Top 5 Ways the 'Birthers' Are Like the Global Warming Deniers

By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress. Posted August 8, 2009.

The people who refuse to accept the reality that President Obama was born in the United States share much in common with those who refuse to accept the reality that humans are dramatically changing the climate.

5. Both groups are impervious to the evidence. During the campaign, "Obama released a certification of live birth, which is the official document you get if you ask Hawaii for a copy of your birth certificate," as Salon explains. Further, "state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii." Politico labels this "seemingly incontrovertible evidence." Similarly, the reality of human-caused warming has been overwhelmingly demonstrated and affirmed by the peer-reviewed literature, the hundreds of scientists who review and report on that literature periodically as part of the IPCC process and the more than 100 world governments (including the Bush Administration) who approved the 2007 IPCC summary reports word for word.

4. Both come from the same group of people. The NYT explained that the birther movement "first took root among some staunchly conservative elements." As Politico notes, "A whopping 58 percent of Republicans either think Barack Obama wasn't born in the US (28 percent) or aren't sure (30 percent)." And it is conservatives and Republicans who make up the overwhelming majority of those who question climate science (see "The Deniers are winning, but only with the GOP").

3. Both group get their disinformation from the same right-wing sources. The NYT wrote on June 24 that "Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country's most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners on Tuesday that Mr. Obama "has yet to have to prove that he's a citizen." " Similarly, Limbaugh tells his listeners things like, "Despite the hysterics of a few pseudo-scientists, there is no reason to believe in global warming."

2. Both groups have an underlying motivation -- their desire to obstruct progressive government action. The birthers, of course, are trying to delegitimize Obama, to block his entire reform agenda. NYT science reporter Andy Revkin noted about one huge conference of global warming deniers, "The one thing all the attendees seem to share is a deep dislike for mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gases." As I explain at length in my book, a central reason that conservatives and libertarians reject the scientific understanding of human-caused climate change is that they simply cannot stand the solution.

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