Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

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Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:49 am

MERCHANTS OF DOUBT -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY
directed by Robert Kenner
© 2014 Merchants of Doubt, LLC.

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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:50 am

Screenplay

[Transcribed from the movie by Tara Carreon]

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS PRESENTS

IN ASSOCIATION WITH PARTICIPANT MEDIA AND OMIDYAR NETWORK

A FILM BY ROBERT KENNER

INSPIRED BY THE BOOK BY NAOMI ORESKES AND ERIK M. CONWAY

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] My expertise is in deception.
The thing that sets magicians apart from con men ...
and other kinds of thieves and liars, is that we're honest liars. It's the moral contract.

[Emcee] Please give it up for Jamy Ian Swiss. Give it up!

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] Good evening. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
We'll begin at the beginning, with incontrovertible evidence ...
of a misspent youth. I'm saying, "I'm gonna fool you, but it's okay." Right?
"That's my job, and I'm gonna bring you back in a not severely altered condition."
You ever seen anybody take cards, wave their hands, and have it change into another card?

[Woman] No.

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] You wave your hands over it, and it changes just like that. You don't always have to wave your hands over it.
Sometimes you just give it a little snap. It changes just like that. Watch again, just a little snap. Ha-ha-ha.

[Woman] No.

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] It changes just like that.

[Audience laughing and applauding]

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] I make an honest living, right? Therefore, it offends me ...
when someone takes the skills of my honest living, if you will, and uses it to twist, and distort, and manipulate people,
and their sense of reality, and how the world works.

[Music] I know how to fool people,
and I know how to recognize when people are being fooled.
That old black magic has me in its spell


CO-PRODUCERS: BRIAN PEARLE; TAKI OLDHAM; DYLAN NELSON; YOUTCHI VON LINTEL

[Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com] Dioxins, pesticides, chemicals in general.
There's no evidence that these are harming us.

[Music] Icy fingers up and down my spine

Directors of Photography: Don Lenzer, Barry Berona, Jay Redmond

[Narrator] Asbestos, designed to last a lifetime,
a trouble-free lifetime.

[Music] The same old tingle that I feel inside

MUSIC BY: MARK ADLER

[Music] And then that elevator starts its ride

EDITOR: KIM ROBERTS, A.C.E.

[Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma] Catastrophic global warming is a hoax.

[Expert] There's no scientific consensus.

[Expert] There is no consensus. This is a myth.

[Music] Round and round I go

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: JEFF SKOLL, PIERRE OMIDYAR, DIANE WEYERMANN

[Music] Like a leaf that's caught in a tide

[Ted Koppel, Nightline Anchor] Cigarette smoking does not cause cancer, yes or no?

[Ed Horrigan, Reynolds Tobacco Chief] It is not known whether cigarettes cause cancer.

[Walker Merryman, The Tobacco Institute] There really isn't a scientific consensus.

[Music] I hear your name

[TV Host] Do you accept the basic premise that smoking kills?

PRODUCERS: ROBERT KENNER & MELISSA ROBLEDO

[Expert] No, I think that the scientists who make statements like that are making political statements, not scientific statements.

[Music] Down and down I go
All around I go in a spin


DIRECTED BY: ROBERT KENNER

[Music] Crazy about the spin I'm in
Under that old black magic called love
That old black magic called love
That old black magic called love


MERCHANTS OF DOUBT
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:50 am

[Woman] How do you spell your name

[Stanton Glantz] G-L-A-N-T-Z.
I can give you a card.

[Woman] No, it's all right. Stan, right?

[Stanton Glantz] No?
Or Stanton. Stan.

[Woman] Are you a ...?

[Stanton Glantz] I got involved in the tobacco issue in 1978 ...
over clean indoor air. Then, the radical thing was to have a nonsmoking section.

[Stewardess] Good evening, the captain has turned off the no-smoking sign.

[Stanton Glantz] Smoking was everywhere.
It was on airplanes.
It was in restaurants.
I work in a hospital.
People were smoking in the hospital.

[MONITOR BEEPING]

[Expert] What in the world is so wrong about smoking in the workplace?
I mean, I smoke on my job every night. I'm not hurting anyone.

[Stanton Glantz] Well, that's bullshit.

[Expert] Is it?

[Stanton Glantz] One thing you've gotta be willing to do when you're doing science that is not in the interest of these giant corporations,
when people come after you for baloney reasons, you've gotta be willing to stand up to them.

[Expert] I don't know of any evidence, conclusive evidence.

[Stanton Glantz] Here. You could read this.

[Expert] Let me ask you something.

[Hits Stan's hand] Let me ask you something.

[Stanton Glantz] Read this.

[Expert] [Throws the books into the air] Let me ask you one simple damn question. Hold on.

[Stanton Glantz] We spent a long time banging our heads up against the wall, because these guys are rich, they're politically powerful ...
and they're mean.

[Expert] How old are you?

[Stanton Glantz] I'm 42.

[Expert] Forty-two. Now, I smoke four packs of cigarettes a day.
I am 55.
Tell me if I don't look 20 years younger than this [DELETE].
Come on.

[Stanton Glantz] [Throwing his hands up in the air]

[Audience cheering and applauding]

[Stanton Glantz] But when you went to policy makers, or the media ...
and talk about just how dishonest and manipulative they were,
people would kind of think you were a little paranoid delusional.
And then the whole situation changed. I'm sitting in my office on the 11th floor of the hospital,
and a box arrives.
And in there was thousands of pages of internal tobacco industry documents.
The documents in the box came from somebody on the inside working for the companies, copying a bunch of documents, and sneaking them out,
and making them available to people on the outside.
We now have over 80 million pages, and the great bulk of those have become available because of lawsuits against the tobacco companies.
The thing that is so important about the documents is, it gets you behind the veil, it gets you inside the companies, where you don't have to speculate about what they're doing.
You could read about it.
That the tobacco companies knew smoking caused cancer in the '50s.

["Heavy smoking contributes to lung cancer" -- 1958]

[Ed Horrigan, Reynolds Tobacco Chief, 1984] It is not known whether cigarettes cause cancer.

[Stanton Glantz] That they knew smoking caused heart disease in the '60s.

["We are disturbed at study's implications re cardiovascular disorders" -- 1963]

[Ted Koppel, Nightline Anchor] No causal relationship between cigarette smoking and heart disease?

[Ed Horrigan, Reynolds Tobacco Chief, 1984] No, as a matter of fact, there are --

[Stanton Glantz] That they knew nicotine was an addictive drug in the '60s.

["We are in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug." -- 1963]

[Stanton Glantz] Yet 30 years later, the CEOs of all the big tobacco companies ...
stood up under oath, and told Congress that nicotine wasn't addictive.

[TV Host] You believe nicotine is not addictive?

[Lying CEO] I believe nicotine is not addictive, yes.

[Lying CEO] I don't believe our products are addictive.

[Lying CEO] Not addictive.

[Lying CEO] Not addictive.

[Lying CEO] It's not addictive.

[Lying CEO] Not addictive.

[Stanton Glantz] The science that they did internally was very good, often decades ahead ...
of what people on the outside were doing. It's just that you don't want the people on the outside to know what that evidence is saying.
The tobacco issue broke into the public consciousness in 1953
Faced with undeniable evidence that smoking was killing people,
they did what any self-respecting big corporation would do. They hired a public relations firm.
And Hill and Knowlton said to the heads of all the big tobacco companies:

[HILL AND KNOWLTON, INC., Public Relations Counsel]

"You can't deny the evidence.
You can't say smoking doesn't cause cancer.
But what you can do, is cast doubt."

[Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy. Within the business, we recognize that a controversy exists. However, with the general public, the consensus is that ...]

[Doubt is our product]


[Dr. Helmut Wakeham, V.P. Science and Technology, Philip Morris] I think there's a great deal of doubt as to whether or not cigarettes are harmful.

[Expert] Smoking may be hazardous, it may not be.

[Expert] Smoking may be hazardous, it may not be.

[Expert] It may be, or it may not be. We don't know.

[Dr. Helmut Wakeham, V.P. Science and Technology, Philip Morris] None of the things which have been found in tobacco smoke ...
are at concentrations which can be considered harmful.

[Interviewer] But the components themselves can be considered harmful, can they not?

[Dr. Helmut Wakeham, V.P. Science and Technology, Philip Morris] Anything can be considered harmful. Applesauce is harmful if you get too much of it. I don't think many people are dying from applesauce.
They're not eating that much.

[Stanton Glantz] The playbook that big tobacco developed to attack science ...

[PLAYBOOK]

worked for them for 50 years.

[MANUFACTURE DOUBT]

[QUESTION THE SCIENCE]


Because every day that they can delay effective policy action,

[CREATE CONTROVERSY]

is one more day that they can make more money.

[FIND FRIENDLY SCIENTIST; ATTACK THE MESSENGER; SHIFT THE BLAME; FREEDOM; DELAY REGULATION]

[BELL RINGING]


They can be out there selling a product that's killing a half a million Americans a year, and get away with it.
And so other businesses that were faced with regulatory challenges ...
had to look at this and say, "Boy, if this works for tobacco,
we ought to be able to use that playbook too.
What's happened is that people working on a whole range of other issues ...
that you wouldn't think had much to do with tobacco,

[PHARMACEUTICAL]

have gone into the documents, and found things that we never would have thought to have looked for.

[ASBESTOS; CHEMICAL]

[Chicago Tribune]

[TALKING INDISTINCTLY]


[Sam Roe, Journalist] My partner and I, we were both ready ...
to take on a new project, something we could sink our teeth into.

[SAM ROE, JOURNALIST]

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] And almost everybody said: "You should be looking at flame retardants."

[Sam Roe, Journalist] I had no idea that there were flame retardants in my couches, my chairs.
These are chemicals measured by ounces and pounds.

[NOTICE: THIS ARTICLE MEETS THE FLAMMABILITY REQUIREMENTS OF CALIFORNIA BUREAU OF HOME FURNISHINGS TECHNICAL BULLETIN 117. CARE SHOULD BE ...]

[Sam Roe, Journalist] In the average couch, there could be up to two pounds of flame retardants.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] We all wind up with the chemicals in our bodies because of it.
Because those chemicals come out of the foam, they migrate in the dust.
American babies are born with the highest levels ...
of flame retardant chemicals of any place in the world. They're linked to health problems.

[CANCER; LOWER FERTILITY; LOW BIRTHWEIGHT BABIES; ATTENTION PROBLEMS; THYROID PROBLEMS]

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] And kids are the most vulnerable.
So then the big question was, "Do they really protect us from fires?"

[Sam Roe, Journalist] One of the early breakthroughs was ...
when we talked to the leading fire scientist.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] It was his study that the chemical industry was holding up as proof ...
that flame retardants work.
And yet, when we talked to him, he said, "They're grossly distorting my work."
That flame retardants in your house,
they don't protect you from anything.
And then I thought, "Wow, okay.
We have them in our bodies, they're rising exponentially,
and they don't work?
How can that be?"

[SIRENS WAILING AND BELL RINGING]

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] In the '70s, thousands of people were dying in fires started by cigarettes.
When you smoked a cigarette and put it down,
it could burn for up to 30 minutes after you'd put it down. The tobacco industry was under pressure to create a self-extinguishing cigarette.
Tobacco kept insisting, "We can't do it."
You start tampering with a cigarette, it is a very highly technical and complex undertaking. They didn't want to alter a product that was making them billions of dollars a year.
So what they needed was a scapegoat. And they had this perfect scapegoat, and it was furniture.
The furniture was to blame here. You need to fireproof the world around the cigarette.

[Sam Roe, Journalist] The cigarette industry at that time was having credibility problems, so they needed a credible third party to go out there and deliver their message.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] There was this document in the tobacco archives ...

[THIRD PARTY ALLIES]

that laid bare their strategy in pretty callous language.

[You have to try to understand whom you have to neutralize in advance, who is a potential threat to you. Not only who is a potentially ally. Who is a potential threat to you and then how do you make common cause with the category of individuals or companies or group or whathaveyou so that you can neutralize them. Example. The self-extinguishing cigarette. Who would normally be involved in the self-extinguishing cigarette on the other side of the fence? The firefighting community."]

"You have to try to understand who is a potential threat to you so you can neutralize them. Example, the self-extinguishing cigarette.
Who would be involved in the self-extinguishing cigarette ...
on the other side of the fence? The firefighting community."
This is an international group of executives.
He's saying, "This is what you need to do.
Find your enemies. In this case the fire service.
Those folks are a real threat to us. Neutralize them."
"We had turned them around and made allies.
Third-party defenders for ourselves."
So there was a guy at the Tobacco Institute named Peter Sparber.
The Tobacco Institute planted Peter Sparber ...
inside the National Association of State Fire Marshals.
And the fire marshals named him their legislative representative.
What the fire marshals didn't know was that big tobacco ...

[Peter Sparber Legislative Representative]

was paying him $200 an hour for work they thought was volunteer work.

[Sam Roe, Journalist] So in some ways, he's almost like a spy.

[Peter Sparber @ $200/hr.]

He would go in, he would talk to the fire marshals.
And he convinced them that they should deliver the message of big tobacco.

[B. CPSC 1996 rulemakings for small open flame and smoldering ignitions of upholstered furniture; possible action against mattresses and adult sleepwear in 1996. (a) In 1996, CPSC will issue a Proposed Rule on small open flame ignitions of upholstered furniture, and is expected to initiate an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on smoldering ignitions. (b) The Commission also will reopen the question of smoldering ignitions of mattresses and may begin work on cigarette ignitions of sleepwear worn by senior citizens. (c) The upholstered furniture, mattresses, fabric and foam manufacturers -- all of whom have promoted fire safe cigarettes as the solution -- have had to turn their attention to the Commission's activities. They tried and failed to cut CPSC funding. Worse, they were caught by Chairman Ann Brown, who has the votes to take action against them. (d) In 1996, fire officials must keep the pressure on the Commission to focus on the fuels rather than ignition sources.]

That it's not cigarettes causing all these fatal fires, it's the furniture.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] Manufacturers had to put pounds of toxic chemicals into the cushions of your couch.

[Sam Roe, Journalist] You have to hand it to Peter Sparber. I don't think there's too many guys that could pull that off.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] He said, "If you can do tobacco,
you can do just about anything in public relations." Peter Sparber went on to work for the pesticide industry, the oil industry.
There are other Peter Sparbers out there.

[PETER SPARBER: TOBACCO; PESTICIDES; AUTOMOBILES; COAL; OIL]

[Stanton Glantz] You see the same small group of people that the tobacco industry used, working on all kinds of other issues.

[STEVEN MILLOY: TOBACCO; PESTICIDES; CHEMICAL; COAL; OIL]

[TOM HILTACHK: TOBACCO; GMOs; OIL]

[RICHARD BERMAN: TOBACCO; ALCOHOL; SODA; FAST FOOD]

[JACK BONNER: TOBACCO; PHARMACEUTICALS; NUCLEAR ENERGY; COAL; OIL]

[TOM BORELLI: TOBACCO]

[MYRON WEINBERG: TOBACCO]

[EXPERT]

[EXPERT]


[Expert] This is not what the drunk driving debate is about.
This is political sound bites, instead of good science.

[Stanton Glantz] They had developed a certain set of skills that a lot of industries are gonna want.

[Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com] Dioxins, pesticides, chemicals in general. There's no evidence that these are harming us.

[Stanton Glantz] The only way these guys are actually effective, is if the public thinks they're an independent voice.

[Glenn Beck] Steve, first of all, are you in bed with big oil,
and if so, how good in bed are they?

[Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com] Ha-ha-ha.
Not in bed with anyone, just trying to do the right thing on climate change.

[Man] Red. Watch it. You win. You lose. You lose. See.

[Indistinct chatter]

[Woman] How did you miss that one?

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] Nobody ever won at Three-Card Monte in history.
They've been playing it for 150 years, and nobody's won.

[Man] That one's your red. That one's your black.

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] People want to think that the Three-Card Monte is all about the sleight-of-hand maneuver the Monte operator uses ...
to switch one card for another. That's the least of it.

[TALKING INDISTINCTLY]

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] The Monte operator, he wants to instill that confidence in you.
That's where "con" comes in con game.
And so he enlists the assistance of confederates,
shills, people who stand there and bet with money and watch the game.

[GRUNTS]

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] The shill wins so that you have the confidence ...
that the Monte operator will pay.

[Shill] Pay me. Thank you. Thank you.

[TALKING INDISTINCTLY]

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] They're gonna look like they're independent.
The idea of how to mask the shill,
how to make the shill look legitimate to the audience, so that they're not suspect when they're playing the game ...
is all part of the psychology. The game does not work without that concealment.

[James Taylor] The evidence does not support the notion that humans are causing global warming.

[Christopher Monckton] There is no scientific basis for alarm.

[Man 1] We do not know enough about what affects climate.

[Man 2] We don't know if there's a problem.

[Man 3] Climate scientists have a political agenda, and they are using science to drive that political agenda.

[Interviewer] First of all, Dr. Hansen, say your name, spell your last name, give your title.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist, 1988] Well, I'm James Hansen. I'm the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And it's H-A-N-S-E-N.

[Interviewer] You've created quite a stir. Are you glad that the stir is happening?

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Well, I think that it's important to have the attention on the possible climate changes.
Let's try that again.

[Interviewer] Sure.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Ahem. You want to ask the question?

[Interviewer] No. No, you just go ahead and answer them.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Well, I think that -- What I'd like to say is that, frankly,
I would rather do my research than be interviewed for TV.

[Robert Kenner] What made you fall in love with science?

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Well, that's what I could do.
I could do physics and mathematics. That was easy for me.
I got into science with NASA ...
as the space program was just getting started.
I had proposed an experiment to go to Venus on the Pioneer Venus mission.
The question was, "Well, why was Venus so hot?"
As it turned out, the greenhouse effect was the reason why Venus had a temperature of about 600 degrees.
We started realizing that our own atmosphere was changing. So I then began to work full-time ...
on understanding our planet instead of Venus.
The CO2 that we put in the air by burning fossil fuels ...
will stay in the climate system for millennia.
It's like putting a blanket around the planet. It holds in the heat.
Civilization has developed in the last several thousand years in a climate that has been very stable, varying by no more than about one degree.
So if you warm up a few degrees, you're putting the planet outside that [state] which has existed ...
for hundreds of thousands of years.
We'd just assumed that humanity would take sensible actions ...
to avoid undesirable consequences.

[Tim Wirth, 1988] Thank you for being here. Dr. Hansen, if you'd start us off, we'd appreciate it.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Mr. Chairman, and members --

[Tim Wirth] You have to talk right into the microphone. These are not high-tech microphones. You have to pull it right over close, and talk right into it, or people can't hear.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Okay.

[Tim Wirth] There you go.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Most scientists are not good communicators.
We're not trained to do that. Science itself is hard enough, without trying to communicate with the public.
The global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.

[John Passacantando] So in 1988, Jim Hansen testifies, and the news media reports it.

["Greenhouse Effect" Called Reality]

[News Anchor] It could mean devastating changes to life on Earth.
John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace.

[John Passacantando] I just trundled into this fight as really just another earnest environmentalist.
I've worked on this for 20 years.
Environmentalists, we thought this was a fight about science.
Get the science out there, into the media, politicians will listen, we can solve this.

[Tom Brokaw] The question is, what will the White House do about it? ...

[George Bush I, August 1988] Those who think we're powerless with this greenhouse effect ...
are forgetting about the White House effect.

[John Passacantando] So the fossil fuel industry realizes it has an enormous problem.

[Woman] Bill O'Keefe is executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute. He's also a board member of the Global Climate Coalition ...
made up of oil and electric companies, automakers, and others.

[Bill O'Keefe, Former Chairman, Global Climate Coalition] We believed it was a war on oil. They had an off-oil agenda. Climate change was part of that.
I think that it's unfortunate that the science is so distorted and misstated.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] The science is complicated, and there are lots of factors. You have to understand the whole picture.

[Lee Raymond, CEO, ExxonMobil] There is a natural variability that has nothing to do with man.

[Don Blankenship, CEO, Massey Energy] Climate is changing naturally.

[Lee Raymond, CEO, ExxonMobil] It has to do with sunspots, the wobble of the Earth.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] And so it's not too difficult ...
to persuade some of the public that we really don't know for sure.
So let's wait awhile. We need to have more proof.

[Bonner Cohen, Author, "The Green Wave: Environmentalism & Its Consequences"] We need more data.

[Lee Raymond, CEO, ExxonMobil] The science isn't there to make a determination.

[Bill O'Keefe, Former Chairman, Global Climate Coalition] There is no need for us to rush to this kind of judgment ...

[John Passacantando] Others put out ads saying more pollution is gonna be good for us.

[Dr. Sherwood Idso] A doubling of the CO2 in the atmosphere will produce a tremendous greening of Planet Earth.

[Ned Leonard, Greening Earth Society] CO2 benefits plant life. It's increasing the bounty of the planet,
our ability to feed populations.

[John Passacantando, Ozone Action] What you see from the coal industry is analogous to what the tobacco industry used to do.
They refuse to change. They're trying to convince us that it's good for us.
The way they used to say, "Luckys make you healthy."
So there's this hope that, as the science continues to emerge, the public will become aware, and our political leaders will solve this problem.
But that's not what happened.
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:52 am

[TALKING INDISTINCTLY]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] I was always interested in broader questions about scientific knowledge.
Why we believe some things, and not others.
How do scientists come to consensus?
What does it take for scientists to say, "Yes, we know this is true"?

[Expert] The problem is, there's no consensus on what's causing it.

[FOX NEWS: GORE, GOV. CUOMO QUICK TO BLAME STORM ON CLIMATE CHANGE]

[Expert] Consensus has not been met among scientists ...

[FOX NEWS: CRITICS TO UN: STOP USING SANDY TRAGEDY TO PUSH AGENDA]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] A decade after Hansen had testified in Congress,
the media are still presenting this as a big scientific debate.

[Stuart Varney] Gentlemen, I'm sure that this debate is gonna continue for a long, long time.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] I had the idea that we could test this question ...
of whether or not there was a consensus among scientists: active scientists, people who are doing research and publishing in journals. Not the public at large. Not politicians. But scientists.
And so we got a list of all the papers ...
that had been published from 1992 to 2002, that had used that key word phrase "global climate change."
And then we read them.
The question was,
how many of these papers disagree that most of the observed warming is due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations?
So I certainly thought we would get some that disagreed.
And when we found nothing,
then I thought, "Oh, this is a result that needs to be published."
When my article on the scientific consensus came out,

[Essay Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes]



I started getting threatening emails, saying that I was a communist,
that I should be fired from my job. A few people began to say to me:
"Other people have also been attacked in a way that seems similar."
People who worked on acid rain, who worked on the ozone hole.
I started doing research on the people who were attacking me.
And that's when I discovered a startling fact.
They were the same people ...
who had attacked the scientists on all these issues.

[Letters to the Editor: Coverup in the Greenhouse?]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Then I began to realize, "This is a debate, but this is not a scientific debate." And if it's not scientific, then the question becomes:
"Well, what sort of a debate is it?"
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:52 am

[SEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE, SPONSORED BY THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE]

[Music] Don't lie to me
Don't lie to me.

[GLOBAL WARMING: NOT HARMFUL; PAST WARNINGS WERE BENEFICIAL; NO CURRENT HARMS; FUTURE WARNINGS WILL BE MODEST]


Don't lie to me

[Dan Harris, ABC News Anchor] Dr. Fred Singer was greeted like a rock star ...
at a recent meeting of global warming skeptics.
This 84-year-old, Princeton-trained physicist ...
is the grandfather of a movement ...
that rails against the broad scientific understanding ...
that global warming is real, man-made and potentially catastrophic.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] It's all bunk. It's all bunk.

His fellow scientists call him a fraud, a charlatan and a showman, but Fred Singer calls himself "a realist."

Singer, an 84-year-old Princeton-trained physicist, is the grandfather of the global warming skeptics who dispute the established scientific consensus that global warming is real, that it is caused by the pollution humans are pumping into the atmosphere, and that it will be catastrophic if measures are not taken immediately.

"All bunk," Singer told ABC News in his characteristically blunt fashion. "I'm not really looking for popularity, you know."

Singer seems to enjoy being provocative.

"I hate to tell you this, but polar bears like to eat tiny little seal pups," he told a conference of global warming skeptics recently.

Singer does not deny the planet is warming, but says man is not the cause, and argues, against overwhelming scientific evidence, that a warmer planet will actually be beneficial for mankind and other species on the planet.

Polar bears, though, are not likely to benefit. They are starving because the Arctic ice cap is shrinking, which is cutting them off from seal populations, and some scientists have suggested they will be extinct in the wild before the end of this century if the warming trend is not reversed.

This is not the first time Singer has set himself against mainstream scientific opinion. He has also challenged the dangers of second-hand smoke, toxic waste and nuclear winter.

"He's kind of a career skeptic," said Kert Davies, a global warming specialist at Greenpeace. "He believes that environmental problems are all overblown and he's made a career on being that voice."

Davies says skeptics like Singer, many of them funded for years by the oil and coal industry, have been able to delay government action on global warming by a decade or more by convincing the public through a disinformation campaign that there was an ongoing debate among scientists about global warming.

"That's how people will remember Fred Singer, as someone who tried to slow down the reaction to global warming," Davies said. "And in the end that is going to cost lost lives, lost species and major economic damage around the world."

Singer responds by asking, "Suppose the other side is wrong.... They're forcing us to make tremendous economic sacrifices that will force people into poverty in the world, make life miserable for our children and grandchildren."

But scientists say there is no "other side." The debate about global warming is over, they say.

ABC News showed Singer's most recent report on global warming to climate scientists from NASA, from Stanford University and from Princeton. They dismissed it as "fabricated nonsense."

Singer insists he is not on the payroll of the energy industry, but admits he once accepted an unsolicited check from Exxon for $10,000.

