re: #1 Expand Your Ground
Blame Al Gore.
Really. He thought he could remove himself from politics, divorce himself from his political past and address the issue of climate change in a neutral and non-partisan way.
Instead, he acted like a red flag for a lot of bull-headed deniers and helped turn it into a massively partisan political issue.
Blaming Al Gore for this is like blaming the attack on the Maddox for the Vietnam War. It’s a pretext. The spinmeisters behind the attacks on climate science would have chosen someone else for the role of climate whipping boy if Al hadn’t been around.