[PAA-Discuss] FW: Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

[Lee Loe]

 FYI. Lee Loe

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From: moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG [mailto:moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG] 
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 7:53 PM
To: PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Subject: Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate By ANDREW C. REVKIN New York
Times April 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?th&emc=th

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing
industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and
public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping
gases could lead to global warming.

"The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood," the
coalition said in a scientific "backgrounder" provided to lawmakers and
journalists through the early 1990s, adding that "scientists differ"
on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the
coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts
were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in
global warming could not be refuted.

"The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of
human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well
established and cannot be denied," the experts wrote in an internal report
compiled for the coalition in 1995.

[to read further, click on the item from the NYTimes above.]