The Aug. 13 Newsweek (on the stands now) sports a churning image of the sun — which many global warming skeptics say is why things are warmer; nothin’ to do with us people — and on the inside an explanation from Sharon Begley of a “paralyzing fog of doubt” obfuscating the issue. The fog’s origin is a well-funded campaign by contrarians, free-market think tanks, industry, and others who either believe or just want to convince people that whatever the climate is doing it’s not our fault (and if it is, it’s good for us).
Nothing new here to most readers of this site but, as Begley gloomily reports, polls consistently find a tremendous number of Americans believing that scientists are sharply and more or less evenly divided over such things. Europeans and Japanese are surer of global warming and its cause — to be found at the nearest smokestack or exhaust pipe, she reports. Begley provides a concise, yet complete, a narrative tale of how the deny-and-doubt camp has relentlessly stuck to its guns while just about every mainstream scientific organization in the world says it’s hot, getting hotter, it’s our doing, and an immense task to prevent deeply bad times is getting no easier. Of course, her piece will be seen, over at the denialist counter, as just more, shrill, liberal-media hysteria. Sigh.
-CP
Related News: In Singapore, Al Gore has attracted a flurry of news in the same vein: see AP Gillian Wong ;
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