My old friend Vladimir Ilyitch used to call them “useful fools”.

There’s a good name I’ve heard Don Wuebbles use for people using those tactics – “confusionists”

Joe -
I think “delayers” is excellent in ‘wrong-footing’ the opposition.
http://www.allwords.com/word-wrongfooted.html
It needs some context, without which it might be misunderstood to mean delaying climate change. Those practitioners will claim they’re delaying unnecessary action and so might embrace the name. Perhaps an adjective such as ‘dire’ or ‘dangerous’ could help.

I’d hoped for more along these lines from the Rockbridge Institute but their efforts are infrequent. Joe Brewer sometimes writes about framing and climate. Chipping sharp tools from pieces of mental flint is hard work.

The Hansen (H) — the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases of all types that is equivalent to 1/1000th of a ppm of atmospheric CO2. So if current CO2e is 420.nnn ppm, then it’s 420,nnn H, where H inexorably rises through time.

I thought about the Keeling curve (and that might be another worthwhile name — Keeling units) and decided that there was some value to letting people see that, while it goes up and down through the year, the downs are never as low year to year …

It’s tough to come up with a single word for these people, because their recalcitrance comes from a variety of sources. Some don’t believe because it conflicts with their religious sensibilities. Others simply are too concrete; they can’t follow the thread of scientific abstractions that say because we know A, B, and C, we can predict D will occur. Still others are unconsciously motivated by greed and hedonism–they can’t believe because then they’d have to give up their yacht.

And some are just cussed, sour, contrarian mules. Come to think of it. THAT is the quality they all have in common–stubborness. They simply are consciously or unconsciously opposed to reevaluating their existing outlook.

So I nominate something like the “obstinates,” the “intractables” or the “stiff-necks.” Or maybe “Dead-enders” is best of all.

It is interesting to note that biologist confronted with pseudo-scientific attacks on evolution also call their opponents “denialists”. There was some overlap between the usenet communities so I;m not sure if the nomenclature was independently developed.

It is nevertheless the case that anyone dealing with truths they find sufficiently inconvenient relies on a comparable array of tactics to befuddle the sympathetic and ill-informed audience. The use of these tactics, rather than the underlying purpose, reasonably needs a name and “denialism” is a good one.

That said, it may in certain circumstances provide an unnecessary distraction. I have proposed “delusionist” as an alternative term. It has some nice features.

Where are the other images that should be ubiquitous? Where are the artists and computer geeks who could create them? (I think Global Warming Art should have a “round earth” temperature-projections image, but the person I asked about it didn’t respond. (have spam filters developed an appetite for climate-related email?)

This is worth getting off our butts for, isn’t it?

How about Climate truthers.

I was trying to think of a group that is like the deniers and then steal some of what they call themselves. I then thought of ‘911 for truth’ or groups in that ‘industry’ and that they had many similarities to the global warming deniers.

1) They’ll take some innocent fact and twist it to make some seemingly plausible but untrue claim.

The twin towers and building 7 came down not from the fires in the buildings, but from explosive charges set by some government group.

Instead of the Pentagon being crashed into by a jet liner that was flown by the highjackers, it was crashed into by another plane and explosives went off to make it look like a jet airliner did it.

List some of the 911 for truth claims that aren’t true.
List some of the Climate Truthers claims that aren’t true.

2) There was an official commission that looked into the problem, but of course it is untrustworthy and had to be part of the government conspiracy against the people.
The 911 commission for the 911 crisis
IPCC for global warming.

3) Mainstream scientists and others have examined their theories and have largely debunked them.
List group that has debunked 911 for truth. Mechanics Illustrated has done a nice job with the 911 for truth group.
List group that has debunked; IPCC and Realclimate.com for global warming.

This is just a quick list of similarities, I’ll leave it for a professional writer to do a better job with it. I think it should be considered and do what you can with it. Maybe it will stick.