you might've heard of this story a while back with scientists asking obama to throw people in jail for intentionally deceiving the public about climate change
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/20-scientists-ask-obama-to-put-climate-change-deniers-in-jail/Quote
Scientists from several universities and research centers even asked Obama to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to prosecute groups that “have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”
RICO was a law designed to take down organized crime syndicates, but scientists now want it to be used against scientists, activists and organizations that voice their disagreement with the so-called “consensus” on global warming. The scientists repeated claims made by environmentalists that groups, especially those with ties to fossil fuels, have engaged in a misinformation campaign to confuse the public on global warming.
didn't think much of it until i read about the parallels between how climate change skepticism was manufactured and how the tobacco companies manufactured doubt about smoking links to cancer by trying to muddle with the science on the matter
http://www.mintpressnews.com/why-is-big-tobacco-funding-climate-change-skeptics/169312/Quote
Monbiot wrote that both the oil and tobacco lobbies recognized early on that their “best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, ‘Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.’”
As Monbiot said, this was a difficult endeavor, since the science supporting climate change was as strong in the early 1990s as the science showing that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV caused AIDS.
Even now, a May 2013 peer-reviewed study, which examined more than 11,000 climate change papers — 4,000 of which discussed whether climate change was caused by humans — found that 97 percent of scientists agree climate change is occurring and is caused by man-made pollution.
Aware that the public may be skeptical of trusting the big tobacco industry that smoking wasn’t as dangerous for one’s health as reported by the EPA and smoking had no impact on the environment, Philip Morris created a funded advocacy of “concerned citizens” who cited concerns about government “overregulation.”
According to memos obtained from Philip Morris, the group said the grassroots movement “should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one ‘unfounded fear’ among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones.”
Big tobacco, like big oil companies such as ExxonMobil, worked with well-known websites, lobby groups and think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation to “create the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread,” and that prematurely taking action to prevent global warming would negatively impact the global economy.
Their plan worked. While scientific evidence has confirmed the existence of man-made climate change since the early 90s, a poll in November 2012 found that 66 percent of Americans believe there is “a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening.”
considering that i'd be willing to throw the people at big tobacco behind this effort into jail for what they did dragging the issue out over decades while knowing the truth about smoking links to cancer, to be consistent i'd also have to throw the people who deliberately mislead the public on climate change into jail for what basically amounts to treason
if you are a climate change denier on this website yourself, odds are you're simply a victim of the propaganda created by these people and any sources you cite will no doubt be sources that received funding from oil/tobacco somewhere along the line
knowing what we know about big tobacco and smoking-cancer denial, would you have supported throwing them in jail for their deliberate lies and if so would you be willing to do the same with those deliberately spreading misinformation about climate change?
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