Climate-change deniers follow script of tobacco industry’ | The Register-Guard
A new book, “Merchants of Doubt,” by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway shines the light on the strategy behind these efforts. It documents how a small group of well-connected scientists, driven mostly by the fear that acknowledging the reality of human-induced global warming will lead to government regulation that stifles the free market and private enterprise, have collaborated with conservative groups and fossil fuel companies to manufacture doubt about the science of climate change.
Their strategy replicates the one used by the tobacco industry to cast doubt on the link between smoking and cancer — in fact, some of the same people have been involved with both campaigns. The strategy is to relentlessly challenge even well-established climate science, portray dissenters as victims of a liberal environmentalist agenda, and try to discredit the leading researchers in the field.
The operation is not the only reason, but it has played a role in stalling congressional action on climate legislation. And, although one independent review after another has exonerated the climate scientists and reaffirmed the basic science of human-induced global warming, many top researchers have received death threats and in other ways continue to be harassed.