-- Global Warming Denier: Fraud or "Realist"?, by Dan Harris, Felicia Biberica, Elizabeth Stuart and Nils Kongshaug


[George Stephanopoulos] There are so many scientists who disagree with you. The IPCC, NASA, NOAA, the National Academy of Sciences,
American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Geophysical Union, The American Meteorological Society. We're talking about scientists all over the globe.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] What can I say? They're wrong.
When we talk about scientists, there are really two camps.
Those of us who wish to have decisions that are evidence-based are called, not just skeptics, which is a good word, but they're called deniers. And some of us are called criminals.

[Robert Kenner] What would you call yourself?

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] Well, I consider myself, primarily, a scientist.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] A major part of the mystery of this story ...
was to understand the scientists in the story.
This whole thing doesn't work unless there are credible voices.

[Female Narrator] Eminent scientists, Drs. Singer and Seitz,
promote the skeptic view on climate change.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Singer and Seitz rose to high positions of influence and power ...
within the American scientific establishment.
Fred Seitz was one of the most important American physicists of the 20th century.
He was the president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
But now we see him starting to attack science and scientists,
in areas in which he has no expertise.
So why would a man like that question the work of his own scientific colleagues?
One of the other things that emerged was that Seitz ...
had worked for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

[Frederick Seitz, Ph.D.
The Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue
New York, New York 10021
Dear Dr. Seitz:
We should like to renew the letter agreement dated July 12, 1978 between you and RJR Nabisco, Inc. (formerly R.J. Reynolds Industries, Inc.) for six months commencing July 1, 1986 at an annual fee of $65,000 which shall be paid in equal monthly installments on the last day of each month. In all other respects the agreement will remain in full force and effect.
If the foregoing is acceptable to you, please sign and return to me the one copy of this letter.
Sincerely,
E.A. [illegible]]


[Frederick Seitz, Physicist] The blame for smoking should be placed upon smokers. If they buy them, it's their responsibility.

[Interviewer] Yeah, but you know that in the '60s, the tobacco company very clearly said that there wasn't a direct linkage.

[Frederick Seitz, Physicist] If people wanted to believe that, it was their own doing.

[Interviewer] But was that also political on the part of the tobacco companies?

[Frederick Seitz, Physicist] Well, they wanted to keep up sales.

[Interviewer] Yeah. Was it irresponsible on the part of the tobacco companies?

[Frederick Seitz, Physicist] It was irresponsible on the part of the smokers.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Fred Singer, like Fred Seitz, also worked with the tobacco industry.
You can find many documents that attest to his relationship with Philip Morris.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] I still think that the EPA has cooked the data on secondhand smoke.
I am annoyed, heh, by the fact that this tobacco business comes up every time when I speak about global warming, which has nothing to do with tobacco.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] So why did Seitz and Singer do this?
Why would they make common cause with the tobacco industry? Most people assume the answer's money.
But it was clear to me early on that that wasn't the whole story.

[Man] Lift off. Lift off at 34 minutes.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Both Seitz and Singer are Cold War scientists.
They both worked on Cold War weapons, and rocketry programs.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] I was primarily concerned with building instrumentation ...
to be put into captured V2 rockets.

[September 27, 1924: [Dr. Fred Singer]] is an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia. Singer trained as an atmospheric physicist, and is known for his work in space research, atmospheric pollution, rocket and satellite technology, his questioning of the link between UV-B and melanoma rates, and that between CFCs and stratospheric ozone loss, his public denial ...]

We felt the threat of the Soviet Union quite strongly.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] They also shared a kind of political ideology, deeply, deeply anti-communist. When the Cold War ends,

[My Adventures in the Ozone Layer, by S. Fred Singer
from Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns]




they begin systematically attacking all these other issues.
There's a bit of a mystery. What do these things all have in common?
All of these issues are issues that involve ...
the need for government action. That's when the penny dropped.
I began to realize, none of this is about the science.

[REGULATION]

This is a political debate about the role of government.
So in a number of places, we found these people saying ...
they see environmentalists as creeping communists.

I have left environmental activists till last. There are well-intentioned individuals who are sincerely concerned about what they perceive as a critical danger to humanity. But many of the professionals share the same incentives as government bureaucrats: status, salaries, perks, and power. And then there are probably those with hidden agendas of their own -- not just to “save the environment” but to change our economic system. The telltale signs are the attack on the corporation, the profit motive, and the new technologies.

Some of these “coercive utopians” are socialists, some are technology-hating Luddites; most have a great desire to regulate -- on as large a scale as possible.

-- My Adventures in the Ozone Layer, by S. Fred Singer


They're Reds under the bed. They call them watermelons.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] Socialism will not be buried under the ruins of the Berlin Wall.
But the beginning of a new threat to free enterprise, and to liberal democracies.
By any other name,
government control of the economy is still government control of the economy.

[Music] Whoa, oh Watermelons

[Man] I call them watermelons. They're Green on the outside, but Red on the inside.

[Music] Whoa, oh Watermelons

[Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com] You know, at the end of the Cold War,
we threw these people out the window Red,
and now they've walked back in the front door Green.

[Man] I'll tell you what the environmental movement is in this country.
It is the modern home of the socialist-slash-communist movement in America.

[Music] Who, oh Watermelons

[Man] This bill is Green on the outside, and inside it's deep communist Red.

[GLENN BECK PROGRAM: CLIMATE BILL FACES TOUGH OPPOSITIO IN THE SENATE]

[Music] Whoa, oh Watermelons


[ARCTIC GREENPEACE]

Whoa, oh Watermelons

[Obama -- lead on Climate! 350.org Citizens' Climate Congress http://www.gwenet.org]

Whoa, oh Watermelons

[STOP GLOBAL WARMING http://www.vermonthotseat.org]


[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] The further down the road somebody gets in terms of their commitment,
behaviorally and ideologically with a social group, a tribe --
"Our tribe doubts climate change. That's what we do."
Whether you care or not, your tribe believes a bunch ...
of other things that you also believe. So you buy the package.
I am Michael Shermer, director of The Skeptic Society.
We investigate the paranormal, pseudoscience, and cults and claims of all kinds between.
Some people call us debunkers,
but there's a lot of bunk that needs debunking. And that's part of our job.
When I say, "Where's the spacecraft?," you say, "They hid it."
Your whole case is based on anecdotes.
You gotta have a piece of the spacecraft, as I've always said.
Bring back one of those probes.
We did one on Holocaust deniers.
Vaccinations, "Do Vaccines Cause Autism?"
We've done many issues on climate change. I became skeptical of the environmental movement,
when a lot of the predictions they made in the '70s -- When I was in college and taking classes in these subjects -- it was clear they weren't coming true. They exaggerated.

[END THE FASCIST RAPE OF AMERICA]



[Man] Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come. An utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.

[Kim Jong Il] Just imagine it.
All around the world, there will be massive exprosions.
With nobody to guide them,
the people will break out into panic and rioting all over the earth.
The true nature of humanity is unreashed.
Dog eats dog, as everyone attacks everyone
and fends only for themselves.
Grobal stabirity unravels.
By the time my show is over, it will be far too rate.

-- Team America, directed by Trey Parker


And when civilization collapses on this earth as it will within this decade, it's going to hit the U.S. first.

[MOTHER EARTH IS DYING]

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] Rain forests would disappear, and we'd run out of oil, and all that.
Overpopulation will destroy the Earth.



And billions of people would be starving to death because we don't have food to feed them.



[IN MEMORY OF THE FUTURE GENERATIONS OF PLANET EARTH]

None of that happened. It didn't even remotely happen.

[Music] [The Day After Tomorrow]

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] By the late '90s, the global warming thing,
it became kind of a secular apocalypse, sort of a millenarianism for liberals.
It's not just a prediction, it was like, "Oh, boy.
Disaster is coming, and we, the chosen ones, well, we were right. We'll come out the other side and say, 'See, we were right.'" So I was a climate skeptic for several decades, actually.
But data trumps politics. In the end, you have to follow the data. I read, you know, all the leading books and scientific papers.
I'm trained enough to realize what the data actually show. I thought, "Oh, my God, this stuff is real." Take all the politics out,
the Earth is getting warmer,
and we're the cause. No question about it.

[Robert Kenner] So this isn't the greatest hoax ever sold to the American people?

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] Ha-ha. No, climate change is not the greatest hoax ever sold to us. But people on the right, they really think it is -- even Libertarians.
I go to this Libertarian conference every summer, Freedom Fest in Las Vegas.

[Cato Spokesman] The Cato Institute is a Libertarian think tank. We're dedicated to free markets, and individual liberty.

[Eagle Financial Publications Spokesman, http://www.EagleDailyInvestor.com] Freedom from government, limited government.

[Heartland Institute Spokeswoman] The Heartland Institute believes warming is not man-made.
This is our event today. James Taylor is with The Heartland Institute.
Okay.

[Robert Kenner] Who is he debating?

[Heartland Institute Spokeswoman] He is debating Mr. Shermer,
who is -- he writes for Skeptic Magazine.
But James Taylor is doing the skeptic side today.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] We'll see what happens at the debate. Yeah, we'll go to that.
They think of me as some liberal, crazy, conspiracy -- putting together this con -- this made-up story about climate change.
I'm like, "I used to be on your side. All I did was look at the data."
I've been Libertarian my whole adult life.
Since I read Atlas Shrugged in college, like everybody else here.
I prefer to read The Wall Street Journal and ignore The NY Times,
because The Journal tells me what I like to know is true.



So what flipped me was just sort of looking at the data,
and all the new data that had come in in the early 2000s.
99% of the world's glaciers are retreating.
Why don't people change their minds when new data comes in about climate?
Because it isn't about the data.
It's about me being a consistent tribal member, and showing to my fellow tribe members that you can count on me.

[Man] The whole global warming debate is based upon your team ...
starting out --

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] "My team?"

[Man] Yeah, your team. Starting out by making the declaration ...
that carbon dioxide causes temperature change.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] First, it's not fifty-fifty. It's not like half of scientists say this and the other half say that. Almost none of them say what my opponent says.

[Man] That's a lie.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] No, none. I showed you the chart. No.
99% of scientists --

[Man] That's a lie! You can repeat it, but it won't make it true.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] 99% have said that it's real.

[Man] That is a bold-faced lie.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] No, it is not.
When I go into these debates, it feels like I'm going into a Twilight Zone episode.
You know, where black is white, up is down ...
and everything is just the opposite of what you think it is.

[TWILIGHT ZONE]

[Woman] Two parallel worlds that exist side by side. And each of us has a counterpart in this world.


[James Taylor, Heartland Institute] Carbon dioxide increases have followed --

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] Whenever I deal with climate deniers, it's almost like a mirrored reality.
I put up the slide showing the Earth getting warmer, and the other guys put up the same slide:
"The Earth is getting cooler."

[James Taylor, The Heartland Institute] Temperatures now are not abnormally warm. They're abnormally cool.

[General] Another dimension? Another world parallel to ours? Heh.
You call that rational?


[NASA RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS 2005]

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] When you look at climate scientists,
we know who they are. They work in science labs.
On the other side, people are not scientists.

[Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com] Global warming ...

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] Of if they are scientists, they're not climate scientists.
They're a political, ideological group,
that just mines the data that somebody else gets,
and cherry-picks data that fits what they already want to be true.

[Brian Williams, MSNBC] An international group of scientific experts said in no uncertain terms,
global warming is real, and it's almost certainly caused by what we humans do to this planet.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and it literally consists of thousands of professional climate scientists from all over the world.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] And then we have the NIPCC. You can say "Not IPCC." We call it "nip-ick." We reached the opposite conclusion.
I want to -- I want to stress that we didn't add any new scientific work.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] They present themselves as scientific.
They use graphics to make them look like the scientific reports they're trying to discredit.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] This is a report produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.



And here is the mirror of that produced by the Cato Institute.
They've adopted the exact same page layout and design.
If you're a congressman, how do you tell the difference between this, and this one?
And that's the point of this deception.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] This is kind of an extended summary.
It's called a synthesis report.

[Robert Kenner] Yeah.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] The actual IPCC report is about so thick.

[Robert Kenner] And how thick is your NIPCC report?

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] Same.

[Robert Kenner] It's the same. You're as thick as they are?

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] We strictly use the same thickness.

[John Hockenberry, Frontline Correspondent] So it's 97 percent of them, and one of you.

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] There's hundreds of us, hundreds, thousands of us. Look, 31,000 scientists and engineers signed a statement to the contrary to what you just read.

[John Hockenberry, Frontline Correspondent] The Oregon Petition?

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] Yes.

[Global Warming Petition: We urge the United States government to reject the global warming ...]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] The Oregon Petition claims to be signed by climate scientists ...
who disagree with the mainstream view of the scientific community.
If you actually look at it, what you find is in many cases, they aren't scientists at all.

[Music] Tell me what you want,
What you really, really want
I wanna, I wanna


[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] Somebody put on there the Spice Girls.

[Dr. Geraldine Halliwell]

Somebody else put on there Michael J. Fox.

[Michael J. Fox]

Even Charles Darwin made the list.

