BIG OIL HAS BELIEVED IN GREENHOUSE EFFECT FOR FIFTEEN YEARS

From ScienceBlogs courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Times Exposes Industry's Global Warming Deceit

The New York Times exposes an internal document from the Global Climate Coalition, a group funded by the oil and auto industries, that shows that their own scientists were confirming the reality of human-caused global warming and the effects of greenhouse gasses as early as 15 years ago even while publicly trying to dispute that reality.

The document is from 1995 and it was a "primer" on the various issues being sent around to the auto companies for approval. It essentially admits that global warming is real and human-caused, that many of the counter-arguments are false and that we don't yet have good enough predictive technology to know the full effects, especially in local areas.

More here.

Last nail in the coffin.

Really, that ought to just about do it. When the scientists employed by the most vociferous of global warming deniers to "authenticate" their bogus view don't take the party line, you know it's over. I mean, of course it's not over. People who deny global warming are motivated by money and ideology, rather than reality, and will continue to bog down policy discussion with their bullshit until the severest effects of climate change become manifest, maybe even after that--it is a fair assumption, even, that most of these deniers believe their own lies.

But the fact that oil industry climatologists have long known about global warming ought to make for a handy rhetorical device when shutting up right-wingers who spout nonsense refuting scientific consensus on the issue. And the fact that Big Oil successfully hushed this report up for so many years ought to make all global warming dissenters suspect--we've got hard evidence now that the big guns on the other side of the "debate" tampered with the jury; why should we believe anything you people say?

Like I said, it's not entirely over, but the bullshit's end is in sight. That's a good thing.

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