The politics of doubt

[Old Rocks]

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.

 

[Avatar4321]

Real science? IE Science that supports your preconcieved notions.. Yep we definitely doubt that. We prefer looking at actual facts first.

You see when the earth's tempature hasnt increased in over a decade. Its a pretty good sign that global warming is a hoax. Especially when the political culture decides to change the terminology from global warming to climate change acknowledging that there is no warming and trying to pretend that any shift in climate is man made.

And isnt it funny that the only solutions for these so called man-made problems are the same socialist principles that the people rejected when presented with them based on their own merit? Funny how that seems to work.

No you are right. This is purely science. and anyone who disagrees with you is stupid.

 

[Oddball]

I guess nobody told that dopey blogger that the "research" behind so-called second hand tobacco smoke was totally cooked, too.

Looks like the e-mail blast has gone out to all the Goebbles warming hacks, to start baffling everyone with their bullshit!

 

[rightwinger]

The anti-global warming lobby (aka oil companies) use the same tactics as the tabacco lobby

The "my grandmother lived to be 92 and smoked three packs a day" logic

The "we need to do more study" logic

The "our scientists have different results" logic

 

[Toronado3800]

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.

 

[Toronado3800]

I guess nobody told that dopey blogger that the "research" behind so-called second hand tobacco smoke was totally cooked, too.

I can believe any one piece of research was flawed. But the idea second hand smoke isn't bad for you is comparable thinking to the idea working in coal mines is healthy for the lungs.

I love my 68 Mustang buy I know what the exhaust does for my lungs if the car is running in the garage.

Also I love wood working and know when all them small particles from sanding off stain just aren't doing me any good when I'm blowing them out of my nose for two days.

 

[Avatar4321]

The anti-global warming lobby (aka oil companies) use the same tactics as the tabacco lobby

The "my grandmother lived to be 92 and smoked three packs a day" logic

The "we need to do more study" logic

The "our scientists have different results" logic

Yeah. keep telling yourself that. The facts only differ from your perspective because those big bad oil companies are trying to spin them. It cant possibility be because your idealogy is a crock and your theories are completely incompatible with reality. No its those big bad oil companies.

 

[Toronado3800]

Avatar, are you saying you don't believe second hand smoke is bad, you don't believe in the effects of greenhouse gasses on heat retention, or ?

 

[Avatar4321]

Avatar, are you saying you don't believe second hand smoke is bad, you don't believe in the effects of greenhouse gasses on heat retention, or ?

Dont care about second hand smoke. And i sure as heck dont believe in the global warming junk. Especially dont believe the believe that CO2 emissions are going to warm the planet. The tempature of the planet is decreasing and we have more emissions than ever. Not only that, the argument is dangerous because if people continue teaching it, it wont be long before some nut case like Hitler is going to take the theory to its logical conclusion and decide to begin the mass murder of humanity to "save the planet"

 

[Oddball]

I guess nobody told that dopey blogger that the "research" behind so-called second hand tobacco smoke was totally cooked, too.

I can believe any one piece of research was flawed. But the idea second hand smoke isn't bad for you is comparable thinking to the idea working in coal mines is healthy for the lungs.

I love my 68 Mustang buy I know what the exhaust does for my lungs if the car is running in the garage.

Also I love wood working and know when all them small particles from sanding off stain just aren't doing me any good when I'm blowing them out of my nose for two days.

Didn't say it wasn't bad, just that the "research" deeming it as much a health threat as actually smoking the cigarettes was cooked, as admitted by the people who cooked it.

BTW...I'm an ex-smoker and don't like my clothes smelling smokey after coming home from the bar. But I also realize that I signed up for it by going to the bar.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Big Carbon Credit is behind the Junk Man Made Global Warming "Science"

 

[Toronado3800]

I can sorta agree about second hand smoke. I avoid overly smokey bowling alley's and bars in favor of ones in no smoking zones when my nose is in a more sensitive mood. Besides that it doesn't affect me much.

The tempature of the planet is decreasing and we have more emissions than ever

? Really?

Michael Crichton and Inhofe's Antarctica theory is flawed. The stuff of a fiction writer misunderstanding an increase in under surface ice flow as a sign of increased ice not a sign of movement due to melting.

(I can't find the whole article, its one of my favorites so I saved part of it. I know I have a hard copy in the basement....)

 

[Toronado3800]

Didn't say it wasn't bad, just that the "research" deeming it as much a health threat as actually smoking the cigarettes was cooked, as admitted by the people who cooked it.

