An early element of David Cameron’s attempt to detoxify the Conservatives was a little bit of non committal rhetoric about climate change and a photo opportunity in the frozen north. He does not seem to have carried his party with him. One report claims that six members of his shadow cabinet don’t feel that it should be a priority for his incoming government. A cynic might add that based on Ed Miliband’s woeful performance at Copenhagen it’s not a priority for the current Labour government either.

The sceptics fall into two broad groups who for ease of reference we’ll call the stupid and the really stupid. The stupid ones just refuse to accept the science. All that physics and chemistry is just hogwash. The really stupid ones accept the science but are worried about the damage to the economy. Making money is more important than trying to keep the planet habitable.

Climate change deniers have a small wind in their sails at the moment. The scariest viewing on TV over the weekend was the footage of the welcome Sarah Palin got at the Tea Party Convention. Hundreds of people were urging her to run for the presidency and fractious though it is the Tea Party Movement has been very successfully pulling American politics to the right.The one man who made Miliband look good at Copenhagen was Obama. He’ll be terrified of doing too much to antagonise those fruitcakes and his already vague proposals for mitigating the polluting effects of the American way of life are certain. to be further weakened.

From being the preserve of marginal eccentrics climate change denial is being given increasing credibility. The reporting of the IPCC data about the rate of melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and what rags like the Daily Mail predictably label “climategate”  have started to shift the public debate away from the incontrovertible science. What’s alarming is the defensiveness of the scientists in the eye of the storm and the lack of a comparable response from the climate change movement.

More on this here.