Thank you for that excellent analogy with tobacco. Cigarettes have had warning labels since 1966, and the US was the first country to require them. Tell me more about how big tobacco fooled everyone, with the complicity of the US gov’t.
As usual many contrarians (and conservatives) do have trouble with time and time lines it was clear that the time was “yesterday”. About 35 years ago when it was very clear that the sun became less of a factor in driving the current warming.
So yes, as pointed before the sources that claimed that the sun was the main cause of the current warming lied and continue to do so.
From the Wikipedia article on cigarette labeling: “Though the United States started the trend of labeling cigarette packages with health warnings, today the country has one of the smallest, least prominent warnings placed on their packages. Warnings are usually in small typeface placed along one of the sides of the cigarette packs with colors and fonts that closely resemble the rest of the package, so the warnings essentially are integrated and do not stand out with the rest of the cigarette package.”
Other countries, like Canada and those in the EU have long had stronger wording and graphic images and overall much more visible and effective warnings. And yes, much of the reason this wasn’t done in the US was due to the complicity of Congress and endless lobbying and court challenges by a powerful industry.
Sure. There are many books that detail that sordid history, like this one: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, which is also now a critically acclaimed documentary, but there are many others. Wendell Potter also talks about it in Deadly Spin, which is mainly about the same tactics being pulled in the health insurance lobby, but also talks about tobacco and climate change disinformation campaigns by the same powerful PR and lobby industry.
The interesting thing is that some of the same unethical characters that sold their reputations to the tobacco lobby for personal gain then later went on to do exactly the same thing on behalf of climate science denial, mostly on behalf of oil and coal companies. These included Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, S. Fred Singer, and Robert Jastrow, among many others.
Regarding less scientific deniers, it baffles me why people like Mark Morano, whose claim to fame was to help swiftboat a presidential candidate, has become a source of climate change disinformation and many conservatives do not see anything weird with that.
Just goes to show that self-serving mercenary liars completely devoid of ethics are pretty much fungible across different industries and endeavors. “The dangers of tobacco smoke are unproven”, “the dangers of climate change are unproven”, or “John Kerry is a traitorous coward” are all the same to them if there’s a buck to be made. And there’s lots to be made.
There was a thread some time ago that asked people fully on the AGW camp with “hockey sticks” tattoed on their chests what they would do, that required sacrifice, to solve AGW.
It was funny to hear why they, for some specific reason, wouldn’t or shouldn’t do more than CFLs, maybe a (subsidised) solar panel or driving a little bit less. Nobody would comit to actual change that mattered, they wanted others to do it.
Don’t tell me how great and easy to follow your diet is if you’re still 35% above your ideal body weight.
Yup, nobody is going to profit from making AGW scary, not one single person, not one single buck, all donors are as pure as driven snow; angels walking amongst men.
In the spirit of fighting ignorance, they claimed they drove to the north magnetic pole, not the actual most northern point of the planet, what we think of as the north pole.
That is of course a gross misrepresentation of what was said, can not speak for others but basically like in the case of acid rain many other problems coming from technology were controlled by pressuring industry to remove acid rain causing materials from emissions at power plants, reduce the materials in the fossil fuels and to put catalytic converters in vehicles, the point was that doing things on your own does help and solar is growing more in popularity, but that is not were the bulk of the solution will come.
As shown before the most effective solution is to have government and industry deploying the use of new technology at large scale to be more economically effective, and then the slight increase in costs will be pay by all, after all it really was inefficient and more expensive to force all drivers to install converters in cars, but/and it was better to have government regulations and industry to make them parts of the vehicles and the increase in cost was shared by all.
And the same can be say about water and sewage systems in our cities:
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Some people say transitioning to clean energy will simply cost too much - "leave it to future generations." In Edinburgh, Scotland, Richard Alley explains that if we start soon the cost of the transformation could be similar to that which was paid for something none of us would want to do without - clean water and the modern sanitation system.
[/QUOTE]
Claiming (with the same logic) that the ones demanding clean water and no cholera as people that only wanted to get clean water the easy way or to shame them because they did not install a sewage line on their own (all the way to the Thames and all of them individually?) is bananas. In any case, our consumer choices are also important but not as much as what the government and industry will have to do to change.
I would not be surprised to find that many toilet bowl manufacturers in Merry Old England also pushed for clean water and sewage lines, that does not detract from the fact that cholera and other diseases became almost unknown in London and many other cities after, this point of yours is really silly.
That is absolutely correct. Most people have to be forced to do almost anything that is for the public good, and resist and refuse to do anything if it cost them anything.
While it rankles the idea of freedom, forcing people to do things has always been the only way it will happen. Combined with industry not wanting to give up a single dime of profits, it’s always been a hard road to force changes. But with out them, we would all be far worse off.
Cite to where I said that? Cite to where anyone has said that?
What I said, and what the cited study and the actual evidence backs up in abundance, is that there are vast amounts of money to be made by lying about climate change and trying to minimize it as a non-issue. For the simple reason that the beneficiaries of the lies are pretty much all of the world’s industries, oil and coal companies, power companies, all the investors therein, and every citizen who perceives a threat to his energy-rich lifestyle, who drives a gas-guzzler and prefers his mind closed, his ears blocked, and the world’s problems to be just a distant buzz that he can ignore in blissful ignorance.
On the other side of this bombardment of propaganda that dominates the airwaves, the print media, and the Internet are the scientists who actually study the issues. The scientists stand pretty much alone. Even governments, wary of skittish voters like the ones I just mentioned, and terrified of spooking Wall Street, tend to downplay the problem. Because the money is overwhelmingly on one side of this manufactured “debate”, and it overwhelmingly favors the side that manufactured the debate in the first place, despite strong scientific consensus to the contrary.
I still remember how Inhofe and the Republicans used Willie Soon’s shoddy research as example of the work of a “Galileo” And promptly spiked the progress of a comprehensible bill to start controlling emissions.
I’m not worried about it because Obama’s not worried. He and his wife couldn’t be bothered to ride in the same 747 to the same destination to tape TV shows. Scheduling difficulties don’tja know. Granted she probable took an economy airliner (757) so clearly they’re doing their bit to shave off their carbon footprint. He once flew to DEN to sign a bill. I’m pretty sure Congress would have driven it over the the White House but what do I know. I’m just footing the bill. Yeah I’m staying awake at night worrying about it.
Maybe the world got tired of the deliberate misrepresentation of data or the constant lies about what should have occurred already but didn’t followed by excuses as to why the numbers were off. All the fear mongering completely ignores the natural transition to electrical power over fossil fuels were experiencing or the switch from coal to natural gas because of the huge deposits found.
Global warming is so far down the list of people’s concerns it’s been relegated to public eye rolling status.
Al Gore gets $100,000 just in speaker fees for each of his Chicken Little speeches. Forget the carbon offset scam he’s involved in that brings in millions.
Get used to being wrong in all your posts so far, including the one where you claimed that this subject “it’s been relegated to public eye rolling status.”
“The dangers of tobacco smoke are unproven”, “the dangers of climate change are unproven”, or “John Kerry is a traitorous coward” are all the same to them if there’s a buck to be made. And there’s lots to be made.