[Dr. Charles Darwin]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] And in fact, the claim was so obviously false,
the National Academy took the unprecedented step ...
of publicly disavowing this petition.

[Fox News, Reasonable Doubt News Anchor] More than 31,000 scientists signed a petition ...

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] And yet, it gets cited, and it gets repeated.

[CFact Europe News Anchor] More than 31,000 scientists ...

[Steve Milloy, Author, "Green Hell"] More than 31,000 American scientists rejecting global warming alarmism.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] They give the impression that it's a very big network, with lots of scientists.
But if you look closely,
you see it's a small number of people. Really, just a handful.

[Man] Hey, Fred.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] It's kind of an amazing accomplishment when you think of it,
that such a small group of people have an enormous impact on public opinion.
So that more than half the American people think that the science isn't settled.

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] Reach out and touch another one. This one here? Okay.
Jason's card. Take a look at that. Try and remember it. Don't tell me what it is. I just want you to tell me when you see it.
As a magician, I work hard to prevent my audience from seeing through the trick.
A lot of people think the hand is quicker than the eye. It's not really true. It's just the eye sees a lot of things the mind never notices.
Having trouble, I can tell. What card are you looking for? Maybe I can help. What? The four of --? Really? Was it really the four of hearts?
It's under my cocktail. Show it to them.

[Woman] No, it's not.

[Man] Yeah.

[Crowd] Oh!

[Man] Yeah.

[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] And now, maybe if you watch it enough times with the benefit of a recording,
maybe you figure out the trick.
I don't want you to tell me what it is, I want you to tell me when you see it.
But if you actually see the method, once you see that, you won't un-see it.
Then you can see me put it there time and time again. Once revealed, never concealed.

[Chicago Tribune]

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] It sort of comes back to that idea of a playbook, right? What shape is it gonna take next?

[Sam Roe, Journalist] But look at this, see? See, there's this.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] As science started catching up to the flame-retardant chemical makers,
their tactics got even bolder.

[Senator, Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, April 25, 2011] Senate Bill 1-4-7.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] In 2011, a bill was up that would have changed the rule,
so companies didn't have to add pounds of flame retardants to furniture.

[Senator, SB 147, Leno: Furniture: flammability standards] Firefighters get cancer at alarming rates.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] There were firefighters arguing that the rule didn't work. There were breast-feeding mothers arguing they don't want it in babies' milk.
And public health officials saying this isn't good for us. I wanted to see,
what does the other side say?

[Dr. David Heimbach] Hi, I'm Dr. David Heimbach.

[SB 147 LENO: FURNITURE: FLAMMABILITY STANDARDS]

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] The real star-witness was the burn surgeon.

[Dr. David Heimbach] And I've actually gotten a Compassion Award ...
from the Dalai Lama last year.



[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] He told this sad and dramatic story.

[Dr. David Heimbach] A 7-week-old baby was in a crib, laying on a fire-retardant mattress, on a non-fire retardant pillow. Mom put a candle in the crib, candle fell over, the baby sustained a 50-percent burn. The entire upper half of her body was burned.



Now, this is a tiny little person, no bigger than my Italian greyhound at home.
She ultimately died ...
after about three weeks of pain and misery in the hospital.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] I literally heard a gasp when he told the story about this baby.
He had the room in his hand.

[Senator] Price?

[Senator Price] No.

[Senator] Price, no. Emerson?

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] When David Heimbach finished speaking, you knew the bill would fail.
Okay, can I tuck you in?
I remember flying back to Chicago and seeing my boys sleeping in their cribs, and I'm thinking, "Why would any mother ...
put a candle in her baby's crib?"
I got back to the newsroom. What I talked to Sam about:
"So, what have they argued in the past? When have these bills come up before? Did Dr. Heimbach show up?"

[Dr. David Heimbach, 2 years earlier, SB 772: Leno: Home Furnishing: Juvenile Products] Last month I won a, uh,
Unsung Heroes of Compassion Award from the Dalai Lama.

The 14th Dalai Lama has been a friend to American interests for his entire adult life, since he abdicated his throne in order to save his people from the dangers of .... Well, okay, it didn't turn out very well for the Tibetans, but he did save his skin, his stash of cash, and a lot of reactionary Tibetan oligarchs who came with him. Fortunately, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America was able to provide him with employment as soon as he arrived in India. Since then, he has reliably made himself a thorn in the side of the Chinese, giving the United States the leverage it has needed to build an arms-length trading relationship that now supplies us with enough borrowed money to buy all the microchips, flat screens, cell phones and cheap clothing we could ever want. While his aspirations to someday "return to Tibet" are unlikely to be fulfilled, his mission on behalf of America has been far more successful, and with the installation of numerous "tulkus" on the boards of nonprofit organizations throughout the United States, the exchange has been more than fair. His country has infiltrated ours, and our country has used his people to the best advantage. For this, we commend him, and with heartfelt thanks award him the Cross of Secret Achievement.

-- Thanks From a Grateful Nation: Awarding the Cross of Secret Achievement to the Dalai Lama, by Charles Carreon


[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] Sure enough, Heimbach had testified,
and he told different stories about babies ...
who burned to death in candle fires.

[Dr. David Heimbach, 2 years earlier, SB 772: Leno: Home Furnishing: Juvenile Products] Tell you about a child I took care of in April, about a 9-month-old baby, about the size of a teddy bear ...

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] And that's when Sam and I sat down. We're like:
"We got three babies who died in candle fires,
all treated at Dr. Heimbach's hospital. We gotta find those babies."

[Sam Roe, Journalist] So I called the medical examiner's office.
I asked them to run a computer program of 16 years of deaths of babies or toddlers,
where Dr. Heimbach had his hospital and practice.
There was not any death of any child ...
that matched Dr. Heimbach's description.
I thought the best thing to do was just to call him at home.

[LINE RINGING]

I said, "Those kids you talked about, did they all die in your hospital?"
And he said, "It wasn't factual, it was anecdotal."
And he said, "Listen, the details don't matter. The principle matters." I go, "What's the principle?" He says, "The principle is that fire retardants will retard fires and will prevent burns."
And he said, "Well, I wasn't under oath."

[Senator] Were either one of you paid for your time here in opposition to the bill?

[Dr. David Heimbach, 2 years earlier, SB 772: Leno: Home Furnishing: Juvenile Products] Citizens for Fire Safety.

[Senator Corbett] Okay, thank you.

[Expert] Citizens for Fire Safety are paying for my trip here, yes.

[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] Records showed that they paid Dr. Heimbach $240,000.
So who is Citizens for Fire Safety, right?
What they were claiming was, they were a broad coalition.
Their website had this picture of five smiling kids holding ...
a hand-drawn banner with the words "Fire Safety" on it, and there was a heart dotting the i.
Turns out that in California, that if you have fewer than 50 members ...
in your trade group, you have to disclose who your members are.
Who were the members? The members were the three largest makers ...
of flame retardants in the world. All that was in that group.

[ALBERMARLE CORPORATION; ICL INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS; CHEMTURA]

So there was no question,
Citizens for Fire Safety was a front group.
The story came out, and Citizens for Fire Safety folded.

[Chicago Tribune: Playing with Fire: A deceptive campaign by chemical companies brought toxic flame retardants into our houses and into our bodies. And they don't even work as promised.]



[Patricia Callahan, Journalist] And the law changed. So now companies can make furniture without flame retardants.
But that took two years of investigating.

[CITIZENS FOR FIRE SAFETY]

Citizens for Fire Safety was pretending to be looking out for consumers,

[FLAME-RETARDANT MANUFACTURERS]

when in reality it was looking out for the interests of its funders.

[NON-SMOKER PROTECTION COMMITTEE]

How many other groups are out there doing the same thing?

[TOBACCO INDUSTRY]

[CITIZENS FOR HEALTH]

[SUGAR INDUSTRY]

[CITIZENS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT]

[OIL INDUSTRY]

[AMERICANS FOR AFFORDABLE ENERGY]
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:53 am

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] In the 1980s, after I had testified, I decided to ...
bail out of the public aspect of this problem, because I was very uncomfortable in that role.
And I thought, as the story becomes clearer,
we will then take the actions that are needed.
By the year 2000, it had become so clear that we were not doing anything.
The science has become so clear.
The things that we predicted, are actually happening ...
and some of them are even happening faster than we thought.

[____ Williams] The ice cap has shrunk 23 percent.

[News Anchor 1] The ice is already 50 percent smaller.

[News Anchor 2] Every state in the U.S. set a heat record.

[News Anchor 3] Driest year in half a century.

[____ Williams] Massive Arizona wildfire ...

[Cate Cauguiran] This storm may be the strongest tropical cyclone on Earth ...
to make landfall.

[News Anchor 4] A category five,
and that is only because there are no categories above five.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] We know as much about how the climate works, as doctors know about how your body works.
The scientific method is, you have to continually reassess your conclusions.
As soon as there's new data, you ask, "How does that affect my interpretation?"
And you're open-minded.
What we're up against is people who have a preferred answer. And so then they take the position of a lawyer. They're going to defend their client, and they will only present you with the data that favors their client.
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:53 am

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] As the scientific community coalesces around believing ...
climate change is underway, it's at that moment that we see the think tanks ...
moving into the media environment, and trying to argue the opposite.

[THE WASHINGTON THINK TANK]

[Narrator] In the missile age, it is vital to try to picture in advance ...
how crises might develop.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] So the idea behind a think tank is to think.

[DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE]

One early example of a think tank, is the RAND Corporation,
which was set up to give advice ...
about how to solve problems that the military faced.

[Military Man] I find it difficult to see how we could say it was an air-dropped weapon.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] What is of use is if you have an independent group who can ...
look at data, work through the issue of ...
what would solutions to that problem look like.

[Military Man] Is there a capability of tracking them? I don't know.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] It devolves into something that's highly partisan,
and has made up its mind in advance what the answer is.
So what we begin to see is think tanks taking up climate change as an issue, but not from the point of view of science, but from the point of view of the politics. And one of the first groups to do that is the George C. Marshall Institute.
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:53 am

[Matthew Crawford, Former Executive Director George C. Marshall Institute] I work on motorcycles.
Either the bike starts and runs right, or it doesn't.
And if it doesn't, there's no weaseling your way out of the fact.
Um, and I like that about it. You might say the BS quotient is low.
Unless you're working on Harleys, in which case it can actually be pretty high.

[MOTOR REVVING]

It got myself into a PhD program at Chicago.
So when I finished, I got a phone call from a former teacher, who informed me about this job at the Marshall Institute.
And, you know, the salary was huge.

[George C. Marshall Institute]

At Marshall Institute, coming into it knowing that they were sort of ...
on the skeptical side of the global warming stuff,
you know, I was more or less down with that.
At the same time that I started, there was a new president.
O'Keefe was a different kind of animal.
He had come from sort of the business world,
so he had a different mentality.
He liked to mention that he knew Karl Rove. So in other words, he's plugged-in, and he's an operator.



It's an incredibly complex subject, and it's really about politics,
and political control,
and control of economic means of production.
Climate is just a mechanism.

[Bill O'Keefe, CEO, George C. Marshall Institute] I'm pleased to be part of your program,
and you're in the offices of the George C. Marshall Institute, a small science-policy think tank.

[Robert Kenner] Is Marshall actually doing science?

[Bill O'Keefe, CEO, George C. Marshall Institute] No, we're not doing science.
What I try to do is make sure our work reaches decision makers, reaches people in the media,
so that we are part of shaping the public policy debate.

[Matthew Crawford, Former Executive Director George C. Marshall Institute] I think a lot of people who get into that think tank would start out as intellectuals,
but, you know, in the mixing pot of Washington, arguments become weapons.
Part of this was gathering arguments that were already out there. They weren't always compatible with one another. Sometimes the argument was that, "The Earth is not warming."

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] We don't see a warming of the atmosphere in the last 50 years.

["The earth is NOT warming"]

[Matthew Crawford, Former Executive Director George C. Marshall Institute] At another time, the argument would be, "Well, yes, the Earth is warming,
but it's not due to human activities."

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] The fact that glaciers are melting does not mean that the cause is human. It only means that it's getting warmer.

["The earth is warming, but it's NOT due to human activities"]

[Matthew Crawford, Former Executive Director George C. Marshall Institute] At another time, the argument would be, "Yes, it is warming,
and it's due to human activities, but the cost of doing something about it ...
would be ruinous for society."

[Dr. Fred Singer, Physicist] Of course there is a human influence on climate.

["The earth is warming, it's due to human activities, BUT the cost of doing something about it would be ruinous for society"]

If they go ahead and regulate CO2 as a pollutant,
it will basically stop economic growth in the United States. And this is what many of the enviros want.

[Matthew Crawford, Former Executive Director George C. Marshall Institute] The occasion for me finally quitting was that I got a call from somebody who was updating a directory of lobbyists,
and they wanted to know if Bill O'Keefe ...
was indeed the president of the George C. Marshall Institute.
I said, "Yeah, but why are you asking? Why --? Is he part of this directory?" And they said, "Yes."
I confronted O'Keefe and said, "Are you a registered lobbyist?"
And he got extremely angry.
I tried to get him to tell me if he was, who his clients were. He wouldn't tell me.

