Global-Warming Deniers

There was an interesting article in Newsweek by Sharon Begley entitled "Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine" or alternatively "The Truth About Denial" that provides us with the "scoop" about the intensive efforts of a number of vested business interests to discredit the global warming/climate change movement. I have no doubt that a high percentage of the quoted facts are in fact true (or at least roughly plausible), but the article is infused with such a high degree of yellow journalism and bias that goes far beyond simply objectively reporting facts on both sides of what is still a legitimate debate and remaining neutral on the subject matter at hand. It certainly read more like an editorial or something for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times than strict reporting of the news or even a legitimate "analysis" story.

Besides, even if one side of a grand debate does have ulterior motives that are less than "sterling" that taints their "evidence" as being "suspect", that does not in any way automatically render any of their arguments or data or science as absolutely invalid.

Ultimately, I'm not sure what the real point of the article was. I suspect that maybe the intention was to be a wake up call for lazy people who may be treating the whole matter of global warming and climate change as a two-way debate or a matter for somebody else to worry about when maybe they should be treating it as some sort of grand conspiracy of business interests again the people that they need to rise up and fight against.

The article did give a number of specific details and a lot of "color" for the "well-funded machine", but ultimately I did not find that it actually tells the public anything that in principle they didn't already know about the oil companies, the car companies, and lobbyists in Washington, D.C.

In fact, what I find amusing is that Newsweek missed the really big picture which is the extent to which all of these special interests are now on a path to completely co-opt the global warming/climate change political and social movement and turn it into a financial boondoggle for all of those big vested business interests.

-- Jack Krupansky