My name is Ken, and I’m a denier...

I admit it. I’ve been looking for a Deniers Anonymous group near me but I just can’t seem to find one. You'd think, with the multitude of ways one could engage in denialism these days, it would be easy to find such a group, and yet my search has been in vain.

Maybe that’s because the people this group is meant to help only show their faces on some dark social media site after 11:00 in the evening. Or maybe they just don’t show up because they’re tired of being mistaken as toothless inbred hillbillies from Saskatchewan. Whatever the reason, it looks like I’m on my own so I may as well tell the world.

When devolving into the seedy underbelly of denialism, it's helpful to research precisely what type of denier one would prefer to become. Just be prepared to discover that the majority of the choices out there don't really require you to deny anything at all, but simply to be a person who is prone to asking questions.

With this in mind, it seems I've inadvertently slipped into one of the more common forms of denialism these days. That's right, I'm a climate denier.

Now, before we get too deep into this, I feel I must clarify that this word, “denier” is not, in fact, the Middle English word that according to Merriam-Webster means “a coin worth ten asses”, though I've had at least ten asses call me that.

Middle English denere, from Anglo-French dener, denier, from Latin denarius, coin worth ten asses.

Nor is it the word that has traditionally been used to refer to the density of a fabric.

A denier /den-yay/ is a unit of measurement that expresses fiber thickness of individual threads or filaments in fabric or textiles.

No, the meaning of this insidious word (for if you listen to the CBC or our own Prime Minister, insidious is surely what it is), is really the denial of everything sane, everything proper, everything ordained by a benevolent government and it's media mistress to keep us all safe from harm.

So though I may in fact qualify as a denier on several fronts, my specialty (if you will) is apparently in climate denialism. Lest you be confused by the terminology, again I feel the need to clarify that I don't deny that there is a climate, nor that said climate changes, since every winter is a crude reminder of that fact. What I deny, (at least according to those well-versed in denialism) is that there is a dire emergency that threatens the very existence of all peoplekind.

I’ve read far too much about the climate change issue to ever look at the world population with the same innocence I once did five or ten years ago. I’ve read many books, and countless abstracts of peer-reviewed scientific papers, as well as had hundreds of arguments online with people I don’t even know, and after all of that, my biggest takeaway is that the 97% “consensus” is really no consensus at all, in fact it would seem to be an utter fib according to the very study itself (Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature - Cook et al). If you don’t believe me, then you obviously haven’t read it, but now you can. If you really want to. Of course you don’t have to read it, but if you choose not to read it now and still continue to disbelieve me, then I think we’ve established what the biggest problem with all of this really is. And remember, we’re talking about scientists who believe the majority of global warming is due to man’s influence.

By the way, if you do decide to read it (and I’d suggest getting a pot of coffee going beforehand if I were you) you’ll want to pay particular attention to #2 Methodology and #3 Results. Anyway, according to this, the science is evidently not quite as “settled” as we’ve been led to believe, even though we constantly hear that it is. This is actually an extremely important point for a variety of reasons. The fact that the author of this study publicly concludes something entirely different and is backed up by many of his colleagues is one of those reasons.

Now, because I’m a denier, let’s for a moment imagine a world where the science of human-caused global warming wasn’t actually a “fact” that almost every single scientist in the world agreed upon. If the science (in this fictional world) isn’t in fact settled, then this would imply that other theories and explanations are valid and thus worth considering (forgive me if this sounds a bit too much like actual science).

If other theories are indeed valid, then that means that a growing portion of the population who happen to agree with many eminent and important scientists who are not part of this mystical 97% may not actually be inbred morons subsisting on scraps from Big Oil after all, even though the media and those followers of the “Church of the Consensus” would have us believe that they are.

If 97% of scientists (oh sorry, I hear it just ticked up to 98% now) don’t really believe that humans are the main cause of global warming, then that would mean that the governments who also espouse this belief and who send their representatives jetting all over the globe to climate change conferences are perhaps just wasting our tax dollars (as inconceivable as this may sound).

If the science is not in fact settled, then why is it that the media says that it is - over and over and over again? You decide, but I can’t stand it when people lie to me, and then turn around and accuse me of being a complete idiot for asking for clarification.

Thankfully the phrase, “science is not a democracy” also seems to be gaining traction these days and I’ve heard enough real scientists say it to believe that it must have at least some merit.

So there you have it - the truth is out. I’m a denier. I deny that half the population of the western world are money-grubbing imbeciles. I deny that the thousands of legitimate scientists that question the “consensus” on man’s contribution to global warming are only there to collect a big, fat pay cheque from the oil companies. I also deny that the interpretation of science is best left up to governments and their media.

Most of all, I deny that any of this is worth the childish name-calling and the “blocking” and silencing of otherwise fine and reasonable individuals (online and in real life).

It appears that we, as a society have a lot of growing up (or regrowing up) to do. The real devolution has evidently been in how we understand common courtesy, decency, and respect, so here's a grand suggestion:

How ‘bout we all re-examine our priorities and just go plant our Canadian gardens, now that it's finally warmed up here.