[Robert Kenner] And when you went to Marshall, were you still connected in any way to the petroleum business?

[William O'Keefe. Client Name: Exxon Mobil]

[Bill O'Keefe, CEO, George C. Marshall Institute] Um, I think I had -- Yes, I had an oil company as a client.

[Robert Kenner] So were you a lobbyist when you went to work for Marshall?

[Bill O'Keefe, CEO, George C. Marshall Institute] I was still registered as a lobbyist.

[Matthew Crawford, Former Executive Director George C. Marshall Institute] That seemed utterly preposterous to me that you would have ...
as the president of a think tank a guy who's a registered lobbyist.
It's just the whole pretense of the place goes out the window at that point.
And so we had sort of a blowup, and I quit. So for me, at least, there's more real thinking going on in a bike shop ...
than there was in the think tank.

[Robert Kenner] If you were hired by a Greenpeace organization to figure out how to present climate as a problem, what would you --?
What would you suggest to them?

[Bill O'Keefe, CEO, George C. Marshall Institute] They couldn't afford me.

[PEOPLE CHUCKLING]

[Kert Davies] At the same time, O'Keefe is a lobbyist for ExxonMobil ...

[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] When I was at Greenpeace, we looked into who was funding these think tanks.
And you started to find ExxonMobil,
and the Koch brothers, and the Southern Company.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] ExxonMobil has been a major funder of climate change disinformation. They funded over 30 different organizations ...

[EXXON]

that promoted disinformation,
or misleading information, about climate change.



[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] Nobody's gonna believe ExxonMobil. But if they can say it through somebody else who seems independent,
there's power in that for them.

[FOX News Anchor] Myron Ebell is Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy for Competitive Enterprise Institute.

[Lou Dobbs, Live CNN] Senior fellow and science director of Heartland Institute.

[Jay Lehr, Heartland Institute]

[Chris Horner, Competitive Enterprise Institute] The idea that cooling ...

[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] It creates a new cast of characters,
these people who become well-known for casting doubt on global warming.

[Patrick Michaels - Cato Institute]

[News Anchor 3] Mr. Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow ...

[Marlo Lewis, Competitive Enterprise Institute]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] What these institutes do ...
is they promote their own "experts" as contrary experts,
who give you the "other side" of the issue. And journalists fall for it, fall for it lock, stock, and barrel.

[News Anchor, CNN Global Debate] Let's talk to a couple of experts.
Joining us ...

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Scientists will be invited to explain the science, and then against the scientist ...
they will have a so-called expert from a think tank.
And so the public is presented with dueling experts.

Now only an expert can deal with the problem
Because half the problem is seeing the problem
And only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

So if there's no expert dealing with the problem
It's really actually twice the problem
Cause only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

Now in America we like solutions
We like solutions to problems
And there's so many companies that offer solutions
Companies with names like Pet Solution
The Hair Solution. The Debt Solution. The World Solution. The Sushi Solution.
Companies with experts ready to solve the problems.
Cause only an expert can see there's a problem
And only an expert can deal with the problem
Only and expert can deal with the problem

Now let's say you're invited to be on Oprah
And you don't have a problem
But you want to go on the show, so you need a problem
So you invent a problem
But if you're not an expert in problems
You're probably not going to invent a very plausible problem
And so you're probably going to get nailed
You're going to get exposed
You're going to have to bow down and apologize
And beg for the public's forgiveness.
Cause only an expert can see there's a problem
And only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

Now on these shows, the shows that try to solve your problems
The big question is always How can I get control?
How can I take control?
But don't forget this is a question for the regular viewer
The person who's barely getting by.
The person who's watching shows about people with problems
The person who's part of the 60% of the U.S. population
1.3 weeks away, 1.3 pay checks away from homelessness.
In other words, a person with problems.
So when experts say, Let's get to the root of the problem
Let's take control of the problem
So if you take control of the problem you can solve the problem.
Now often this doesn't work at all because the situation is completely out of control.
Cause only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

So who are these experts?
Experts are usually self-appointed people or elected officials
Or people skilled in sales techniques, trained or self-taught
To focus on things that might be identified as problems.
Now sometimes these things are not actually problems.
But the expert is someone who studies the problem
And tries to solve the problem.
The expert is someone who carries malpractice insurance.
Because often the solution becomes the problem.
Cause only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

Now sometimes experts look for weapons.
And sometimes they look everywhere for weapons.
And sometimes when they don't find any weapons
Sometimes other experts say, If you haven't found any weapons
It doesn't mean there are no weapons.
And other experts looking for weapons find things like cleaning fluids.
And refrigerator rods. And small magnets. And they say,
These things may look like common objects to you
But in our opinion, they could be weapons.
Or they could be used to make weapons.
Or they could be used to ship weapons.
Or to store weapons.
Cause only an expert can see they might be weapons
And only an expert can see they might be problems.
Cause only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

And sometimes, if it's really really really hot.
And it's July in January.
And there's no more snow and huge waves are wiping out cities.
And hurricanes are everywhere.
And everyone knows it's a problem.
But if some of the experts say it's no problem
And other experts claim it's no problem
Or explain why it's no problem
Then it's simply not a problem.
But when an expert says it's a problem
And makes a movie and wins an Oscar about the problem
Then all the other experts have to agree that it is most likely a problem.
Cause only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

And even though a county can invade another country.
And flatten it. And ruin it. And create havoc and civil war in that other country
If the experts say that it's not a problem
And everyone agrees that they're experts good at seeing problems
Then invading that country is simply not a problem.
And if a country tortures people
And holds citizens without cause or trial and sets up military tribunals
This is also not a problem.
Unless there's an expert who says it's the beginning of a problem.
Cause only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

Only an expert can see there's a problem
And see the problem is half the problem
And only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem

-- Only An Expert, by Laurie Anderson


[MSNBC News Anchor] Steven Zebiak is General Director of International Research Institute and Climate and Society at Columbia. James Taylor is a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute.

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] If you actually ask what are their credentials,
the answer's often very little, sometimes none.

[James Taylor, Heartland Institute Expert] In college, I majored in government. I also took ...
atmospheric science courses. I also took economics courses.
That makes me well-positioned to bring together all the aspects of this debate, because it's scientific, it's economic, it's political.

[Chicago Sun Times OPINION: Alarmist Global Warming Claims Melt Under Scientific Scrutiny, by James Taylor]

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] There are think tanks that do nothing but crank out op-ed pieces every day.

[The Gazette: OPINION: Global Warming Not Causing Iowa Drought, by James M. Taylor]

[San Antonio Express News: OPINION: Studies Show Earth Warming More Slowly Than Predicted, by James M. Taylor]

If you start tracking them, you'll see sit's the same handful of people that just keep pumping out this material.

[Tampa Tribune: OPINION: Solve State Budget Woes With Coal, by James Taylor]

[Calgary Herald: OPINION: Is Wind Power a Lot of Hot Air?, by James Taylor]


[USA Today: OPINION: This Winter Shows That Global Warming Is Not Changing Our Climate Severely, by James M. Taylor]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Some of these so-called experts, they become go-to people.
A handful of them turn out to be very, very good at it.

[Marc Morano] The global warming alarm spread by Al Gore and the United Nations is in utter scientific collapse.
We've gone 16 years without global warming according to data.
Akin to medieval witchcraft where we blame witches for controlling weather.



[Thom Hartmann] You were described as the godfather of climate change denying.

[Marc Morano] The mastermind of the whole thing -- Yes.

[Thom Hartmann] Yeah. Yeah.
What do you call yourself? Are you, uh ...?

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] [Chuckles] What do I call myself? Uh ... Uh ...
I guess I'm an environmental journalist on some level.
After the Greens out there finish puking after hearing me say that,
I will say, that's how I started.

[Ronald Reagan] And will, to the best of my ability --

[Young Marc]

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I was a volunteer for Ronald Reagan in 1980, at age 12.

[Robert Kenner] When you were growing up,
you were a door-to-door salesman?

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Ha-ha-ha. Yeah.
I learned so much from door-to-door sales.
I did gutter cleaning.
You learn then what communication tactics worked,
and what didn't.

[Robert Kenner] How did you meet Rush Limbaugh?

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Rush Limbaugh I met in 1991.

[Rush Limbaugh] Our man in Washington,
an ever more and more popular part of this show.
There he is sneaking in.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I used to hang out at the men's room at these events,
so I'd guarantee I'd get just about every big name.
As the night went on, they'd be drinking more, so you'd always get much better interviews.

[John Ritter, Actor] Women should deny sex ...
until we clean up this planet. Not all women.

[Robert Kenner] You decided to go to work for Senator James Inhofe.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Wow, you're jumping. Okay. Ha-ha.

[Robert Kenner] Ha-ha. Your energy --

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I thought this was Marc Morano, my life. No? Oh, okay. Ha-ha-ha.

[Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman] Catastrophic global warming is a hoax.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I got a call from Inhofe's office to be the new communications director. It was the lowest point,
when I started in June 2006, for global warming skeptics.

[AT SUNDANCE IT RECEIVED THREE STANDING OVATIONS]

[IF YOU LOVE YOUR PLANET ..
IF YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN ...
YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS FILM.]


[Al Gore] If you look at the ten hottest years ever measured,
they've all occurred in the last 14 years,
and the hottest of all was 2005.

[AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH]

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Al Gore's film -- I'd just watched the movie. I watched it the week before I started the job.
It was poised to win awards. Later, he won the Nobel Prize for it.
So we decided for Inhofe to go on the offensive.

[Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman] NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen --
He's NASA's vocal man-made-global-warming-fear soothsayer --
He'd say almost anything you asked him to say.

The sociopath will always accuse you of doing the very thing that they are guilty of themselves. They do this to deflect the attention from them. Examples of this are: Accusing you of cheating; Accusing you of being dishonest or lying; Accusing you of talking about them; Accusing you of doing whatever it is that they are guilty of themselves. The sociopath has a bizarre ability to be able to make YOU feel guilty and feel like you have to defend yourself… for things that he has done. You see the sociopath is actually fairly intelligent. He knows that whilst you are busy defending yourself, and proving your innocence, you will be confused, and will forget about the real issue, the truth that you are close to uncovering about the sociopath.

Bullshit Bingo: It’s all a game to the sociopath. Life is a game. With little inside themselves, they spend most of their life playing stupid mind games. Accusing you of things that they have done themselves is something that they will do over and over again. The result for you the victim is: Feeling confused; Feeling violated; Feeling misunderstood; Feeling unheard; Feeling guilty. Likely he will also say ‘everyone thinks, or says….’ – so you feel isolated too. Afterwards, after wasted hours protesting your innocence, you think: How did that happen? The truth is right there. You are relieved that the constant questions and accusations have stopped. There is peace again. Once again, the sociopath has managed to manipulate the situation, and deflect blame back onto you. You have spent another few hours of your time, stressed, anxious and defending your corner. You feel that yet again there was yet another problem that didn’t need to be there. Some other issue, that didn’t need to be there. But for the sociopath, it isn’t like that. He is playing a game. Playing a game with your mind and your heart.

There are two things that are important to the sociopath: Winning; Control. If you were to catch him out in a lie, he would neither win, or be in control. So he will do anything that he can do, to win the game, and control the game. That is all that it is. The sociopath probably doesn’t even realise the effect that this has on you. After all, he never thinks about your needs, and this is in terms of both good and bad things. He, like always, is thinking about himself, not about you, your welfare or your needs. It is all just a game. A stupid, mindless game. That could continue for the rest of your life if you let it.

Isn’t it time to move forward? To stop playing the stupid game with the sociopath, who could play forever. If you let him. The sociopath doesn’t feel too much, but he does feel satisfaction from: Winning; Being in control. Maybe right now it is time to stop playing the game. To finish the game. Stop playing. It is now time to focus on you. On your needs and your welfare. After all. when you were with the sociopath, so much of your time and energy was wasted, defending yourself, and playing pointless mind games, nobody was taking care of your needs. Endless stress and endless drama. that is the relationship with the sociopath. There comes a time, when the only thing to do, is to put in place no contact rules, stick to them, and focus on you, and loving yourself and creating your own beautiful world. A world where there isn’t someone constantly trying to pull you apart. You deserve so much better :)

-- The Sociopath Will Always Accuse YOU of What They are Guilty of Themselves, by datingasociopath.com


[Robert Kenner] On some levels, it was not so much directly talking about science, but it was going after the scientists themselves. I mean, that was a change that you brought to Inhofe.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Yes, in fact we went after James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer, and had a lot of fun with it.

The last contextual feature is humor. Viewers interpret violence that is cast in a humorous light as less devastating and less harmful (Gunter, 1985). Humor also may seem like a reward for violence. For these reasons, the presence of humor in a violent scene can increase the chances that viewers will imitate or learn aggression from such a portrayal. Indeed, studies have revealed that exposure to violence in a humorous setting increases aggressive behavior (Baron, 1978; Berkowitz, 1970). Humor can also desensitize viewers to the seriousness of violence (Jablonski & Zillmann, 1995).