BTW...I'm an ex-smoker and don't like my clothes smelling smokey after coming home from the bar. But I also realize that I signed up for it by going to the bar.

I'll admit skepticism to any research that shows second hand smoke is AS HARMFUL as actually smoking the cigarette. Lord, that just doesn't make sense. Even if you're stuck in an elevator and 3 ppl are smoking its diluted and you can't get as much as the fellas inhaling it who are using their lungs as a partial filter.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I can sorta agree about second hand smoke. I avoid overly smokey bowling alley's and bars in favor of ones in no smoking zones when my nose is in a more sensitive mood. Besides that it doesn't affect me much.

The tempature of the planet is decreasing and we have more emissions than ever

? Really?

Michael Crichton and Inhofe's Antarctica theory is flawed. The stuff of a fiction writer misunderstanding an increase in under surface ice flow as a sign of increased ice not a sign of movement due to melting.

(I can't find the whole article, its one of my favorites so I saved part of it. I know I have a hard copy in the basement....)

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t." -- Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado

 

[Toronado3800]

Big Carbon Credit is behind the Junk Man Made Global Warming "Science"

When did this Carbon Credit "capitalist pollution control" idea get born? Good lord, can't even just set a limit on pollution anymore but I understand the theory.

 

[Toronado3800]

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t." -- Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado

What year was that quote from?

Is he referring to this lack of warming?

Any lack of decrease over the last 5 years should be troubling given the solar cycle.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig4.gif

Sounds like a pointed question asking something short sighted like "Why was 2008 cooler than every year since 2000 if global warming is true"
2008 was really cooler than every year since 2000

Notice I'm not "bragging" about March 2009 being the 10th warmest on record. Just like 2008 must be taken in accordance with the decade as a whole so much March 2009.

 

[Old Rocks]

I can sorta agree about second hand smoke. I avoid overly smokey bowling alley's and bars in favor of ones in no smoking zones when my nose is in a more sensitive mood. Besides that it doesn't affect me much.

The tempature of the planet is decreasing and we have more emissions than ever

? Really?

Michael Crichton and Inhofe's Antarctica theory is flawed. The stuff of a fiction writer misunderstanding an increase in under surface ice flow as a sign of increased ice not a sign of movement due to melting.

(I can't find the whole article, its one of my favorites so I saved part of it. I know I have a hard copy in the basement....)

"The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t." -- Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado

Yes, that was what he said, and here is the context.

I would urge people to read Trenberth’s article, which asks:

The global mean temperature in 2008 was the lowest since about 2000 (Fig. 1). Given that there is continual heating of the planet, referred to as radiative forcing, by accelerating increases of carbon dioxide (Fig. 1) and other greenhouses due to human activities, why isn’t the temperature continuing to go up? The stock answer is that natural variability plays a key role1 and there was a major La Niña event early in 2008 that led to the month of January having the lowest anomaly in global temperature since 2000. While this is true, it is an incomplete explanation. In particular, what are the physical processes? From an energy standpoint, there should be an explanation that accounts for where the radiative forcing has gone. Was it compensated for temporarily by changes in clouds or aerosols, or other changes in atmospheric circulation that allowed more radiation to escape to space? Was it because a lot of heat went into melting Arctic sea ice or parts of Greenland and Antarctica, and other glaciers? Was it because the heat was buried in the ocean and sequestered, perhaps well below the surface? Was it because the La Niña led to a change in tropical ocean currents and rearranged the configuration of ocean heat? Perhaps all of these things are going on? But surely we have an adequate system to track whether this is the case or not, don’t we?

 

[rightwinger]

Makes perfect sense.....Dumping shit into the air is good for you

Sucking smoke down your lungs can't do any harm


Conservative science at its best

 

[alan1]

I guess nobody told that dopey blogger that the "research" behind so-called second hand tobacco smoke was totally cooked, too.

I can believe any one piece of research was flawed. But the idea second hand smoke isn't bad for you is comparable thinking to the idea working in coal mines is healthy for the lungs.

I love my 68 Mustang buy I know what the exhaust does for my lungs if the car is running in the garage.

Also I love wood working and know when all them small particles from sanding off stain just aren't doing me any good when I'm blowing them out of my nose for two days.

The government should pass a law that prevents people from sanding wood.
It will be to protect you.

 

[asaratis]

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 consist of government grants?