When I manage to pretend for a moment that the denialists aren’t being taken seriously, they’re actually remarkably amusing to watch.

Most don’t even come close to making scientific arguments, they just treat it as just another front in the “us and them” political mentality they seem to have. Al Gore said it’s true, Fox News says it isn’t - I’m a conservative, so it must be false. Completely illogical (why the science should have anything to do with one’s political views, I’m not entirely sure), but condensing every single issue in the world to left/right, conservative/liberal, us/them is equally illogical.

But those that do… as a published scientist myself it’s always a little strange watching the developments of “Climategate”, etc. We’re used to arguments falling or standing based on their merits, as judged by other experts in the field.

Sometimes arguments which are pretty much entirely settled from a scientific perspective (e.g. evolutionary biology) spill over to the public arena, but these generally turn out to be pretty inconsequential. Sometimes unsettled arguments (e.g. string theory, the interpretations of quantum mechanics) are so obscure and apolitical that they’re unlikely to generate much controversy. But here is an issue where the experts clearly agree, where political action is clearly needed, but where we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory - defending the science against smear campaigns, journalistic malpractice, political assassinations, fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Within the scientific community, the verdict is almost unanimous, with much of the uncertainty surrounding the feedback mechanisms, in other words, we know it’s going to be bad, we just don’t know how much worse climate feedback is going to make it (although it’s possible that some feedback loops could mitigate it, the burden of proof is now on the denialists to prove how they counterbalance positive feedback loops). I think it’s fair to say that in the time scale of decades, there is more uncertainty from how we respond to the issue than there is in the science itself.

I agree with the poster who said that history isn’t going to be kind to the deniers. It’s also hard not to feel a little like Cassandra, knowing full well that no matter how much temperatures increase, you’ll always have people who refuse to accept what they don’t want to hear or have a vested interest in continued denial. I’m almost resigned to the fact that nothing will be done, and that we should just hope that things will happen to stabilise without too much damage when we turn out to do nothing (e.g. fossil fuels, etc. turning out to be a better choice economically).