How to Tell a Denier from a Skeptic

Doomed GOP presidential aspirant Rick Frothy Mixture of Lubricant, Semen and Fecal Matter Resulting from Anal Sex claims global warming is a liberal conspiracy:

".... I think ... the idea that man ... is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd."

What a relief. We've been waiting for a definitive statement on global warming from our favorite reliable source, Mr. Frothy Mixture of Lubricant, Semen and Fecal Matter Resulting from Anal Sex

Back in reality world, Zandar has found a better metric.

Yep, keep telling yourself it's just a fairy tale, like Angry Invisible Sky Person and the Atlanta Thrashers. Remember, there's an easy way to tell the difference between a true skeptic and an idiot like this as Joe Romm explains:

So here’s one way to tell if you’re a genuine skeptic or a climate denier.

When trying to understand what’s happening to our climate, do you consider the full body of evidence? Or do you find the denial instinct kicking in when confronted with inconvenient evidence?

For example, let’s look at the question of whether global warming is happening. Do you acknowledge sea level rise, a key indicator of a warming planet, tripling over the last century? Do you factor in the warming oceans, which since 1970 have been building up heat at a rate of two-and-a-half Hiroshima bombs every second? Glaciers are retreating all over the world, threatening the water supply of hundreds of millions of people. Ice sheets from Greenland in the north to Antarctica in the south are losing hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice every year. Seasons are shifting, flowers are opening earlier each year and animals are migrating towards the poles. The very structure of our atmosphere is changing.

We have tens of thousands of lines of evidence that global warming is happening. A genuine skeptic surveys the full body of evidence coming in from all over our planet and concludes that global warming is unequivocal. A climate denier, on the other hand, reacts to this array of evidence in several possible ways.

The most extreme form of climate denier won’t even go near the evidence. They avoid the issue altogether by indulging in conspiracy theories. They’ll pull a quote out of context from a stolen ‘Climategate‘ email as proof that climate change is just a huge hoax. I have yet to hear how the ice sheets, glaciers and thousands of migrating animal species are in on the conspiracy, but I’m sure there’s a creative explanation floating around on the Internet.

That creative explanation is apparently "global climate change is a religion based on pure faith, and there's zero scientific evidence to support it."

What we need is a way to make people who deny global warming - especially those who use their corporate or political power to block solutions to global warming - become the primary sufferers of the consequences of global warming.

Flood their homes permanently, like the residents of low-lying Pacific Islands. Turn them into climate refugees, forced from their homes by invading sea water like the farmers of Bangladesh. Take away their ability to make a living the way their ancestors have for millennia, like the residents of the melting arctic. Force them to starve, like the subsistence farmers of the planet's equatorial zone, which is rapidly turning into desert.

In the meantime, I'll settle for everyone referring to the former Pennsylvania Senator by his true name: Rick Frothy Mixture of Lubricant, Semen and Fecal Matter Resulting from Anal Sex.