Reply #4: They were handed it on a silver platter.

[FBaggins]

Recent years have seen an increase in how AGW is described to the public. Scientists (and politicians) who are upset over lack of sufficient action make hyperbolic claims about what the future looks like, but they're far too short-sighted and extreme. "Glaciers will be gone by" or "DC simply doesn't get snow any longer" or similar are not statements backed up by the science. When reality shows this to be the case... you can expect the opposition to jump on it (and the public to buy it).

Same thing happened after Katrina/Rita. Some scientists shifted from the more reasonable position that AGW could result in more (and more powerful) storms and instead started to make specific predictions about the next year being worse... that this was the new normal. Go through a few years of unusually low hurricane activity along the Gulf and Atlantic coastlines and they look like they don't know what they're talking about.