{"id":46195,"date":"2019-05-17T08:04:21","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T13:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46195"},"modified":"2019-05-17T08:04:51","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T13:04:51","slug":"climate-change-was-no-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46195","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change was No Accident"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Climate Change was No Accident<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Years ago, tobacco companies discovered the link between their products and lung cancer. Did they warn their customers? No \u2014 they denied the link entirely, misleading the public for decades while killing their customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, ExxonMobil scientists made startlingly accurate predictions<\/a>about climate change as early as 1982 \u2014 and then spent millions of dollars on a misinformation campaign<\/a> to sow public doubt about climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t need to convince the public that the climate crisis wasn\u2019t happening. They just had to muddy the waters enough<\/em> to prevent us from doing anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They provoked uncertainty: Maybe the climate crisis isn\u2019t happening. And even if it is, maybe it\u2019s not caused by humans burning fossil fuels. (Of course, it is<\/em> happening and it is<\/em> caused by humans.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was inaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we aren\u2019t even sure that a human-caused climate crisis is afoot, why should we wean ourselves off of fossil fuels? It would be highly inconvenient and very expensive to go to all of that trouble unless we\u2019re absolutely certain that we need to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, the argument went, \u201conly\u201d 97 percent of scientists believe that human are causing a climate crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a scientist. Let me tell you, when 97 percent of scientists agree on anything, the evidence must be overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists are trained to critique and argue with one another. We make our careers by pulling apart other scientists\u2019 theories and exposing the flaws in them and then supplanting them with better theories of our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You couldn\u2019t get 97 percent of scientists to agree that puppies are cute or chocolate is delicious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about other 3 percent? You can always find one or two nutty so-called scientists with inaccurate, fringy theories out there. There\u2019s probably a scientist somewhere attempting to publish a study asserting that Bigfoot exists \u2014 or that climate change isn\u2019t happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate Change was No Accident Years ago, tobacco companies discovered the link between their products and lung cancer. Did they warn their customers? No \u2014 they denied the link entirely, misleading the public for decades while killing their customers. Similarly, ExxonMobil scientists made startlingly accurate predictionsabout climate change as early as 1982 \u2014 and then spent millions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2648,2956,5493,3448,1041,386,19410,705],"class_list":["post-46195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-anthropogenic-climate-change","tag-climate-science","tag-counterpunch","tag-doubt","tag-exxonmobil","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-jill-richardson","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46196,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46195\/revisions\/46196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}