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Stage 2: Deny We’re the Cause Once people move beyond denying that the problem exists, they often move to the next stage, denying that we’re responsible.  John Christy and Roy Spencer took this approach by disputing the accuracy of global climate models in The Daily Mail and The Christian Post,……, climate models have done very well in projecting long-term global surface temperature changes………

Stage 2b: Consensus Denial  In Murdoch’s The Australian, Andrew Montford took a different approach to deny that we’re the cause of the problem, attacking the expert consensus on human-caused global warming. Specifically he attacked the Cook et al. (2013) study finding 97 percent consensus on this question in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

In order to deny the consensus, Montford employed the Climategate strategy, using material stolen during a hacking of the private Skeptical Science discussion forum. He then pulled quotes out of context to claim the study was “a public relations exercise,”……… we have set up a public ratings system so that anybody can read and rate the scientific abstracts. If you don’t believe the vast body of evidence of an expert consensus on human-caused global warming,test it for yourself. Moreover, the scientist ratings of their own papers – independent of our abstract ratings – also resulted in a 97 percent consensus.

Stage 3: Deny It’s a Problem

Once they’ve progressed through the first two stages and admitted global warming is happening and human-caused, contrarians generally move on to Stage 3, denying it’s a problem. ……..

Stage 4: Deny We can Solve It

In his editorial, Roy Spencer bounced between the second and fourth stages of global warming denial, also claiming that solving the problem is too expensive and will hurt the poor. In reality the opposite is true……….

Stage 5: It’s too Late

Stage 5 global warming denial involves arguing that it’s too late to solve the problem, so we shouldn’t bother trying (though few climate contrarians have reached this level). Unfortunately this stage can be self-fulfilling. If we wait too long to address the problem, we may end up committing ourselves to catastrophic climate change.

The good news is that we still have time to avoid a catastrophic outcome. The more emissions reductions we can achieve, the less the impacts of climate change will be. The challenge lies in achieving those greenhouse gas emissions reductions when Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and other news outlets are spreading climate misinformation and denial. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial