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What is the current state of affairs after 70 years of this climate denial machine? In the US, at least 180 congressional members and senators are declared climate deniers. They’ve received more than US$82 million in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry and its partners.Q: How much money bribe from oil and gas industry does it take to claim that “climate scientists are in it for the money”?A: $763,331Climate scientists slam Rick Santorum's "conspiracy theory" that they're in it for the moneyWhen you have received $763,331 from oil and gas companies, I guess its mandatory to claim that "climate scientists are in it for the money" right?LOLOil & Gas: Money to CongressThe goal of the fossil fuel industry is to keep its profits rolling in without interference by government or by new, competing energy sources.To do this they need the public embroiled in doubt and suspicion; they need to degrade public confidence in science and scientists; they need to harm America’s future—and the world’s future—so that one of the wealthiest industries on Earth can engorge itself in even more wealth.https://cleantechnica.com/2016/0...The Dake Page :"Denialists know that they have no valid scientific argument; if they did they would present it in scientific journals, conferences, and debates. Their goal isn’t to demonstrate science, it is to manipulate public opinion. That is what lobbyists do, and they do it well. Their goal is to create the illusion of debate, the façade of uncertainty. By continuing the “discussion,” such as it is, in the media, they win. They know that a majority of the public won't understand the intricacies of the science, either by choice or by its complexity. Denialists know that the public will get an overall sense of whether the science is settled or not, and that it is on this vague feeling the public will make judgments as to whether immediate action is needed. Perception is more important than fact, and illusion of reality is much more powerful than actual reality. [...] What is critical in this game is not what the science tells us, it’s the fact that to the public it appears as if there are two sides arguing with each other. Two sides + arguing = not settled.THE MAIN PLAYERS: THE KOCHS AND EXXON MOBILThe Kochs are probably the main founders of the american denial machine. Their agenda is to undermine all science which comes into “conflict” with their self interests. They are mega big polluters. And they have paid politicians to “do nothing about global warming”. (Watch the video)The origin of climate denial:Mont Pelerin Society Revealed As Home To Leading Pushers Of Climate Science DenialDuke University history professor Nancy MacLean suggests some answers in her new book Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.The book documents how wealthy conservatives, in particular petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch, teamed up with neoliberal academics with the objective, MacLean says, of undermining the functions of government in the United States.MacLean’s central character is the late James McGill Buchanan, a political theorist and economist who won a Nobel award in 1986 for his development of “public choice theory”.Buchanan and Koch developed and propagated their ideas through a private organisation called the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) – an influential group known as the “neoliberal thought collective” that was established in 1947 by famed free market economist Friedrich Hayek. Buchanan was a former president and joined in 1957. Koch, who has poured millions into groups attacking mainstream climate science, joined MPS in 1970.MPS has about 500 members in more than 40 countries.In the US it has many members who also work at think tanks that push climate science misinformation and attack renewable energy.This ongoing billion dollar attack on science from polluters industry think tanks and front groups have unfortunately undermined peoples trust in science and scientists.How Exxon Mobil, Koch brothers created a culture of climate doubt.Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeAbstractDrawing on large-scale computational data and methods, this research demonstrates how polarization efforts are influenced by a patterned network of political and financial actors. These dynamics, which have been notoriously difficult to quantify, are illustrated here with a computational analysis of climate change politics in the United States. The comprehensive data include all individual and organizational actors in the climate change countermovement (164 organizations), as well as all written and verbal texts produced by this network between 1993–2013 (40,785 texts, more than 39 million words). Two main findings emerge. First, that organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant to polarize the climate change issue. Second, and more importantly, that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts, and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content over time. These findings provide new, and comprehensive, confirmation of dynamics long thought to be at the root of climate change politics and discourse. Beyond the specifics of climate change, this paper has important implications for understanding ideological polarization more generally, and the increasing role of private funding in determining why certain polarizing themes are created and amplified. Lastly, the paper suggests that future studies build on the novel approach taken here that integrates large-scale textual analysis with social networks.https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/...__________________________________________________________________How Fossil Fuel Money Made Climate Change Denial the Word of God_______________________________________________________The shocker!!The moment when ExxonMobil admits they funded climate denier think tanks:You gotta see this to believe it. About 6 mins into video.OIL INDUSTRIES AND TOBACCO INDUSTRIES USED THE SAME METHODS TO UNDERMINE THE SCIENCETobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway Public"As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".Merchants of Doubt is a 2014 American documentary film directed by Robert Kenner.The film traces the use of public relations tactics that were originally developed by the tobacco industry to protect their business from research indicating health risks from smoking. The most prominent of these tactics is the cultivation of scientists and others who successfully cast doubt on the scientific results.LETS LOOK AT THE MONEY SPENT:A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that over the last 20 years, private funding has had an important influence on the overall polarization of climate change as a topic in the United States.Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeTruth is these interests are spending billions on lobbying officials:"Lobbying is conducted away from the public eye," explained Brulle. "There is no open debate or refutation of viewpoints offered by professional lobbyists meeting in private with government officials. Control over the nature and flow of information to government decision-makers can be significantly altered by the lobbying process and creates a situation of systematically distorted communication. This process may limit the communication of accurate scientific information in the decision-making process."As the study concludes, “the environmental organization and the renewable energy sectors were outspent by the corporate sectors involved in the production or use of fossil fuels by a ratio of approximately 10 to 1.”How lobbyists buy climate change legislationThe money spent on anti science propaganda campaigns and attacks on climate science is riddicilous:AbstractThis paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies.https://phys.org/news/2013-12-koch-brothers-reveals-funders-climate.htmlhttp://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx"Dark Money" Funds Climate Change Denial EffortExclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate scienceSenators who urged Trump to leave Paris climate accord took millions from oil companiesHOW THE 2% RICH KEEPS THEIR 98% SHEEPLE “SATISFIED”To pander their gullible “people on the streets” its often enough to label environmental laws for “tax scams”. This will trigger their tribe into believing its about them. Thats how they have kept america polluted for 100 years.The amount of spent money has been staggering. Between 2005 and 2008, the Kochs alone spent nearly $25m on organizations fighting climate reform. One study by a Drexel University professor found 140 conservative foundations had spent $558m over seven years for the same purpose.[...] The genius of this strategy was to “turn corporate self-interest into a movement among people on the streets”."The AEI was one of dozens of the new think tanks bankrolled by hundreds of millions from the Kochs and their allies. Sold to the public as quasi-scholarly organizations, their real function was to legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever more tax cuts for the people who created them.Here is the method they use to pander and exploit “people on the streets”:Kochs’ “grand strategist Richard Fink:“We want to decrease regulations. Why? It’s because we can make more profit, O.K.? Yeah, and cut government spending so we don’t have to pay so much taxes. There’s truth in that.” But to the “middle third” these positions seemed motivated not by ideological principle but by greed.The rich donors who made up the Koch network, Fink said, needed to persuade moderate, undecided voters that their intent was generous. “We’ve got to convince these people we mean well, and that we’re good people,” Fink said.Fink was brutally honest about how unpopular the views of his wealthy audience were. “When we focus on decreasing government spending,” he said, and on “over-criminalization and decreasing taxes, it doesn’t do it, O.K.? . . . They’re not responding, and don’t like it.”But he pointed out that if anyone in America knew how to sell something it should be the successful business leaders in the Koch network. “We get business,” he told the audience. “What do we do? We want to find out what the customer wants, right? Not what we want them to buy!”The company’s internal research had shown that Americans wanted a clean environment, widespread good health, high standards of living, security, freedom, peace, and opportunity for both themselves and others. This posed a problem, given that the Kochs and their network opposed environmental regulation and government action on global warming, and supported privatizing Social Security and health care.But Fink had a solution. “This is going to sound a little strange,” he acknowledged. “So you’ll have to bear with me.” The Koch network, he said, needed to present its free-market ideology as an apolitical and altruistic reform movement to enhance the quality of life—as “a movement for well-being.” The network should make the case that free markets forged a path to happiness, whereas big government led to tyranny, Fascism, and even Nazism. Arguing that an increase in the minimum wage would cause higher unemployment, Fink