1. If we don't admit that there's a problem, we don't have to admit that we need to solve it. Even solutions that will save money in the long run will often cost money/resources in the short term. So, refusing to admit that there is AGW will drive up short-term profits.
2. If you have a job/business that in some way relies on fossil fuels, deforestation, or other causes of AGW, the longer it takes the world to start acting on AGW, the longer you can keep your job.
3. If you have a job that in some way involves disaster relief, reconstruction after hurricanes, or the like, then failure to act on AGW may get you more business.
4. If you are one of the few "winners" from AGW (for example, a farmer in Canada), failure to act on AGW will mean that you will, for example, lose fewer crops to late frosts, or whatever benefit you receive from warming.
Apparently ignorance is it's own reward for denialists
None. Denying AGW not only stands in the way of solutions, but leads us unprepared for the effects of AGW.
So they can pretend that their not ruining the planet.
You choose nothing but wikipedia and political websites. Nice. No one is disputing there has been a miniscule increase over the last 100 years or so, but not to the point where sensationalism has been screaming in order to increase taxes. Give me a break.
Should we spend trillions of dollars to stop the next meteor? Because there is a better chance of that getting us than AGW? Or how about the "super volcano under the US? Should we spend trillions stopping it, because again, there is a better chance of that killing us.
Maybe you could explain this graph to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Ag...
The costs to the global economy are clear enough. Increasing losses and damage to resources, agricultural output, and infrastructure as action to reduce the use of carbon fuels is derailed, public confusion about the issues and the scientific realities, politicians pandering to ignorance and confusion while feeding at the fossil fuel industry trough, journalists having a convenient phony "debate" to sensationalize the back and forth between "both sides" of, etc.
But what are the benefits? (I can think of a few, small in relation to the costs, but worth noting).
What have you noticed?
http://nas-sites.org/climate-change/qanda.html#.U2Afzsf75DS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://realclimate.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/the-great-carbon-bubble_b_1259782.html
http://jcmooreonline.com/2013/01/31/engineering-climate-denial/
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/How-GOP-became-party-of-denial-on-warming-4469641.php
http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-denier-database
