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Climate science doubters readily admit that world temperatures are changing.
Only that warming has actually stabilised during the past decade.
Emissions trading scheme (ETS) opponents also think climate change is happening, well, sort of.
It's just that humans are not to blame.
Don't call them deniers - to some that's an offensive term.
They'd rather be referred to as sceptics.
Sceptics who are questioning the science that links rising carbon emissions with hotter global temperatures.
Australia's chief scientist Penny Sackett is among the nine out of 10 scientists in the world who accept that anthropogenic climate change is real.
The most vocal critics of this scientific consensus happen to come from the right of politics, or from academics who aren't climate science researchers.
They are comparing themselves to heretics who in an earlier age were crucified for questioning the church.
The new clerics, they argue, are the scientists and politicians warning us about rising sea levels and the loss of ocean biodiversity and coral bleaching as carbon pollution acidifies the world's oceans.
Climate sceptics see an ETS as an economically catastrophic tax.
While federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull wants action on climate change, he has been undermined by his Senate leader Nick Minchin, who has likened an ETS to a left-wing, post-Cold War conspiracy to de-industrialise the world.
Aside from Senator Minchin and The Nationals, West Australian Liberal MP Dennis Jensen has been the coalition's most vocal critic of climate science.
Asked about catastrophic bushfire dangers in Adelaide as temperatures soared past 40 degrees celsius, Dr Jensen responded: 'Perth, it's been bloody cold'.
His climate science critique is based on the argument that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) temperature measure methodologies are as inaccurate as long-range weather forecasts.
The IPCC says world temperatures between 1995 and 2006 were among the 12 warmest years since records began in 1850.
It has data showing that world temperatures have risen as global carbon dioxide levels have climbed, from a pre-industrial 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in 2005.
NASA also has data showing a similar sharp rise in ocean temperatures from the 19th century onwards.
But Dr Jensen, who has a doctorate in ceramics, argues that world temperatures have actually fallen since 2000.
'I'm open to evidence that could contradict my position again,' said Dr Jensen, who once invoked Adolf Hitler to denounce the scientific consensus on climate change.
'I'm not religious on this.'
Another politician, Family First senator Steve Fielding, became critical of climate science after attending a Washington conference organised by the Heartland Institute, a free-market lobby group.
In June, shortly after his conversion, Senator Fielding said the solar cycle of the sun could be to blame for global warming.
Since then, he has maintained the line that while climate change is happening, humans are not to blame.
Before voting against Labor's ETS in August, the senator organised to have climate sceptics challenge chief scientist Penny Sackett in the presence of Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.
The group included geology professor Bob Carter, former Australian Greenhouse Office computer programmer David Evans, environmental engineering professor Stewart Franks and meteorologist Bill Kininmonth.
The UK Hadley Centre's Climate Research Unit says three of the hottest years on record have occurred since 1998 but average temperatures have not risen above that level since then.
Using this data, Senator Fielding argues that world air temperatures have not gone up in line with rising carbon dioxide levels - but his attempts to have a chart with 15 years of data tabled in parliament failed.
Another geology professor, Ian Plimer from the University of Adelaide, also disputes the link between rising carbon dioxide and global warming, arguing that water vapour is responsible for most of the so-called greenhouse effect.
Australia, he contends, will become 'the laughing stock of the world' if political leaders make decisions on climate change based on ideology rather than on science.
Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson attended the launch of a climate sceptics book in early 2007, several months before Labor won power, but he has since stayed loyal to the party position.
Weighing in to the debate, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell has also declared himself to be a climate change sceptic.
By contradicting his boss The Pope, who wants carbon emissions reduced, Cardinal Pell is the clerical equivalent of Nick Minchin when it comes to climate change.
'Thirty or 40 years ago, actually, some of the same scientists were warning us about the dangers of an ice age, so I take all these things with a little bit of a grain of salt,' Cardinal Pell says.
As Australians brace for a particularly hot summer, temperatures are also rising in the parliamentary chamber, with Tasmanian Liberal senator David Bushby taking offence to being labelled a climate change denier.
'The extremely pejorative term of denier has offensive, racial, anti-Semite overtones,' he said.
As sceptics of climate science undermine public confidence in an emissions trading scheme, the real change that is needed is further delayed.
