" and a massive increase in tropical hurricanes."

They have been saying this for YEARS now, and there hasn't been a major hurricane in how many years?

It is predictions and statements like this that have people like me scratching our heads. None of the predictions of doom have happened. Polar Bears are not drowning either. When people are caught lying, repeatedly, people stop believing them. This is what happens when people stop reading fairy tales and start creating them using "Science" as a backdrop.

Ahh yes, we've just established that the oceans have been warmer than we expected. And just around the same time we've had a recent minimum of severe hurricanes. Climate change or not, you cannot predict severe weather patterns. Anti-deniers like to attribute every negative event to climate change and none of the positive events. Maybe a warmer planet will have less severe weather if the air temperature is closer to the water temperature as it is the differential that causes severe weather.

(just one example) I wonder if Southern Baptist - of the Fire Brimstone leaning - are seen as "trustworthy" more/less than scientists. I'd wager they are, and I'd double down that it has little to do with how "warm/fuzzy" they come off as.

I'd wager this has much less to do with scientists coming off as "warm/fuzzy" and more to do with most people’s innate distrust of those that deliver either information they don't agree with (or more specifically that doesn't agree with their preconceived notions) or information that makes them feel stupid - when the majority hears about something they are too ignorant to understand, they don't like/trust the person with that idea - but that's just human nature.

While "scientists" do have their problems (journals / peer review circle-jerks / et al) I fear the only way they'll come across as "warm/fuzzy" would be if they "dumb it down" even more and that's not a direction we should be going, as we're already down to -11.

'Climategate' involved people being happy at the death of scientists they disagreed with. I don't think you understand the meaning of 'friendlier.' Climategate was basically a bunch of assholes being revealed as assholes.

Science is about reproducible results. Publish the details of your experiment, so I can perform your experiment (and variations on it) myself. Your claim is strengthened if I get the same results you do.

You must have missed the whole Climategate thing.