The Denial of Global Warming

No book about the science of climate reconstruction would be complete if it did not also address the organized efforts to reject and obfuscate that science. This chapter begins with passages adapted from Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (2010), which were kindly shared by the authors and publisher. This path-breaking work uncovered links among the tactics and agents involved in organized efforts to cast doubt and disrepute on research and researchers who have demonstrated how certain profitable enterprises have negative health and environmental externalities. Here, we have extended Oreskes and Conway’s account with a discussion of global warming denial in Europe and in Australia.