Climate denial is like The Matrix; more Republicans are choosing the red pill | Dana Nuccitelli

The wall of Republican climate denial is starting to crack; who will be the Neo that accelerates the process?

Trump's EPA administrator Scott Pruitt wants to hold televised 'Red Team/Blue Team' climate science 'debates.' The idea is that a 'Red Team' of scientists will challenge the mainstream findings of 'Blue Team' scientists. That may sound familiar, because it's exactly how the peer-review process works. But climate deniers have lost the debate in the peer-reviewed literature, with over 97% of peer-reviewed studies endorsing the consensus on human-caused global warming, and the few contrarian papers being flawed and failing to withstand scientific scrutiny.

So Scott Pruitt is trying to put his thumb on the scale, giving the less than 3% of contrarian scientists equal footing on a 'Red Team.' John Oliver showed how to do a statistically representative televised climate debate (so brilliantly that it's been viewed 7.4m times), but it's probably not what Pruitt had in mind: