Why do denialists say they are winning the debate?

Well, as far as public opinion in the US goes, what they say may be true (a rarity). They're certainly not winning any scientific debate, but they are slowing down progress toward mitigation. Public perception of the issue is highly dependent on weather, so when people experience a hot a brutal summer, with lots of hurricanes that make landfall on the US, they perceive the scientists as being correct; if the weather is colder than usual then they become more dubious. Also, people tend to be more concerned about the economy than other issues, and the Republicans have falsely portrayed mitigation as something that will hurt the economy (as opposed to the effects of a trillion dollar pointless war on the economy).

The more educated people are, then the less they fall for these sorts of tricks, but these same people are trying to make college unaffordable for all but the rich (Santorum believes that going to college is "elitist".)

EDIT: Your comments to jim z are dead on--the guy thinks that PHYSICS is SOCIALIST. Frankly, it doesn't matter what your economic philosophy is--thermodynamics and quantum mechanics will be just as valid. He can't separate his ultra-right wing philosophies from the study of science, and I seriously doubt that he's had anything more than the barest of introductions to physics.

His answer to science he doesn't know or understand is to prattle on about socialism. If he really believes that the science of global warming is socialist, I'd love for him to find a socialist manifesto that talks about the Schrodinger Equation, Stefan's Law, the laws of fluid dynamics, Maxwell's Equations, etc.

If find that an indication of how a debate is going may be shown by how the sides treat and speak to each other. And while both sides have their extremes no matter how the debate is going, the rational moderates from either side can tend to change their tone and/or take more extreme positions.

I'll leave it up the readers around here to judge which side has changed it's tone more.

We listen to flakes like Van Jones , Micheal Mann and Jim Hansen .

Nothing they say is true , And Cenk tries to connect weather to Climate .

Tornado's in Texas are not proof of AGW Tornado's happen in the Spring every year .

He must be a climate scientist like Sheryl Crow .

You may have been a fan of Ronaldus Magnus but he was no fan of socialism. Reagan was an economist and much more intelligent than the ignoramuses on the left would allow. When he was president, if you recognized what a monstrous failure the socialist experiment was, you were belittled by the left. It is no different today with AGW. If you don't walk lock step with alarmists nonsense, you are called a denialists. What you call denialism is simply the informed recognizing that no matter how you dress it, socialism is a failure. Instead of using class warfare (Leninism), or nationalism (fascism) to motivate, modern day AGW alarmists use the environment to push their brand of statism.

Alarmist's clearly don't think for themselves. That is why they keep trying to suggest there is a consensus even when there clearly isn't. What is really sickening to me is those who are so ignorant of our countries history that they would elect people like Obama. He promised to put coal out of business and he has worked at increasing gas prices. He suggests oil is the fuel of the past yet anyone with any brain, even possibly an alarmist, should realize that oil is the fuel of today. Obama and his policies are a throwback to the failed states of last century yet like alarmists he refuses to learn from history, both human and natural.

Look around you.

Denialists HAVE WON the debate.

The burning of fossil fuels is at an all time high.

Whatever the scientific evidence is, it is being completely ignored.

It is, I believe, political suicide to support any global warming initiatives.

Thus Obama 4 years ago (before the election) was talking about doing something about global warming.

As President, he can't becoz there is too much vested interest in the status quo.

After your bomb shelter crack, it's obvious you're just a blind sheep.

The psychological nature of denialism ensures that the denier of any subject, be it global warming or otherwise, is often removed from the reality of the situation and intrinsically lacking in objectivity and rationality. They find it difficult to accept what has happened or is happening, and to avoid confronting said situation will often take measures to avoid it.

We see such behaviour manifest itself in the repeated avoidance of anything actually connected to the science of global warming. Rather than deal with the actual evidence, it’s preferable for a denier to go off on a tangent by politicising the issue or simply deferring to a third party. How many times do we see deniers simply quoting some other source and not actually answering the question, but instead linking to a denialist website – it’s the diffusion of responsibility. It’s a mechanism by which the subject is avoided and the denier doesn’t actually need to involve themselves in providing an answer, thus negating the need to actually understand the question.

Interestingly, you’ll also note that the mentality of the deniers is very much one in which the issue of climate change is one of taking sides. Compare and contrast the answers of those who accept global warming is happening with those that don’t.

By and large the realists actually answer the questions that are asked and don’t seize every opportunity to promote the fact that global warming is happening. By contrast, the deniers often don’t actually answer the questions and instead resort to simply inflicting their viewpoint on other people.

Don’t worry that the deniers call you a communist, all that does is to highlight that they’re more concerned with propaganda than reality. The Institute of Propaganda Analysis lists name-calling as the number one technique that is used by propagandists, and the number one name that is used – Commie.

Second most common name that’s used is to call someone a Nazi (sound familiar?). Not only is this a propaganda technique but it also invokes Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogy, which essentially states that anyone engaged in a debate that resorts to calling the other side a Nazi has lost the argument.

If you want to look at global warming as being a debate with winners and losers then the deniers have been utterly annihilated. Those who understand the reality of global warming have ‘won’ every single government in the world, every scientific organisation in the world, every major corporation in the world and the majority of the citizens of the world.

Because they insist on being wrong. They aren't winning anything except a poor future for their descendants do to slowing down progress towards green energy. They have a false sense of security'

it honestly doesn't matter what they think or say because global warming/climate change is here and here to stay. More significant changes will come about as 2015 approaches and they will have to eat their words.

<<Why do denialists say they are winning the debate?>>

Because they live in a completely different universe where up is down, black is white and where the Daily Mail is a respected source for scientific news.

Anything is possible in their little world, even winning a debate about science with non-scientific arguments, cherry-picked bits and pieces and an British Lord whose climate scientific knowledge is comparable to that of a small ant.

just as long as people are still capable of forming their own opinions and asking questions, the denialists cannot win