If my story opens the door to this kind of discussion, I'm not one who'd want it closed, but the story I posted is not incomplete without it.

This is not a climate in which accurate information can be effectively disseminated

I don't think it (= effectively disseminating accurate information) has been sufficiently tried to really know that.

Is easy to get wrong. When the denialists are getting off by blatant distortion of science, that doesn't mean you should reciprocitate with blatant distortions of science in the other direction.

Or, as I wrote before:

There are downsides to overton window politics which are being ignored in the discourse on the left. Mainly, that it is easy for opponents to start painting your movement as irrational extremists. As we have by now successfully started doing to conservative Republicans in the United States. To avoid this trap, one should at least try to avoid bullshit. And, in the context of policy, one should put a focus on offering concrete alternatives to avoid being seen as merely critical.

Now, that's my perception, born mainly out of an elitist preference for truthfulness, nuance and realism, as well as observing how environmentalism has been sidelined and declared 'dead' in the mainstream during the past 9 years. To the extent that 'environmentalist' is now seen as a pejorative by otherwise reasonable people like Nate Silver. It might be, though, that we are on the brink of a more progressive age and I merely lack the audacity of hope.

And reformulated:

Many of the objections of environmentalists to European climate change policy can be understood in the context of the 'Overton window'. Their criticism is harsher than would seem reasonable, but this is a design to shift the political centre towards their position.  The centre, in that context, is a social construction mainly formulated through the mainstream media. For more, read this post by Jamais Cascio.

As a perpetual concern troll, I worry whether this approach is overrated. The least that needs to be digested is that the original formulation of the Overton window is about advocating more extreme policies than you wish to see implemented in order to widen the spectrum of imagined solutions. Not just about kicking up noise.

IMHO many of the greens that get into the media get it wrong. Of course the media overplays these people the same as it overplays anyone who will say anything 'different' on the other side. As David Roberts recently noted on Grist:

Helpfully, when you offer facile dismissals of science and policy to which people have devoted their lives--"We could end this debate and be done with it," sighs Dubner, "and move on to problems that are harder to solve."--they get angry, and they express that anger. Then you get to be the Brave, Persecuted Freethinker battling the Quasi-Religious Orthodoxy, and the press loves you all the more.  Why else would anyone know Roger Pielke Jr.`s name? Lomborg rode that train, along with Shellenberger/Nordhaus and Dyson. In a smaller, grubbier way, even a flack like Patrick Moore ("co-founder of Greenpeace"!) has made it work for him. It's no wonder Levitt/Dubner thought they could do the same thing, and you can sense their hesitation now that it's not working so well. [...]

On the other hand, simply repeat the broad global consensus-- climate change is an urgent problem that warrants coordinated action to reduce GHG emissions--and you get nowhere. Boooring. (I can't tell you how many back-and-forths I've had with media outlets where I try to explain that the thing most people think is right actually is right, and they say, maybe so, but that's not going to titillate our readers.)

I could start doing this crap tomorrow: Have a revelation that greens are emotional, irrational, in the grips of a cultish faith (a "secular religion"!). Realize that they're doing everything wrong, from their message to their recommended policies. Discover that the real solution is ... I don't know, thorium reactors, and everything else is needless hype and meddling. I could be denounced by greens and wear their opprobrium as a badge to gain entry into cable news and op-ed pages.

If the public keeps reading things from greens about imminent catastrophies and the need for population reduction (and yes, that's not the majority but these people are prominent) it's little wonder many see environmentalism as a secular religion. It's partially a media-created image. It's partially a result of people not being able to process too much reality at a time. But I sometimes do feel like doing a good Realo style purge.

I wasn't thinking of the policy effect. Merely the reasons why even Jon Stewart is talking of "secular religion".

Given that denialists have bombarded public opinion with attacks defaming human-induced global warming as a secular religion for a decade, and did so using by far not only the rhetorical overshoots of loose cannon environmentalist activists and boastful scientists, I don't think you can give most of the blame to these loose cannons for present trends in American public opinion.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.