Plain Talk

about matters of interest in Washington State and, often, elsewhere

March 2007

Two things everyone needs to understand about global warming: one, it's very real, very big, and very dangerous; and two, a parcel of paid liars, augmented by a few nutcases, are trying to deny it.

The classic old saying simply cannot be repeated often enough: _follow the money._ And if you _do_ follow the money in the phony "debates" about global warming, at the end of the many-linked chain you find virtually all the deniers funded by major energy companies. Wow! Whatta concept!

Just between 1998 and 2005, one oil company alone (ExxonMobil) funneled nearly *$16 million* to a network of 43 advocacy organizations denying global warming. To pick but a single grain of sand off that beach, something calling itself the George C. Marshall Institute touted a book edited by one Patrick Michaels--who is affiliated with at least 11 organizations funded by ExxonMobil; the Institute had received $630,000 from ExxonMobil. And it's a very sandy beach.

By law, a corporation is "an artificial legal person". Artificial people have artificial consciences. The business of a profit-making corporation is, um, making profit. If the small business up the road from you discovers that its operations are poisoning the groundwater, it will probably do something about it, because it's run by a real human being who probably has a real conscience. Artificial legal persons are run by armies of suits mumbling about "responsibility to the shareholders". (As if the shareholders--probably including you, if you've got a pension plan--would, if asked, say, Yeah, sure, destroy the planet if it makes me 27 bucks more.)

The paid liars get up things like petitions signed by "scientists", whose numbers include such eminent climatological experts as dentists. Or they cite "experts" like former Washington governor Dixy Lee Ray, whose works a _practicing_ scientist said "display serious misunderstandings of atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, either ignore or misrepresent scientific evidence, and are based upon poor scholarship, in particular the uncritical use of exceedingly unreliable sources." Exceedingly unreliable sources; sounds about right here.

The poor public, then, is given the false idea, from all this fakery, that there is some sort of "debate" on global warming; in reality, the only "debate" is the political question "How long can we keep getting away with it?"

None of this should be news. Remember this one? "There is no credible evidence that smoking is harmful to health." The Big Liars count on what is called "FUD"--Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt--which they raise because lots of money buys lots of news coverage (and, the cynic might say, lots of people).

In the end, we just have to ask ourselves one simple question: which lot is more credible, the collection of nearly all qualified scientists concerned with global warming, or the collection of nearly all executives of the Big Oil companies responsible for most of the global-warming problem. Follow the money.

Plain Talk is a more or less monthly feature carried in the weekly Ritzville Adams County Journal.