There’s an Emerging Right-Wing Divide on Climate Denial. Here’s What It Means (and Doesn’t) - by David Roberts

Now that the public and the media are paying more attention, denial is starting to make the GOP look like, to borrow a phrase from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the stupid party.  Denialism is increasingly seen, not only among elites but in popular culture, as atavistic and conspiracy-minded.  Climate has become one of those issues where the gulf between the insular far right and the rest of American (to say nothing of Western) culture has become so vast that it is serving like a moat, keeping out the very demographic groups the GOP needs in coming years.
...
So what does this emerging tension in the GOP mean?  Lots of enviro types see it as great news, as a kind of breakthrough.  Paul Gilding writes (in a great post worth reading in full) that the “dam of denial” is breaking and what comes next is a “flood.”

I agree with the first part, but I’m not so sure about the second.  Because the argument to which establishment Republicans are pivoting — or at least trying to pivot, given their tenuous control over the crazies — is likely to be more effective than denial in achieving their real goal, which is to block government action.  It was always the savvier argument, the one they should have switched to years ago.

Here’s oleaginous dirty-energy lobbyist Scott Segal, pretending he’s describing a narrative but actually trying to propagate one:

The science issue just isn’t as salient as it once was,” said Scott Segal, who represents energy interests at Bracewell & Giuliani.  Debate over climate science was “all the rage” in the past, he said.  “But today, the key issue is whether proposed regulations cost too much, weaken reliability or are illegal.

By “salient,” Segal means “effective.”  Science denial isn’t working any more.
...
Conservatives are relatively safe on this anti-regulatory ground; it unites their entire coalition. It’s ground that no reporter will portray as false or ridiculous, as they might denialism.  “Small government” is taken seriously in a way “scientific hoax” never will be.
...
Denialism has just become an unnecessary distraction, one that’s hurting them culturally. They are better off just opposing any bill or regulation that comes up on the usual grounds:  big government, overreach, economic misery, blackouts, blah blah.  That kind of thing has worked for decades and there’s no reason it couldn’t work against climate solutions too.

Read more at There’s an Emerging Right-Wing Divide on Climate Denial.  Here’s What It Means (and Doesn’t)