I recommend an eye-opening article from Sharon Begley in Newsweek Science & Technology which attempts to show just how much effort Big Oil and its friends and cohorts have put into supporting the 'climate change isn't man made' club.
"the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion."
"There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided"
The article describes a good deal of the politics and chicanery that has gone on at top level in the US; including how several attempts to pass legislation on CO2 emissions have been strangled etc. All in all, well worth a few minutes perusal.
"It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is."
Quite!
Addendum: 7/8/2007
According to this article from Canada.Com, the media isn't helping too much either. It would seem that the US and Canadian media have quite a strong tendency to tone down any climate change article in comparison with their brethren in Europe.
I just loved this example - "the New York times ran an article noting that 'global warming is an unequivocal fact likely to make summers hotter and winters warmer for the next few centuries, with potentially dire consequences for the ecosystem' -- then spent the next 17 paragraphs discussing the likely effect on groundhogs."
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