Wikipedia describes climate change denial as a term used to describe organized attempts to downplay, deny, or dismiss the scientific consensus on the extent of climate change, its significance, and its connection to human behavior, especially for commercial or ideological reasons. Typically, these attempts take the rhetorical form of legitimate scientific debate, while not adhering to the actual principles of that debate. Climate change denial has been associated with the energy lobby, industry advocates and free market think tanks, often in the United States.
Not everyone out there believes that global climate change is rapidly ascending on us. In fact, gallup polling revealed that just 51% of Americans saying they worry a great deal or fair amount about global warming. That number is significantly lower from the year 2000 when the same question was asked by gallup and 72% of Americans said they worried a great deal or fair amount about global warming. So the question begs…”Are you in climate Change denial?” Even if the answer is a resounding “NO”, you probably know a guy/gal or two who’d be more that willing to talk your head off over all the reasons that global warming is the biggest scam on earth.
Well if you’ve forgotten about climate change from the good old years of Al Gore…you’re not alone. Maybe you feel that climate change is exaggerated or that ‘nature is nature and will do what it does’. Other reasons still are shifts in short-term world temperature, the controversy over some scientists who deal with global warming data, the concerted effort to criticize global warming among some conservatives, and the bad economy.
Despite all the reasons that some people are skeptical about climate change in general, there is strong support for issues like renewable energy, increased automobile fuel efficiency, and reduced energy sources from coal or natural gas.
One way of explaining these reasons might be that even those who don’t believe in global warming see other good reasons to make the shift from fossil fuels to renewables — like getting off oil before it runs out, cleaning up the air their children and grandchildren will breathe, sending less money to foreign countries they don’t like, building a new growth sector for the U.S. economy, and so on.
It must be remembered that public debate over global warming would have been decided long ago if not for a massive lobbying drive by companies vested in business-as-usual energy systems — and, to a shameful degree, willing to rely on covert messengers and disinformation to defend them.
No doubt these tactics have helped to drive recent shifts in opinion on the simplest, true/false questions about global warming, at least temporarily. But on the campaign’s real objective — undermining public confidence in alternative energy, and building public opposition to greenhouse gas regulation — the battle isn’t going nearly so well since there is strong public support for these.
Newsflash, the science is mounting up, the evidence is getting louder and stronger.
Climate Deniers Caught
American Petroleum Institute – Recruited scientists who shared the industry’s views of climate science and trained them in public relations that convinced journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases. They were paid off to the tune of $5 Millon – New York imes
American Enterprise Institute – offered British, American, and other scientists $10,000, plus travel expenses, to publish articles critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment back in 2007. – The Guaian
ExxonMobil – gave $2.9 million to American groups that “misinformed the public about climate change,” 39 of which “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”. –The Guardian
