"The suit accuses twenty oil, gas and electric companies of being responsible for emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gases, causing the Arctic ice to melt. Companies named in the suit include ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Peabody. The suit also accuses eight of the corporations of being involved in a conspiracy to mislead the public about the causes of global warming."
..
The denial movement has flourished, in part, because of the preoccupation of the media with balance and with controversy. And so, if you have 3,000 scientists working for years and producing a report that says our considered opinion is the climate is changing by this much, it’s changing this fast, it’s having these effects, and you have two or three so-called denialists or a few small think tanks, some of which were certainly funded by Exxon, saying the opposite, they get equal time. The deniers get equal time in the newspapers, on the television.

Another problem is that a denier can tell a lie in a single sentence that takes a scientist three paragraphs to rebut, but the scientist never gets the three paragraphs in the sound bite culture that our media represent. And so, the denialists, even though they are small in number, they have no credible arguments, very few of them have any scientific credentials, get attention out of all proportion to their credentials, the merit of their arguments, and that delays the generation of public understanding and political will to do the things we need to do to address this challenge. There are a lot of things we can do, but we have been delaying doing them, in part because the so-called skeptics, or more accurately deniers or denialists, have basically obscured reality for much of the public and indeed for many of our policymakers.

It is not impossible to overcome this skeptic smokescreen that has been out there, but it’s a lot of work. It’s happening. We’re getting there. But we should have been getting there two decades ago. Dr. Jim Hansen in 1988, twenty years ago, presented in a Senate hearing the first really convincing evidence that climate change caused by human activities was now evident in the temperature measurements made around the world. That was twenty years ago. That should have been the call to action, but we’ve had twenty years of inaction, in part because of the deniers that Stephen Susman is now engaged in suing.
/snip/
from http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/3/groundbreaking_lawsuit_accuses_big_oil_of

Here's a list of the organizations that just Exxon-Mobil has been supporting over the years, many of which are simply climate change deniers, acid rain deniers and for all I know bad human behavior deniers of all stripes.

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php

My favorite of the the denier groups that Exxon-Mobil has supported (to the tune of about a half-million dollars over the years) is the Heartland Institute. Some of you may remember a former member here (some, perhaps even myself, would call him a troll,..maybe I did.. a dozen times or so?...) who would cut and paste endless articles from this organization to "prove" his points, all the while insulting those who disagreed with his and the Heartland Institutes wild assertions.

Wayne

quote:

Originally posted by adirondackgardener:
....... all the while insulting those who disagreed with his ........ wild assertions.

Wayne

Not that I'm defending the troll.

quote:

Originally posted by ellenr:
Another problem is that a denier can tell a lie

Case closed, no discussion required. Everyone get in line and follow the leader (he's the guy with the $100 million check in his pocket!)

Dirt

It is 56* in Alabama today on July 15, 2008. Big oil doesn't have to convince me!
owl

I'm now using my "hand lawnmower" instead of the gasoline lawnmower.