Field of Science

Confirming your suspicions on climate change denial

Particularly with the topic of climate change denialism, it was pretty easy for us skeptics to believe that corporations and individuals whose fiscal interests are wrapped up in polluting businesses were promoting denialism by paying think tanks, even pseudothink tanks, to produce counter arguments, counter "studies", to convince people that the issue is still a matter of some debate, something still disputed, so reasonable, but gullible, people still might think inaction is OK or maybe even warranted.  Now someone has spilled the beans on the Heartland Institute, that wonderful organization that pioneered denialism for the tobacco industry.  And it worked so well for so long that it only made sense to use their tobacco-causes-cancer denialism play-book on climate change.  You can find all the details in some leaked documents via Greg Laden's blog.  The best part is how you portray climate change as "uncertain and controversial" as a means of dissuading teachers from teaching science!  Yes, keep them uneducated about science; they're just so much more gullible that way.  An awful lot of people will be very defensive, if not downright belligerent, because it isn't fun to find out you've been played.  The same tactic has worked pretty well for religious opposition to evolution too.  And why shouldn't it?  Grifters know that the same old cons continue to work. 

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