This letter was posted on Skeptical Science, a website designed to address the points that climate science deniers throw up in their debate. The site is full of excellent and measured information which succinctly debunks the standard toolkit of the deniers. Unfortunately the site's owners are still operating under the delusion that the deniers are honest interlocutors who simply need to be shown the facts to be brought on board and everything will be alright. The Sceptical Science website comments policy strictly forbids; politics, ad-hominem commentary, accusations of fraud or dishonesty and pretty much anything that addresses the real problem, namely the politicization, the fraud and dishonesty and the individuals who, paid and otherwise, inject mud into the waters of the debate to prevent the very resolution of the problems we have on the horizon. This post was removed for failing to remain in the safe and noninflammatory territory of selling the hard scientific facts of climate science to the converted.

The interests behind the global warming denial camp are not under any illusions that they are winning their argument, or even that their argument can in fact be won.

They are not interested in “winning” anything as mundane to them as this abstract treehugging argument.

The forces behind climate science denial are interested only in perpetuating the debate in the public domain. This is in spite the fact that the debate is long since settled in the fields of science relevant to the understanding of the issue. They know this. They also know, only too well, that the public perception of controversy is all that’s required for the maintenance of the obscenely profitable status quo.

 In the cases of tobacco, DDT, CFCs, asbestos and slavery, science and ethics predicted great harm and immediately, the techniques of science denial have swung in and granted a stay of execution, often for decades, to industries who have continued to reap the rewards while society procrastinates. For every extra day that these businesses get to ply their deadly trade, billions of dollars of profit and dizzying bonuses accumulate in the hands of the rapacious executives at the helm. Their entire model of economic enrichment is predicated upon the ability to go ahead with business as usual and the only thing that puts that at risk in the near term is society becoming convinced of the need for change. For that to happen, society needs to trust that the harm these industries do is understood and beyond doubt. Only then will the community overcome the terrible inertia inhibiting their activism and only then will the gutless twerps we call our “leaders” respond by limiting the potential for these industries to damage our future.

It should be no surprise that the P.R. firms who developed  Big Tobacco’s highly successful, multi-decadal campaign of science denial are the very same firms who now support Big Carbon’s efforts to spread mud into the clear waters of the message science is sending us. We need to stop wasting precious time trying to convince industry of the scientific truth and start informing the public of the black-hearted techniques that the industry deploys in managing their opinions about these big issues.

The reader may experience a certain amount of cognitive dissonance at the thought they could be victims of “opinion management”.  This might cause a person to resist accepting the notion that their reaction to the climate debate has been engineered by unethical but well demonstrated and powerful P.R. techniques.

Do yourself a favour, take an interest in the history and techniques of the P.R. industry and read some of the many published accounts of that industry’s “success” stories, published by the industry in their own journals and widely on the web.

 I've heard more than a few people exclaim, “no-one in high office would deliberately drive the planet into climatic and ecological jeopardy for individual gain! These captains of industry and government are intelligent, educated people who would never put profit before the good of humanity!”Not to burst their bubble but these Utopian dreamers need to see the vast body of reliable, peer reviewed work that demonstrates the capacity of humans to ignore evidence that sits in opposition to their worldview however unsupportable that worldview or incontrovertible the evidence might be. Changing your worldview is like changing your OS. A pain in the ass. This is the essence of the term “cognitive dissonance”. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is very difficult to make someone understand something when their salary relies on them not understanding it.” The clever PR person can use the power of cognitive dissonance as a blunt instrument or a scalpel.
 If that gives you a chill, then go to the various studies that demonstrate the fourfold concentration of psychopathic personalities in the highest offices of our corporations and government.
 This is difficult for many to accept, partly because most of us have a very limited picture of the psychopath as "the bug-eyed, axe-wielding maniac" of our nightmares and movies. That kind of psychopath is the kind that gets taken out of circulation quickly and dramatically. The rest of them live amongst us at a density of around one in one hundred in the general population. They are intelligent, often above average as a result of their abnormal brain. Again as a result of their abnormal brains, an entire network of processing lies unstimulated. In brain imaging tests this region just doesn't light up when the rest of the brain does ethical testing exercises.  This is the part of the brain that seems to deal with moral and ethical issues. The fear processing areas are similarly feeble  With no fear of repercussions and no internal behavior watchdog the impulsive ones qet removed from circulation quickly. The smart ones learn to fake social graces and to willfully learn a fear of getting caught, academically as a substitute for real fear..If they are smart enough to manage that, they are smart enough to remain in the community as “free range psychopaths”. Out here they run riot over their competition on their way to the top of their various games, unbound by the ethical and moral limits the rest of us elect to be bound by. In the halls of high office their numbers are estimated at as high as one in twenty five. In prison it's one in ten, the only place with a higher concentration of psychopaths in its population than in high office!

It’s is these same people who wield the tools of opinion management and who call the loudest shots in our society. It is these same people who are driving us to the point of no return in our delicate dance with the well understood chemistry of our atmosphere.