What I don’t understand about AGW denial is the extent of the alleged hoax on the part of scientists.
Realistically, this hoax would need to extend 100 or more years into the past, starting with the first discoveries of the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect itself would need to be a hoax, and I don’t see how a 100+ year conspiracy could have worked when simple experiments in an undergrad laboratory could expose the whole thing. Arrhenius did the first calculations estimating the impact of increased carbon dioxide in the late 1800’s, and those calculations are still largely accurate.
Assuming the greenhouse effect is real, then the next big hoax would have to be measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, both in modern times and extending through geologic history as measured in ice cores and other geologic records. These would obviously need to be a hoax in order to keep the denial going. If greenhouse gases increase, then you trap more heat. There is no getting around this basic conclusion from physics. Therefore, there is a world wide hoax of making up carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and I just don’t see how this could be pulled off.
So what are we left with? It seems that the only thing the AGW deniers have left is to complain about the accuracy of the predictions, which is ludicrous. It’s a bit like saying that cancer is a hoax because a doctor said someone would die from cancer in 6 months but they didn’t die until 8 months later. Predictions are difficult because climate is complex, but the large scale conclusion is still unavoidable: increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increase temperature.
All I can really see is a cult of conspiracy. We see the same thing in creationism, ID, flat earth, moon landing conspiracies, and geocentrism. Some people are just drawn to contradictory positions, for whatever reason.