-- Children and Media Violence, edited by Ulla Carlsson and Cecilia von Feilitzen


We mocked and ridiculed Hansen.

[U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works: Blogs]

AD HOMINEM (ABUSIVE)
argumentum ad hominem

(also known as: personal abuse, personal attacks, abusive fallacy, damning the source, name calling, needling [form of], refutation by character)

Description: Attacking the person making the argument, rather than the argument itself, when the attack on the person is completely irrelevant to the argument the person is making.

Logical Form: Person 1 is claiming Y; Person 1 is a moron; Therefore, Y is not true.

Example #1: My opponent suggests that lowering taxes will be a good idea -- this is coming from a woman who eats a pint of Ben and Jerry’s each night!

Explanation: The fact that the woman loves her ice cream, has nothing to do with the lowering of taxes, and therefore, is irrelevant to the argument. Ad hominem attacks are usually made out of desperation when one cannot find a decent counter argument.

Example #2: Tony wants us to believe that the origin of life was an “accident”. Tony is a godless SOB who has spent more time in jail than in church, so the only information we should consider from him is the best way to make license plates.
Explanation: Tony may be a godless SOB. Perhaps he did spend more time in the joint than in church, but all this is irrelevant to his argument or truth of his claim as to the origin of life.

Exception: When the attack on the person is relevant to the argument, it is not a fallacy. In our first example, if the issue being debated was the elimination of taxes only on Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, then pointing out her eating habits would be strong evidence of a conflict of interest.

Tip: When others verbally attack you, take it as a compliment to the quality of your argument. It is usually a sign of desperation on their part.

Variation: Needling is attempting to make the other person angry, taking attention off of the argument and perhaps even making the other person look foolish.

-- Ad Hominem (Abusive), by logicallyfallacious.com


I couldn't believe they let me do this.

[Don't Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom -- Get the Facts on James Hansen, June 23, 2008, by Marc Morano - Marco_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov. "High Crimes Against Humanity" Trial for Climate Skeptics? NASA scientist James Hansen has created worldwide media frenzy with his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fears. See: UK Register: Veteran climate scientist says "Lock up the oil men" -- June ...]



I did a two-part, 10,000-word, scathing critique on Hansen.
I'm not gonna question his scientific work, but in terms of his influencing the public -- and actually his scientific work isn't really in question. It's more of his public claims, and publicity, and interviews.
I still felt restrained, so I started doing what I call "the underground newsletters,"
which went much further than anything else, had more fun,
more humor, wit, sarcasm, and sometimes nastiness. That went out and became the basis for Climate Depot.

[REPORT: "GLOBAL WARMING DIDN'T CAUSE BIG U.S. DROUGHT" -- "A Random Event"]

This is the new media's new world.
This is an office where you rent it as you need it, but we all know ...
most of the work happens on the road, or in your home office.
They find no evidence of a human fingerprint in that drought.
A lot of it's done in a taxicab heading to, you know,
Fox News, or CNN studio, or even on the runway in an airplane.
James Hansen, I call him NASA's resident ex-con,
is inspiring these people to potential acts of eco-terrorism.
Communication is about sales. Keep it simple.
People will fill in the blank with their own, I hate to say biases, but with their own perspective.
A global environmental organization that'll police the world. Think of the -- our own EPA that speaks French.

[INFOWARS.COM]

I'm not a scientist, although I do play one on TV occasionally.
Okay, hell, more than occasionally.

But the prosecutor, Christiane Burkheiser, dismissed Fritzl's last-minute confession as a cynical ploy to win a more lenient sentence. She said: "I don't see it as a confession but rather as an attempt to improve his position, to gain advantage through a show of weakness. "At the last curtain call in the last act of this drama he is showing his true face in trying to exploit people's gullibility. Do not be deceived. Do not be manipulated."

-- Josef Fritzl Burst Into Tears and Changed Plea After Seeing Daughter Elisabeth in Court, by Gordon Rayner and Caroline Gammell


[CNN News Anchor] Joining me, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Marc Morano.

[Marc Marano, Environmental Journalist] You go up against a scientist, most of them ...
are gonna be in their own little policy-wonk world, or area of expertise.

[Bill Nye] So you look in the ice, and you find bubbles of trapped gas --

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Very arcane. Very hard to understand, hard to explain.
And very boring.



Bottom line, new study in Nature, peer-reviewed: No change in U.S. drought in the last 50 years. Bottom line, a new study out shows --
You can't be afraid of the absolute hand-to-hand combat, metaphorically. You've gotta name names. You gotta go after individuals. You can't just go after a system. I think that's what I enjoy the most is going after the individuals, where something lives or dies.
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:54 am

[Ben Santer, Climate Scientist] As a scientist, you're trained to defend the science that you do. What you don't expect is to have people ...
threaten you with all kinds of dire consequences ...
for continuing to do the research that you do.
I was contacted by the IPCC to act as convening lead author ...
for one chapter of the second assessment report.
That final sentence, "The balance of evidence suggests ...
a discernible human influence on global climate" ...
was finalized at the end of November, 1995.
I had no idea that my life would be so dramatically changed by that one sentence.
These are a few emails from a large number of emails that I received.
"Yeah, you -- You arrogant, fucking piece-of-crap con man. I hope you are hung by your pathetic, little neck. I'd love nothing more than to beat you with a large stick, you shit-eating Yank. Go die."

[Subject: dirtbag; Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010; From: DrDetail; To: Santer, Ben: Ya you you arrogant fuckin peice of crap conman, I hope you are hung by you pathetic little neck, because of cunts like you , the world suffers,i,d love nothing more than to beat you with a large stick you shit eating yank.Go Die]

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] It's possible I posted Santer's email in the early days of Climate Depot.
He's far from the only one I've done that to.

UNREPENTANT: not sorry for having done wrong <she was unrepentant about selling her ex-boyfriend's prized guitar>. Synonyms impenitent, shameless, unashamed, unrepentant. Related Words: compassionless, cruel, merciless, pitiless, ruthless, unmerciful; evil, immoral, iniquitous, nefarious, reprobate, unregenerate, unrighteous, vicious, vile, villainous, wicked; callous, cold-blooded, hard-hearted, heartless, inhuman, inhumane, obdurate, soulless, unfeeling.

-- Unrepentant, by Merriam Webster Dictionary


[Michael Mann, Climate Scientist] "You're an effing terrorist, you and your colleagues ...
ought to be fed to the pigs, along with your whole families."
"How come no one has beat the living piss out of you yet? I was hoping I would see the news and you committed suicide."

[Katharine Hayhoe, Climate Scientist] "You stupid bitch. I would like to see you convicted and beheaded. If you have a child, then women in the future will be even more leery ...
of lying to get ahead when they see your baby crying next to the guillotine."

[Subject: Slimey-cunted Nazi Bitch Whore Climatebeche. You stupid bitch, You are a mass murderer and will be convicted at the Realitly TV Grand Jury in Nuremberg ... eugenical scam. It was ... thing as radiative forcing. There is a fake solar constant in the models, ignoring so ... numercially by ten orders of magnitude, the NIMBUS satellite data was fudged according .... the 2000s. The glaciers are not melting abnormally, the ice pack at the poles is just about ... through lack of refrigerators. IPCC admits there has never been a single measurement of ... see you convicted and beheaded by guillotine in the public square, to show women that if ... the men do when they get caught. If you have a child, then women in the future will be even more leery of lying to get ahead when they see your baby crying next to the guillotine. Stan in Seattle. Comment today on Tom Nelson blog. I am the supposed culprit. I read how horrified she was that people were calling climate ... do every day. My usual litany includes, "When the Grand Jury is done with you, I'll enjoy ... not a death threat. It's an effective counter-propaganda tactic, thank you very much. Stan Lippmann Ph.D. (radiative transfer in ionized gases, 1989) J.D. 1998]

Sometimes it's one a week. When your email address ...
gets posted online at Morano's website, it's 200 or more in a day.

[Ben Santer, Climate Scientist] Well, I think the most disturbing emails and letters were ones that ...
suggest there will be harm to you, direct physical harm, to you and your family.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I don't know what his complaint is. I'll give you the philosophy behind it.

[Robert Kenner] Yeah, that's more important.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Is he ready? This is one of my favorite topics.
In fact, I got on ABC Nightly News just because I posted emails.
I did a whole segment.

[Marc Morano, ABC News.com] The public is appropriately angry at these scientists. No one's advocating violence, but it is refreshing to see these scientists hear from the public.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] I think people should be thanking me. I was doing a service.
People go, "Oh, your death threats." I get death threats. I enjoy them.
It was one of the healthiest things that could have happened in the climate debate.
I make no apologies. I still do it. I enjoy doing it.



[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Every time we see the world beginning to act on the science,
we see some kind of attack designed to undermine it.
In 1995, the IPCC comes out with its second assessment report that says ...
"Yes, there's climate change." What do we get?
A massive attack on Ben Santer, who's the lead author of the key chapter.
In the second case, before the run-up to the Kyoto negotiations,
when it looked like the world was going to agree,
we had the Oregon Petition. It's a completely discredited document.
Nevertheless, it did a lot of damage.

New light on the putative value of intelligence dossiers issued by Tony Blair’s office in Number 10 Downing Street was not long in coming. In September 2002, Blair published amid great fanfare his dossier purporting to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq currently possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was entitled “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,” and it was clearly crafted to provide a pretext for waging unprovoked and aggressive war against Iraq. This dossier was exposed as a fraud in two distinct waves of demystification. The first exposure took place in February 2003, when it emerged that entire sections of this report, which had been billed as the most up-to-date evaluation that could be offered by the very formidable capabilities of MI-6 and the rest of the British intelligence machine, had simply been lifted, plagiarized without attribution, from older documents in the public domain. The Iraq dossier had been concocted by Blair and his media guru Alistair Campbell, a figure who combined the worst of image-mongers like Michael Deaver and Karl Rove, using materials provided by British intelligence. Parts of Blair’s dossier had been stolen from articles written by Sean Boyne of Jane’s Intelligence Review, who was horrified by the nefarious use to which his work had been put. “I don’t like to think that anything I wrote has been used as an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war,” complained Boyne. Another source from which Blair had lifted material verbatim was a thesis entitled “Iraq’s Security and Intelligence Network,” published in September 2002 by a graduate student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, a California resident. Al-Marashi was equally indignant, commenting that “this is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the government if it is up to this sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish now with a lot of skepticism from now on.” And not just from now on; it is our contention here that this disbelief in regard to Tony Blair’s work product should also be applied retrospectively.

The British Parliament was appalled by Blair’s mendacity, which was so crude that the coded titles of the Microsoft Word documents that made up the dossier had been allowed to remain visible on the Number 10 Downing Street web site. Many pointed to Alistair Hamilton as the dervish of spin behind the entire sordid operation. Former Labour Party Defense Minister and current Member of Parliament Peter Kilfoyle observed that Blair’s deception merely “adds to the general impression that what we have been treated to is a farrago of half-truths. I am shocked that on such thin evidence that we should be trying to convince the British people that this war is worth fighting." Labour MP Glenda Jackson added “It is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament. And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying.” (Daily Mirror, February 8, 2003)

Blair’s nonchalance in cribbing together dossiers on subjects of vast importance also attracted the barbs of British wits. AheadOfNews.com spoofed Blair’s plagiarized Iraq dossier by writing that “a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged recently that the report, ‘Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,’ had been cobbled together from a variety of sources, including old term papers, Readers Digest, and several tabloids. John Miller, Undersecretary for Cutting- and-Pasting, explained that ‘plagiarized’ sections of the report included spelling errors, such as ‘weapons of mass distraction,’ and ‘Untied States’ found in the originals. 'Our deceptions might have succeeded,’ he said, ‘except for our bloody incompetent proofreaders.'” (February 12, 2003) Blair’s Iraq dossier was an international laughingstock, but that had not prevented Colin Powell from praising it in his infamous speech to the United Nations Security Council.

But Blair’s dossier was in the end no laughing matter: it contributed to the deaths of perhaps 15,000 people in Iraq within a year. It also brought tragedy to one of the British intelligence officials who had collaborated in its creation.

In June, 2003, when the Iraq war had already begun to go badly for the aggressors, BBC News broadcast a story by correspondent Barnaby Mason reporting that Blair and Campbell had personally supervised the concoction of the Iraq WMD dossier, sending proposed drafts back to the Joint Intelligence Committee “six to eight times” to be “sexed up” through the addition of more lurid and sensational details. One of these details was thought to be Blair’s fantastic claim that Iraq had WMD which could be launched within 45 minutes. Blair delivered this warning in such a way as to suggest that Iraq would be capable of striking the UK within 45 minutes, despite the fact that Iraq possessed no delivery systems capable of doling this.

