Denying the
facts
?
Climate change
Just look at these hysterical and/or anti-scientific
statements by members of the 'don't-worry-about-climate-change' brigade
:
# "THE BIG CLIMATE CHANGE 'FRAUD'"
- Daily
Express
#
"Concerns
over global warming are doomsday scare tactics pushed by an
environmental priesthood" - Sarah Palin
#
"The
theory
that
global
warming
is
all the fault of
mankind is a massive scam based on flawed computer modelling, bad
science and an anti-west ideology" - Melanie Phillips
#
"The
claim
that
global
warming
is
caused by
man-made emissions is simply untrue and not based on sound
science" - James Inhofe, U.S. Senator for Oklahoma
#
"The
climate change movement is a conspiracy to
impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin
or Mao" - Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party
#
"This
well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by
contrarian scientists, free-market think-tanks and industry has created
a paralysing fog of doubt around climate change"
- Newsweek magazine (U.S.)
#
"Carbon
dioxide
is
not
a
harmful
gas,
it
is
a
harmless gas", -
influential far-right U.S. Republican Congress-woman Michelle Bachman
#
"Global
warming
is
poppycock;
carbon
dioxide
is not
the driver" - David Bellamy
These
non-scientific
'authorities' see the environmental movement as a
socialist conspiracy determined to destroy the make-believe world of
sanitised global financial/industrial capitalism. They are
often funded by such idealistic benefactors of humankind
as the U.S. oil company ExxonMobil and the tobacco industry. They are
waging a very effective campaign to deny the facts of climate change.
They would like us to believe that most of the
world's climate scientists are telling lies about the proven changes in
the global climate. We are not told why these scientists would be so
unprofessional or dishonest. These story-tellers cannot accept that
human beings are responsible for most of the alarming changes which
have been observed and measured in the highly-complex world climate
system.
In the end, of course, non-scientist citizens like
you and me have to make up our own minds. If you prefer the
explanations quoted above, that's fine; it's your own business.
Provided that you know that there are some very powerful organisations
which are spending large amounts of money to sell their own version of
the truth.
'Merchants of Doubt : How a Handful of
Scientists Obscured
the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' by Naomi
Oreskes and Erik M. Conway Bloomsbury
Flat Earth Society
Worst-case scenario
Climate
change
scepticism