Agreement among climate scientists and scientific organizations that the globe is warming and humans are contributing to it is nearly unanimous, and the hard evidence to back up that position is readily available. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are the highest they’ve been any time in the last 400,000 years; arctic ice is melting; and the global temperature has been steadily increasing, with all ten of the warmest years since recordkeeping began occurring within the last 12 years. As recently as 2008, the political consensus roughly mirrored the scientific consensus on the reality of climate change, but thanks to a concerted effort from corporations and industries that stand to benefit financially from lax oversight of emissions, the conservative establishment has slowly embraced climate change skepticism, with some flat-out denying that warming is occurring and others merely hedging on whether or not it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Many National Conservative Figures Are Climate Skeptics – A Change From 2008

In 2008, Both GOP And Democratic Candidates Believed In Global Warming. From the New York Times: “In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions.” [New York Times, 10/15/11]

By 2012, GOP Presidential Candidates Were Skeptical Of Climate Science. From the New York Times: “But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue. In the crowded Republican presidential field, most seem to agree with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas that ‘the science is not settled’ on man-made global warming, as he said in a debate last month. Alone among Republicans onstage that night, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. said that he trusted scientists’ view that the problem was real.” [New York Times, 10/15/11]

Read more after the jump.