HISTORY OF THE DENIALISTS

Newsweek ran a long article, "The Truth about Denial," on the history of the nuts and whores who deny there is any such thing as a global warming problem. Key denial players: ExxonMobil, American Petroleum Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Global Climate Coalition, Information Council on the Environment, George C. Marshall Institute, Western Fuels Association, Patrick Michaels, S. Fred Singer, Myron Ebell (CEI), Fred Smith (CEI), and Richard Lindzen. The big plan was to cast doubt on the science and overall, it has been effective.

I didn't realize that the denialists have been at work since the late 1980s, so I was a bit surprised to learn that a few of the lies I've recently heard are actually fairly old. For example, the idea that the Sun is responsible for global warming goes back to 1992 and the Marshall Institute. It doesn't matter that the idea has been debunked because after years of repetition, it becomes a background fact for many, especially Republican law makers. I also found this anecdote interesting:

Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on climate change, including an op-ed in The Washington Post in 1998 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism."

A few months ago, Michael Savage had a promo for his radio show that claimed global warming was "the religion of the atheists."