Ed Hawkins tweets that most of the public don't see sceptics as lukewarmers. He's right of course. Nigel Lawson, for example, is regularly condemned as a "denier" by the chattering classes. Take these examples:
Robin McKie, the Guardian's science editor (in a letter to Owen Paterson): you arrive at your new post with the strong endorsement of Britain's chief climate change denier, Nigel Lawson, the former chancellor...
David Conn of the Guardian: Nigel Lawson, a very much ex-politician, now a well known climate change denier, getting a platform on the BBC: why?
Magnus Linklater: Nigel Lawson, climate change denier, says we should quit Europe: a very good reason for staying in.
Jonathan Porritt: Nigel Lawson (former Chancellor of the Exchequer, political street-fighter and spinner, and notorious climate denier...
Yet here are Nigel Lawson's stated views on the subject from 2010:
While CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas, increasing concentrations of which may be expected to have (other things being equal) a warming effect, scientists disagree about how large that effect may be.
Similarly from 2011:
I don’t deny for a moment that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there are so many other factors that affect climate.
Owen Paterson is another who seems quite clear on the subject:
There is almost certainly bound to be some influence by man-made activity but we have just got to be rational and make sure the measures we take to counter it do not actually cause more damage.
The reaction by our green friends and their acolytes in the media has been as follows:
Mehdi Hasan (writing in the Huffington Post, days after Paterson had been admitted to hospital): It wouldn't be so bad if Paterson's denialism was expressed only in the form of rhetorical gaffes.
Natalie Bennet of the Green Party (while Paterson was still convalescing): It's an insult to flood victims that we have an Environment Secretary (Owen Paterson) who is a denier of the reality of climate change and we also can't have anyone in the cabinet who is denying the realities that we're facing with climate change."
Joss Garman of Greenpeace: “David Cameron went from promising the “greenest government ever” to appointing a climate change denier, Owen Paterson, as environment secretary.”
Seumas Milne in the Guardian: paradoxically, Paterson is in fact a climate change denier in what was supposed to be "the greenest government ever"
Or what about that other environmentalist bogey man, Matt Ridley:
Here are his views from 2011:
I fully accept that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, the climate has been warming and that man is very likely to be at least partly responsible.
Or from 2013:
Every time I argue for a lukewarm “third way” — that climate change is real but slow, partly man-made but also susceptible to natural factors, and might be dangerous but more likely will not be — I am attacked from both sides.
So if the public think that prominent sceptics are deniers rather than lukewarmers, we know who is responsible.
Bishop Hill