CEI eats brains

Climate Cover Up reveals how zombies are made 4

Climate Cover UpClimate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore (Greystone Books, 2009)Regular readers know that I’ve basically lost the ... what is it? cussedness? ... required to spend time debunking skeptic arguments about the existence of climate change. It’s like being a zombie hunter, shooting, hacking, and defenestrating talking points only to watch them lurch back to life and stumble on. And every time they drag their carcasses into public again, the media covers them again, they get shot again ... and so on, and on, to this day.

Ever wonder what keeps bringing those zombies to life? Turns out it’s a toxic blend of ideology and money. Mostly money. The same well-funded movement that spent so long delaying regulations on tobacco is still out there,  busy polluting public discussion with fear, uncertainty, and doubt about climate change. They do it knowingly, and they profit from it.

Thankfully, not everyone’s lost their cussedness. Some have only become more cussed over time, like DeSmogBlog, a Canadian outfit that has its teeth in the skeptic movement’s arse like it was made of sirloin. Now they’ve got a book out: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. It offers chapter and verse on the industry groups, scientists for hire, and lazy-ass media that have colluded to leave the public in its current state of ignorance on the most important scientific question of our time. This isn’t just bloggy ranting either: the guys know how to dig, and they’ve uncovered original documents. Tasty, tasty documents.

Besides, it’s been blurbed by Leo Dicaprio, James Hansen, Bill McKibben, and Neve Campbell. You gonna argue with that posse?

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. skitters Posted 12:45 pm
    22 Oct 2009

    Yeah this looks great I'm hoping to get it soon. A huge problem is that skepticism is still growing. According to a Gallup pole peoples view that global warming is a urgent threat has been dropping for a couple of years now.

    http://envirogy.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/a-day-of-actio…climate-change/
  2. lockeandkeynes Posted 3:55 pm
    22 Oct 2009

    "What's the Worst that Could Happen?" by Greg Craven
  3. isaacschumann Posted 7:21 am
    29 Oct 2009

    this article demonstrates why discussion of climate change and the global climate in general should be confined to the scientific community. The global climate is an inhumanely complex system that we are only recently coming to understand, there is ongoing debate about many things. science is an ongoing muddle with very few epiphany moments that requires constant skepticism and debate. As scientists, we are always skeptical of our own findings, especially when we are approaching what we believe to be an understanding of an issue. (i am a microbiologist, which is why i do not make bold assertions about climate science, i instead read the work of climate scientists with interest and appreciation; and not just the ones I agree with) I do not question that human activity is affecting the climate, the laws of physics require that if you dump carbon into the atmosphere at ever increasing amounts, SOMETHING will happen. But many legitimate scientists have doubts concerning the presciptions put forward and claims made concerning the effects of climate change, such as roger rivelle, the originator of global warming and al gore's mentor, believed that the claims of global warming alarmists were overblown and overstated the science. a concerted political and media effort was put forth by mr. gore and his colleagues to discredit him. this author does a disservice to scientific debate; anyone trying to feed talking points to you and simplify an issue is a politician not a scientist. The work being done by climatologists and paleo-climatologists is truly fascinating, yet it has not given us concrete understanding of either the the current climate or climate in the past; some studies show no more than 1 C of warming per millennia, others show up to 7-12 C change in temperature over 50 years. both are good studies, and we will learn from all of them. Science is confusing, slow and does not fit nicely into snap judgements and talking points, and the attempt to do so makes for bad science; eg. all this talk about tipping points, the irriversible damage were going to do(the changes already are irreversible, were never going to get back to 350 ppm CO2 in our lifetimes, sorry bill) etc..., and makes people join silly groups like 350.org that are proposing ludicrous and impossible solutions, if they even bother to do so. There are too many bs claims made by both the denialist and and alarmist camps.

    ps. who cares what celebrities and a celebrity scientist think about that book

    pps. note to both sides, more scientists saying something does NOT equal more truth; eg. just because a vast majority of scientists did not believe in anthropogenic climate change in 70's did not make it false.
  4. yashmiss Posted 7:26 am
    04 Nov 2009

    I always wandered where they came from :)

    Yash
    Healthcare accounting firm

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