this article does a good job explaining the connection between the increasing denial of the facts of global chimate change and the insistence by those on the political right, as a direct function of their need to identify with their group which defines itself by denying the federal govenment's necessary functions for the country. the article shows the progression of the scientific facts over the decades of study

Another study of the role of the culture war: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503 and James Hansen's observations from 1999 on why the US climate had failed to be as convincing as the global climate " Part of the "answer" is that U.S. climate has been following a different course than global climate, at least so far. ... The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed, in the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934. Global temperature, in contrast, had passed 1930s values by 1980 and the world has warmed at a remarkable rate over the last 25 years." ... More »