. (Source: http://www.desmogblog.com/30000-global-warming-petition-easily-debunked-propaganda)
At the risk of committing what conspiracy theorists love to call an "ad hominem attack," it should be noted that the independent scientific credibility of Dr. Seitz, whose brainchild the Oregon Petition was, is open to serious question. After Seitz retired from the National Academy of Sciences, he did a good deal of work for the nice fellows at the Philip Morris Tobacco Company, who paid him to spearhead a project to inject officially-tinged doubt into the debate about whether secondhand tobacco smoke causes cancer. The effort was funded by Philip Morris. (You can see a 1994 document indicating Seitz's involvement in tobacco lobbying efforts here: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yzb65e00/pdf;jsessionid=2E3191CCAB06867DF3D6D7226CD4DE49) It would seem that during his lifetime Dr. Seitz was not adverse to selling his scientific credentials to a well-paying source.
Further discussion of the Oregon Petition here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm
Claim: "AGW can't exist because the idea of the greenhouse effect violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics."
Rebuttal: False. This issue, which arises out of one poorly-researched paper that fundamentally misunderstands climate science, has recently become hot (excuse the expression) because of its extremely technical nature. AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists love it because only those with a very fluent vocabulary in scientific concepts can debunk it; consequently, to the uninformed, it appears official and convincing.
This is a complicated issue because of the technical concepts involved. Basically the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in an isolated system which is not in equilibrium, entropy will tend to increase, basically irreversibly. What is this supposed to mean in terms of climate change? AGW deniers argue that it means that heat must flow from warmer areas of the atmosphere to colder ones, and because the greenhouse effect holds that greenhouse gases absorb radiation from the surface and re-radiate it back, warming the Earth, this (supposedly) cannot happen.
Sounds definitive, right? Well, the problem is that the Second Law applies to systems as a whole--not individual molecules. When a CO2 molecule releases a particle of energy, that particle can flow anywhere, up or down; the Second Law does not mean it will always flow upwards. What this means is that energy is constantly being exchanged in both directions in the atmosphere. (There is a good layman's explanation of this phenomenon here: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/09/greenhouse-violates-thermodynamics.php) Furthermore, if this theory was correct, the Earth would not be able to retain enough heat to support life. Since we're obviously here, there must be something fundamentally wrong with this argument. (Discussion of this issue, among others surrounding the 2009 paper referenced below, is here: http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/03/formal-reply-to-gerlich-and-tscheuner.html)
The "AGW violates the Second Law" argument has been around for a while, but it gained traction in 2009 when a paper by two German scientists, Gerlich and Tscheuschner, was published in a physics journal. The paper was titled On Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects. The title seems to have been carefully chosen: like the CRU emails incident, the word "falsification" would tend to raise a red flag in the uninitiated, but in fact falsification is a common tenet of the scientific method and has nothing whatsoever to do with deception. Gerlich and Tscheuscher's paper has been widely refuted and it is clear that their modeling of the greenhouse effect is faulty--but, as the best technical and scientific refutation of the paper is in German and has not yet been translated into English (if you sprechen sie Deutsch, you can see it here: http://www.ing-buero-ebel.de/Treib/Hauptseite.pdf), lay people in the English-speaking world are generally limited to scientific blogs that attempt to reduce the gibberish into terms understandable by a non-scientific audience. (Examples: http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/03/14/on-having-a-laugh-by-gerlich-and-tscheuschner-2009/, http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/04/05/on-the-miseducation-of-the-uninformed-by-gerlich-and-scheuschner-2009/, http://atmoz.org/blog/2007/07/10/falsification-of-the-atmospheric-co2-greenhouse-effects/) That in itself lends AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists the argument that "this refutation is not scientific" and thus not creditable. AGW deniers will also often use hostile comments posted on these blogs to try to refute them, but naturally blog comments can be made by anyone and there's no guarantee the commentator knows what he or she is talking about.
Suffice it to say that no reputable climate scientists agree with Gerlich and Tscheuscher, and many have expressed shock that their paper managed to find publication in the first place. AGW does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the notion that the multitudes of scientists who do believe in AGW do so in violation of one of the most basic scientific principles is utterly fantastic.
Claim: "It's cold today! That proves global warming isn't happening!"
Rebuttal: This claim is so nonsensical that ordinarily it shouldn't be accorded the dignity of a response. However, in my experience this is the single most common argument used by AGW deniers, as amazing as that sounds. Therefore, it must be addressed.
Coby Beck, who wrote a terrific blog for lay people (link here: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php) aimed at refuting AGW denial, refers to this as the "It's Cold Today in Wagga Wagga" argument. It fails for two reasons. First, there is a difference between weather and climate. Weather is what's happening outside your window at this moment. As TV meteorologists well know, it's often difficult to predict. Climate is the aggregation of long-term atmospheric and hydrospheric trends. It can be predicted with scientific accuracy. "It's Cold Today in Wagga Wagga" deliberately confuses the two. It also plays on the connotation of the words "global warming." To those who do not understand climate change, the words "global warming" suggest that climate change means it will always be getting hotter everywhere on Earth all the time, forever. Naturally that's absurd.
The second reason that the argument fails is because data from a single point source cannot be extrapolated to a conclusion about the climate of the whole Earth. A day of record-breaking cold temperatures in Fargo, North Dakota has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification in Africa or the shrinking of the Antarctic ice sheet. Climate change isn't that simple.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of AGW deniers' arguments, and I'm quite certain comments on this article or hate mail to its author (you can send it to muertos@gmail.com) will invariably raise one of the hundreds of other memes used by AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists that are not addressed here. "But they predicted global cooling in the 1970s!" "The hottest year on record was 1934!" "Antarctic ice is growing, not shrinking!" I'm sure we'll get responses along these lines. There are handy resources on the web, and even an iPhone app, that collect and refute AGW deniers' arguments. The best ones in my opinion are here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php, http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php. I would request that AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists please check these resources and look up the refutation of your argument there before bringing them to ConspiracyScience.com.
Summary
Anthropogenic global warming is really happening. It is not a hoax or a conspiracy. Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, while containing some errors, generally states coherently and correctly the science behind AGW. The consensus of scientists regarding AGW is virtually total. The minority that does deny AGW is extremely noisy and the media is eager to cover them because global warming denial is the classic example of a "dog bites man" story: the opposite story is so mainstream and accepted that it doesn't make news, while going against the tide is by definition newsworthy. Many of the motives behind attacks on AGW science and its proponents are political, due in no small measure to the association of a divisive political figure, Al Gore, with the AGW issue. Those who feel a need to attack AGW for political reasons are eager to keep up the drumbeat of propaganda against it, which is why the global warming hoax conspiracy theory is so prominent and popular on the Internet. But the science is not in question.
When dealing with conspiracy theories it's always helpful to take a step back and consider what would have to happen if the conspiracy theory was true. If AGW is a hoax, you must accept that someone (who? Margaret Mead?) came up with an erroneous scientific idea, whether willfully or innocently, and then a critical mass of the world's scientists fell in line behind it. You must accept that those legions of scientists must themselves either be innocently mistaken or have made a conscious choice to push a spurious theory for ideological or economic reasons, or to preserve grant funding or avoid academic ridicule. You must accept that all of the following organizations which have explicitly and publicly endorsed AGW science are necessarily in on the conspiracy: the American Geophysical Union, the British Antarctic Survey, the European Geosciences Union, Geological Society of Australia, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada, the Science Council of Japan, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the United Nations, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Science of South Africa, the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and even the Royal Society of New Zealand. You must accept that the governments of small island nations such as Kiribati and Vanuatu, who are undertaking wide-ranging and costly efforts to relocate their entire populations in the coming decades because of rising sea levels caused by AGW, are either in on the conspiracy or have been duped by it. These are among the poorest countries on Earth. If there was a credible excuse for them not to spend resources they don't have on reacting to climate change by literally abandoning their territory, they most definitely would do so.
