This is an important distinction:

“Cigarette makers exploited this to great effect by confusing two very different senses of controversy, much as we still have today with climate change: there was an honest controversy about what to do about cigarettes causing harm, and a dishonest controversy about whether such harms had been scientifically proven. The genius of the industry was to confuse these two senses of controversy, one political, one empirical.”

I admit that remained agnostic toward global warming science for many years until multiple lines of evidence came in and established that it’s happening and that humans are a major driver. But now we need to move on from debating the reality human impacts and get to work on debating what to do about it.

Soft Climate Denial at The New York Times