Climate denialists (as well as other science deniers) present themselves as reasonable skeptics, when in fact they are anything but. Lee McIntyre, author of Respecting Truth, explains why they cannot honestly present themselves as skeptics: “True skepticism must be more than an ideological reflex; skepticism must be earned by a prudent and consistent disposition to be convinced only by evidence. When we cynically pretend to withhold belief long past the point at which ample evidence should have convinced us that something is true, we have stumbled past skepticism and landed in the realm of willful ignorance. This is not the realm of science, but of ideological crackpots. And we don’t need a poll to tell us that this is the doorstep to denialism.”

Read McIntyre’s trenchant critique of the proponents of denial: The Price of Denialism – The New York Times