A history of doubt
Newsweek is running a fascinating history of coordinated climate change denial in a story The Truth About Denial.
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. “They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,” says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. “Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That’s had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.”
It’s been the dirty secret of the dinosaur industries who see their immediate bottom line about to be hit by actions to mitigate against climate change that they know global warming is real, they know we humans have caused it, and they have been doing everything in their path to coverup those facts. But no amount of bullshit pseudo-documentaries, hack-science and well funded rhetoric can keep the basic, inconvenient truths contained. For those of us who care about the planet, our time is surely now. — DS
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