As CNN's Fareed Zakaria demonstrated this week, you can be in possession of a doctorate from Harvard University and still allow yourself to become terminally beguiled by a glib and charismatic crackpot. Zakaria's struggles with the pleasing sounding illogic of climate change denialist Bjorn Lomborg - who's not worried about polar bear extinction because those creatures are sure to take up the unprecedented process of rapid de-evolution to avoid dying out as their natural habitat declines - while uniquely depressing to watch, raise an important question for those of us who'd rather not get fooled, again: where can one go for one-stop, scientifically-supported, rapid response to climate change nutballs?
The answer? The good folks at Grist have compiled all of Coby Beck's "How To Talk To A Climate Skeptic" series, "containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming" onto one handy and indexed webpage. The listing is neatly divided into four sections: Stages of Denial, Scientific Topics, Types of Argument, and Levels of Sophistication. The last is my favorite because it is subdivided into four sections titled Silly, Naive, Specious, and the charitable Scientific. Throughout, you will find the most common arguments against climate change in the index, and, at the click of the link, all of the necessary research for reasserting the reality-based facts.
The listing is not entirely complete - under the heading "Types of Arguments" it sadly lacks current entries for "Underdog Theories" and "Crackpottery." But give them time! In the meantime, set your bookmarks accordingly, and within no time, you will find your base of knowledge growing far beyond the expanse of the mainstream media. They'll still give equal time to morons no matter how much you learn, but then, nobody said life was fair.