Climate Propaganda


This propaganda commercial is funny. "Carbon Dioxide; We call it life!"

Except that it's sort of scary. Companies including Exxon Mobile and Ford Motor Company (among many more) fund an organization called CEI, the so called Competitive Enterprise Institute. One of CEI's goals is to sow confusion about the reality of climate change among people with schedules too busy to research esoteric topics. Such people, who come home at the end of a long day of work and flip on the TV and see this commercial, are probably not aware that of the over 900 articles in peer-reviewed journals between 1993 and 2003, 75 percent supported the position that human activity was responsible for at least some of the observed warming of the past 50 years. The remaining 25 percent, which dealt with questions of methodology or climate history, took no position on current conditions. Not a single article disputed the premise (via Field Notes from a Catastrophe).

What really gets me is the blurb by CEI that suggests environmental groups and some politicians are only interested in making everyone ride bicycles. Sure, luddites among environmental groups are rife, but why not focus on what reasonable people are suggesting instead of the outliers? Bills recently and now before Congress ask for an apollo project for alternate energy research. No one will voluntarily give up their car, though they will certainly switch to cheaper solutions if given the opportunity.

That said, in the long run we'll require solutions beyond those even those proposed by the apollo project, but this is the place to start.


Posted: Fri - May 19, 2006 at 09:01 AM          

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