What is so fascinating about climate change denial is not that it denies climate change, but that it does it so crudely. Last weekend we came across one very fine example that we thought is too good to keep from you, dear readers – even though it is not that recent: In February, the web edition of Forbes magazine ran a piece titled “Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis”. Really? Finally, a sea change in scientific opinion?

Not quite. In fact, not at all. This lazy piece penned by James Taylor, a contributor to Forbes.com, deliberately leaves out the fact that the people surveyed were geoscientists and engineers. Plus, that they are all members of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, Canada and mostly in the pay of the petroleum industry – the largest employer in the region. It’s like polling the scientific advisers of the tobacco industry on the risks of smoking.

Of course, scientists will always differ on issues, especially important ones like Global Warming. But there is a scientific consensus that human-caused Climate Change is happening. And even if you hate this consensus, it does not go away.  Not even if you misrepresent the facts. And to do so  in such a crude fashion is just lame. But to insult your readers’ intelligence doesn’t go unpunished: Forbes readers duly tore the piece apart – and provided the details this simulation of “journalism” so conveniently left out. We assume James Taylor didn’t care and was too busy scribbling together his next climate sceptic hit jobs – a look at the Forbes archive of his articles suggests it was not his last one…

It’s getting pretty lonely here. Once a fertile soil this place was home to a colorful lot of different walks of life: neighbors – cooperating, sometimes bickering but never questioning the other’s right to exist. But this place has become increasingly barren, lifeless in an age of global warming: This desert, of course,  is the political middle ground in the US climate debate.

Ok, we are not quite there yet. But the signs are alarming. The climate debate, especially in the US, is becoming an increasingly shrill shouting match between extremes so far apart that a normal conversation between neighbors is impossible, with some media outlets taking the lead. The fact that more than 90 percent of Fox coverage on climate change is factually wrong or at least misleading, for instance, does not come as a surprise. Over the last year the situation has gotten worse, even personal. And the launching of attacks is by no means confined to the camp of climate change deniers.

“Exxon hates your children” is the title of a TV ad that bluntly takes aim at the fossil fuel industry.

And while climate scientists warning about global warming have been known for a while to receive hate mail and death threats, the other side responds in kind. The latest example is an Australian professor calling for the death penalty for climate change deniers.

The harassment of climate scientists by deniers appears to be of a more organized nature, but who knows when the warriors against climate change will catch up.

Maybe, it’s just the heat – the worsening extremes in the climate debate are in fact accompanied by unprecedented extreme weather. Eventually, nothing is impossible. Pigs can’t fly, they said, and rivers do not run upstream. But even that may be in doubt: Climate Change is set to reverse the Chicago river in the North-East of the US.

What do the moon landing and climate change have in common? They’re both fake. Well, at least if you belong to a certain small but very vocal group of people. As a part of this group, you might also be convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, that the CIA killed Martin Luther King and, yes, that radical free market policies will cure all the world’s ills.

Climate change deniers tend to be also conspiracy theorists and hard core free market ideologues, a new study finds. Apparently climate change denial very often goes together with the usual host of other fringe convictions and opinions. The reason for this, the climate science psychologist Adam Corner speculates in the Guardian could be

“…that it is the libertarian instinct to stick two fingers up at the mainstream – whatever the issue – that is important. Because a radical libertarian streak is the hallmark of free-market economics, and because free market views are popular on the political right, this is where climate change scepticism is most likely to be found.”

So what’s the solution? Corner suggests that

“the challenge of engaging with climate change sceptics is finding the lens that better fits their ideological views – not just shouting the science more loudly.”

Or maybe climate change has to be turned into a rogue topic – censored in the news, blasted by scientists, decried by the public – before it gains acceptance – among deniers. But then again, there is no such thing.