Denialists are Doomed

It's been a frigid winter in much of the United States, but Greg Laden notes that the country covers only 1.5% of the Earth's surface, and overall the planet just experienced the fourth-warmest January on record.  Meanwhile global warming denialists are resorting to every rhetorical trick in the book, such as comparing their increasingly outnumbered position to that of Galileo.  While it's tempting to recount the history of science as that of a few brilliant mavericks overthrowing established consensus, Greg writes "Science hardly ever gets Galileoed, and even Galileo did not Galileo science; he Galileoed religion."  Meanwhile, on Stoat, William M. Connolley offers some explanations for denialist behavior.  For many, denialism is a political position amenable to any scientific veneer.  But the consequences of denying global warming are more than political: they could make life harder for generations to come.  And denialists, far from being vindicated, can only look forward to being reviled, ridiculed, and forgotten.