It's way past time to speak truth to climate arguments this stupid

For precious decades experts have explained, over and over, that the science of climate change is incontrovertible, the consequences of blindly sticking with fossil fuels catastrophic and the costs of inaction far higher than switching to a low-emissions economy.

‘To make the ridiculous case that abandoning Paris
 was good for the US economy, Trump didn’t just
have to ignore science, but also the pleading
of the US business community.’ 

But these facts had no impact on the sceptics, who cling to a worldview where they find “alternative facts”, where fossil fuel power is the only path to prosperity and mounting environmental and economic evidence to the contrary is some kind of dastardly leftwing plot.

For Tony Abbott’s economic adviser Maurice Newman, global warming was a “hook” used by the United Nations to impose a new world order in opposition to “capitalism and freedom”. To Donald Trump it is a “hoax” propagated by the Chinese to undermine the US while the rest of the world rolls around laughing.

The only skerrick of positive news from sceptics’ greatest victory yet – the US president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord – is that it seems to have galvanised politicians, scientists, business leaders and economists who have grown weary from all these years talking to the hand.

Read Lenore Taylor’s story on The Guardian -  “It's way past time to speak truth to climate arguments this stupid.