Dec 16 2009
Copenhagen Climate Summit Special – Part 2
Danish authorities have begun cracking down hard on climate justice activists and non-governmental organizations in Copenhagen. Hundreds of people have been arrested as they attempted to take over the Bella Center where delegates are meeting and where heads of state are expected later this week. Activists planned to reclaim the talks by holding a “people’s assembly” to counter what they see as negotiations heading in the wrong direction.
Meanwhile, in a recent Forbes.com article published last week, columnist Gary Sutton decried climate science as “fiction.” In making his case, the author attempted to argue that just a few decades ago scientists were predicting the coming of another ice age. Sutton wrote that in 1974 the National Science Board stated that the time of global high temperatures would be ending in favor of global cooling. However, as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting noted this week in a rebuttal, the quotation actually spliced together two separate National Science Board Documents and was presented out of context in both usages. The first source document actually mentioned the greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere but acknowledged that scientific knowledge at the time was not advanced enough to accurately predict its potential to alter cooling trends. The second source document Sutton used did indeed mention a coming glacial age, but not for another 20,000 years. The article by Gary Sutton, entitled “The Fiction of Climate Science,” article is just one of the most recent examples of global warming denial championed in corporate journalism.
The climate deniers’ campaign has been in full force for more than 20 years, and despite having their deceptive methods debunked thoroughly by journalists like Ross Gelbspan and others, they are still active, even at the Climate talks in Copenhagen. Given the current public confusion over global warming their methods have been quite successful. In a new and compelling book by James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, the shenanigans of people like Frank Luntz, Steven Milloy, Fred Singer, Tim Ball, Lord Monckton, and other climate deniers are exposed. The book Climate Coverup: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming recounts in lays bare their funding ties to giant companies like Exxon-Mobil, their circulation of petitions with names of dead scientists, their exploitation of the scientific method to sow confusion in the public, and their dogged efforts at creating an effective echo chamber through a host of think tanks, sympathetic Congress men, and lazy journalists.
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