"Climate Truthers: Why Global Warming Deniers Are Conspiracy Theorists, Not Rational Skeptics" is an excellent essay by Sahil Kapur posted on Huffington Post yesterday (May 31).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sahil-kapur/climate-truthers-why-glob_1_b_869294.html

Kapur's article nicely supplements John Cook's essay, "Are you a genuine skeptic, or a climate denier?" 

I saw that article yesterday.  Kind of basic stuff, and I don't know why he chooses the term 'truthers' rather than 'deniers'.  I guess it's because of '9/11 truthers'.  Kind of a strange article because the author seemed to think he was saying something new, but it was just the same old familiar description of global warming denial we're all familiar with.

What's "old news" to us, may very well be "new news" to many readers of Huffington Post.

I think that every contrarian movement that's in conflict with mainstream science feels obligated to indulge in a conspiracy theory to explain why their views contradict the consensus. It's not just conservative cranks, either; there are contrarians about vaccinations, cell phones, smart meters, very low level radioactivity, power lines, etc and if you ever try to argue with them on the basis of peer-reviewed science you are immediately countered with a conspiracy theory.