And why is this all being done? To make Al Gore rich? To punish oil companies? To pass carbon taxes? (The United States Congress can't even pass cap-and-trade legislation. How on Earth are they ever going to pass a carbon tax?) The existence of a truly global conspiracy backed by millions of scientists and scores of governments around the world--a hoax so large that even the Chinese, the Poles and the president of Kiribati have been taken in by it--is one of the most incredible notions ever conceived, far more incredible than the wildest conspiracy about the 9/11 attacks or the New World Order. In terms of sheer scale, the "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theory has to qualify as the single largest conspiracy theory that ConspiracyScience.com has ever taken on.
The scientific facts are clear and persuasive: AGW is happening. But again, do not take my word for it. Do your own investigation--all the science is out there in the open and no one is hiding it. A good place to start is with the report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which most AGW deniers haven't even read. It's here: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm
Author: Muertos
The Claims:
Believers in this conspiracy theory claim that the idea that the Earth's climate is warming as a result of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, caused predominantly by human activity ("anthropogenic global warming" or "AGW"), is unsupported by science and is actually a hoax perpetrated by scientists and politicians (notably Al Gore) for economic or ideological reasons, or to "scare" populations and governments into enacting measures (such as carbon taxes) that would be difficult to implement by other means.
This is by no means the only articulation of the "global warming hoax" theory, but is one of the most common broad-based claims. This article is intended to debunk the broader themes of AGW denial, involving a few specific examples of claims that have been refuted. By no means is this article intended as a comprehensive refutation of all individual claims made by AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists, as there are thousands of them, but these are the most important and the most representative.
It is important to note that, although climate change is a contentious political issue, this article is not intended as a political statement. ConspiracyScience.com does not take any stand on the political issues involved with global warming, such as cap-and-trade, carbon taxes etc., nor is this article intended as a statement of political agreement with Al Gore or political disagreement with AGW deniers who are also politicians, such as Ron Paul. This article is concerned with answering three questions: is global warming happening as a factual matter, is it primarily caused by human activity, and is it a conspiracy or hoax? The answers to these questions are, respectively: yes, yes, and no.
Notable AGW Deniers and/or Conspiracy Theorists:
- Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) (has often stated in Senate speeches his belief that AGW is a hoax and that science is faulty) (Example: http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)
- Lord Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, British journalist and aristocrat (has authored numerous articles expressing skepticism about AGW, views similar to Inhofe's) (Example: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-believe-it.html)
- Alexander Cockburn, prolific author and columnist for The Nation (stated on many occasions denouncing the scientific consensus for AGW as an illusion) (Example: http://www.creators.com/opinion/alexander-cockburn/the-greenhousers-strike-back-and-strike-out.html)
- Dr. David Evans, noted Australian denier, a Ph.D. (in electrical engineering) from Stanford University (contributed numerous materials to AGW skeptic conferences and organizations; his explanations often show up in YouTube videos) (Example of his presentations: http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/David_Evans.ppt) (Example of his theories on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fCP_nHRjP8)
- Glenn Beck, conservative commentator for Fox News (frequently denounces scientific consensus on AGW, has run television specials on the subject) (Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpv56A9yHrg)
- Dr. Frederick Seitz (1911-2008), former head (1962-69) of U.S. National Academy of Sciences and co-founder of the George C. Marshall Institute (instrumental in creating the "Oregon Petition," a fraudulent petition purporting to represent scientists opposed to AGW, also made many public statements denouncing AGW science and characterized the Kyoto Accords as "violent action") (Example: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/seitz.html)
- Lyndon LaRouche, political activist and eight time U.S. Presidential candidate (his organization believes the AGW conspiracy began at a conference organized in 1975 by anthropologist Margaret Mead) (Example: http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-23/pdf/50-55_723.pdf)
- Ron Paul, U.S. Congressman (R-TX) (promotes Seitz's "Oregon Petition" and has made public statements denouncing AGW scientific consensus) (Example: http://freethemarketman.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/31478-scientists-rejects-global-warming-theory/)
Rebuttal of Specific Claims
Claim: "There is no scientific consensus either that (1) climate change is happening, or (2) that humans are causing it."
Rebuttal: False. The consensus that AGW is real is overwhelming. In 2009, a poll organized by Dr. Peter Doran of the University of Illinois, whose results were published in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, questioned 10,257 scientists on whether they believe that human activity is a contributing factor in changing global temperatures. Eighty-two percent of all scientists polled said yes, but among climatologists who have published research on climate change, 97.5% said yes. (Source: http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf)
Furthermore, a 2004 survey of peer-reviewed scientific literature considered 928 peer-review articles on climate change published between 1993 and 2003. Of those nearly 1000 papers, not a single one rejected the consensus position that AGW is happening. A skeptic, Benny Peisner, attempted to discredit this survey, and claimed to have found 34 peer-reviewed papers rejecting the AGW theory; in fact, after it was revealed that this claim was not true, Peisner retracted his criticism of the survey.
(Sources: (Survey: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686#) (Peiser's retraction: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1777013.htm) (Further discussion on survey results: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=24))
Claim: "The 'hockey stick' is broken."
Rebuttal: False. The "hockey stick" is a famous graph reconstructing global temperature from extant records as set forth in a 1999 paper by Michael Mann (no, not the movie director; he's a scientist at University of Massachusetts). (The paper is here: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/research/ONLINE-PREPRINTS/Millennium/mbh99.pdf) The projections of rising global temperatures resemble a hockey stick in that they swing dramatically upwards in recent years. Since then there have been various critiques of the study, focusing mainly on the methods Mann used to reconstruct global temperature from hundreds of years ago, a doctrine known as palaeoclimatology which uses tree rings, ice cores and other indicators to project what temperatures actually were in times before weather records were kept reliably. Although Mann's methods were primitive by modern standards, every new method used to reinvestigate historical temperatures since 1999 has resulted in the exact same hockey stick-shaped graph, for example, boreholes (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~peter/Resources/Seminar/readings/Huang_boreholeTemp_Nature'00.pdf) and stalagmites (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/smith2006/smith2006.html). All of these studies confirm the "hockey stick" phenomenon. Not some of them. All of them.
Further discussion on this issue, with links to various studies: http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Claim: "Far greater levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) are emitted by natural processes such as plants and the ocean than by human activity...it's ludicrous to think that it's harmful!"
Rebuttal: It's not about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but the rate of absorption. Natural emissions of CO2, such as from plants, are absorbed by natural processes (also oceans and plants) in rough balance. It's the human emission of CO2 that is the problem--because it's overwhelming the planet's ability to absorb the additional CO2. In fact, only about 40% of human CO2 emissions are being absorbed at all--the rest is going into the atmosphere and staying there.
(Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1178296)
Claim: "Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth is deceptive and exaggerated."
Related Claim: "The movie Inconvenient Truth was judged to be fraudulent by a British court."
Rebuttal: There are errors in Al Gore's film, two of which stand out. The first is the film's assertion that the disappearance of snow on Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro can be directly attributable to AGW. The second is where Gore asserts that CO2 projections and temperature graphs are an exact fit. As to Kilimanjaro, the cause of glacial retreat is subject to fierce debate in the scientific community. Suffice it to say, while it may be caused by AGW, it may not be, and thus Kilimanjaro's glaciers should not be used as direct evidence of AGW. (Lengthy discussion of this issue here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/tropical-glacier-retreat/). As to the temperature graphs, Gore conflated the 1999 Mann "hockey stick" graph with the East Anglia CRU's surface temperature measurements.
Neither of these errors affect the basic thrust of Gore's film: that global temperatures are rising and human activity is the cause. Indeed, very much like the CRU email hacking incident (discussed below), AGW deniers seized upon the errors to denounce the basic thesis of the film as a whole--entirely without evidence.
Because Al Gore is so publicly and universally associated with AGW and efforts to mitigate it, AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists often believe that attacking and discrediting Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth is tantamount to discrediting the science behind AGW itself. Of course this is silly. Al Gore is not a scientist, and the scientific basis of AGW did not originate with him. Even if An Inconvenient Truth was a total fabrication, the science behind AGW would still be overwhelmingly convincing.
