In the spirit of friendly debate Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington says there are four basic kinds of mentally or morally defective people who disagree with his own opinion on climate: “[t]he shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool.” And he writes an entire column on why you should ignore them all, including Michael Shellenberger and only listen to, ahem, Damian Carrington. It is not, of course, that he’s an egomaniac, dependent on his living for holding certain views, or rigidly unable to process contrary information. Oh no. That only happens to other people.

Carrington brushes us aside before turning to pummel us. “The science is clear, the severity understood at the highest levels everywhere, and serious debates about what to do are turning into action. The deniers have nothing to contribute to this. However infuriating they are, arguing with them or debunking their theories is likely only to generate publicity or money for them.” But apparently you need to know who you’re ignoring: “The shill is the easiest to understand. He, and it almost always is he, is paid by vested interests to emit clouds of confusion about the science or economics of climate action…. A sadder case is that of the grifters. They have found themselves earning a living by grinding out contrarian articles for right-wing media outlets…. The egomaniacs are also tragic figures. They are disappointed, frustrated people whose careers have stalled and who can’t understand why the world refuses to give full reverence to their brilliance.” And finally “The ideological fool is the fourth type of climate denier, and they can be intelligent. But they are utterly blinded by their inane, no-limits version of the free-market creed. The climate emergency requires coordinated global action, they observe, and that looks horribly like communism in disguise.” (Meanwhile some British academics do a chart explaining another group, or subgroup, who deploy “discourses of delay” as their denialism crumbles.

Notice that nowhere in this list is the possibility of being a well-informed citizen who has grown tired of failed past alarmist scaremongering, knows that today’s doomsters are speculating without solid evidence and doesn’t like paying vast amounts of money for policies and schemes that would make no difference even if the other side were right.

OK then. Why pay attention to a man who thinks no sane person could disagree with him? There has been no shortage of such people over the course of human history on every imaginable subject from science to history to religion to how to grow a tomato, and yet people, even ones possessed of intelligence and good will, somehow do manage to disagree with one another. In this case, it’s because impatience with the need to make intelligent arguments instead of getting everyone to shut up and do as they're told is making climate alarmism a force for shutting down free speech and spreading intolerance.

When an alarmist like Eric Holthaus tweets “The climate emergency isn’t about science, it’s about justice” it means he has no interest in debating science. (And probably very little in debating justice either.) And he’s not alone. When activists celebrate victories in court that bypass voters and legislators, it means they have little interest in debating policy. When social media giants start deplatforming unpopular views, or mainstream media smear skeptics, or universities silence doubters and spend vast sums trying to crush them in court, it means they have little interest in debating anything and their praise for those who challenge orthodoxy is self-deluding conformism.