Some have argued that AGW alarmists will soon jump ship for the 'biodiversity crisis', but articles like this show that it is more likely, as physicist Lubos Motl argues, that the hardcore alarmists will simply back into a corner and fight tooth and nail to defend their failing mission.

'Movies where they reveal their combative dreams and James Hansen who gets arrested every month are just peaceful reminders what will probably happen' - Lubos Motl.

Quote from Debora MacKenzie article

"Whatever they are denying, denial movements have much in common with one
another, not least the use of similar tactics. All set themselves up as
courageous underdogs fighting a corrupt elite engaged in a conspiracy to
suppress the truth or foist a malicious lie on ordinary people. This conspiracy
is usually claimed to be promoting a sinister agenda: the nanny state, takeover
of the world economy, government power over individuals, financial gain,
atheism.

All denialists see themselves as underdogs fighting a corrupt elite. This common
ground tells us a great deal about the underlying causes of denialism. The first
thing to note is that denial finds its most fertile ground in areas where the
science must be taken on trust. There is no denial of antibiotics, which visibly
work. But there is denial of vaccines, which we are merely told will prevent
diseases - diseases, moreover, which most of us have never seen, ironically
because the vaccines work.

Similarly, global warming, evolution and the link between tobacco and cancer
must be taken on trust, usually on the word of scientists, doctors and other
technical experts who many non-scientists see as arrogant and alien.

Many people see this as a threat to important aspects of their lives. In Texas
last year, a member of a state committee who was trying to get creationism added
to school science standards almost said as much when he proclaimed "somebody's
got to stand up to experts".

It is this sense of loss of control that really matters. In such situations,
many people prefer to reject expert evidence in favour of alternative
explanations that promise to hand control back to them, even if those
explanations are not supported by evidence.

All denialisms appear to be attempts like this to regain a sense of agency over
uncaring nature: blaming autism on vaccines rather than an unknown natural
cause, insisting that humans were made by divine plan, rejecting the idea that
actions we thought were okay, such as smoking and burning coal, have turned out
to be dangerous."

sarnian "All denialists see themselves as underdogs fighting a corrupt elite"

Yet we see so many AGW believers, making out they are the underdogs .. and Big Oil (corrupt elite) is funding the deniers (very very well too according to some of the more shrill and hysterical of the AGW camp).

Who is in denial?

It's interesting that people find it necessary to tarnish skepticism as some sort of evil, to rebrand or badge it, so their own ideas are not questioned.

The passage you have quoted is full of holes and messaging tools, to put "global warming, evolution and the link between tobacco and cancer" together is to connect anyone questioning AGw in the same boat as companies who promote tobacco.

The denier term is to put skeptics in the same boat as holocaust deniers.

With such tools at your disposal, it's a wonder anyone could ever be skeptical again, of anything .. since all you have to do is rebrand them as a denier/sarc

Tell me, where does Galileo fit into all this?

Galileo went up against the established consensus on the universe, he was in your definition "a denier", he questioned the "known" science of the day, was up against the elites of his age, and had to recant otherwise the local bullies of his time, would have ended his life.

I'll not be bullied out of being skeptical, not when I'm in such company as one of the giants of our civilization, Galileo - thank goodness some people do "deny" the views of consensus culture.

Let's face it, this article you quote is trying to silence dissent, and stop the questioning of a belief.

I rather enjoyed the Creeping Menace but it's not as good as 2011. It seems clear to me that rising sea levels are a plot by real estate agents, working with growthists, to raise the price of ever diminishing available land. The question is, how is this going to effect the polar bears? For god's sake, think of the bears.

Sarnian's post is curious. It could be a pre-medication post as it lies outside of pretty much anything so far posted re global warming on either side or sides.

Those whose minds are still open, may care to look at a scientific paper available online by a group of researchers from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool in the UK and the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland in Finland.

The researchers analysed whatever historical tidal gauge data they could find to show that the accepted increase in sea levels during the 20th century of about 20 cm was far from uniform. ('Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago? by Svetlana Jevrejeva and others' - Geophysical Research Letters, April 30, 2008). They present a reconstruction indicating that the rate of global sea level rise increased and then decreased in several distinct waves since before the beginning of the nineteenth century, or about the end of the little ice age.

The average for the 20th century still works out to 2mm a year or so, but we are now at the top of one of the cycles they identified. The group’s calculated rate of the current increase of 3.4 mm a year is in good agreement with the satellite data of 3.1 mm a year. The rate of increase was at least that high in the 1950s (before satellites).

This work is still fairly recent and has to be kicked around scientific circles some more, but it does not seem to have been challenged and has been taken as supporting the IPCC. In the paper Jevrejeva and colleagues say that simple extrapolation of the results gives a sea rise of 34 cms during the 21st century, although it could be more.

As I said its free, online, so you can look for yourselves. Sorry John - despite the best efforts of scientists to find some way to inflate sea level forecasts, New York will stay dry for some time to come.

Hi John

BETWEEN AN ALARMIST ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

Suggest you question your "expert evidence" and "consensus" climate science.

Note Judith Curry's recent post on "climate uncertainty" at www.judithcurry.com :

"The question needs to be asked as to whether the early articulation of a preferred policy option by the UNFCCC has stimulated a positive feedback loop between politics, science, and science funding that has accelerated the science (and its assessment by the IPCC) towards the policy option (CO2 stabilization) that was codified by the UNFCCC. This feedback loop marginalizes research on natural climate variability (forced and unforced) on regional and global scales, focuses research on model development rather than observations (particularly paleoclimate), and values model agreement over a full exploration of model uncertainty (including model structure). The net result of such a feedback loop is an overconfident assessment of the importance of greenhouse gases in future climate change. Which has brought us to our current position between a rock and a hard place, where we lack the kinds of information that we need to understand climate change more broadly and develop and evaluate a broad range of policy options."

Dr David Evans's series of articles: "It the Climate Establishment Corrupt?" worth your time too at www.joannenova.com.au.

Apocalyptic rhetoric has been around for at least two millennia. We seem to have an entrenched tendency to project our fears and anxieties onto Nature.

Perhaps no surprise today's prophets of climate doom base their prophecies on models and claims as obscure, controversial and unfalsifiable as those of the entrail-reading priests of ancient religions?

Alice (in Warmerland)