[pdonis]

I'm not sure where you're getting "denialist" from his article. He doesn't say anything about whether there is or isn't global warming, or whether humans are or are not causing at least a portion of it. His charge is that the APS, instead of fostering open debate, is stifling it. I do think he's too preoccupied with money as a motivation for why the stifling is being done; but his primary charge is basically that scientists aren't doing their due diligence the way they used to:

"As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time...How different it is now."

When I read the IPCC reports, for example, I find it hard to disagree with this assessment; even before ClimateGate we had plenty of evidence that what went into those reports was largely politically, not scientifically, determined. Note that this does not mean the IPCC reports are entirely wrong, nor does it mean that global warming will not be a problem. It means the reports don't make a good enough case for, say, emasculating the entire world economy in order to maybe, possibly, reduce the global temperature rise over the next century by a fraction of a degree Celsius.

[jdp23]

well, he does use terms like "the global warming scam" and "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist" which are typically associated with denialists.

[pdonis]

True, but I give him credit for using words a little more precisely than your average media hack. It's clear to me from the context that by "scam" and "fraud" he means not the simple claim that the climate is warming, nor even the claim that humans may be causing at least a portion of it, but the whole edifice that's been erected to drive certain political policies that are not justified by the state of the science, and to suppress any suggestion that those policies might not be justified.

[jdp23]

agreed, the main tone of his article is somebody lamenting "scientists behaving badly" and remarking on the changes since the good old days. no idea whether or not he's a denialist, i was just trying to highlight that the language he uses could lead people to assume that.