told his audience that unemployment in Germany during the nineteen-twenties had led to the rise “of the Third Reich.”New Koch: Rebranding the Billionaire BrothersHere lies the real scam:The hysterical, polemic, paranoid conspiratorial and desperate feigned "us against them" conservative alt-right wingnut ideological free marked fundamentalist libertarian Ayn Rand anti-government anti-regulation tax alarmism demagogy junk with its mandatory and predictable attacks on unwanted (climate) science and smear against scientists and competing green energy, filtered through think tanks and astroturf orgs by their wolf pack attackers, Opinion Piece writers, fake experts and their media-accomplices, all recycled by echo chamber denier blogs and You-Tube-videos by amateur deniers and boys room conspiracy drivlers and web-trolls,-are really only asewer stream of cynical polluters industry self interests,camouflaged as a political right / left struggle -drag queened in a convulsively socialist witch hunt, posing like its about the "people on the street", the workers (their gullible sheeple) and "the poor people of the world",but the real agenda isto legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever more tax cuts for the free marked fundamentalists who created them so they can continue to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and add to the damages of CC.Private corporations take the profit while the environment and public health takes the bill.The amount of spent money has been staggering. Between 2005 and 2008, the Kochs alone spent nearly $25m on organizations fighting climate reform. One study by a Drexel University professor found 140 conservative foundations had spent $558m over seven years for the same purpose.[...] The genius of this strategy was to “turn corporate self-interest into a movement among people on the streets”.Dark Money review: Nazi oil, the Koch brothers and a right wing revolutionTesting Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average CitizensMultivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.If policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.https://goo.gl/SX9y38America are run by the polluters and their puppet politicians.The same mighty polluters which have kept America polluted for 100 years with lead, asbestos, DDT, mercury ,nicotine and now C02.HOW DO WE RECOGNIZE THE POLLUTERS AND THEIR PUPPETS?You recognize them when they start to attack environmental laws.They always attack environmental laws.These laws are made so that you and I can enjoy clean air and waters. These same laws are called “tax scams” by the polluters. The term “tax scam” will very likely be embraced by anyone who doesn’t like “the government” in the first place.The EPA was created to protect citizens from pollutions and environmental hazards. But he EPA is now a joke in Trumps America. It’s been hijacked by fossil fuel puppets and climate deniers. FFS, their new chief is a former coal lobbyist.Trump taps former coal lobbyist to lead EPATrumps America is fossil fuels America. How proud deniers must be. Leat them eat mercury, as they did lead, asbestos, DDT, nicotine and C02, you know, those other "hoaxes" science warned about. And as usual, these environmental laws will be renamed "tax scams" by the fossil fuels front group propaganda machine, to pander their bent over tribe of gullibles who, as usual, will swallow any anti-governmental lie they design, just because they believe being pro-government makes you a socialist.The corruption knows no limits:When Mother Jones first reported in December 2017 that the Environmental Protection Agency had hired a hyper-partisan GOP opposition research firm known for its aggressive tactics to handle the agency’s news-clipping work, the politically appointed flacks in the agency’s press office insisted the decision was about saving money and the hiring had been handled through normal procurement channels. As we reported Thursday, we now know that was not the case. Internal emails obtained by FOIA show that political appointees in the EPA press office demanded career staff push through the hiring of Definers Public Affairs—best known for its work for Republican campaigns and recently for its role as Facebook’s attack dog on Capitol Hill, which included attempts to smear George Soros for his critiques of the social media network.Now, thanks to another batch of internal emails, we have even more evidence that the motivation for hiring Definers came from the top agency political appointees who were ticked off at the old service, because it was collecting too many news clips that portrayed then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt negatively.- Russ Choma & Rebecca Leber, Politics, Mother Jones, Jan 7, 2019The EPA hired GOP oppo firm because it was sick of "fake news"And when fossil fuel interests get bogged down in the candy store alone, this is what happens:Donald Trump has announced a replacement for the Clean Power Plan, one that would create hundreds of millions more tons of carbon pollutionThe Oil Industry’s Covert Campaign to Rewrite American Car Emissions RulesPublic Citizen report on Koch-Trump connectionsMercury Limits on Coal Plants No Longer ‘Appropriate,’ EPA SaysEPA Says Limiting Mercury Pollution From Power Plants Is No Longer 'Appropriate and Necessary'Trump's New Power Plan Comes With a Deadly Price76 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under TrumpThe Trump Administration’s War on Wildlife Should Be a ScandalNational Parks Getting Trashed During Government Shutdownhttps://www.facebook.com/yearswa...Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate changeAmerica the pollutedLets explain how climate science became a political and ideological issue.The polluters know they dont have any science to back up their arguments. So instead they use the best defence method they can. Which is to polarize and politizise the science.Polluters industry will resist regulation that makes its operations more expensive.Thats why cynical industries and free marked fundamentalists which are dependant on polluting the environment in order to make their profit - will accuse anyone and anything and everyone, including governments, of using "politics" to try and "stop" them polluting.The Oil and coal Industry does not want to give up it’s cash cow.The polluter industries are accusing the climate science of being so "political", but they themselves have deliberately worked to make it appear as political. Because they have no science to defend themselves, this is their only defense against those who try to stop their pollution. To get a focus away from the fact that basic physics alone is 100% clear our CO2 causes climate change.It's much easier for them to defend themselves when their own interests are wrapped up in ideology and politics.The science was not politicized until the implications of doing something about it were realized by those who saw a harmful side of doing so to their particular concern. That usually involves big money but also becomes a threat to ideologies which abhor government interference into free market capitalism. Effective global warming intervention necessarily requires that the governing bodies of the world unite in the effort in a comprehensive and coordinated way.(Russel Swan)When think tanks and fossil fuel front groups started to lobby for the fossil fuel self interests 30 years ago, the first thing they did was to camouflage those interests as an anti government anti regulation anti tax ideological anti socialist "struggle".They connected their audience’s underlying ideologies to climate change: Because cutting GHG emissions requires intervention regulation or increased taxation of carbon emissions—that curtail free market economics, people whose identity and worldview centers around free markets became particularly likely to reject the findings from climate science when the logic was laid bare.How Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?Non-science free market lobbying groups have a long history of setting up fake front organizations and now blogger networks to saturate the public domain with intentional misinformation.Back in the late 1980s, when it became pretty clear that there was no persistent Soviet threat, conservatives needed a new bogeyman, and they found it in the environmental movement. “Green is the new Red,” became a common phrase in the conservative magazines of that era. Rather than suggesting that America strip away protections designed to keep air and water clean, commentators and pols railed against controls on less visible threats, like pesticides, ozone holes, and global warming. Cries for environmental regulation were twisted into calls for socialism and the end of economic progress.Conservative think tanks and politicians took up the mantle of climate change denial and, for more than 25 years, they’ve kept at it. Just like tobacco industry did before them.Accepting that climate change is real and bad is fundamentally harder to do for those who have benefited from industrial capitalism, which runs on cheap fossil fuels. It’s doubly hard for conservatives, who by definition tend to resist change more than liberals.Climate change is a side effect of industrial capitalism. Industrialized nations were built with energy from cheap fossil fuels, and this released enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.This is what economists call an externality — a consequence that is not built into the cost. There are market solutions to externality problems, like carbon taxes or carbon trading schemes, which incentivise industries that don’t pollute as much. These are the sort of solutions that conservatives tend to like, but implementing any solution means acknowledging the problem in the first place."It’s not surprising that high-profile deniers are almost exclusively conservative white men, since they have most benefited from the industrial capitalist system, and therefore have the most skin in the game when it comes to protecting the powers that be — even if they aren’t those powers."[...] “conservative white males are likely to favour protection of the current industrial capitalist order which has historically served them well”. It added that “heightened emotional and psychic investment in defending in-group claims may translate into misperceived understanding about problems like climate change that threaten the continued order of the system.”Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United StatesHow Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?http://journals.plos.org/plosone...Smearing scientists and undermining "unwanted" science which comes into conflict with self interests and ideology, is all part of the denial propaganda machine:"Cynicism about the motives of public servants, including government-backed climate scientists, can be traced to a group of neoliberals and their ‘toxic’ ideas".On the origins of environmental bullshit"The concerted effort to discredit the scientific consensus over man-made global warming has been continuing for two decades in the United States, and shows no sign of weakening. It is very often described as an attempt on the part of corporate America, most notably the fossil fuel industries, to hinder governmental regulations on their activities. While emphasising this dimension of the US climate denial movement, this article also aims to show the complexity of the movement, rather than the mere defence of the narrowly-defined and short-term economic interests of the oil and gas industries, by shedding light on two additional factors which have been instrumental in blocking strong climate action. First, climate denial stems from the strong ideological commitment of small-government conservatives and libertarians to laisser-faire and their strong opposition to regulation. Second, in order to disarm their opponents, US climate deniers often rest their case on the defence of the American way of life, defined by high consumption and ever-expanding material prosperity. It is the contention of this article, therefore, that the US climate denial movement is best understood as a combination of these three trends."https://journals.openedition.org...Emails show cooperation among EPA and climate-change deniersWASHINGTON (AP) — Newly released emails show senior Environmental Protection Agency officials working closely with a conservative group that dismisses climate change to rally like-minded people for public hearings on science and global warming, counter negative news coverage and tout Administrator Scott Pruitt’s stewardship of the agency.John Konkus, EPA’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs, repeatedly reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute, according to the emails.“If you send a list, we will make sure an invitation is sent,” Konkus wrote to then-Heartland president Joseph Bast in May 2017, seeking suggestions on scientists and economists the EPA could invite to an annual EPA public hearing on the agency’s science standards.Follow-up emails show Konkus and the Heartland Institute mustering scores of potential invitees known for rejecting scientific warnings of man-made climate-change, including from groups like Plants Need CO2, The Right Climate Stuff, and Junk Science.The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency especially when it comes to climate-changing carbon emissions.Emails show cooperation among EPA, climate-change deniersLeak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate scienceRoger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Do you think that some scientists have been persuaded by elements of the industrial behemoth that global warming is fake or overstated?Anthony Watts - SourceWatchDeniers favorite fossil fuel think tank front group, the Heartland Institutes view on tobacco and tobacco smoking. Sound familiar?Heartland Institute 2018:"The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science".Heartland Institute 2018:"The anti-smoking movement is hardly a grassroots phenomenon: It is largely funded by taxpayers and a few major foundations with left-liberal agendas."Heartland Institute 2018:“The association between (second hand) tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.Heartland Institute 2018:"There are many reasons to be skeptical about what professional anti-smoking advocates say. They personally profit by exaggerating the health threats of smoking and winning passage of higher taxes and bans on smoking in public places."More:Anti-smoking activists give smokers a stark choice: Stop smoking or die! In fact, there is a third path: reduce the harm by shifting to less-hazardous products that provide similar enjoymentLitigation against the tobacco industry is an example of lawsuit abuse, and has “loaded the gun” for lawsuits against other industries.Smoking bans hurt small businesses and violate private property rights.Appeals to “protect the children” don’t justify the war being waged against adult smokers.Smoker's Lounge | Heartland Institute“They did everything that becomes known as the signature of the tobacco industry,” said David Rosner, who has helped anti-lead lawsuits and co-wrote the 2013 book “Lead Wars.” “In fact, they were really pioneered by the lead industries. … The (Lead Industries Association) can take credit for creating this giant doubt industry.”While evidence about the harmful effects of asbestos continued to grow, so did the influence of the asbestos companies. Between 1940 and 1980, the business expanded into a multibillion dollar industry that employed more than 200,000 people.The success of these companies hinged on keeping the health risks of asbestos a secret — but it was asbestos workers and consumers who paid the price. In order to keep the industry alive and prosperous, many companies took steps to ensure miners, factory workers and the public knew nothing about the true dangers of asbestos.http://theweek.com/captured/7307...Jeremy Grantham, the longtime investor famous for calling the last two major bubbles in the market, is urging capitalists and "mainstream economists" to recognize the looming threat of climate change."Capitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems. Mainstream economics largely ignore [them]," Grantham, who co-founded GMO in 1977, said Tuesday in an impassioned speech at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago. "We deforest the land, we degrade our soils, we pollute and overuse our water and we treat air like an open sewer, and we do it all off the balance sheet."This negligence is due in large part to how short-sighted corporations can be, Grantham said. "Anything that happens to a corporation over 25 years out doesn't exist for them, therefore, as I like to say, grandchildren have no value" to them, he said.- Fred Imbert, CNBC, June 13, 2018https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/...