I work with a lot of Fundamentalist Christian types. Many are actually cool people who I like a lot however I recently got into a discussion / debate about Global Warming with several of these co-workers on Facebook. Most of them were unaware that every scientific organization in the world had come down on the side of human caused global warming and only a hand full being no-committal. Of course you can guess what their answer was to this. Yep, they don't trust scientists because they say: "the theory of Evolution is a fact". In a nut shell this totally pisses them off. What I realized is these folks are primed to look for any reason to go against science, because science undercuts their whole foundation and values and the idea that their might be this wonderful place called heaven waiting for them after death. I could give them a billion facts but it simply won't matter if they don't trust science. In a nut shell, these people are a lost cause unless they start to believe in things like Evolution.
So here was my answer to them which I am sure will have zero impact:
"It's common knowledge that all those scientific organizations come down on the side of global warming, feel free to go to each of their web sites and see for yourself, but if you don't trust scientists then that wont mean much to you. However it would be one hell of a conspiracy theory to imagine all those organizations and scientists making all this up behind the scenes and there are a lot of Christian and religious scientists mixed into those numbers. Keep in mind that most of the leading voices on climate denial like Patrick J. Michaels are part of the CATO institute and they get a ton of money from the oil and gas industry. Michaels even admits it in this video that 40% of his funding comes from Big Oil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fguJod_voPc Just like the scientists who worked for Phillip Morris that said cigarette smoke was not bad for you the oil and gas company has a crop of the same kind of scientists.
As for Evolution, even the Catholic Church is now moving toward a belief in Evolution. They still believe that God created the Universe but when you can see light from galaxies that is tens of billions of years old, one has to wonder why the Bible says the universe is only a few thousand years old. Things like a hike from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where there are very simple life forms in the oldest layers of rock and very complex life forms in the top young layers, have caused even the most religious people to realize that they need to re-think their understanding of the universe and it doesn't mean they have to abandon a belief in God, it just makes it more mysterious and big! People had very limited understanding of things 2,000 years ago. Even simple things like thinking the sun revolved around the earth. Cheers"
Don't worry fellow DUers, I am not holding my breath that this will change their thinking. Anyway, it's a nice civil conversation so far.