Holding up a snowball as proof the planet isn’t warming is anti-science. Declaring that an immense amount of evidence-based, peer-reviewed climate research is a hoax or a grand conspiracy is denialist. Those are positions I wish were fringe, but aren’t. And they’re detrimental for discourse and policy.

Some people surely overuse terms like anti-science and denier. (I don’t know how Universal Basic Income denier could be a thing). Presenting new evidence or new evidence-based analysis that challenges prevailing theories is an essential part of the scientific process.

But on the three basic conclusions I listed, there’s so much supportive evidence, and so little countervailing evidence, that it’s in the realm of the planet’s round, the Earth revolves around the sun, and vaccines protect against disease.

When it comes to predicting the future, the more specific you get, the less accurate climate models will be. They deal in probabilities, and if-then possibilities, and can always be improved.

But for policy purposes, we have more than enough evidence to conclude that the risks of unabated warming are high. If someone responds to that by saying “no, the whole thing’s made up,” then I have no problem categorizing them as denialist. And I wish fewer prominent Republicans took that position.