Isn't "Merchants of Doubt" the title of a Frontline documentary?

@Flyingsaucesir Based on the book of the same name. A must read if you want to understand what drives science denialism at the highest and most powerful levels of society. Take a trip back in time to the ‘50s when the link between cancer and tobacco was first being established. How Big Tobacco fought back established the template for everything that followed up to the present moment with Climate Change denial. “Their product is doubt”.

@NostraDumbass Yeah the fossil fuel industry ran the same plays pioneered by the tobacco industry. Mother fuckers. Rot them all.

Druvius is right: fossil fuel think tanks created spurious arguments sowing doubt, lobbyists took them to Capitol Hill.

@Druvius I have been extolling the virtue of renewable energy/electric cars since 1990 in response to Desert Storm. Public would nod and then tell me why I was an anti-American. Lobbyists got bonuses because it was politically smart to be against green anything back then. I guess it reminded them of Carter's solar panels and made them mad, again, at tree huggers. I'd like to say people were hoodwinked but that's not the truth I saw.

@rainmanjr You're right, the public is too lazy and selfish to support green policies. It makes them apathetic to how the pols sell them out on energy policy.

@rainmanjr I'm not saying the public isn't responsible; we are. But to really address the problem will require collective action, because we have to create a whole new infrastructure. An ad hoc approach will not be sufficient. And the fossil fuel industry has dedicated a lot of resources toward sowing doubt about the science, which has decreased the necessary sense of urgency.

@Flyingsaucesir I don't argue your points about collective action but we had plenty of serious folks telling us the truth and we didn't like it. Besides, we had other things to argue about first. And those have been important things but they were created as diversions, I believe, and they worked. Ho hum, so sad, but we therefore didn't put full pressure on making the BBB happen. That was the appropriate response so we can't blame POTUS Joe. He threw a strike and we blinked.