Let’s quote the experts on the matter of global climate change: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and potential impact of human emissions of green house gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.”
That does not come from some lefty environmental group, but from a 1995 report by scientific and technical experts working for the Global Climate Coalition. Who? The GCC was a front group organized and funded by Big Oil, automakers, utilities, and other major greenhouse gas polluters.
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Throughout the 1990s, this coalition was desperately trying to debunk assertions by most environmental scientists that, indeed, the pollutants emitted by these industries were causing Earth’s drastic climate change. The coalition ran a multimillion-dollar PR and lobbying campaign to create doubt that global warming was even happening, much less that its members had any responsibility for it.
Yet, internal coalition documents have now been released, revealing that GCC’s own expert advisory committee told the corporate interests nearly 15 years ago that, one, climate change most certainly was happening and, two, that they were a central cause of it. When the advisory committee’s 1995 report was issued, however, this inconvenient finding was deleted, allowing the industries and their political enablers to keep insisting that the scientific community was “divided” on the causes of climate change, thus forestalling any governmental action on the worsening problem.
This is the same ploy that the tobacco giants used for decades, to deny any link between smoking and cancer. These corporate interests have learned that they don’t have to prove their innocence, but just puff up a “scientific” smokescreen to dupe the media and government. You might remember this ploy the next time you hear any corporate interest spouting science to defend its abusive practices.
“On Climate Issue, Industry Ignored Its Scientists,” The New York Times, April 24, 2009.
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