In a beloved film from my childhood, “Flight of Dragons,” the scientist hero confronts the evil red magician on a dark crag. As menacing snakes sprout out of the magician’s neck and breathe fire at the scientist, the spectacled nerd definantly stands up to the wizard and says three simple words, “I deny you.” Sneering, the magician retorts, “deny ME, and you deny ALL magic.”

In the real world, the reverse has actually been true for the past decade, if not longer. The magician has been denying the scientist. The sad thing is, stastically, more than half of the United States is still self-proclaimed magician when it comes to climate science. And unfortunately, it’s screwing us all over.

Climate change denial receives far less press than say Holocaust denial, but arguably, it’s much more damaging to the world in our modern age. Climate change denial is rife in every segment of society, from the sneering pundit to the living rooms of middle America, churches, and message boards. And because so many people don’t “believe” in the global consensus built on decades of hard research, we’re at risk of a very rude awakening and a whole lot of misery.

I’m not going to beat around the bush. If you deny the work of climatologists, you deny all science in the process. If climatology as a field is “junk science,” then how is geology, physics, biology, or even medicine any more factual or “right?” Why are you any more likely to believe a spot test for strep throat than you are an ice-core sample analysis of carbon dioxide trends? Why are you more likely to trust computer models of hurricane formation than a computer model of projected sea level rise? Are you more likely to believe one oncologist (a cancer scientist) who says you don’t have cancer than the 99 others who say you do?

I’m not denying there’s plenty of bad science. There’s shoddy research, dubious conclusions, and ulterior motives in every field of the scientific discipline. But bad science is the work of individuals, not a field. That’s the beauty of how science works. It weeds out crackpots and careless work by virtue of peer review, future trials, further evaluation, and so forth. That’s why to me, it seems far more likely that the “junk science” is the 5%, not the 95%.

Which brings me to my final point. Climate change denial infuriates me not only because it’s helping the Atlantic Ocean on its way to my basement, but because it debases scientists. It’s a slap in the face. It’s embarrassing to see so many people so quick to dismiss the work of experts in a reputable field they know little to nothing about. It’s criminal how one’s allegiance to a particular cable news channel or political party trumps the very idea of logical sense. It’s an insult to the researcher spending months away from his family on a crag of ice in blizzard-swept Antarctica. It’s an affront to the scientist spending long days at sea collecting ocean samples. And it’s spitting in the face of brilliant men and women from diverse fields who are trying to stave off a catastrophe that can and will affect nearly everyone on this planet if we let it.

But the really sad thing about this is, it’s us. It’s our future. It’s our future and YOUR children’s future and it’s being thrown further and further away from any chance at fixing it. And it’s happening because we as workers, parents, and people choose what science we feel like believing. And that is PROFOUNDLY fucked up, my fellow Americans.