Climate Change Is Real - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 192

decades, these “merchants of doubt” have suggested there really was no
strict link between smoking and a host of health problems, industrial air
pollution and the problem of acid rain, or CFCs and the growing ozone
hole over the Antarctic. They sought to undermine research showing
how an exchange of nuclear warheads could lead to nuclear winter, and
in recent years have even suggested that the ban on DDT was a mistake.
All these campaigns took roughly the same shape, and all were effective
in shaping public opinion: they show that once you suggest that a con-
sensus position is “bad science,” prompting responsible scientists to reply
and defend research in the field, you create a public debate where there
is none to speak of within the scientific community itself, produce the
impression of uncertainty, and thus create the basis for inaction. The situ-
ation today around climate change is no different.166 166
At one point a few years ago, however, many of the “skeptics” behind
these efforts abandoned their intransigence. Frank Luntz, the Republican
pollster, spinmeister, and leading participant in a public relations cam-
paign against action on climate change, recanted his “skeptical” views in
2006, and in 2008 or so Exxon stopped funding the group behind most of
that campaign's activities. 167 Around the same time, President George W.
Bush, who doubted whether human activities are contributing to global
warming and whose White House had often doctored statements about
climate change by scientists working for the federal government, spoke of
the urgent need to take steps to “confront the serious challenge of global
climate change” in his 2007 State of the Union message. 168 By this point,
the increasing confidence of climate change science was beginning to
change even resistant minds.
Despite the tendency of even well-known public figures to recant or
soften their resistance to action, a portion of the public remains uncon-
vinced and is likely to stick with that position, no mater what scientists
or policy professionals might say. This group, generally associated with
the Republican party, is now permanently commited to a “skeptical”
position, despite the partial change of heart by leaders as prominent as
former President Bush. Candidates for office as Republicans are now
virtually required to deny the human contributions to climate change if
they are to receive the support of voters in that party, whatever the evi-
dence may show. Apparently, “conservatives” are not terribly interested