There's a great and extremely revelant piece over at WorldChanging this week about the need for a concerted plan to deal with the skeptics hard at work confusing the public in online dicussions about climate change.

Alex Steffan writes:

...it is precisely because the climate crisis is so profound that we need to encourage the American debate on the subject to move on, finally and for good, and start to focusing on how to build a bright green future as quickly as possible. The science, after all, is pretty unequivocal at this point. Indeed, essentially the last remaining credible skeptic, Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer announced this month that, despite his dislike for environmental groups,"[D]ata trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic climate change. ... Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism."

From that compelling dismissal of skepticism (and that's a nail in the coffin if I ever read one), Alex goes on to note that climate change skeptics have become a new form of "troll" in the blog world, turning up in comments to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. He then proposes that as bloggers, we need a concerted plan to deal with this situation and set the record straight. To that end, he's asking for help in creating a "Universal Climate Skeptic Response Post" for WorldChanging.Org, which will then be made available for other bloggers everywhere to use also.

An excellent and timely idea, without question. We're looking forward to collaborating on this one. There is no debate, the illusion that there is one keeps us from taking the action that's required to save ourselves, and it's time to set the record straight. Blogosphere, unite!