http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23000-the-climate-deniers-are-using-the-same-tactics-as-the-tobacco-industry
The Climate Deniers Are Using the Same Tactics as the Tobacco Industry
Wednesday, 09 April 2014 14:54
By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed
As it becomes increasingly obvious that global warming is entering
doomsday scenario territory, the fossil fuel industry is ramping up the
propaganda war.
Last week, the so-called Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate
Change (NIPCC) released its fifth report "debunking" the findings of the
U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
According to the NIPCC report, which was published by the conservative
think tank the Heartland Institute, global warming is nothing to worry
about. It's just a natural process that's happened hundreds of times
before. If anything, the report concludes, global warming could be a
good thing because extra CO2 in the atmosphere means more air for plants
to breath.
Seriously.
Not surprisingly, Fox So-Called News has picked up on the NIPCC report
and is treating it like real science.
But if you're wondering why 97 percent of scientists disagree with the
NIPCC on global warming, Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast says
it's because the entire climate science community has been "corrupted"
by environmentalists.
In reality, though, it's the NIPCC and the Heartland institute that are
corrupt and dishonest.
To quote Deep Throat, just follow the money.
The Heartland Institute, the think tank that published the NIPCC report,
is largely funded by the fossil fuel industry and its allies. In fact,
it's received around $67 million dollars over the past thirty years from
donors like Exxon Mobil, the Koch Brothers, and the Scaife Foundation.
All stand to get very, very rich if we continue pumping greenhouse
gasses into the atmosphere.
The NIPCC report's leading authors, meanwhile, are a virtual who's who
of the climate denial industry. Dr. Fred Singer, the group's founder,
has been pushing the lie that global warming isn't a big deal for
decades now, and fossil fuel companies have helped him out all along the
way. Another author, Craig Idso, actually used to work for coal giant
Peabody Energy.
Make no mistake about it: the NIPCC report is one giant scam created by
the fossil fuel industry to trick the public into thinking global
warming is a lie.
History, it seems, is repeating itself in the worst possible way. Back
in the 1990s, the people behind the NIPCC climate change denial machine
used to shill for another not-so-reputable industry: the tobacco industry.
As lawsuits and Congressional hearings turned public opinion turned
against the tobacco industry, the Heartland Institute pushed out bunk
study after bunk study claiming that there was no connection between
secondhand smoke and cancer.
In 1998, for example, current Heartland President Joseph Bast argued in
a piece for the think tank's website that the "EPA had to twist and
torture its data to find a public health risk from secondhand smoke."
The Heartland Institute's PR campaign was so crucial to the tobacco
industry's cause that Phillip Morris executive Tom Borelli actually
listed supporting the Heartland Institute as one of his company's most
important strategies in a 1993 memo called the "Five Year Plan"
At the same time as Heartland towed the big tobacco party line, NIPCC
founder Fred Singer was busy pumping out some blatant pro-tobacco of his
own. In 1993, he joined up with the Philip Morris' favorite PR firm APCO
Associates to "debunk" studies showing the link between secondhand smoke
and cancer.
All this, of course, was done to protect the interests of giant tobacco
companies who denied in front of Congress that nicotine was addictive.
There are few coincidences in history. The fossil fuel industry today
appears to be following the exact same script used by the tobacco
industry in the 1990s.
If you're an optimist, you might point to tobacco settlement of the
1990s and say that eventually the truth will prevail and the bad guys
will get outed.
But remember, it took more than thirty years after Surgeon General
Luther Terry warned the American people about the dangers of smoking to
hold the tobacco industry accountable for the deaths it was causing and
continues to cause.
With global warming, we may not have that kind of time. Some scientists
think runaway climate change could kill off the human race in a matter
of decades.
It's time for the American people and the media to wake up and call out
the climate denial industry for what it is, a scam, before it's too late.
After all, the future of humanity is at stake.
--
Darryl McMahon
It's your planet. If you won't look after it, who will?
_______________________________________________
Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list
Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org
http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel