Idiotic climate deniers on the ropes? Or are we screwed?

Salon has a nice, quick analysis of the state of the debate at http://www.salon.com/2012/06/04/denying_global_warming_despite_no_actual_expertise/

Read the first part if you want to be depressed. It concludes on a more hopeful note:

On the brighter side, not everyone has been intimidated. In fact, a spirited counter-movement has arisen in recent years. The very same weekend that Heartland tried to put the Unabomber’s face on global warming, 350.org conducted thousands of rallies around the globe to show who climate change really affects. In a year of mobilization, we also managed to block — at least temporarily — the Keystone pipeline that would have brought the dirtiest of dirty energy, tar-sands oil, from the Canadian province of Alberta to the Gulf Coast. In the meantime, our Canadian allies are fighting hard to block a similar pipeline that would bring those tar sands to the Pacific for export.

Similarly, in just the last few weeks, hundreds of thousands have signed on to demand an end to fossil-fuel subsidies. And new polling data already show more Americans worried about our changing climate, because they’ve noticed the freakish weather of the last few years and drawn the obvious conclusion.

But damn, it’s a hard fight, up against a ton of money and a ton of inertia. Eventually, climate denial will “lose,” because physics and chemistry are not intimidated even by Lord Monckton. But timing is everything — if he and his ilk, a crew of certified planet wreckers, delay action past the point where it can do much good, they’ll be able to claim one of the epic victories in political history — one that will last for geological epochs.