The denialist deck of cards

A video you simply must see

Posted by David Roberts at 2:46 PM on 11 May 2007

Read more about: climate | climate change skepticism | health | lying liars | green living

Yikes. Everyone must watch this video, which comes to us from DeSmogBlog:

And on a related note, this seems like a good time to link to The Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts. You will see that these perpetual, maddening arguments about global warming are not new. The techniques are the same and the goals are the same: protecting industry.

All the more reason not to feed the trolls.

And PS: DeSmogBlog also has a petition asking Fox to fire Steven Milloy, one-time tobacco shill, now climate denialist shill. FYI.

For story: The denialist deck of cards
9 Comments | Post a Comment

Is that Dick Lindzen?

Yes it is. In a 2001 Newsweek profile of Lindzen, he says that the link between smoking and health effects is weak. That kinda puts his statements about the weak connection between CO2 and global warming in context, doesn't it.

by Andrew Dessler at 3:22 PM on 11 May 2007

The well-defended fortresses of denial

I like to call these denial efforts the Well-Defended Fortresses of Denial. I think it's useful to note that they can look like an impenetrable wall of defense, but seen correctly they're nothing more than specific points of denial where defenses have already been built. It's usually possible to find ways around the denial rather than trying to bring the denial crashing down.

Ok, long and tired metaphor, but it can be a useful exercise to ask whether it's possible to go around the denial rather than confronting it head-on.

Blogfish

by Mark Powell at 4:22 PM on 11 May 2007

Do you have the newsweek story

Hi Andrew,

Do you have the Lindzen/Newsweek story? Would love to get my hands on it...

kevin@desmogblog.com

by KGrandia at 4:25 PM on 11 May 2007

Ready To Give Up BJs ?

Since you guys buy every "link" possible how about:

http://www.worldnewsaustralia.com.au/region.php?id=136931 ...

Oral sex link to throat cancer
A common virus, believed to be transmitted during oral sex, is the cause of a rare throat cancer in both men and women, US researchers said Wednesday.

by jabailo at 4:41 PM on 11 May 2007

thank you for driving

sad truth; people who don't want to change their habits will believe anything, no matter how sorry.

and this stuff is sorry.

by zackk at 5:07 PM on 11 May 2007

crazy hair ...

I am astounded that anyone can do that sort of thing for a living: i.e., what the obviously well educated, articulate person is doing, by way of defending the tobacco industry.

IMHO, the most impressive part of Al Gore's book, though very understated actually, is his discussion of his sister's death, by lung cancer, and his comparison of the tobacco industry's denialist strategy to that of the energy industries' global-warming-denialist strategy.

On oral sex: Well, for many of us, it works very nicely. But involuntary woman-on-man oral sex is indeed a major injustice, health issues aside, about which not enough has been reported.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 4:53 AM on 12 May 2007

Judge Voids Study Linking Cancer to Secondhand Smo

This sounds like what will happen to all the bogus "Global Warming" studies:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health& ...

Judge Voids Study Linking Cancer to Secondhand
By BARRY MEIER
Published: July 20, 1998

A Federal judge held Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency made procedural and scientific mistakes when it declared in a 1993 report that secondhand cigarette smoke caused as many as 3,000 cancer deaths a year among nonsmokers.
...
In the ruling, Judge William L. Osteen Sr. of Federal District Court in Greensboro, N.C., held that E.P.A. officials made significant mistakes when the agency brought together scientists to study secondhand smoke. The ruling came in a lawsuit by major cigarette companies seeking to have the report declared invalid.
Judge Osteen found that the composition of the study panel was flawed because, among other things, none of its representatives were drawn from industry. But in a far more damning finding, Judge Osteen held that agency researchers, rather than rigorously proving their case, frequently shifted theories and selected the data they wanted in order to reach a preordained conclusion.

by jabailo at 11:35 AM on 12 May 2007
[ Parent ]

You Make It Too Easy, jbailo

Hmmm...interesting that the case was vacated on appeal. Were you unaware of this? Does it matter to you?

by TradBrad at 4:42 PM on 12 May 2007
[ Parent ]

EPA Suppression

The case was vacated not on the judgement that the original report was flawed, but that the plaintiffs (Big Tobacco) had the right to challenge it in the first place.

In other words, the EPA suppressed the right to challenge the flawed report -- not that the report was flawed.

[But points of law don't concern you when you're trying to steamroll junk science through our society, does it?]

First, EPA argues that the district court incorrectly held that the Report was reviewable final agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5
U.S.C. §§ 702, 704. Second, EPA contends the district court errone-ously concluded that plaintiffs-Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative
Stabilization Corporation, Council for Burley Tobacco, Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, Phillip Morris Incorporated, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and Gallins Vending Company (collectively plaintiffs)-had proper standing to challenge EPA's Report.

by jabailo at 11:00 PM on 12 May 2007
[ Parent ]

ADVERTISING POLICY

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