Discussion of Inconvenient Truth errors is available here: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/10/the_boring_truth.php
Related Rebuttal: The UK High Court of Justice, in an October 2007 decision (which is available in full here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html), did not find Gore's film to be "fraudulent." The issue was whether, under UK law, An Inconvenient Truth was a science film, suitable for presentation in public schools, or a political film, which would require an accompanying guide clarifying certain points if it was shown in schools. That was the only issue. The court found it was a political film and that it must be accompanied by a guide--but that its science was sound. In fact, the court found that:
"It is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact, albeit that the science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political programme."
This is hardly surprising, considering Al Gore is a politician, not a scientist; I think very few people would disagree that An Inconvenient Truth is, and was always intended to be, a political film. Clearly it is.
The court also found:
"The Film advances four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC: (1) global average temperatures have been rising significantly over the past half century and are likely to continue to rise ('climate change'); (2) climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide ('greenhouse gases'); (3) climate change will, if unchecked, have significant adverse effects on the world and its populations; and (4) there are measures which individuals and governments can take which will help to reduce climate change or mitigate its effects.' These propositions, Mr. Chamberlain submits (and I accept), are supported by a vast quantity of research published in peer-reviewed journals worldwide and by the great majority of the world's climate scientists."
So, in other words, the British court ruled that the four main scientific bases of An Inconvenient Truth were accurately presented, and the nine specific errors discussed in the judgment (for a list of them, go here: http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/Gorejudgment.htm) do not impugn the basic scientific integrity of the film.
Claim: "Emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) prove that AGW is a fraud and that scientists are trying to hide it!"
Rebuttal: False. Conspiracy theorists love to engage in "quote-mining," that being the taking of particular quotes out of context to support a predetermined conclusion, and this is exactly what happened in the CRU case. This conclusion has been validated by an independent investigation by the British House of Commons.
Here's what happened. In November 2009, just before the United Nations Copenhagen summit on climate change, somebody hacked into the CRU's computer system and illegally downloaded emails from the database that had passed between prominent climate scientists. The emails were posted on an Internet blog for AGW deniers. Taken out of context, the quotes appear to indicate the scientists are hiding something. This is the most famous of them, from Phil Jones, then head of the CRU:
"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
Sounds suspicious, doesn't it? Especially when he uses words like "trick" and "hide." However, he is not referring to "trick" in the sense of a deception. What he is referring to is the method of correlating data from various sources that use incompatible phenomenon into an intelligible picture. The "trick" that Jones is referring to is set out in a 1998 paper, again by Michael Mann and published in Nature (hence the "Nature trick"), discussing how to do precisely this--and it's not deceptive at all. (The paper is here: http://www.elmhurst.edu/~richs/EC/FYS/Mannetal.OriginalPaper.pdf) The British House of Commons report, released in March 2010 (read it here: http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HC387-IUEAFinalEmbargoedv21.pdf) is very clear in stating:
"Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones's use of the word 'trick' is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominately caused by human activity. The balance of evidence patently fails to support this view. It appears to be a colloquialism for a 'neat' method of handling data."
And what about that "decline?" AGW deniers insist he means a decline in temperatures; in fact he is referring to the decline in the sensitivity of data culled from tree rings (called dendrochronology) to indicate temperatures in more recent years, because (ironically) of climate change. In other words, the more recent the tree-ring records you're looking at, the less accurate they are going to be, which means that if you're plotting tree-ring temperature records from recently against those from hundreds of years ago, you will have to recalibrate one set of figures or the other so that they're measuring the same thing. This is what "hiding the decline" means. But don't take my word for it. The House of Commons report addresses this specific point:
"Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones's use of the words "hide the decline" is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity. That he has published papers--including a paper in Nature--dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation. In our view, it was shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous. We expect that this is a matter the Scientific Appraisal Panel will address."
Another hacked email from Kevin Trenberth, who wrote much of the IPCC report, contains a statement, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." Again, this sounds very suspicious, doesn't it? In fact what Trenberth is talking about is not that it's a "travesty" that the planet isn't as warm as he would like it to be; in fact what he's actually expressing is the exact opposite--that scientific measurements can't explain why the Earth isn't already warmer than it is! This has to do with the planet's "energy budget." We know the Earth is getting hotter, but, calculating all the warming sources all over the planet, mathematically the Earth should be trapping more heat via the greenhouse effect than it already is. Trenberth is not certain why that is, but he feels it extremely important that the answer be found--a conclusion I doubt anyone would disagree with. Again, do not take my word for it. Trenberth already published a peer-reviewed paper on this subject. (It's here: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf) Thus, it is clear that he is not part of a conspiracy to "fudge" data showing AGW. All of the emails pointed to by AGW deniers are quote-mined. Not some of them. All of them.
The House of Commons report made several good points, such as calling for greater transparency in the sharing of climate change data by the CRU, especially given the political and economic importance of the AGW issue. The House also criticized the CRU's handling of Freedom of Information Act requests. Those appear to be quite reasonable criticisms. But as far as the CRU emails showing a conspiracy, the House of Commons is extremely clear that they do not:
"In addition, insofar as we have been able to consider accusations of dishonesty--for example, Professor Jones's alleged attempt to 'hide the decline'--we consider that there is no case to answer. Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that 'global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity'."
More discussion on the CRU email issues, and other issues raised in this rebuttal, here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Kevin-Trenberth-travesty-cant-account-for-the-lack-of-warming.htm
Claim: "Over 31,000 scientists have signed a petition disputing that AGW is real. This clearly represents a significant lack of consensus in the scientific community regarding AGW."
Rebuttal: No, clearly it does not. Furthermore, the petition itself is misleading and in many respects an outright fraud.
The petition in question was once known as the "Oregon Petition," the first time it surfaced in 1998. It's called that because it was the brainchild of an organization called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which embarked on a project with Dr. Frederick Seitz to circulate a petition to get as many scientists as possible to sign off on opposition to AGW. [Note: I live in Oregon, and I find it interesting that the "Institute" that created the petition has the acronym OISM, which is a letter-switch for another organization called OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Whether this was a deliberate attempt to invite confusion I have no idea, though as you will see in the next paragraph, there was evidently a deliberate attempt to invite confusion as to whether the petition was connected to the National Academy of Sciences]. Basically, OISM shotgunned the petition to thousands of scientists of various disciplines, hoping for as many positive responses as possible. This was done while the U.S. government was considering ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Accords which impose voluntary caps on greenhouse gases.
The materials enclosed with the original 1998 petition included a paper--which was not peer-reviewed--arguing that more CO2 is actually good for the environment. The paper was printed in the same format and typeface as used by the National Academy of Sciences' official journal and accompanied by a cover letter signed by Dr. Seitz, who had been NAS president years before (in the 1960s). The confusion was significant enough to cause the NAS to issue a press release (you can read it here: http://144.16.65.194/hpg/envis/doc97html/globalssi422.html) bluntly dissociating itself from Dr. Seitz's efforts. The NAS stated:
"The Council of the National Academy of Sciences is concerned about the confusion caused by a petition being circulated via a letter from a former president of this Academy. This petition criticizes the science underlying the Kyoto treaty on carbon dioxide emissions (the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change), and it asks scientists to recommend rejection of this treaty by the U.S. Senate. The petition was mailed with an op-ed article from The Wall Street Journal and a manuscript in a format that is nearly identical to that of scientific articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org/nas/). The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal."
Over the years the "Oregon Petition" has surfaced again and again, and gained new traction in 2009 when it was featured on Congressman Ron Paul's website (scroll to where Ron Paul is listed above for a link to that site). However impressive the "31,000" figure seems, three things are evident about it:
- There is no independently verifiable method to determine the qualifications of the 31,000 people who have signed it; OISM refuses to release information that would make it clear. In fact only 39 have actually been identified as climatologists.
- The number 31,000 represents a tiny minority of the 10.6 million "scientists" (as defined according to OISM's original and very broad qualification statement) who have graduated from U.S. universities since 1970.
- OISM has a serious problem with vetting who has signed the petition, as numerous demonstrably fake names have been successfully added to the petition in an attempt to test how open the qualifications really are.
These points in turn. The first two are closely related. OISM called for "scientists" to sign the petition, but it defined "scientist" as "obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields." The scientific fields that are listed as "appropriate" include such things as computer science, aerospace engineering, zoology, electrical engineering or metallurgy as well as climate science and more appropriate studies. (Source: http://www.petitionproject.org/qualifications_of_signers.php) But the OISM does not indicate the qualifications of the individual signers--just their names and the states they live in. (Example: http://www.petitionproject.org/signers_by_state_main.php) How many zoologists in California have signed the petition? We don't know. How many electrical engineers in Delaware? No idea. What does seem clear is that the number of signers is far less impressive when one realizes that they include experts on chimpanzee behavior or silicon circuit designers who have not studied climate science. What is also clear is that 31,000 is a drop in the bucket when you're talking about people who have "obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher" in the fields identified by the OISM as their target demographic. According to U.S. Department of Education statistics (have fun searching them here: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables_3.asp#Ch3aSub4), nearly eleven million people have done this in the United States since 1970. Thirty-one thousand people--almost all of whom are not climatologists--out of almost eleven million science graduates does not seem particularly impressive, especially when one considers that the petition has been collecting signatures for 12 years.
Furthermore, the Oregon Petition's qualification and gatekeeping functions are clearly deficient. Environmental groups have snuck names such as "B.J. Hunnicutt" (Mike Farrell's character from the old M*A*S*H TV show) and one of the Spice Girls onto the list with success. They have since been removed, but we have no idea how many other fake names that might not be so recognizable are on the list. How many real climate scientists are there who are willing to go on record as supporting the Oregon Petition? Thirty-nine. (Source: http://www.desmogblog.com/30000-global-warming-petition-easily-debunked-propaganda)
At the risk of committing what conspiracy theorists love to call an "ad hominem attack," it should be noted that the independent scientific credibility of Dr. Seitz, whose brainchild the Oregon Petition was, is open to serious question. After Seitz retired from the National Academy of Sciences, he did a good deal of work for the nice fellows at the Philip Morris Tobacco Company, who paid him to spearhead a project to inject officially-tinged doubt into the debate about whether secondhand tobacco smoke causes cancer. The effort was funded by Philip Morris. (You can see a 1994 document indicating Seitz's involvement in tobacco lobbying efforts here: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yzb65e00/pdf;jsessionid=2E3191CCAB06867DF3D6D7226CD4DE49) It would seem that during his lifetime Dr. Seitz was not adverse to selling his scientific credentials to a well-paying source.
Further discussion of the Oregon Petition here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm
Claim: "AGW can't exist because the idea of the greenhouse effect violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics."
Rebuttal: False. This issue, which arises out of one poorly-researched paper that fundamentally misunderstands climate science, has recently become hot (excuse the expression) because of its extremely technical nature. AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists love it because only those with a very fluent vocabulary in scientific concepts can debunk it; consequently, to the uninformed, it appears official and convincing.
This is a complicated issue because of the technical concepts involved. Basically the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in an isolated system which is not in equilibrium, entropy will tend to increase, basically irreversibly. What is this supposed to mean in terms of climate change? AGW deniers argue that it means that heat must flow from warmer areas of the atmosphere to colder ones, and because the greenhouse effect holds that greenhouse gases absorb radiation from the surface and re-radiate it back, warming the Earth, this (supposedly) cannot happen.
Sounds definitive, right? Well, the problem is that the Second Law applies to systems as a whole--not individual molecules. When a CO2 molecule releases a particle of energy, that particle can flow anywhere, up or down; the Second Law does not mean it will always flow upwards. What this means is that energy is constantly being exchanged in both directions in the atmosphere. (There is a good layman's explanation of this phenomenon here: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/09/greenhouse-violates-thermodynamics.php) Furthermore, if this theory was correct, the Earth would not be able to retain enough heat to support life. Since we're obviously here, there must be something fundamentally wrong with this argument. (Discussion of this issue, among others surrounding the 2009 paper referenced below, is here: http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/03/formal-reply-to-gerlich-and-tscheuner.html)
The "AGW violates the Second Law" argument has been around for a while, but it gained traction in 2009 when a paper by two German scientists, Gerlich and Tscheuschner, was published in a physics journal. The paper was titled On Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects. The title seems to have been carefully chosen: like the CRU emails incident, the word "falsification" would tend to raise a red flag in the uninitiated, but in fact falsification is a common tenet of the scientific method and has nothing whatsoever to do with deception. Gerlich and Tscheuscher's paper has been widely refuted and it is clear that their modeling of the greenhouse effect is faulty--but, as the best technical and scientific refutation of the paper is in German and has not yet been translated into English (if you sprechen sie Deutsch, you can see it here: http://www.ing-buero-ebel.de/Treib/Hauptseite.pdf), lay people in the English-speaking world are generally limited to scientific blogs that attempt to reduce the gibberish into terms understandable by a non-scientific audience. (Examples: http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/03/14/on-having-a-laugh-by-gerlich-and-tscheuschner-2009/, http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/04/05/on-the-miseducation-of-the-uninformed-by-gerlich-and-scheuschner-2009/, http://atmoz.org/blog/2007/07/10/falsification-of-the-atmospheric-co2-greenhouse-effects/) That in itself lends AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists the argument that "this refutation is not scientific" and thus not creditable. AGW deniers will also often use hostile comments posted on these blogs to try to refute them, but naturally blog comments can be made by anyone and there's no guarantee the commentator knows what he or she is talking about.
Suffice it to say that no reputable climate scientists agree with Gerlich and Tscheuscher, and many have expressed shock that their paper managed to find publication in the first place. AGW does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the notion that the multitudes of scientists who do believe in AGW do so in violation of one of the most basic scientific principles is utterly fantastic.
Claim: "It's cold today! That proves global warming isn't happening!"
Rebuttal: This claim is so nonsensical that ordinarily it shouldn't be accorded the dignity of a response. However, in my experience this is the single most common argument used by AGW deniers, as amazing as that sounds. Therefore, it must be addressed.
Coby Beck, who wrote a terrific blog for lay people (link here: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php) aimed at refuting AGW denial, refers to this as the "It's Cold Today in Wagga Wagga" argument. It fails for two reasons. First, there is a difference between weather and climate. Weather is what's happening outside your window at this moment. As TV meteorologists well know, it's often difficult to predict. Climate is the aggregation of long-term atmospheric and hydrospheric trends. It can be predicted with scientific accuracy. "It's Cold Today in Wagga Wagga" deliberately confuses the two. It also plays on the connotation of the words "global warming." To those who do not understand climate change, the words "global warming" suggest that climate change means it will always be getting hotter everywhere on Earth all the time, forever. Naturally that's absurd.
The second reason that the argument fails is because data from a single point source cannot be extrapolated to a conclusion about the climate of the whole Earth. A day of record-breaking cold temperatures in Fargo, North Dakota has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification in Africa or the shrinking of the Antarctic ice sheet. Climate change isn't that simple.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of AGW deniers' arguments, and I'm quite certain comments on this article or hate mail to its author (you can send it to muertos@gmail.com) will invariably raise one of the hundreds of other memes used by AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists that are not addressed here. "But they predicted global cooling in the 1970s!" "The hottest year on record was 1934!" "Antarctic ice is growing, not shrinking!" I'm sure we'll get responses along these lines. There are handy resources on the web, and even an iPhone app, that collect and refute AGW deniers' arguments. The best ones in my opinion are here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php, http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php. I would request that AGW deniers and conspiracy theorists please check these resources and look up the refutation of your argument there before bringing them to ConspiracyScience.com.
Summary
Anthropogenic global warming is really happening. It is not a hoax or a conspiracy. Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, while containing some errors, generally states coherently and correctly the science behind AGW. The consensus of scientists regarding AGW is virtually total. The minority that does deny AGW is extremely noisy and the media is eager to cover them because global warming denial is the classic example of a "dog bites man" story: the opposite story is so mainstream and accepted that it doesn't make news, while going against the tide is by definition newsworthy. Many of the motives behind attacks on AGW science and its proponents are political, due in no small measure to the association of a divisive political figure, Al Gore, with the AGW issue. Those who feel a need to attack AGW for political reasons are eager to keep up the drumbeat of propaganda against it, which is why the global warming hoax conspiracy theory is so prominent and popular on the Internet. But the science is not in question.
When dealing with conspiracy theories it's always helpful to take a step back and consider what would have to happen if the conspiracy theory was true. If AGW is a hoax, you must accept that someone (who? Margaret Mead?) came up with an erroneous scientific idea, whether willfully or innocently, and then a critical mass of the world's scientists fell in line behind it. You must accept that those legions of scientists must themselves either be innocently mistaken or have made a conscious choice to push a spurious theory for ideological or economic reasons, or to preserve grant funding or avoid academic ridicule. You must accept that all of the following organizations which have explicitly and publicly endorsed AGW science are necessarily in on the conspiracy: the American Geophysical Union, the British Antarctic Survey, the European Geosciences Union, Geological Society of Australia, National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada, the Science Council of Japan, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the United Nations, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Science of South Africa, the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and even the Royal Society of New Zealand. You must accept that the governments of small island nations such as Kiribati and Vanuatu, who are undertaking wide-ranging and costly efforts to relocate their entire populations in the coming decades because of rising sea levels caused by AGW, are either in on the conspiracy or have been duped by it. These are among the poorest countries on Earth. If there was a credible excuse for them not to spend resources they don't have on reacting to climate change by literally abandoning their territory, they most definitely would do so.
And why is this all being done? To make Al Gore rich? To punish oil companies? To pass carbon taxes? (The United States Congress can't even pass cap-and-trade legislation. How on Earth are they ever going to pass a carbon tax?) The existence of a truly global conspiracy backed by millions of scientists and scores of governments around the world--a hoax so large that even the Chinese, the Poles and the president of Kiribati have been taken in by it--is one of the most incredible notions ever conceived, far more incredible than the wildest conspiracy about the 9/11 attacks or the New World Order. In terms of sheer scale, the "global warming is a hoax" conspiracy theory has to qualify as the single largest conspiracy theory that ConspiracyScience.com has ever taken on.
The scientific facts are clear and persuasive: AGW is happening. But again, do not take my word for it. Do your own investigation--all the science is out there in the open and no one is hiding it. A good place to start is with the report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which most AGW deniers haven't even read. It's here: http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm
Debunking by Invitation: Star Wars Beam Weapons and 9/11
Author: Muertos
Date: May 13, 2010 at 00:05
By Muertos (muertos@gmail.com)
I'm not quite sure why I subject myself, often on a daily basis, to the quackery, pseudo-scientific gibberish and the downright lunacy of the conspiracy theorist crowd. I guess a large part of it is that when I see a frontal assault on logic, reason and critical thinking I feel a need to combat it whenever I can. I'm under no illusion that I have much of a chance of converting conspiracy theorists, but hope springs eternal, I guess.
Once in a while, the conspiracy theorists find me--and usually end up wishing they hadn't. Such was the case recently with a woman called "Dr. Babs" who invited me, via Twitter, to comment on the blog she had recently set up. The blog is here. I wasn't following this person but received this request as an @ reply (I don't recall the person's Twitter handle, and she may no longer be on). When I clicked on her profile I saw that she had made the same request of numerous others, probably a result of some bot that flagged anybody who tweeted about 9/11. (This was about the time that I had my infamous exchange with a global warming denier and 9/11 Truther on Twitter, about which I blogged here and here). Likely she did not know that I was a debunker, as I seriously doubt a conspiracy theorist would knowingly invite a debunker to post comments on her blog--but as she had done exactly that (whether knowingly or not), I decided to take her up on the request and clicked on her blog.
As you'll see from the blog, Dr. Babs is a devotee of Judy Wood, a 9/11 Truther noted for her claim that the World Trade Centers were destroyed by a super-secret government weapon that she semi-officially claims is a "directed energy weapon" (DEW) but evidently does not resist the use of the term "Star Wars space beam," since that term appears on Wood's website. In the writeup for her blog, Dr. Babs passionately anoints Dr. Wood as "an American hero" who is involved in "a tireless search for the mechanism of destruction of the WTC."
Let me repeat that in case you missed it. Judy Wood believes the WTC towers were destroyed by beam weapons from outer space. Yes. Beam weapons from outer space.
In case you don't know the history of the 9/11 Truth movement, one of its few "stars" (I use that term guardedly) was a former BYU physics professor named Steven Jones, who is to date the only real scientist (there are plenty of fake ones in the Truth movement) to put his career on the line by claiming that there is some scientific basis for the belief that the WTC towers were destroyed by a "controlled demolition." (There is no scientific basis for that, which is part of why Jones was cashiered from the BYU faculty--and it's important to note that none of Jones's findings have ever been validated by the peer review process, which is why Jones created his own bogus "journal" where conspiracy theorists "peer-review" the work of other conspiracy theorists). Essentially, after finding "spherules" in samples of paint from WTC debris--from which there was no chain of evidence, I might add--Jones claimed that the paint was rife with an explosive compound, and this was what destroyed the World Trade Center.
Let me repeat that in case you missed it. Steven Jones believes the WTC towers were destroyed by exploding paint. Yes. Exploding paint.
Well, to make a long story short, roundabout 2006, the high water mark of the 9/11 Truth movement, Dr. Wood decided she didn't like what Dr. Jones had to say. Actually it is fairly rare in conspiracy theorist circles for such a public rift to develop over two equally ridiculous theories that are mutually exclusive, considering that conspiracy theorists often incorporate mutually exclusive elements into their convoluted belief structures. However, for whatever reason, Dr. Wood split off with her own followers, and Dr. Jones split off with his, and the two of them have been at war with each other ever since for "the heart and soul of the 9/11 Truth movement." On her blog Dr. Babs makes no secret of which side she's on, claiming that "There are good guys and there are bad guys in the 9/11 truth movement...[and] Steven E. Jones is a bad person." Indeed, it would seem that her blogs (actually she has two, the second one is here, which I'll discuss in a minute) are mainly aimed at fellow 9/11 Truthers, with the objective of talking up Wood's claims and ripping the holy bejeezus out of Jones's. This is why I don't think she expected to attract a debunker with her Twitter promotional campaign. I can't be sure, but for her the debate appears to be "who is the better conspiracy theorist, Jones or Wood?" as opposed to, "Was there a conspiracy at all on 9/11?" The answer to the latter question appears to be self-evident to the creator of these blogs.
Not very many debunkers would even bother wasting their time trying to debunk space beams. I mean, the idea is so outlandish on its face that it's something akin to the Barack Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory: the believers are so far off in another dimension that you despair of even where to begin. But, foolishly perhaps, I dove in and began to post some comments on Dr. Babs's blog, basic 9/11 debunking 101. The departure point for Wood's theory appears to be that she thinks the WTC towers were "pulverized" (or "dustified," to use her terminology), and that this on its face proves that beam weapons must have been used. Wood also goes into some nonsense about dropping a billiard ball off the World Trade Center, which, to the extent it's intelligible, appears to be a more extreme variation on Truthers' "free-fall" claims (which have all been widely debunked). Needless to say, as is common with all 9/11 Truthers, Wood's claims are all based on highly selective analysis of photographs and YouTube videos--conspiracy theorists just love YouTube--and give perfunctory treatment, if any at all, on the necessary logical implications of this breathtaking theory, such as what were those big silver things with wings that thousands of eyewitnesses saw crash into the towers (they were holographic projections), who is supposed to have built these weapons (the evil gubbermint, of course) or why no one blew the whistle on this whole thing (no comment).
After posting the usual debunkings of 9/11 conspiracy theories--that the NIST report lays out the comprehensive engineering analysis behind the collapse, that Osama bin Laden confessed, that wreckage of the planes and the remains of their occupants were recovered from the WTC site, that there is not a single shred of evidence of any form of conspiracy whatsoever--I finally got a mention on Dr. Babs's blog. She showcased (link here) a comment from someone called "Lucy" in rebuttal to me, beginning with this statement:
Actually, they do (and it was an Airforne, not a cell phone), but Lucy was just getting started. She next launched forth into a diatribe of usual Truther claims which reads like a "greatest hits" of the conspiracist movement, to wit:
So, all of this is supposed to "prove" that the evil gubbermint blew up the WTC towers with beam weapons from space. Uh, yeah.
I debunked all these claims in turn (see the comments for my reply), and I ended with this:
Indeed, everything that "Lucy" (who may be Dr. Babs herself, not sure) threw at me dates from no sooner than 2005, demonstrating that conspiracy theorists do nothing but rehash the same tired crap over and over again, regardless of how many times it has been proven wrong. They simply cannot accept that erroneous claims are capable of being proven erroneous. If there still are any Truthers left in 2021, twenty years after the disaster, they will still be out there claiming that the hijackers are still alive.
From this alone, Dr. Babs's claims wouldn't really be worthy of a blog post. However, her other blog--on which I have not commented to date--fills out the picture of the kind of person who believes in crap like space beams. For example, take this one: she evidently believes that Jim Fetzer, a well-known 9/11 Truther, and Steven Jones, who she says is a "bad person" remember, were themselves involved in 9/11! I am not making this up. Read the blog post here. Classic quote:
So, there you have it. This is what passes for "evidence" in the 9/11 conspiracy crowd. On the basis of this, Dr. Babs is making the public allegation that Steven E. Jones, the guy who brought you (but can't prove) cold fusion and exploding paint, was complicit in the murder of 3,000 innocent Americans. Some standard of "proof," eh?
By way of background, it should be mentioned that the acrimony between Jones's exploding-painters and Woods's space-beamers is extremely intense. Many "mainstream" 9/11 Truthers (is there such a thing?) believe that Judy Wood and her followers are government plants who are being paid to spread intentionally ridiculous theories so that the mainstream media can more easily ridicule anyone who believes in a 9/11 conspiracy. In short, that the space beamers are "disinformation" (another classic term that conspiracy theorists love to toss around). To say that the space beamers resent this characterization is sort of like saying that Alex Jones stretches the truth occasionally.
It gets better. Further on in Dr. Babs's second blog you get a greater dose of her "activism" and what she thinks is really important: Sarah Palin's kids.
I am not making this up. Here it is, complete with a photo of Dr. Babs herself protesting outside a Borders somewhere, holding a sign reading "Sarah Palin Is NOT The Birth Mother of Trig Palin." In fact it's one of three posts she makes about the Trig Palin conspiracy theory.
In case you forgot your 2008 political conspiracy theories, here's a refresher. In 2008 former Alaska governor and losing VP presidential candidate Sarah "Lipstick Bulldog" Palin had a baby named Trig. Not long after, Palin's teenage daughter, Bristol, got knocked up by her then-boyfriend, Levi Johnston (who later bared all in Playgirl magazine), and gave birth to her own child, Tripp. Conspiracy theorists claim that Trig was also Bristol's child, and that he was passed off as Sarah Palin's son in order to avoid the "scandal" of her daughter getting pregnant at an even earlier age. Naturally the theory is ridiculous, but even if it's true (and there is absolutely no evidence that it is), it definitely falls in the "Who cares?" category. I don't think anybody outside of the habitual consumers of gossip magazines really cares about whether Sarah or Bristol Palin is really Trig's mother. But evidently Dr. Babs does, and she's out there in front of Borders making sure the world knows how crucial this issue is.
Interestingly, in one of Dr. Babs's entries, she posts the words of a supporter on the Trig Palin "issue" who lauds her for her efforts and opines that the Lipstick Bulldog should be pressured to "produce the birth certificate." Hmm, those words sound uniquely similar to another birth certificate hijinx story that was popular in 2008 and 2009, that being the idiotic "Birther" conspiracy pushed by California dentist and sometime lawyer Orly Taitz.
But, back to 9/11. In an amusing post (link here) Dr. Babs responds to some of her readers' criticism.
At least some other debunker had the guts to take her to task on her space beam nonsense. Here is her response, which I believe encapsulates her views of 9/11:
The usual conspiracy theorist line: you just don't understand. You're brainwashed. You're willfully blind. And on the glorious day when 9/11 Truth is trumpeted on CNN or Fox News, only then will you realize that this small, elite group of brave freedom fighters was right all along.
Another response to a debunker:
Um, maybe because what you believe is factually insupportable, corrosive to reason and rationality as well as completely ridiculous, and is pissing on the graves of 3,000 innocent victims of Osama bin Laden?
Now this is especially telling:
If indeed Dr. Babs has spent "night and day and every moment in between" researching 9/11, I'm surprised she doesn't know that the hijackers are dead, or that the towers did not collapse at free-fall speeds. I can find that information within minutes. The only explanation is that she willfully chooses not to accept these facts--which is irrational.
But Dr. Babs's statement is important also for another reason: here we have another classic conceit of the conspiracy theorist, that of casting themselves in the role of a valiant sleuth trying to solve a mystery. Actually this view is key to understanding the bizarre pathology of people like Judy Wood and her followers. Notice she uses the words "figure out 9/11" and "searching for answers to the question." This indicates that she believes what happened on 9/11 is some sort of mystery. She says it too on the write-up on her blog (emphasis added): "This blog is dedicated to her [Judy Wood's] tireless search for the mechanism of destruction of the WTC...Judy Wood got the right answer to the question "What destroyed the WTC?"... in the future she will be known for solving 9/11."
This is classic conspiracy theorist ideology. Historical events, even those about which there is no reasonable debate, are re-cast as "mysteries" to be "solved," like police investigating a murder or the NTSB investigating the cause of an air crash. Why do conspiracy theorists like to do this? First, it affirms their worldview that they're privy to secret knowledge that almost no one else accepts or understands, and that this knowledge will change the world. Second, it puts their conspiracy theories on the same footing as provable fact: that is, that event X is unknown or misunderstood, and is susceptible to more than one reasonable explanation. The JFK assassination is the paradigm example of this--conspiracy buffs love to refer to it as "the mystery of the century" and with other such hyperbole--but more extreme 9/11 deniers also exhibit this tendency.
Dr. Babs and other conspiracy theorists seem to think that 9/11 goes something like this:
*WTC centers blow up*
PUBLIC: "Oh, wow! That was unexpected! How did that happen? What caused it?"
EVIL GUBBERMINT (without evidence): "It was Osama and his Al-Qaeda hijackers!"
PUBLIC: "Okay, I believe that because you said so."
CONSPIRACY THEORIST (with mountains of convincing evidence): "No! Don't fall for it! It was actually the Bush administration that blew up the towers with space beams!"
PUBLIC: "Wow, thanks, Conspiracy Theorist! You solved the mystery of 9/11!"
Of course, it's not like this at all. What happened on 9/11 is not a mystery and never was. Just as in the JFK case, the truth was known within hours: Oswald assassinated John Kennedy. On 9/11, the investigations led immediately and unmistakably to Al Qaida and the 19 Saudi hijackers. All of the evidence that has come to light since 9/11 has merely confirmed that unmistakable conclusion. Not some of it. Not selective pieces of it. All of it.
But the "it's a mystery!" and "how was it really done?" memes make it very easy for conspiracists like Judy Wood and her followers to breeze past the mountains of evidence about what really happened. To them, 9/11 is a mystery by definition. Therefore, what they term the "official story," which to them is a single monolithic pronouncement by a single entity, can at best only be a theory on which reasonable minds can differ. When your starting point of inquiry is, "We don't know how 9/11 happened except that we know it didn't happen the way they said it happened," then the battle between space beamers and exploding painters suddenly becomes much more important--when in the real world it's merely one group of tinfoil hatters trying to tear down another.
Will there ever be an end to this nuttery? I doubt it, unfortunately. Forty-seven years on people are still convinced that the CIA, Mafia, LBJ or the Cubans whacked Kennedy. Probably in the year 2057 there will still be idiots running around out there thinking that the World Trade Center towers were intentionally demolished. Hopefully Judy Wood's "space beams" lunacy will die down long before then, and it's not as if I think it's particularly likely to catch on. Space beams is super-fringe stuff even by 9/11 Truthers' low standards. Hell, if Steven Jones, the guy who believes in exploding paint, tells you that you're nuts, you've really got a deep hole to dig yourself out of.
