The politics of doubt

[alan1]

From tobacco to asbestos, to global warming we see the same cast of people denying real science.

Wunder Blog : Weather Underground


Posted by: JeffMasters, 3:07 PM GMT on November 25, 2009

In 1954, the tobacco industry realized it had a serious problem. Thirteen scientific studies had been published over the preceding five years linking smoking to lung cancer. With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world's five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton, to help out. Hill and Knowlton designed a brilliant Public Relations (PR) campaign to convince the public that smoking is not dangerous. They encouraged the tobacco industry to set up their own research organization, the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), which would produce science favorable to the industry, emphasize doubt in all the science linking smoking to lung cancer, and question all independent research unfavorable to the tobacco industry. The CTR did a masterful job at this for decades, significantly delaying and reducing regulation of tobacco products. George Washington University epidemiologist David Michaels, who is President Obama's nominee to head the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), wrote a meticulously researched 2008 book called, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. In the book, he wrote: "the industry understood that the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad. Create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Throw mud at the anti-smoking research under the assumption that some of it is bound to stick. And buy time, lots of it, in the bargain". The title of Michaels' book comes from a 1969 memo from a tobacco company executive: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy". Hill and Knowlton, on behalf of the tobacco industry, had founded the "Manufactured Doubt" industry.

The Manufactured Doubt industry grows up
As the success of Hill and Knowlton's brilliant Manufactured Doubt campaign became apparent, other industries manufacturing dangerous products hired the firm to design similar PR campaigns. In 1967, Hill and Knowlton helped asbestos industry giant Johns-Manville set up the Asbestos Information Association (AIA). The official-sounding AIA produced "sound science" that questioned the link between asbestos and lung diseases (asbestos currently kills 90,000 people per year, according to the World Health Organization). Manufacturers of lead, vinyl chloride, beryllium, and dioxin products also hired Hill and Knowlton to devise product defense strategies to combat the numerous scientific studies showing that their products were harmful to human health.

By the 1980s, the Manufactured Doubt industry gradually began to be dominated by more specialized "product defense" firms and free enterprise "think tanks". Michaels wrote in Doubt is Their Product about the specialized "product defense" firms: "Having cut their teeth manufacturing uncertainty for Big Tobacco, scientists at ChemRisk, the Weinberg Group, Exponent, Inc., and other consulting firms now battle the regulatory agencies on behalf of the manufacturers of benzene, beryllium, chromium, MTBE, perchlorates, phthalates, and virtually every other toxic chemical in the news today....Public health interests are beside the point. This is science for hire, period, and it is extremely lucrative".

Joining the specialized "product defense" firms were the so-called "think tanks". These front groups received funding from manufacturers of dangerous products and produced "sound science" in support of their funders' products, in the name of free enterprise and free markets. Think tanks such as the George C. Marshall Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, and Dr. Fred Singer's SEPP (Science and Environmental Policy Project) have all been active for decades in the Manufactured Doubt business, generating misleading science and false controversy to protect the profits of their clients who manufacture dangerous products.

...as the manipulation and deliberate deception by "scientists" regarding global "warming" is attempting to protect the profits of Gore and Company, Carbon Credit Brokers and our current admin, eager to tax the country into submission and bankruptcy.

I wonder how many of these lying "scientists" sources of funding come from government grants?

And Bingo was his name-o

 

[uscitizen]

I can account for the lack of warming at this point in history.

Hell is getting ready to freeze over!

 

[Andrew2382]

linking charts is ez

 

[asaratis]

linking charts is ez

Making charts is easier. Perhaps you haven't read the leaked emails that reveal the statistical trickery behind that 1998 pogo stick. It's all a lie. The earth is cooling. We are headed for another cyclical Ice Age. Run for cover.

 

[alan1]

When I grow up, I wanna be able to link charts.

 

[Andrew2382]

compared to the "AHHHHHHH WE ARE ALL GOING TO MELT!!! WOMEN AND POLAR BEARS FIRST!!!! RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Do you have any proof?

ummm



no

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Do Libruls actually WANT most of New York State to be buried under 20 feet of ice like it was for the vast majority of the past 200,000 years? Is that the goal and the reason for the fake AGW "Science"

 

[CrusaderFrank]

"Now that Global Warming has be proven to be a hoax, can I get the fuck off this stupid ice block because my balls are freezing." -- Polar Bear Shamelessly Exploited for AGW Photo Op

 

[alan1]

Now that Global Warming has be proven to be a hoax, can I get the fuck off this stupid ice block because my balls are freezing.

