Cue the Orchestra

Jeff Masters of Wunder Blog has a long article on Lindzen's WSJ anti global warming editorial. He takes a rather balance approach, reminding us of Lindzen's many accomplishments and honors, but he doesn't think Lindzen makes a case. Interestingly, he points out that Lindzen's editorial was just one of three appearing at about the same time, and reminds of a a previous orchestrated campaign of denial:

The fossil fuel industry has spent tens of millions of dollars on many such campaigns in the past. The most notorious of these campaigns was launched in 1991, when the Information Council on the Environment (ICE), a creation of a group of utility and coal companies, launched a PR campaign whose goal was to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact". The campaign targeted "older, less-educated men" and "young, low-income women" in electoral districts who had a congressperson on the House Energy Committee. The PR campaign hired four "greenhouse skeptic" scientists--Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer, Robert Balling, and Sherwood Idso--to generate op-ed pieces, broadcast appearances, and newspaper interviews. Gelbspan writes: "The plan was clever if not accurate. One newspaper advertisement prepared by the ICE, for example, was headlined: 'If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis getting colder?' (Data indicate that Minneapolis has actually warmed between 1 and 1.5 degrees Celsius in the last century.)" Another print ad featured a cowering chicken under the headline "Who Told You the Earth Was Warming...Chicken Little?"

Master's also reminds us of the previous bit of global environmental "alarmism" over Ozone depletion. Not until the scientific case was absolutely rock solid did the industry flack skeptics fold their tents - interestingly enough, some of the same cast were skeptics back them. It would be tempting to accuse them of having learned nothing, but actually what they learned was that they could line their pockets by flacking for polluters.