The response of the Blair regime to this report was to promote a witch-hunt to ferret out the source inside the government who had leaked such embarrassing material to Barnaby Mason. Officials of the British Defense Ministry allowed journalists to read them lists of persons suspected of being the leaker, and were willing to confirm the identity of their prime suspect as soon as the journalists mentioned his name. In this way, the Defense Ministry in effect betrayed one of its own employees, Dr. David Kelly. A few days later Kelly was found dead in a forest near his home, with his wrists slashed. His death was quickly ruled a suicide. After Kelly’s death, a UN diplomat recalled that he had asked Kelly back in February 2003 what would happen if Tony Blair went through with his plan to join Bush in attacking Iraq. “I will probably be found dead in the woods,” was Kelly’s prophetic reply.

-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley


Third time, Copenhagen. Finally, we're gonna get an agreement.
The U.S. is on board. Obama has gone to Copenhagen.

[Brian Williams, MSNBC] A new scandal that's burning up the Net these days, that began with emails that were stolen --

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Suddenly, we see this release of stolen emails.
Lines taken out of context to make it seem as if ...
scientists were involved in nefarious activities.
People started saying, "What's going on in Copenhagen?"

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] This is the upper echelon of the U.N. It's been exposed as the best science that politics and activists can manufacture.

[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] My initial reaction with the Climategate, I thought, "Okay, mm, gosh, I hope I didn't flip at the wrong point there. Maybe this is all baloney."
When you actually read the emails in context, you go, "Oh. Okay, he's not actually saying what Rush Limbaugh said he was saying."
There's been three investigations into Climategate where they had ...
independent committees go through every email. There was nothing.

[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] They were trying to find yet new ways to weaken ...
this growing international accord.
All they have to do is slow down action.

[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has. That's all you really want. There's no legislation we're championing.

Gridlock: the stoppage of free vehicular movement in an urban area because key intersections are blocked by traffic. 2. the blocking of an intersection by vehicular traffic entering the intersection but unable to pass through it. 3. any situation in which nothing can move or proceed in any direction: a financial gridlock due to high interest rates.

-- Gridlock, by dictionary.reference.com


We're the negative force, just trying to stop stuff.

This raises the question of the violent revolt against the universal homogeneous state, which is what Strauss regards as inevitable and desirable: "Yet there is no reason for despair as long as human nature has not been conquered completely, i.e., as long as sun and man still generate man. There will always be men (andres) who will revolt against a state which is destructive of humanity or in which there is no longer a possibility of noble action or of great deeds." (Strauss 209)

When the real men revolt against too much peace, progress, and prosperity, what will be their program? Strauss: "They may be forced into a mere negation of the universal and homogeneous state, into a negation not enlightened by any positive goal, into a nihilistic negation. While perhaps doomed to failure, that nihilist revolution may be the only great and noble deed that is possible once the universal and homogeneous state has become inevitable. But no one can know whether it will fail or succeed. (Strauss 209, emphasis added)

What can be understood by nihilistic negation and nihilist revolution? In the nineteenth century, nihilism was an ideology of terrorism; the crazed bomb-throwers who assassinated statesmen and rulers across Europe and America (including President McKinley) were atheists, anarchists and nihilists. In the twentieth century, the nihilist revolution was synonymous with some of the most extreme factions of fascism and Nazis. "Long live death!" was a slogan of some of them. With these lines, Strauss has opened the door to fascism, murder, mayhem, war, genocide, and most emphatically to terrorism. And he is not shy about spelling this out.

-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley


[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] It's all about distraction, it's all about confusion.
It's about preventing you from looking where the action really is, which is in the science.

Friends,

There are times when words are hard to come by, and when you find them they feel inadequate.

I’m writing you from France, with a heavy heart. Following Friday's attacks in Paris, the mood here is tense. People are angry, and many are afraid. Many of our staff members are in Paris to get ready for the climate talks in a couple of weeks, and they are feeling the pain of this moment sharply.

I am heartbroken -- for the lives lost in Paris, and for those lost in Beirut and Baghdad, which also suffered devastating attacks late last week. Clearly the world is hurting in many places right now.

As we’ve struggled to find the right words and the right response to Friday night’s attacks, one thing rises to the top for me:

The upcoming Paris Climate Summit is, in a sense, a peace summit -- perhaps the most important peace summit that has ever been held.

We need global solidarity more than ever right now, and that is, really, what this movement is all about. Even as climate change fans the flames of conflict in many parts of the world -- through drought, displacement, and other compounding factors -- a global movement that transcends borders and cultural differences is rising up to confront this common existential threat.

Let’s hang on to that solidarity and love. Let’s learn from it. Especially at a time like this.

Friday night’s events were horrific, and we must clearly and unequivocally condemn such violence. Their aftermath has also been frightening though, and we should stand in equal condemnation of the instinct to meet violence with more violence. It is a cycle as old as it is ugly: after tragedy comes the rush to judgement, the scapegoating, the xenophobia and Islamophobia, the blame.

There is a real danger here that those already impacted by both the climate crisis and the wars that are so intimately bound up with it -- migrants, refugees, poor communities, and communities of color -- will be further marginalized.

If there is a thing we must resist, it is our own fear and short-sightedness. No government should use a moment like this to increase the burden of hatred and fear in the world -- sowing suspicion, calling for war, and reducing people’s civil liberties in the name of security. This is a mistake we've seen too often before, compounding tragedy with more tragedy.

The Paris Climate Summit, scheduled to begin in just a couple of weeks, will proceed. The government is promising heightened security measures, which is understandable but also worrisome.

We don't yet know what Friday night's events mean for our work in Paris. The coalition on the ground is committed to working with the French authorities to see if there is a way for the big planned march and other demonstrations to safely go forward. We fully share their concerns about public safety -- just as we fully oppose unnecessary crackdowns on civil liberties and minority populations.

We do know that this global movement cannot and will not be stopped:

The Global Climate March -- a worldwide day of action scheduled for November 28th and 29th -- will also proceed, no matter what. We can think of few better responses to violence and terror than this movement's push for peace and hope.

We hope you’ll join us at the end of the month.

There couldn't be a more important time to work for climate justice, and the peace it can help bring.

With love and determination,

Nico and team at 350.org

-- Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer - 350.org


[Jamy Ian Swiss, Magician] Misdirection is the use of the little lie to sell the big lie.
The big lie and the floating lady -- the classic levitation illusion --
is the mechanism that's used to make the woman rise.
The little lie is the passing of the hoop.
The floating raises your skepticism. There must be a wire. There must be threads.
There must be something.
And then the hoop is used to specifically undo that. Cancel that.
So really, misdirection is about focus. It's not so much about directing away, or misdirecting,
it's about direction.
It's about bringing your attention to something that engages you. And then, you don't see anything else in the frame.

["Swing the question over to the freedom-of-choice issue."]

[Stanton Glantz] The tobacco companies knew they have to appeal to something more ...

[FREEDOM]

basic than this intellectual pursuit of science. How do you do it? Do it with freedom.

[Man] That's the way freedom dies. Today it's smoking. But what will they try to regulate next?

[Man] What will they try to regulate next? What we can say? What we can read?

[Woman] I don't want Big Brother breathing down my neck telling me what to do.

[Man] Not just for smokers, but for nonsmokers,
and all others who want to live their lives ...
making their own decisions, not having them made for them by the benevolent bureaucracy of Washington wisdom, or these other --

[Stanton Glantz] By turning it into an abstract issue of freedom,

[BRING BACK THE SMOKING SECTION]

and moving it away from their corporate interests,

[SMOKERS ARE CUSTOMERS TOO]

they can get people behind it. Who can possibly be against freedom?
What happened was, these other companies, and other industries realized, like: "Hey, this is a pretty good idea."

[Boy eats ice cream]

[Man takes ice cream away from boy]


[Man] Everywhere you turn, somebody is telling us what we can't eat.

[FUNDED BY FAST FOOD INDUSTRY]

[Man] Do you ever feel like you're always being told what not to do?

[FUNDED BY FAST FOOD INDUSTRY]

[Steven Milloy, JunkScience.com] These people tell us where to work,
how many children to have, how much energy to use, how much water we can ...

[PRES. OBAMA SAYS ELECTRICITY RATES WOULD SKYROCKET UNDER CAP-&-TRADE]

[Stanton Glantz] On global warming, you see the same thing happening.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] For literally decades, David Koch has been just a tireless defender of our economic and individual freedoms. I'd like to introduce to you David Koch,
our chairman at the Americans for Prosperity.

[David Koch]

[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] Koch Industries is heavily invested in coal, oil, and tar sands. They are some of the biggest polluters in the country,
[and have] received the largest fines.

[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]

[Stanton Glantz] They needed an army of people to fight against regulation ...
in the name of freedom.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Good afternoon, fellow freedom fighters!

[Reporter 1] The group, Americans for Prosperity, is holding a nationwide,
hot-air balloon tour.

[GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM: LOST JOBS; HIGHER TAXES; LESS FREEDOM]

[Reporter 2] They're spreading a message of global warming alarmism, lost jobs, higher taxes, and less freedom.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Over eight years ago, we launched Americans for Prosperity. And the goal behind it was to provide grassroots support at the local and state level to push free-market policies.
And we have just over two million people who've taken action.
We now have an army too.

[Robert Kenner] Do you try to figure out if the science is real or not?
Or you don't even think of that?

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] No. We're on the economic side.
Howdy.
We study what they'll do to American people in the name of global warming.
They won't drill for oil. Guys, let's get moving here.
Come on, it's not a really hard -- Not a really hard decision. Let's --
For a long time it was just, hey, An Inconvenient Truth,
and all these polar bears that seemed to be drowning, and horrible things that seemed to be happening. A lot of Americans said: "Gosh. That seems like a bad thing." But then, through the education efforts of a lot of groups ...
like Americans for Prosperity and others, Americans began going, "Wait, I'll pay more for everything. It means a little bit less freedom."
I think the American public has moved our way. The polls confirm that.

[WE WANT FREE ENTERPRISE, NOT SOCIALISM TAKEOVER]

We want to make sure that both parties know we'll hold them accountable. Republicans too, absolutely.

***

[Robert Kenner] Should I think of you as a liberal, a conservative, or ...?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Pretty conservative is how you should think of me. Ninety-three American Conservative Union Rating, 100 percent Christian Coalition, National Right to Life.
[1992] With your help, we can reclaim the Congress.
I represented the 4th District of South Carolina, which is probably the reddest district in the reddest state in the nation.
When I was first in Congress, I was a complete denier.
I said, "That's hooey, absolute nonsense. Al Gore's imagination."
I just knew that if it was coming from the other team, it had to be wrong.
I got on the science committee, and had the opportunity to go to Antarctica -- twice, actually.
I saw the evidence in the ice core. You can pull it up and examine the CO2 levels.
They were really stable.
And then, coinciding with the industrial revolution, there's an uptick.
The chemistry is real clear, that you're changing the chemistry of the air.
So I decided, really right then and there,
I'm gonna go back, and I'm gonna do something.
Madam Speaker, what I'd like to say tonight ...
is that there is a need to act --
and to come together to find a solution that breaks our addiction to oil, that creates new energy jobs, and that cleans up the air.
That was to my great peril, with the Tea Party coming, and the great Recession happening.

[CROWD SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
[WE ARE TAX POOR!!!
AMA DOES NOT SPEAK FOR US!!!
STOP THE MARCH OF SOCIALISM
SENIORS! VOTE OUT DEMOCRATS IN 2010]


[News Anchor] Tim Phillips is helping to organize some protest parties.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] It's a genuine grassroots uprising. Groups like Americans For Prosperity, we're organizing.

[Speaking Indistinctly]

[SPENDING DOES NOT EQUAL INVESTMENT
JUST SAY NO TO SOCIALISM]


[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] There's a tide of doubt that comes out of the Great Recession,
where we started to doubt every institution, you know.
Along comes some people that see the opportunity ...

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Coming up next is a global warming tax. It's a pretty cold night in April here, right?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Americans For Prosperity has been amazingly effective.
They're able to organize that discontent.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] In the name of Al Gore-ism. And by the way, can we just talk about Al Gore for a moment?

[CROWD BOOING]

[Robert Kenner] If you see Republicans becoming sympathetic to carbon tax, do you view it as your job to knock those guys out?

[GLOBAL WARMING MY ASS]

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Well, we hold both parties accountable.

[Nancy Pelosi, 2008] We don't always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?

[Newt Gingrich] No, but we do agree our country must take action to address climate change.

[John McCain] The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention.

[CNN = POLITICS. MCCAIN SLAMS PRES. ON ENVIRONMENT WON'T "SHIRK ... MANTLE OF LEADERSHIP"]

[Rep. John Boehner, (R) Minority Leader] We have had climate change.
Clearly, humans have something to do with it.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] I remember in the mid-2000s, so many Republicans,
they had a lot of the same tenets of faith that Democrats still many have today.

[Mitt Romney] Well, I think the risks of climate change are real.
I think human activity is contributing to it.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] Those days are over. Few Republicans play that game. A lot of Democrats bailed too.

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] You have Newt Gingrich at the beginning of '08 on the couch with Nancy Pelosi.
And by the end of 2008 ...

[Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Anchor] Do you believe in man-made global warming?

[Newt Gingrich (R), Presidential Candidate] I don't think we know.