I'm not quite sure why I subject myself, often on a daily basis, to the quackery, pseudo-scientific gibberish and the downright lunacy of the conspiracy theorist crowd. I guess a large part of it is that when I see a frontal assault on logic, reason and critical thinking I feel a need to combat it whenever I can. I'm under no illusion that I have much of a chance of converting conspiracy theorists, but hope springs eternal, I guess.
Once in a while, the conspiracy theorists find me--and usually end up wishing they hadn't. Such was the case recently with a woman called "Dr. Babs" who invited me, via Twitter, to comment on the blog she had recently set up. The blog is here. I wasn't following this person but received this request as an @ reply (I don't recall the person's Twitter handle, and she may no longer be on). When I clicked on her profile I saw that she had made the same request of numerous others, probably a result of some bot that flagged anybody who tweeted about 9/11. (This was about the time that I had my infamous exchange with a global warming denier and 9/11 Truther on Twitter, about which I blogged here and here). Likely she did not know that I was a debunker, as I seriously doubt a conspiracy theorist would knowingly invite a debunker to post comments on her blog--but as she had done exactly that (whether knowingly or not), I decided to take her up on the request and clicked on her blog.
As you'll see from the blog, Dr. Babs is a devotee of Judy Wood, a 9/11 Truther noted for her claim that the World Trade Centers were destroyed by a super-secret government weapon that she semi-officially claims is a "directed energy weapon" (DEW) but evidently does not resist the use of the term "Star Wars space beam," since that term appears on Wood's website. In the writeup for her blog, Dr. Babs passionately anoints Dr. Wood as "an American hero" who is involved in "a tireless search for the mechanism of destruction of the WTC."
Let me repeat that in case you missed it. Judy Wood believes the WTC towers were destroyed by beam weapons from outer space. Yes. Beam weapons from outer space.
In case you don't know the history of the 9/11 Truth movement, one of its few "stars" (I use that term guardedly) was a former BYU physics professor named Steven Jones, who is to date the only real scientist (there are plenty of fake ones in the Truth movement) to put his career on the line by claiming that there is some scientific basis for the belief that the WTC towers were destroyed by a "controlled demolition." (There is no scientific basis for that, which is part of why Jones was cashiered from the BYU faculty--and it's important to note that none of Jones's findings have ever been validated by the peer review process, which is why Jones created his own bogus "journal" where conspiracy theorists "peer-review" the work of other conspiracy theorists). Essentially, after finding "spherules" in samples of paint from WTC debris--from which there was no chain of evidence, I might add--Jones claimed that the paint was rife with an explosive compound, and this was what destroyed the World Trade Center.
Let me repeat that in case you missed it. Steven Jones believes the WTC towers were destroyed by exploding paint. Yes. Exploding paint.
Well, to make a long story short, roundabout 2006, the high water mark of the 9/11 Truth movement, Dr. Wood decided she didn't like what Dr. Jones had to say. Actually it is fairly rare in conspiracy theorist circles for such a public rift to develop over two equally ridiculous theories that are mutually exclusive, considering that conspiracy theorists often incorporate mutually exclusive elements into their convoluted belief structures. However, for whatever reason, Dr. Wood split off with her own followers, and Dr. Jones split off with his, and the two of them have been at war with each other ever since for "the heart and soul of the 9/11 Truth movement." On her blog Dr. Babs makes no secret of which side she's on, claiming that "There are good guys and there are bad guys in the 9/11 truth movement...[and] Steven E. Jones is a bad person." Indeed, it would seem that her blogs (actually she has two, the second one is here, which I'll discuss in a minute) are mainly aimed at fellow 9/11 Truthers, with the objective of talking up Wood's claims and ripping the holy bejeezus out of Jones's. This is why I don't think she expected to attract a debunker with her Twitter promotional campaign. I can't be sure, but for her the debate appears to be "who is the better conspiracy theorist, Jones or Wood?" as opposed to, "Was there a conspiracy at all on 9/11?" The answer to the latter question appears to be self-evident to the creator of these blogs.
Not very many debunkers would even bother wasting their time trying to debunk space beams. I mean, the idea is so outlandish on its face that it's something akin to the Barack Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory: the believers are so far off in another dimension that you despair of even where to begin. But, foolishly perhaps, I dove in and began to post some comments on Dr. Babs's blog, basic 9/11 debunking 101. The departure point for Wood's theory appears to be that she thinks the WTC towers were "pulverized" (or "dustified," to use her terminology), and that this on its face proves that beam weapons must have been used. Wood also goes into some nonsense about dropping a billiard ball off the World Trade Center, which, to the extent it's intelligible, appears to be a more extreme variation on Truthers' "free-fall" claims (which have all been widely debunked). Needless to say, as is common with all 9/11 Truthers, Wood's claims are all based on highly selective analysis of photographs and YouTube videos--conspiracy theorists just love YouTube--and give perfunctory treatment, if any at all, on the necessary logical implications of this breathtaking theory, such as what were those big silver things with wings that thousands of eyewitnesses saw crash into the towers (they were holographic projections), who is supposed to have built these weapons (the evil gubbermint, of course) or why no one blew the whistle on this whole thing (no comment).
After posting the usual debunkings of 9/11 conspiracy theories--that the NIST report lays out the comprehensive engineering analysis behind the collapse, that Osama bin Laden confessed, that wreckage of the planes and the remains of their occupants were recovered from the WTC site, that there is not a single shred of evidence of any form of conspiracy whatsoever--I finally got a mention on Dr. Babs's blog. She showcased (link here) a comment from someone called "Lucy" in rebuttal to me, beginning with this statement:
"Interesting. Muertos (comment) contradicts Dr. Babs with the same propaganda that deceived this nation, his own information being incorrect. Barbara Olsen's cellphone records show she NEVER made the cellphone calls her husband claimed she did."
Actually, they do (and it was an Airforne, not a cell phone), but Lucy was just getting started. She next launched forth into a diatribe of usual Truther claims which reads like a "greatest hits" of the conspiracist movement, to wit:
- Osama never confessed (false; he did) and is not wanted by the FBI for 9/11 (also false, but there is a reason why 9/11 does not appear on his wanted poster);
- PNAC predicted a "New Pearl Harbor" in 2000 (absolutely meaningless);
- The towers were "dustified" (they weren't);
- The whole thing was trumped up to put an oil pipeline in Afghanistan (debunked in 2002);
- The tired-and-true "the hijackers couldn't fly a Cessna" argument (quote-mined);
- No 757 wreckage at the Pentagon (absolutely false);
- WTC7 was "pulled" (absolutely false, based on a quote-mine);
- Mohammed Atta's passport couldn't have survived the collapse (although many other small items, such as pieces of mail, did); and, my personal favorite
- The hijackers are still alive (ludicrously false, and itself probably the subject of an upcoming blog).
So, all of this is supposed to "prove" that the evil gubbermint blew up the WTC towers with beam weapons from space. Uh, yeah.
I debunked all these claims in turn (see the comments for my reply), and I ended with this:
"Come on, ladies. This is 2010. You're recycling Truther claims that were debunked five years ago or more. You can do better than that, can't you? Or is there nothing new under the sun in the realm of 9/11 conspiracy theories?"
Indeed, everything that "Lucy" (who may be Dr. Babs herself, not sure) threw at me dates from no sooner than 2005, demonstrating that conspiracy theorists do nothing but rehash the same tired crap over and over again, regardless of how many times it has been proven wrong. They simply cannot accept that erroneous claims are capable of being proven erroneous. If there still are any Truthers left in 2021, twenty years after the disaster, they will still be out there claiming that the hijackers are still alive.
From this alone, Dr. Babs's claims wouldn't really be worthy of a blog post. However, her other blog--on which I have not commented to date--fills out the picture of the kind of person who believes in crap like space beams. For example, take this one: she evidently believes that Jim Fetzer, a well-known 9/11 Truther, and Steven Jones, who she says is a "bad person" remember, were themselves involved in 9/11! I am not making this up. Read the blog post here. Classic quote:
"Question from Fetzer about 9/11: "...have you looked into any of these high tech weapons?"
Reply from Steven Jones: "Ah, well, I just read about them. I have not been involved in the event."
