[T]he more the climate data and public opinion undermine alarmists' agenda, the more the alarmists dig in. Tweet A comprehensive new survey entitled "The Politics of Climate" from the left-leaning Pew Research Center offers encouraging insight into Americans' views toward global warming orthodoxy. The climate alarm industry, however, only seems to double down on efforts to shove that false orthodoxy down our throats as the inconvenient truths accumulate. A crony capitalist utility subsidy boondoggle in New York state provides the latest illustration. First, to the Pew survey. Among other findings, the survey reveals that the public broadly rejects the mythical "scientific consensus" and questions climate alarmists' reliability. Fully 67% of Americans don't believe that climate scientists understand very well whether climate change is occurring. An even larger 72% don't believe that climatologists understand the causes of climate changes, with 81% disagreeing that those scientists understand the best ways to address climate change even to the extent that it is occurring. Just 32% of respondents agree that "climate scientists' research findings are influenced by the best available evidence most of the time," and an even tinier 23% minority believe that their research findings are most often influenced "by concern for the best interests of the public." Additionally, only 39% say that "climate scientists can be trusted a lot to give full and accurate information on climate change," while a remarkably small 27% agree with the popular claim that "almost all climate scientists agree that human behavior is mostly responsible for climate change." The Pew data reveals something even more interesting to anyone familiar with the popular myth that skepticism is confined to die-hard elements of the conservative side. Namely, liberals are actually the extremist outliers in the "climate scientist consensus" debate. For example, only 18% of conservative Republicans, 24% of moderate or liberal Republicans and 31% of moderate or conservative Democrats agree with the claim that "climate scientists understand very well whether climate change is occurring." In contrast, fully 68% of liberal Democrats do. Similarly, majorities of conservative Republicans, moderate or liberal Republicans and moderate or conservative Democrats all disagree with the claims that climate scientists understand the causes of climate change, that "almost all climate scientists agree that human behavior is mostly responsible for climate change," that "climate scientists can be trusted a lot to give full and accurate information on causes of climate change" or that climate scientists' research findings "are influenced by the best available evidence most of the time." In contrast, majorities of liberal Democrats agree with all four of those claims. The public's skepticism, of course, is by now well-founded. As we at CFIF have previously highlighted, the climate projection models from climatologists whom we're instructed to trust by mainstream media and liberal politicians have by now proven uniformly exaggerated and inaccurate when matched to actual climate data over the years. Public skepticism is also justified by other high-profile failed global warming predictions. Just last week, like clockwork, we were told that Hurricane Matthew somehow reflected global warming. But recall that back in 2005, we were told in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that global warming was the cause, and that we should expect more and more such hurricanes in coming years. Instead, we proceeded to go 11 years without a major hurricane in the U.S., which was the longest stretch in recorded history. Unfortunately, liberal politicians and climate alarmists simply refuse to let actual climate data or public opinion get in the way of their agenda. New York state offers a disturbing example, where the Public Service Commission (PSC) staffed entirely by Governor Andrew Cuomo's appointees recently approved something called the "Clean Energy Standard" (CES). In a nutshell, that global warming boondoggle requires 50% of the state's power to be generated by carbon-neutral sources by 2030, and subsidizes financially unsound upstate nuclear plants that just happen to be owned by a single well-connected company named Exelon. The subsidies will cost $1 billion in the first two years of the CES program alone, and an estimated $8 billion over the course of the scheme. And who will pay the price of those billions of dollars in subsidies? New York state citizens and businesses, of course. Thus, the more the climate data and public opinion undermine alarmists' agenda, the more the alarmists dig in. Talk about the true "deniers" in the climate debate. It all shows once again that, per William F. Buckley's adage that he'd rather be governed by the first 1,000 names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty, the general American public demonstrates better wisdom and judgment than our supposed climate alarmist superiors. The important task is for the rightfully skeptical electorate to resist alarmists' stubborn agenda of political persecution, wasteful spending and crony capitalism in pursuit of their crusade.