NEWSWEEK COVER STORY: GLOBAL WARMING DENIAL IS AN INFLUENTIAL, WELL-FUNDED MACHINE

[DeepModem Mom]

The Truth About Denial
By Sharon Begley
Newsweek
Aug. 13, 2007 issue -



Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

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."

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/

[El Supremo]

1. deleted by poster

[screembloodymurder]

2. Where can I get that bumper sticker?

I must have one.

[El Supremo]

4. here:

http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/stickers-ss2.html

[RufusTFirefly]

3. Great. It only took them two years

Here's the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones






Climate of Denial
By Bill McKibben
One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?


Some Like It Hot
By Chris Mooney
A dose of doubt trumps years of solid science, but skepticism doesn’t come cheap. ExxonMobil is spending millions to sustain an echo chamber of global warming denial.


Snowed
By Ross Gelbspan
Why the “balanced” media would rather promote paid flaks and fantasy than report the biggest story on earth

[Duppers]

18. there's one DU poster from my state

who openly stated that she thought that global warming is a hoax. I'm hoping to embarrass her.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

[roseBudd]

5. DU this article by clicking through & rating it a 5! Freeptards have it at 2

[DeepModem Mom]

9. Thanks, rosebud! nt

[pretzel4gore]

6. Newsweek, the concerned citizen...

Mr pig realises that the '6 billion metric tonnes carbon a year' pumped into earth's 12 mile thick atmosphere, year after year after year after year, adds up to...since Dec 1995, when Harpers Magazine published Ross Gelbspan's essay ''The Heat is On' the warming of the world's climate sparks a blaze of denial' in which the massive funding of climate change skeptics...let Gelbspan say it: "...if its September announcement was uncharacteristically bold, possibly it was because the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists understood that they were addressing their remarks to people profoundly unwilling to hear what they had to say' 'That resistance is understandable, given the immensity of the stakes. The energy industry now constitute the largest single enterprise known to mankind. Moreover blah blah...Begin to enforce restrictions on the consumption of oil and coal, and the effects on the global economy would be...blah blah blah...it is no wonder that for the past 5 or 6 years many of the world's politicians and most of the world's newsmedia have been promoting the perception that worries about the weather are overwrought"
Mr pig is scared, cuz he rigged the game too well It's been 12 long years since that article in Harpers and the IPCC warnings about climate change were mentioned ...

[RufusTFirefly]

7. Thanks for citing Gelbspan's 1995 essay, pretzel4gore

Gelbspan's an interesting case. He was initially convinced that the talk of global warming was all much ado about nothing but then came around and realized it was very real. Reminds me a little of Paul Krugman, who initially thought Bush economics was just so creative and complicated that he couldn't really appreciate and understand it. Of course, he's a Princeton economist and so once he had a chance to fully investigate things, he realized that Bush economics was a con game, just as Gelbspan's research led to the inevitable conclusion that he was being snowed by shills for the energy lobby.

[IndyOp]

8. ClimateProgress' report on the Newsweek article - it is still slanted way right...

<snip>

The magazine’s article on global warming deniers is better than the cover, but the eye-grabbing headline may well mislead casual readers — and the picture of the blazing sun, underlining a favorite denier myth, also adds to the misleading picture.

Aren’t we past the time when deniers deserve this much space? And why does Newsweek’s website runs the two deceptive Competitive Enterprise Institute ads without any rebuttal.

I’d also add that the cover, even with the footnote, is still wrong. Most (but not all) deniers accept the “overwhelming evidence of climate change” — since it is just too damn overwhelming not to accept — but they just assert that:

1. Most of the climate change is not human caused .

2. Climate change won’t be a catastrophe, it might even be beneficial for some, and we can just adapt to the rest

3. Reducing emissions today would be too costly so we must wait for new technology breakthoughs .

These three traps, which I debunk at length in my book, are the main emphasis of the denial machine these days. Ironically, Newsweek even contributed to the machine’s success by giving leading denier Richard Lindzen a platform.

http://climateprogress.org/2007/08/05/newsweek-believes-global-warming-is-a-hoax/

[NastyDiaper]

13. I agree that we are already at the point where the John Stossels...

... need to be smacked over the head with journals rather than handed a microphone.

But I do hope that the point us not lost on newsweek readers that this cover is about the 'machine' itself.

Remember when Tom Delay picked up Colbert as having "Cracked the Story"? I'd love nothing more than to see Inhoffe join in a similar gaffe in reference to this cover.

Book? (googling and ordered). All the sudden I feel underqualified to make my point. posting anyway ;)

[IndyOp]

15. I'd love nothing more than to see Inhoffe join in a similar gaffe in reference to this cover.

That would be good...

:rofl:

[NastyDiaper]

10. "Blue Skies, Looking At Me....."

*cough*

Don't miss the poll on the newsweek link, 40 percent are a-clicking the (Yes, I'm a Drooling Freeper) Button. I hope it's the freepers anyway, otherwise that poll is awfully ironic.


I love this. The stealth is beginning to fail on these AEI/CEI "Think Tanks", like so many pails of Day-Glow paint tossed on them.

It's good to see Newsweek beginning to explain how policy that consistently benefits Tobacco, Energy and Military companies were successfully able to infuse so much fiction into the electorate as deliberate and extraordinarily well funded.

Maybe the mainstream media finally recognize their complacency as part of the noise machine? If not, the DU and the rest of the blogosphere will be here to exxpose them with more day-glow paint.

http://thinkprogress.org/?s=%22Competitive+Enterprise+Institute

Good stuff.

[DeeDeeNY]

11. Newsweek Live Vote on global warming

"Do you believe that global warming is a major threat to life on earth?"
So far, 40% of people say no!!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11882878/

[RandomKoolzip]

12. Thank f'n gawd someone in the MSM is doing a story about

the unfortunate influence think tank money makes in the public forum. The right can throw money at the media and just watch public opinion swell in their favor - just through visibility in the media alone. The veracity of their claims, the accuracy of their "facts," the devastating consequences of the policies they promote - all go unscrutinized by the MSM because of so much consolidation, so much back-scratching, so much corporate greed.

I hope just reading this article on one issue will awake the public to the realization the the right is lying to them about pretty much EVERY OTHER issue, and using the same technique to do it (think-tank/corporate collusion).

[OnionPatch]

14. Please answer the poll at this article

Yesterday it was 27% don't believe. Today it is at 40%. Me thinks the Freepers have been at this poll.

Also, rate the story up.....click on the fifth star at the bottom. The rating there is not so good, either

[Duppers]

17. the Poll is now at 56 vs. 38

It should be 100 percent.

dumb, dumb, dumb assholes. what planet do they think their children will live on?

[BornagainDUer]

16. Book: "Global Spin: The corporate Assault on Environmentalism"

by Sharon Beder is a great read on this subject she dissects the machinations of those behind it and much more on censorship, neocon movement, etc.