And then Fetzer starts talking over him. Do you realize what happened in this interview?
Steven Jones denied involvement in "the event" when the question was about high tech weapons. DING DING DING DING!! Jones denied involvement when the question wasn't about involvement. It's similar to a spouse saying, "Hi, honey. How was your day?" and the spouse responding, "I wasn't flirting with that secretary."
So, there you have it. This is what passes for "evidence" in the 9/11 conspiracy crowd. On the basis of this, Dr. Babs is making the public allegation that Steven E. Jones, the guy who brought you (but can't prove) cold fusion and exploding paint, was complicit in the murder of 3,000 innocent Americans. Some standard of "proof," eh?
By way of background, it should be mentioned that the acrimony between Jones's exploding-painters and Woods's space-beamers is extremely intense. Many "mainstream" 9/11 Truthers (is there such a thing?) believe that Judy Wood and her followers are government plants who are being paid to spread intentionally ridiculous theories so that the mainstream media can more easily ridicule anyone who believes in a 9/11 conspiracy. In short, that the space beamers are "disinformation" (another classic term that conspiracy theorists love to toss around). To say that the space beamers resent this characterization is sort of like saying that Alex Jones stretches the truth occasionally.
It gets better. Further on in Dr. Babs's second blog you get a greater dose of her "activism" and what she thinks is really important: Sarah Palin's kids.
I am not making this up. Here it is, complete with a photo of Dr. Babs herself protesting outside a Borders somewhere, holding a sign reading "Sarah Palin Is NOT The Birth Mother of Trig Palin." In fact it's one of three posts she makes about the Trig Palin conspiracy theory.
In case you forgot your 2008 political conspiracy theories, here's a refresher. In 2008 former Alaska governor and losing VP presidential candidate Sarah "Lipstick Bulldog" Palin had a baby named Trig. Not long after, Palin's teenage daughter, Bristol, got knocked up by her then-boyfriend, Levi Johnston (who later bared all in Playgirl magazine), and gave birth to her own child, Tripp. Conspiracy theorists claim that Trig was also Bristol's child, and that he was passed off as Sarah Palin's son in order to avoid the "scandal" of her daughter getting pregnant at an even earlier age. Naturally the theory is ridiculous, but even if it's true (and there is absolutely no evidence that it is), it definitely falls in the "Who cares?" category. I don't think anybody outside of the habitual consumers of gossip magazines really cares about whether Sarah or Bristol Palin is really Trig's mother. But evidently Dr. Babs does, and she's out there in front of Borders making sure the world knows how crucial this issue is.
Interestingly, in one of Dr. Babs's entries, she posts the words of a supporter on the Trig Palin "issue" who lauds her for her efforts and opines that the Lipstick Bulldog should be pressured to "produce the birth certificate." Hmm, those words sound uniquely similar to another birth certificate hijinx story that was popular in 2008 and 2009, that being the idiotic "Birther" conspiracy pushed by California dentist and sometime lawyer Orly Taitz.
But, back to 9/11. In an amusing post (link here) Dr. Babs responds to some of her readers' criticism.
At least some other debunker had the guts to take her to task on her space beam nonsense. Here is her response, which I believe encapsulates her views of 9/11:
"You say evil people hijacked airplanes. Fine. You're wrong, but that's OK for now. What actually happened was that an energy weapon dissolved the WTC. One day it will become clear to you on your own, or somebody you trust will give you the news, and you'll finally believe it."
The usual conspiracy theorist line: you just don't understand. You're brainwashed. You're willfully blind. And on the glorious day when 9/11 Truth is trumpeted on CNN or Fox News, only then will you realize that this small, elite group of brave freedom fighters was right all along.
Another response to a debunker:
"One of the things that has been peculiar about my work on medical marijuana and on 9/11 research is that so many people want to tell me their opinion. Not that I'm not open to their opinion, but if their opinion is that the government is telling the truth about 9/11, then just stop. I already know that story. Why force it upon me?"
Um, maybe because what you believe is factually insupportable, corrosive to reason and rationality as well as completely ridiculous, and is pissing on the graves of 3,000 innocent victims of Osama bin Laden?
Now this is especially telling:
"I'm the researcher, here. I'm the one who spends night and day and every moment in between trying to figure out 9/11, not you...I've done my homework on this. I've spent the best years of my life nearly constantly searching for answers to the question, "What destroyed the WTC?""
If indeed Dr. Babs has spent "night and day and every moment in between" researching 9/11, I'm surprised she doesn't know that the hijackers are dead, or that the towers did not collapse at free-fall speeds. I can find that information within minutes. The only explanation is that she willfully chooses not to accept these facts--which is irrational.
But Dr. Babs's statement is important also for another reason: here we have another classic conceit of the conspiracy theorist, that of casting themselves in the role of a valiant sleuth trying to solve a mystery. Actually this view is key to understanding the bizarre pathology of people like Judy Wood and her followers. Notice she uses the words "figure out 9/11" and "searching for answers to the question." This indicates that she believes what happened on 9/11 is some sort of mystery. She says it too on the write-up on her blog (emphasis added): "This blog is dedicated to her [Judy Wood's] tireless search for the mechanism of destruction of the WTC...Judy Wood got the right answer to the question "What destroyed the WTC?"... in the future she will be known for solving 9/11."
This is classic conspiracy theorist ideology. Historical events, even those about which there is no reasonable debate, are re-cast as "mysteries" to be "solved," like police investigating a murder or the NTSB investigating the cause of an air crash. Why do conspiracy theorists like to do this? First, it affirms their worldview that they're privy to secret knowledge that almost no one else accepts or understands, and that this knowledge will change the world. Second, it puts their conspiracy theories on the same footing as provable fact: that is, that event X is unknown or misunderstood, and is susceptible to more than one reasonable explanation. The JFK assassination is the paradigm example of this--conspiracy buffs love to refer to it as "the mystery of the century" and with other such hyperbole--but more extreme 9/11 deniers also exhibit this tendency.
Dr. Babs and other conspiracy theorists seem to think that 9/11 goes something like this:
*WTC centers blow up*
PUBLIC: "Oh, wow! That was unexpected! How did that happen? What caused it?"
EVIL GUBBERMINT (without evidence): "It was Osama and his Al-Qaeda hijackers!"
PUBLIC: "Okay, I believe that because you said so."
CONSPIRACY THEORIST (with mountains of convincing evidence): "No! Don't fall for it! It was actually the Bush administration that blew up the towers with space beams!"
PUBLIC: "Wow, thanks, Conspiracy Theorist! You solved the mystery of 9/11!"
Of course, it's not like this at all. What happened on 9/11 is not a mystery and never was. Just as in the JFK case, the truth was known within hours: Oswald assassinated John Kennedy. On 9/11, the investigations led immediately and unmistakably to Al Qaida and the 19 Saudi hijackers. All of the evidence that has come to light since 9/11 has merely confirmed that unmistakable conclusion. Not some of it. Not selective pieces of it. All of it.
But the "it's a mystery!" and "how was it really done?" memes make it very easy for conspiracists like Judy Wood and her followers to breeze past the mountains of evidence about what really happened. To them, 9/11 is a mystery by definition. Therefore, what they term the "official story," which to them is a single monolithic pronouncement by a single entity, can at best only be a theory on which reasonable minds can differ. When your starting point of inquiry is, "We don't know how 9/11 happened except that we know it didn't happen the way they said it happened," then the battle between space beamers and exploding painters suddenly becomes much more important--when in the real world it's merely one group of tinfoil hatters trying to tear down another.
Will there ever be an end to this nuttery? I doubt it, unfortunately. Forty-seven years on people are still convinced that the CIA, Mafia, LBJ or the Cubans whacked Kennedy. Probably in the year 2057 there will still be idiots running around out there thinking that the World Trade Center towers were intentionally demolished. Hopefully Judy Wood's "space beams" lunacy will die down long before then, and it's not as if I think it's particularly likely to catch on. Space beams is super-fringe stuff even by 9/11 Truthers' low standards. Hell, if Steven Jones, the guy who believes in exploding paint, tells you that you're nuts, you've really got a deep hole to dig yourself out of.