[Music] C-c-changes

[Mitt Romney] My view is that we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet.

[Rep. John Boehner, (R) Minority Leader] George, the idea that carbon dioxide is harmful to our environment is almost comical.

[Tim Phillips, President Americans for Prosperity] We've run TV ads in Republican states with Republican senators, like South Carolina.

[People shouting indistinctly]

[SOUTH CAROLINA]


[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Sit down!

[SHOUTING CONTINUES]

[PEOPLE BOOING]


[Robert Kenner] What happened in your election?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Well, it wasn't even close.

[Michael Cogdill, WYFF4.com News Anchor] Bob Inglis ran into a buzz saw of voter frustration with incumbents.
Inglis lost every county in the district. He is a seasoned congressman going down to a huge defeat tonight.

[Two years after defeat]

[Man] Are we --? Is there not cell phone reception? Where are we? Um ... Can you hear me now?
Did Price brief you on the climate views on this radio show?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] No.

[Man] All right. Well, we better find that out, huh?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We can turn on the radio, see what he's saying.

[Paul Gallo] [Over Radio] Everyone knows this country is being flushed right down the drain.
The ACLU and liberals is where I place --

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We're after -- the target audience is red-state Republicans. And so I think we found some in Mississippi.

[Radio Announcer] From SuperTalk Mississippi --

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] 8:02. We go on at 8:06.
Paul Gallo, a shining example of the Fairness Doctrine as it should be.

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was—in the Commission's view—honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the Doctrine in 1987, and in August 2011 the FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine.

-- Fairness Doctrine, by Wikipedia


[Paul Gallo] You think polar bears are in trouble? No, they're not in trouble.
In some cases, we've got more polar bears than we've ever had.
We got polar-bear problems out there in some cases.

[Indistinct chatter]

Former South Carolina GOP Representative Bob Inglis ...
is urging conservatives to stop denying humans are contributing to global warming.
I don't understand. How do you come up with this? Because to me, every fiber in my body is saying you're a conservative. You can't believe this, that conservatives -- you're asking me as a dyed-in-the-wool native-born Mississippian -- will die here and blessed to do so -- to believe that humans are responsible for global warming, and we must admit that? Mic's yours, sir.

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] The challenge here is it's a conversation started by liberals.
What we're used to, as conservatives, is they gin up hysteria, and then they drive through regulations and tax increases and grow government. And so it's natural that we respond with, "No, we don't wanna do that."

Consider for a moment just how terrifying it must be to live life as a true believer on the right. Reality is scary enough, but the alternative reality inhabited by people who watch Glenn Beck, listen to Rush Limbaugh, or think Michele Bachmann isn't a joke must be nothing less than horrifying.

Research suggests that conservatives are, on average, more susceptible to fear than those who identify themselves as liberals. Looking at MRIs of a large sample of young adults last year, researchers at University College London discovered that “greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala” ($$). The amygdala is an ancient brain structure that's activated during states of fear and anxiety. (The researchers also found that “greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex” – a region in the brain that is believed to help people manage complexity.)

That has implications for our political world. In a recent interview, Chris Mooney, author of The Republican Brain, explained, “The amygdala plays the same role in every species that has an amygdala. It basically takes over to save your life. It does other things too, but in a situation of threat, you cease to process information rationally and you're moving automatically to protect yourself.”

The finding also fits with other data. Mooney discusses studies conducted at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in which self-identified liberals and conservatives were shown images – apolitical images – that were intended to elicit different emotions. Writing at Huffington Post, Mooney explains that “there were images that caused fear and disgust -- a spider crawling on a person's face, maggots in an open wound -- but also images that made you feel happy: a smiling child, a bunny rabbit.” The researchers noted two differences between the groups. The researchers studied their subjects' reactions by tracking their eye movements and monitoring their “skin conductivity” – a measure of one's autonomic nervous system's reaction to stimuli.

Conservatives showed much stronger skin responses to negative images, compared with the positive ones. Liberals showed the opposite. And when the scientists turned to studying eye gaze or "attentional" patterns, they found that conservatives looked much more quickly at negative or threatening images, and [then] spent more time fixating on them.

Mooney concludes that this “new research suggests [that] conservatism is largely a defensive ideology -- and therefore, much more appealing to people who go through life sensitive and highly attuned to aversive or threatening aspects of their environments.”

-- Why is the Conservative Brain More Fearful? The Alternate Reality Right-Wingers Inhabit is Terrifying, by Joshua Holland


But what if we had a different conversation?
It's all about economics. You're taxing something you want more of, which is income, and you're not taxing something you maybe want less of, which is CO2.

[Paul Gallo] Why do we need to be talking about the global-warming tax again?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Because if you believe in taking care of this part of Eden that's left, and if you believe in creation care --

[Paul Gallo] Now you're confusing me.
Now you're saying you do believe that we are, as humans, creating global warming. We are part-and-parcel responsible?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Yes.

[Paul Gallo] I don't believe that humans are creating this, because -- and neither do, apparently, a vast majority of climatologists out there.

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] I was tracking --

[Paul Gallo] That humans --

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] I was tracking with you until that last part. You're wrong on that last part.

[Paul Gallo] Good luck to you. It was good meeting you.

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Good to talk with you.

[Paul Gallo] Lots to do ...
in the final two segments coming up next.
Okay, lots to do in the final two segments ...

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We'll put you down as undecided.

[Paul Gallo] Sorry?

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] We'll put you down as undecided.

[Paul Gallo] I don't think so.

[BOTH LAUGHING]

[Paul Gallo] Okay, Perez, we are ready to roll.

[Caller] And as for climate change, we're in the middle of it right now. It's called winter into spring.
For him to say that we need to change the conversation ...
is to cave in to these liberals and their way of thinking. When they're wrong, they're wrong.

[Man] I can't take this. Can we get out of here?
It's so easy to fall back into the: "The weather always changes."

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] Yeah.

[Man] It's a battleship, Bob. It takes a while to turn around.

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] That's right.
I mean, it's not just a head thing. This is very much a heart issue.
It's not the science that's affecting us.
I mean, the science is pretty clear.
It's something else that's causing this rejection.
Many conservatives, I think, see action on climate change as really an attack on a way of life.
The reason that we need the science to be wrong ...
is otherwise, we realize that we need to change.
That's really a hard pill to swallow,
that the whole way I've created my life is wrong, you're saying?

Being a captain of industry is supposed to mean never having to admit a mistake—swearing they are as innocent as a new-born baby.

-- Republicans and Democrats: What's the Difference? by Pete Dolack


That I shouldn't have this house in the suburb?
I shouldn't be driving this car that I take my kids to soccer?
And you're not gonna tell me to live the way that you want me to live?
And along comes some people sowing some doubt. And it's pretty effective, because I'm looking for that answer.
I want it to be that the science is not real.

[News Anchor] Top U.S. oil company ExxonMobil,
and Russia's Rosneft, have signed a deal ...
to develop oil and gas reserves in the Russian Arctic.

[TALKING INDISTINCTLY]

[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] One of the reasons this deal is now possible ...
is the human-induced global warming that has rolled the ice back.
It's warmer in the Arctic than it's been in at least 40,000 years.
And yet, there's ExxonMobil looking at that,
thinking they can drill more.
The very thing they paid groups to tell us wouldn't happen, has now benefited them.

[Rex Tillerson, CEO, ExxonMobil] We could be into the hundreds of billions of dollars over the life of developing all of the potential prospects up there.

[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] We now know they were using climate change ...
as a source of insight into exploration.
There's a point at which you realize you are part of the losing end of a hustle.

HUSTLE: transitive verb. 1a : jostle, shove; b : to convey forcibly or hurriedly; c : to urge forward precipitately; 2a : to obtain by energetic activity <hustle up new customers>; b : to sell something to or obtain something from by energetic and especially underhanded activity <hustling the suckers>; c : to sell or promote energetically and aggressively <hustling a new product>; d : to lure less skillful players into competing against oneself at (a gambling game) <hustle pool>

-- Hustle, by Merriam Webster


And it can make you feel very sad.
And I know many environmentalists who feel very sad.

[Senator] Each of you solemnly swear that ...

[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] But at some point, the public catches up with you. The legal system catches up with you.

[Diane Sawyer] An extraordinary punishment for the country's big cigarette companies. A federal judge said they lied, and they have to take out ads and admit it publicly.
Specifically, they have to say they deliberately deceived the American public ...
about the dangers of cigarettes, and they designed them to be addictive.

[PHILIP MORRIS INTERNATIONAL]

[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] We know the truth about the harms of tobacco. And the tobacco industry has been prosecuted for its illegal activities.
So that's the good news, right? The truth has come out,
and people who deserve to be punished have been punished.
The bad news is that it took 50 years.
If we look at the case of climate change, we can imagine that eventually people will come to understand the scientific evidence. But the problem is, we don't have 50 years.
Climate change is happening. It's underway, and it's not reversible.
As sea level rises, and hurricanes become more intense, people get killed.
Their houses and communities get destroyed.
Think about heat waves and droughts that ruin agricultural communities.
These are problems that it will require government intervention to address.
The great irony of the story to me ...
is that people who don't like big government, are going to get more of it.
And we're gonna see more money being spent ...
on dealing with the aftermath of these disasters.
There will be billions of dollars in real-estate losses.
But more than that, people will die.

Image

That's why it matters.

Image

That's why this is meaningful for us,

Image

not just for polar bears, or people in Bangladesh.
That's why so many people in the scientific community ...
are really starting to talk in very worried tones.
There's a growing sense in the scientific community ...
that we're running out of time to prevent a train wreck.

[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] Our parents did not know the things they were doing ...
were going to have major consequences for young people ...
and future generations. But we cannot say that. We can only pretend that we don't know.
If we warm up the planet a few degrees, we're talking about eventual sea-level rise of tens of meters,
which would wipe out all the coastal cities.

[MIAMI]

[NEW YORK]

[LONDON]

[SAN FRANCISCO]

[SHANGHAI]

[HOUSTON]

[MUMBAI]

[SYDNEY]

[HAMBURG]

[SHENZHEN]

[GUAYAQUIL]

[NAGOYA]

[DUBAI]

[OSAKA]

[NEW ORLEANS]

[SEATTLE]

[AUCKLAND]

[TAMPA]

[CAPETOWN]

[SINGAPORE]

[WASHINGTON]

[BANGKOK]


[James Hansen, Climate Scientist] If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate,
then by that time you've passed a tipping point,
so that it's -- you're going to get consequences that are out of our control.
I've been arrested, I think, four times.
We should be going and beating on the president's desk.

[Bob Inglis, Six-Term Congressman] You don't have to accept things the way they are. There are things we can do to change.
The lie is that we can't do it, that we can't innovate.
We gotta keep relying on petroleum, coal.
We gotta have just those things.
Why? To be in this situation,
where those fossil fuels are imperiling our future and future generations, and we're not accountable for that,
that really becomes a moral problem.
We're leaving our children and grandchildren a legacy of people who failed to lead.
People who, when it came their time to be awakened,
they slept.
We didn't have enough faith in the future that could be brought about, so we just gave up.
We couldn't rise to higher things.
I don't wanna be a part of that. I wanna be a part of saying:
"No, we did rise to it. You bet we did."

DON'T LET THEM STACK THE DECK
go to takepart.com/doubt
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Re: Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner

Postby admin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 1:54 am

WRITTEN BY ROBERT KENNER, KIM ROBERTS

[Music] It isn't hard to hate you now
The way I should do
And you would burn the house down
If I let you
Take everything and make it worse
But I've seen the weather change
And you're alone now
Standing your ground with no shame
You fooled me
But you don't fool me anymore
And a change is gonna come
I've come to realize
I'm finally moving on
I know it's hard for you to see
But we're in this together
And I still wanna make it work
You lied and I found out
Now I know better
But when it turns around I'm gonna show you first
Why in the world?
You find me sleepin'
God knows I'm not sleepin' now
You fooled me
But you don't fool me anymore
And the change is gonna come
And we will see the light
Before what's good is gone
Lies like yours won't last forever
You fooled me
But that won't happen anymore
And a change is gonna come
I've come to realize
I'm finally moving on


MUSIC SUPERVISOR: BRUCE GILBERT

GRAPHICS: BIG STAR; JON BOLERJACK; MINDBOMB FILMS

MAIN TITLE: BBDG; BIGSTAR

LEAD ASSISTANT EDITOR: JON BOLERJACK

ASSISTANT EDITORS: RYAN LOEFFLER; BARB STEELE

ARCHIVAL RESEARCH: DYLAN NELSON; TAKI OLDHAM

POST PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR: BENJAMIN LINDEMUTH-MCROBIE

FEATURING (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

Jamy Ian Swiss
Stanton Glantz
Sam Roe
Patricia Callahan
James Hansen
John Passacantando
Bill O'Keefe
Naomi Oreskes
Fred Singer
Michael Shermer
James Taylor
Matthew Crawford
Marc Morano
Ben Santer
Michael Mann
Katherine Hayhoe
Tim Phillips
Bob Inglis

[SONY PICTURES CLASSICS]
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