My response to an article like this is to resist the temptation to restate the latest climate science, what the current state of play is with respect to global heating, the melting of the icecaps, ocean acidification, desertification. That not only misses the point, it falls into the very trap set by arguments like this.
Of course science is an ongoing intellectual activity and is never over and completed. We know this. The scientists who continue to research the various problems arising from the crisis in the climate system are continuing to do science and have never stopped doing science. The implication – indeed outright accusation - that those seeking to act in light of the research findings of scientists in these areas have actually stopped doing science in order to do politics is the thing to be challenged. But it needs to be challenged in a way that is alive to some fine distinctions. I labour the distinction between the fields of theoretical reason and practical reason. The former comprises our knowledge of the external world. Science does not deal with absolute truth, and is therefore can never be a finished project at all, always an ongoing reality check which tests hypotheses and theories by way of facts. Got it. We know.
The contentious part is the relation of science as that reality check to the world of politics and ethics. I include technology, too, in this part of my argument. Scientific knowledge and technological know-how do not, in themselves, have the character of true virtues in themselves for the reason that they give us the ability to act, but not the will. The latter is a matter of morals and motivations, the inner motives. I am therefore concerned to read articles such as this not to contest the denial of the science with respect to the climate crisis. I am concerned instead, to distinguish and delineate those things that are too often conflated. Note how, in the article, politicians such as Al Gore and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are targetted in order to contrast the ongoing and open nature of science to the supposedly 'closed' pseudo-science being peddled by those demanding climate action. Note, too, the snide reference to Ocasio-Cortez as a 'bartender turned Congresswoman.' That's an ad hominen attack, and a crude one. I have worked at several jobs in the building trade and still work in mailing and distribution. So what? I know how to construct a strong argument. There is a deliberate conflation of science and politics in this article which is designed to make it look as though those who, from a political perspective, are demanding practical action to address the climate crisis are not actually doing science. The science is out there, for those who wish to engage with it seriously. If you have alternate explanations to the myriad environmental crises underway, then you are free to do your own research and present your findings and scientists will subject your work to rigorous analysis. We don't need to be informed that 'science is never settled.' No one but no one has stopped doing science, the science is still very much underway. Inconveniently, it is not merely confirming the view of anthropogenic global warming, it is showing that the situation is much worse than thought. We have erred on the side of caution. If you have alternate views, then present them, show the workings out. Every time this has been done, as with work on solar and volcanic activity, it has always been shown to be insufficient to explain the heating underway. If you don't like that conclusion, then the scientific world remains open to your alternative hypotheses, bring them forth.
The issue is elsewhere. Of course, the real bone of contention is politics. There are people who don't like the political conclusions being drawn from the science. The issue is not one of freezing scientific investigation and declaring questions to be settled once and for all. The issue is one of political decision and action. The world faces severe environmental crises that need to be addressed. That is a responsibility of government, law and the entire institutional fabric of our societies. The temper of politics is judicious. Politics is not about truth. This is a point I would be concerned to emphasize. Because it exposes a truth in supposedly climate denying articles that environmentalists miss at their peril. When politicians call for environmental action and for a Green New Deal, they do so as a political commitment, and they should be clear about that. The field of practical reason concerns politics and ethics, it concerns persuasion and the soliciting of active consent. The weakness in the climate movement lies in pressing science (and technology) into service as politics and ethics. Not only can science and technology not do the job of ethics and politics, they circumvent it when used authoritatively, stated as a necessity which denies will and choice on the part of citizens. That is, and always has been, my critical point with respect to environmentalism. If the environmental cause continues to claim to speak with the voice of science, it will continue to fail in the field of practical reason, it will continue to suffer from a democratic deficit, and it will continue to be blocked by those who have a vested interest in prevailing arrangements. If those relations serve them, and others, as they say, why should we be surprised that they defend them? It is simply inadequate to couch an explicitly political and ethical case in terms of scientific necessity. That's the core truth in articles like this. Rather than respond by raising charges of climate denialism, we should instead differentiate clearly between the fields of theoretical and practical reason, and give each of science, technology, politics and ethics their due in appropriate relation. An integral environmentalism ought to be presented in terms of citizens' views with respect to how they ought to live in common.
That the case for the Green New Deal rests on good sound science does not constitute the whole nor even the main part of a green politics. Environmentalists make a mistake when they think it does, leaving out the whole citizen dimension of choice, will, and legitimacy. That's what makes it easy for those who wish to block each, any, and every case for environmental action by conflating science and politics – because that's precisely what environmentalism has had a tendency to do: reducing the political and the ethical to the science, ditching the realm of values for a (politically dictatorial) statement of fact. It won't work as politics. For effective climate action, you have to build political will on the part of citizens.