Not until you resort to cannibalism and blame it on global warming.
Polar bears resort to cannibalism as Arctic ice shrinks - CNN.com

 

[asaratis]

compared to the "AHHHHHHH WE ARE ALL GOING TO MELT!!! WOMEN AND POLAR BEARS FIRST!!!! RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Do you have any proof?

ummm



no

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’? – Telegraph Blogs


Urgent alert to all holders of stock in AL GORE AND OTHER SHYSTERS, LLC..CARBON CREDIT BROKERS.....























SELL! SELL!

 

[Mike458877]

As is the case with any Manufactured Doubt campaign, a respected scientist was needed to lead the battle. One such scientist was Dr. Frederick Seitz, a physicist who in the 1960s chaired the organization many feel to be the most prestigious science organization in the world--the National Academy of Sciences. Seitz took a position as a paid consultant for R.J. Reynolds tobacco company beginning in 1978, so was well-versed in the art of Manufactured Doubt. According to the excellent new book, Climate Cover-up, written by desmogblog.com co-founder James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, over a 10-year period Seitz was responsible for handing out $45 million in tobacco company money to researchers who overwhelmingly failed to link tobacco to anything the least bit negative. Seitz received over $900,000 in compensation for his efforts. He later became a founder of the George C. Marshall Foundation, and used his old National Academy of Sciences affiliation to lend credibility to his attacks on global warming science until his death in 2008 at the age of ninety-six. It was Seitz who launched the "Oregon Petition", which contains the signatures of more than 34,000 scientists saying global warming is probably natural and not a crisis.

Wow, I've been reading more and checking up on the wunderground fella. He's spot on. May everyone who doesn't believe in Global Warming enjoy two packs of non-cancer causing camel non filter cigarettes a day on Dr. Seitz.

My I don't know how some folks sleep with themselves at night.

Why thank you, but, I prefer a fine cigar and after I am finished rolling the flavor around in my lungs, mouth and nose, I share it with everyone around me!

I don't know how they sleep eighter. It's terrible. Thankfully I enjoy happy dreams of bursting factories spewing smog, crowded streets with big hemi hot rods, air condistioning ice cold in the summer months and steaming high heat in the winter months!

Hey, Have a Happy Thanksgiving and remember, God Loves You!

Mike

 

[Oddball]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hftsk4gWqI&feature=related[/ame]

 

[Toronado3800]

Well I had the chart showing the earth getting warmer over the last 100 years. You had the chart showing it leveled off off temperatures in the lower trophesphere.

How to decide who is right.

1. we do an experiment in a small enclosed environment and extrapolate.

2. we go around and check on something physical that's temperature dependent. Like ice coverage. Should be relatively simple. If there is more then its getting cooler than it was. If there is less then it must be warmer.

Was the part of your signature?

 

[Toronado3800]

And about the government conspiracy of global warming.... If there is a conspiracy where is there money to be made?

The folks making catalytic converters made a killing when they were mandated in California I suppose.....

Seems a smaller lobby group than the businesses and folks who would rather not clean up whatever equipment they're using.

 

[Toronado3800]

World Climate Report, a newsletter edited by Patrick Michaels, was produced by the Greening Earth Society,[1] a non-profit organization created by the Western Fuels Association.[2].
Early editions were paper based; it then transferred to a web-only format, having ceased publication as a physically based report with volume 8 in 2002. It continues to exist in blog form at World Climate Report

Guess the Western Fuels Association website could be a questionable source......

 

[Oddball]

Aside from the collusion to deliberately destroy the careers of opposing voices, this mess is less of a conspiracy than it is an example of peer pressure and the results of science being practiced in echo chambers.

 

[Toronado3800]

less of a conspiracy than it is an example of peer pressure and the results of science being practiced in echo chambers.

A reasonable statement. I agree group think problems do exist and the possibility should not be overlooked.

Links to two more charts.... I'm having real issues with the earth is cooling theory.
Recent Climate Change - Annual Average Global Surface Temperature Anomalies 1880-2008 | Science | Climate Change | U.S. EPA
File:Short Instrumental Temperature Record.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How about an idea like "Urban heat islands create falsely high temperature readings". Of course then again that would be admitting to a different type of warming, but it would be a statement discounting some of the disputed or possible effect of greenhouse gasses.. None the less even a medium sized city like St. Louis has a heat signature and the outlying areas are cooler. The thermometer in our cars will tell us that.