By Michael Beck
Deniers Fiddle While the World Burns
Deniers often resort to sleight-of-hand in order to “disappear” global warming. In one recent frolic, Virginia’s reactionary Attorney General Cuccinelli tried to subpoena all the research from the University of Virginia performed by eminent climate scientist Michael Mann. The reason? – a presumption of fraud. The judge tossed out the request, dryly noting that just because some scientific findings are politically ‘controversial’ does not automatically confer ‘evidence’ of fraud.
I can almost sympathize with the deniers (well not really, but let’s pretend). Here’s this wonderful past world of business-as-usual and addictive consumerism that always used to work just fine, at least from the point of view of the movers and shakers. And now here comes a flood of scientist types who insist we have to change the rules and, what’s worse, they’ve got tons of facts to back them up.
What to do? Take refuge in the past of course. And if you’ve got mountains of cash, just launch a blitz of PR (i.e. obfuscation) that appeals to the comfort of traditional models. Global warming never hurt civilization before, right, so how could it now? Besides, the weather is showing pretty much the kind of variation it always has. In this manner deniers would secure the future by gazing straight backwards.
Perhaps these folks’ only problem is they’re not looking far enough back. So to assist them I’ve taken it upon myself to offer a cartoon from The Pulse, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) monthly email newsletter (Sept issue). As I’ve said before, if you want reliable information about Global Warming, who do you look to?
A. Political pundits with axes to grind. Or..
B. Practicing peer-reviewed climate scientists.
For the latter, there are few better places to start than the UCS global warming page (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/)
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