The Dispatch letters page has been long on wishful thinking during the Copenhagen climate talks. If only climate scientists were greedy villains, we could blame them and go on ignoring how human activity is altering the planet.
Nice Christmas wish, maybe — but nothing more. Letter writers Roderick Clay (last Saturday), John Belt (Sunday) and John McFadden (last Saturday) need to go back a few years and look at the expensive public-relations campaigns led by Big Tobacco. A recent article in The Lancet compares climatechange skeptics to those desperate tobacco lobbyists.
Despite the mounting scientific evidence of harm, tobacco apologists kept playing the same game the climate-change deniers are playing up to now: for as long as possible, cast public doubt to delay implementation of tougher rules that would hurt their bottom line. The sources these letter writers cite are never climate scientists whose work has undergone peer review.
Christopher Horner and Iain Murray belong to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars every year from ExxonMobil. Patrick Michaels' 2007 academic curriculum vitae disclosed that he's been funded by the Edison Electric Institute and the Western Fuels Association.
Another skeptic is a director of three mining companies. Best of all, Clay disputes global warming by citing the infamous Steven Milloy of junkscience.com — a Web site set up to defend . . . tobacco companies! Milloy, long a paid advocate of Philip Morris, now gets his gravy from ExxonMobil, too. A professional shill and not a scientist, Milloy would have to be against doing something about global warming, wouldn't he, now that the money to flack cigarettes is all gone.
Scratch a skeptic, find a paid spokesperson. Too bad climate change is going to harm so many more people than secondhand smoke ever did.
JOHN DEEVER
Mount Vernon
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Special Note: John Deever survived my 9th Grade English class many years ago. His missive appeared on the Letters To The Editor Page of the December 26 Columbus Dispatch.
Thanks, John.
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