______________________________________________________SUMMARY:The polluters industry - a timeline:1900-2000: LEADLead is good for us and not dangerous to children and if you dont bend over and enjoy it youre attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize LEAD is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of businessOIL COMPANY DUPONT AND GENERAL MOTORS KNEW LEAD GAS WAS A KNOWN POISON WHEN THEY PUT IT IN GASOLINE AS AN ANTI-KNOCK AGENT.(Ethanol couldn’t be patented and offered no viable profit for GM, so they were on the lookout for new additives to use. Marketing tetraethyl lead or TEL under the name “Ethyl” (because lead was already known to be poisonous), GM expected to rake in massive amounts of money.)For decades auto and oil companies denied that lead posed any health risks.1930s-1990s ASBESTOSAsbestos is good for us and if you dont bend over and enjoy it youre attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize asbestos is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of business."As is often the case with environmental scares, the asbestos “cure” was pushed well ahead of a complete diagnosis. Research has confirmed that asbestos workers who do not use protective breathing apparatus suffer increased health risks. For the remaining 99+ percent of the U.S. population, however, asbestos health risks are virtually nil."https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/testimony-on-asbestos-litigation-1Massive Asbestos Cover-Up by World's Industrial Giants1940s-1960s: DDTDDT is good for us and if you dont bend over and enjoy it youre attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize DDT is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of business.Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: From DDT to Roundup1950s-1980s: NICOTINENicotine is good for us and is not addictive nor related to lung cancer and if you dont bend over and enjoy it you're attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of businessTobacco industry intentionally manipulates cigarettes to make them more addictive."A federal court has ordered Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA to make this statement about the health effects of smoking."Then the bad news begins to flow."Smoking causes heart disease, emphysema, acute myeloid leukemia and cancer of the mouth, esophagus, larynx, lung, stomach, kidney, bladder and pancreas."Heartland Institute 2018:"The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science".1990s-2018: C02C02 is good for us and not related to pollution and climate change and if you dont bend over and enjoy it you're attacking our industry and our desire to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and your campaign to demonize fossil fuels is based on junk science and you are probably a leftist government communist out to tax and regulate us out of business.The US supreme court ruled that carbon dioxide IS a pollutant is 2007.Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years AgoShell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents ShowTHE END RESULTIS AMERICA NOW HAVE HALF A POPULATION WHO ARE IN DISTRUST OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTSJournalist Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free :"The rise of idiot America today represents - for profit mainly, but also and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power - the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is an expert."Richard Hofstadter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his book, Anti-Intellectualism In American Life, describes“how the vast underlying foundations of anti-elite, anti-reason and anti-science have been infused into America's political and social fabric.”Tom Nichols’ bok, “The Death of Expertise:“The culture and our educational system have created a generation that has little experience being told they are objectively wrong. Everyone feels they are entitled to be right. Combine this with the illusion of knowledge provided by Google, and everyone thinks they are their own expert in anything.”The War On Science from this administration is shameful and devastating to the United States reputation as a pioneer science nation as well as for the US's further ability to develop new technology mankind needs to progress .Antiscience attitudes and policies actively hurt science's ability to do great things.The "Best and the Brightest" no longer come to US universities to study or do research, because there is simply too little funding of the sciences,Its become tribal. Often its enough for the polluters to label environmental laws for “tax scams”, and their tribe will have another reason to hate the government.Everything about the claim, “global warming (climate change) is a scam”, can be directly linked to fossil fuel front groups, think tanks and their echo chamber denier blogs.Every singe time you follow the trail back, this is where you gonna end up. EVERY SINGLE TIME.To some nonsense about how C02, their monetary crane and Holy Grail, is “good for us”. Everything the professional climate deniers have ever written about this matter, has this one purpose; to protect C02. To portrait C02 as “ a gift from God”.They duped us with leadThey duped us with asbestosThey duped us with DDTThey duped us with nicotineAre we gonna let the mighty polluters run us all over..AGAIN?Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Why is opposition to climate science more common in the United States than other countries?Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to How do the Koch brothers feel about global warming and pollution?