Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

[steven johnson]

Source: New York Times

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

"The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood," the coalition said in a scientific "backgrounder" provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that "scientists differ" on the issue.
But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

"The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied," the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

Environmentalists have long maintained that industry knew early on that the scientific evidence supported a human influence on rising temperatures, but that the evidence was ignored for the sake of companies' fight against curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. Some environmentalists have compared the tactic to that once used by tobacco companies, which for decades insisted that the science linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was uncertain. By questioning the science on global warming, these environmentalists say, groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action.


Read more: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.xml

[Birthmark]

1. I was just reading that.

Sounds like a criminal conspiracy to me. Attempted mass murder for hire? Depraved indifference?

[opihimoimoi]

2. The Breed of Greed got to them....

[Delphinus]

4. Greed is going to wipe out civilization as we know it.

Greed is what is driving the politicians to not even put single payer health care on the table.

I'm so sick of corporations ruling our world. Why don't the people matter any more?

[opihimoimoi]

5. I am working on plan to help ,,,have ...people must come together to a common bond

[Optical.Catalyst]

3. The companies put their profit motive above human health and survival

Not only does dirty fossil fuels release greenhouse gasses like Carbon Dioxide, they pollute the air and water with poison.

The people who run industries that use hydrocarbon fuels sit back and maintain that global warming is just a natural trend, and coal burning power plants are not a factor, while we watch in horror as 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash rip out of a poorly constructed dam in Tennessee, the Exxon Valdez floods Prince William Sound with 10.8 million gallons of crude oil pollution, and acid rain kills fresh water lakes across the eastern North American continent.

Still the deniers claim there is no global warming as the Larsen B ice shelf collapses, the Wilkins ice shelf collapses, and the Arctic is on its way to becoming ice free.

The climate crisis is upon us right now. Positive feedback loops have been identified that are speeding the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and releasing Methane, a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, at ever increasing rates. Now is the time for action. The human race can’t wait.