WHY THE U.S. SNEEZES AT CLIMATE CHANGE

The American 'allergy' to global warming: Why?
Charles J. Hanley, September 25, 2011 (AP via Knox News)

"…[T]he headline on the 1975 report [in the journal Science] coined the term [“global warming]…In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in…And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened…

"…[E]conomist-ethicist Clive Hamilton…and others who track what they call "denialism" find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone…[though the] basic physics of anthropogenic — manmade — global warming has been clear for more than a century, since researchers proved that carbon dioxide traps heat. Others later showed CO2 was building up in the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Weather stations then filled in the rest: Temperatures were rising…"


From ClimateReality via YouTube

"…[In 1989] U.S. oil and coal interests formed the Global Climate Coalition to combat efforts to shift economies away from their products. Britain's Royal Society and other researchers later determined that oil giant Exxon disbursed millions of dollars annually to think tanks and a handful of supposed experts to sow doubt about the facts…[A] document emerged years later showing that the industry coalition's own scientific team had quietly advised it that the basic science of global warming was indisputable…

"In the face of years of scientific findings and growing impacts, the doubters persist. They ignore long-term trends and seize on insignificant year-to-year blips in data… focus on minor mistakes in thousands of pages of peer-reviewed studies…[and] carom from one explanation to another…[But] Al Gore, for one, remains upbeat…[He recently] pointed to tipping points in recent history — the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the dismantling of U.S. racial segregation — when the potential for change built slowly in the background, until a critical mass was reached…Last May the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, arm of an institution that once persecuted Galileo for his scientific findings, pronounced on manmade global warming: It's happening…"