Tag: tobacco

Yale law dean opposes free speech for climate skeptics

http://junkscience.com/2016/06/yale-law-dean-opposes-free-speech-for-climate-skeptics/…

Rasmussen Poll: 27% of Democrats favor prosecuting ‘global warming’ skeptics – 63% of all Americans say debate is not over

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/little_support_for_punishing_global_warming_foes

Global warming advocates are calling for the prosecution of groups who disagree with them, and New York State has taken it a step further by investigating Exxon Mobil for refusing to play ball with the popular scientific theory.

But 68% of Likely U.S. Voters oppose the government investigating and prosecuting scientists and others including major corporations who question global warming. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 17% favor such prosecutions. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

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Among voters who believe scientists have made up their minds about global warming, one-in-four (24%) favor prosecuting those who question that theory, but 64% are opposed.…

In Their Zeal to Go after Exxon, Warmists Erase Scientists’ Early Caution on Global Warming

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425433/climate-mafia-rewrites-science-history

As ExxonMobil better at climate science than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? This is the bizarre position now being adopted by climate activists such as Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes and 350.org’s Bill McKibben. As early as 1977, Exxon researchers “knew that its main product would heat up the planet disastrously,” McKibben claimed in the New Yorker last month. “Present thinking,” an Exxon researcher wrote in a 1978 summary, “holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

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Contrary to what Oreskes and McKibben believe, unearthing the thoughts of Exxon scientists from the late 1970s and 1980s illustrates a tendency among some scientists — even those in the pay of an oil company — to be prone to alarmism and to overstate what is known. Predictably, Oreskes and McKibben draw a different conclusion, one entirely unsupported by the evidence.

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Even this assertion about tobacco smoking is historically inaccurate. Medical researchers in Britain and then America had first found the link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer in 1949 and 1950; researchers in Nazi Germany had made the association before them. Notoriously, American tobacco companies in the 1950s had run campaigns claiming that their customers’ health was their overriding concern, a patently dishonest statement that subsequently put them in legal jeopardy. But smoking prevalence peaked and began its long decline shortly after the surgeon general’s first report in 1964 warned of the dangers of smoking.

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Scientists were able to prove the threat to health from smoking because there is a very strong statistical relationship between smoking and lung cancer. The strength of those initial findings was further validated by passing a tough predictive test. In 1953, Richard Doll, one of the first researchers to have found the link, predicted that in 1973 there would be 25,000 lung-cancer deaths in Britain. In fact, there were 26,000. By contrast, climate models have been systematically over-forecasting temperature rises this century, demonstrating that climate scientists know much less about the climate system than they would have us believe. In the New York Times, Oreskes complains that climate scientists are ridiculed for predicting catastrophic climate change. If climate scientists’ predictions had been more accurate, they might be taken seriously

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425433/climate-mafia-rewrites-science-history

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425433/climate-mafia-rewrites-science-history

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425433/climate-mafia-rewrites-science-historyRead more at: …

‘The Climate Mafia Rewrites Science History’: ‘RICO statute was passed to fight the mafia. Now it’s being used by the climate mafia to silence dissent’

http://www.thegwpf.com/rupert-darwall-the-climate-mafia-rewrites-science-history/

The belief that to reject climate catastrophism (aka climate denial) constitutes a moral failing is a hallmark of pseudoscience – See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/rupert-darwall-the-climate-mafia-rewrites-science-history/#sthash.iafFb5JB.dpuf

Scientists were able to prove the threat to health from smoking because there is a very strong statistical relationship between smoking and lung cancer. The strength of those initial findings was further validated by passing a tough predictive test. In 1953, Richard Doll, one of the first researchers to have found the link, predicted that in 1973 there would be 25,000 lung-cancer deaths in Britain. In fact, there were 26,000. By contrast, climate models have been systematically over-forecasting temperature rises this century, demonstrating that climate scientists know much less about the climate system than they would have us believe. In the New York Times, Oreskes complains that climate scientists are ridiculed for predicting catastrophic climate change. If climate scientists’ predictions had been more accurate, they might be taken seriously.

Climate activists have highlighted the history of research on tobacco smoking and lung cancer not to illustrate the weakness of climate science compared with the epidemiology of lung cancer, but to intimidate those who disagree with them and close down debate. Last month, 20 climate scientists wrote to President Obama requesting that the government use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to bypass Congress and, they hope, muzzle dissenting views. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the letter’s organizer, Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University, and his family have been doing very well indeed out of federal research dollars, reaping more than $1 million in 2014 alone.

– See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/rupert-darwall-the-climate-mafia-rewrites-science-history/#sthash.iafFb5JB.dpuf…

Climate Depot Responds to Sen. Whitehouse: ‘The warmists have it exactly backwards. It is the global warming proponents who are guilty of the tobacco tactics.’

Climate Depot Responds: 

The warmists have it exactly backwards. It is the global warming proponents who are guilty of the tobacco tactics.

See: Flashback: Warmists’ mimic tobacco industry tactics: ‘Like tobacco industry, Warmists’ manufactured uncertainty & fear by stridently proclaiming certainty & consensus based on dubious & uncertain modeled results predicting disastrous consequences of a warmer climate’

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. Rips ‘Big Climate’ for having ‘similarities’ with ‘Big Tobacco’ & ‘Big NFL’ – Pielke Jr. specifically linked UN IPCC and Michael Mann’s tactics to ‘Big Tobacco’ and ‘Big NFL’ – Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., prof. of env. studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the U. of Colorado at Boulder:

Democrat Sen. Whitehouse: Use RICO Laws to Prosecute Global Warming Skeptics

Via The Weekly Standard:

Writing in the Washington Post, Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, offered a curious suggestion for dealing with global warming skeptics:

In 2006, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided that the tobacco companies’ fraudulent campaign amounted to a racketeering enterprise. According to the court: “Defendants coordinated significant aspects of their public relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared objective — to . . . maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public.”

The parallels between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are striking. … The coordinated tactics of the climate denial network, Brulle’s report states, “span a wide range of activities, including political lobbying, contributions to political candidates, and a large number of communication and media efforts that aim at undermining climate science.” Compare that again to the findings in the tobacco case.
The tobacco industry was proved to have conducted research that showed the direct opposite of what the industry stated publicly — namely, that tobacco use had serious health effects. Civil discovery would reveal whether and to what extent the fossil fuel industry has crossed this same line. We do know that it has funded research that — to its benefit — directly contradicts the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate science. One scientist who consistently published papers downplaying the role of carbon emissions in climate change, Willie Soon, reportedly received more than half of his funding from oil and electric utility interests: more than $1.2 million.

To be clear: I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke.

That’s right — a sitting U.S. Senator is suggesting using RICO laws should be applied to global warming skeptics. Courts have been defining RICO down for some time and in ways that aren’t particularly helpful. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled RICO statutes could be applied to pro-life activists on the grounds that interstate commerce can be affected even when the organization being targeted doesn’t have economic motives.

Obviously, there’s a lot of money hanging …

Watch Now: Morano in lively TV climate debate with enviro lobbyist: ‘The points she just made are demonstrably not true’

Catholic network, EWTN – May 14, 2015 – Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) climate expert and lobbyist Carol Andress Vs. Climate Depot’s Marc Morano

Watch: Full 15 min. Climate Debate begins at 25 min. in:

Watch: Watch Now: The Uncomfortable Pause; EDF climate expert explains lack of global warming: ‘I, the, yeh, uhh…’

Dems tie climate skeptics to tobacco, lead backers

Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.: ‘This AAAS report is an embarrassment to the scientific community’ – Declares report includes ‘blatant advocacy and absurd statements’

Warmists trot out tobacco smear to demean skeptics debating climate on TV: Dem Sen. ‘Giving scientists and climate change deniers equal time is like having tobacco executives debate doctors on the safety of cigarettes’

Global warming activists are at it again, once again attempting to smear climate skeptics by using the tobacco analogy. Warmists are fuming over the Bill Nye debate with Rep. Marsha Blackburn on NBC’s Meet the Press . See: Warmist Salon Mag. Disses Bill Nye as ‘a professional children’s entertainer’ – NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ to host climate change debate between GOP’s Marsha Blackburn and Bill Nye ‘the Science Guy’

Via National Journal – Feb. 16, 2014:

Article excerpt: Environmentalist Miles Grant: ‘Next week’s debate: Do cigarettes cause cancer? An oncologist debates a tobacco executive!’

Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat:  ‘While its good to see Meet the Press waking up to the fact that climate change is an issue—the debate is over.’ ‘Climate change is a public health threat. Giving scientists and climate change deniers equal time is like having tobacco executives debate doctors on the safety of cigarettes,’ Schatz said.

End National Journal article excerpt

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Climate Depot Responds: 

The warmists have it exactly backwards. It is the global warming proponents who are guilty of the tobacco tactics. See: Flashback: Warmists’ mimic tobacco industry tactics: ‘Like tobacco industry, Warmists’ manufactured uncertainty & fear by stridently proclaiming certainty & consensus based on dubious & uncertain modeled results predicting disastrous consequences of a warmer climate’

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. Rips ‘Big Climate’ for having ‘similarities’ with ‘Big Tobacco’ & ‘Big NFL’ – Pielke Jr. specifically linked UN IPCC and Michael Mann’s tactics to ‘Big Tobacco’ and ‘Big NFL’ – Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., prof. of env. studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the U. of Colorado at Boulder: