How to argue and win an argument with climate change skeptics?

[QF5]

Last night I found myself in a heated argument between a science student and a business colleague of mine. Both are in their mid 30's. My business colleague is a "passionate" climate change skeptic and loves to use very opportunity to quote these 5 same scientists over and over again that state that the whole thing is a farce.

Yesterday he argued with another friend of mine who has just finished his BoS. His arguments were that there are actually real scientists out there .... like the 5 skeptics that are quoted in about every article about the subject and that also some countries would deny the whole thing. HE went on to argue that it would be more of a "believe" people like to join onto rather than science. Now this came from a guy who takes his family to the same church every 3 days and also gives them about 10% of his income .....

My scientist-in-training friend could argue all he wanted, quote official positions, facts etc, but they guy just kept going with the non sense talk.

I have encountered about 10 or more people just like him in the past year or two and would really like to know what their real issue is. Your average denier seems to always be the loudest guy in the room calling everyone racist, homophobe and possible nazi for mild disagreements. What to do? How to react? What to say? As I am really tired of just not saying anything!

 

[Guilherme]

Hmm Interesting, you said business colleague.
Money is the first thing that comes on these peoples's heads, don't matter how hard you try, they will never understand something tha is non-money related or something that may cause them to lose money.
Simple as that.

 

[TheVampireMuffinMan]

There's really no way. In general, they are prone to being fanatical about their beliefs and as you might know, arguing with a fanatic is like digging through granite with a plastic spork. You just aren't going to get through...

_

 

[chessmasterd2]

I don't know if it is real. My personal problem with the "Average" earth temperature, is that I think the way in which they measure it means nothing. it went up 1 degree? Well if you average the temperature of my house at 70 degrees, and then you put a welder in my house and turn it on, it's like 5000 times hotter than the sun, but that doesn't make my HOUSE that hot, it may mildly raise the temperature, but the Average temperature will be skewed like hell when you have that much heat in one area being added to the equation. The earth goes naturally through hot and cold cycles. We dont' know what normal is. It's hard to say it's from greenhouse gasses.

 

[Baccheus]

There is no reason to argue. The science guy should have just said I don't need to or want to argue this with you. People should understand that the skeptics are few, make no sense and are generally ignored by people who follow the science and make the decisions. Don't waste your time in arguments. Your business friend probably believes the earth is only 6,000 years old and was made magically in 7 days; you can't make such a person believe science and there is no good reason to try.