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In case you didn't manage to catch all 24 hours of the Climate Reality Project (I mean, what the heck else were you doing?), I wanted to flag this one video for you, as it's particularly germane to the ongoing coverage here at DeSmogBlog.

It's called "Doubt," and it's about how the fossil fuel industry took the tobacco industry's playbook (didn't just borrow a play, but really the whole playbook) to confuse the public on the science of climate change. Not by disproving the facts — because that's impossible — but just by creating enough doubt to make a busy public dismiss it.

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

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David Legates announced this week that he was asked to step down as Delaware State Climatologist, a position he held for seven years. A long-time denier of the human contribution to climate change, Legates’ tenure as State Climatologist has always been a controversial one.

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You have to wonder what happened to Tom Borelli. Here’s a guy who studied at the New York Medical College - who was smart enough and hard-working enough to get a PHD in biochemistry - and now he spends his time trying to hasten … not really the end of the world, but an end to human habitability.

Of course, poisoning humans, rather than saving them, appears to have been Borelli’s life work. He was a Philip Morris operative in the ’90s, proudly fighting for the rights of tobacco fans to blow smoke in the face of passing children - passing anybody, really. Now, as sometimes-DeSmogBlog contributor Kate Sheppard documents here, Borelli is gathering up oil money to finance an attack on any corporation that promotes responsible action on climate change.

Tom, we really hope you have a nice house. Because, according to Dante at least, in your next life, you will get a rather less fabulous choice of neighborhoods: either the Eighth and Ninth circle of hell (Fraud or Treachery).

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Regardless of the clear evidence that he had posted inaccurate information on his website (see next post), Junk Science purveyor Steven Milloy, has jumped straight over the "apology and correction" step, moving directly from inaccuracy to insult.

Indeed, rather than admitting that he had misinterpreted or misrepresented material printed by the American Physical Society, the self-described "Junkman" accused APS President Arthur Bienenstock of cowardice in the face of political controversy, and suggested that the APS is on the verge of a Nazi purge of those who disagree with the majority view ("Nacht der langen Messer," in M'Lie's words).

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Using methodology that Junkman Steve Milloy has refined over more than a decade, the pro-pollution website Junk Science today announced that the American Physical Society (APS) "has declared that there is no scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming."

But a quick click on the APS website produces this:

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

Isn't there a technical, legal and socially bruising word to describe when someone says something that is directly at variance with an observed, easily verifiable truth?

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Many of the recent attempts to discredit the science of human-induced climate change have come in the form of challenging Vice-President Al Gore to a public debate. This, of course, is a big red herring when you consider that it is not "Al Gore's science," but instead the conclusion drawn through years of research by thousands of experts.

However, by tagging the scientific evidence that human activity in the form of burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) is causing global warming as "Al Gore's science," right-wing think tanks and fossil fuel friendly front groups have effectively politicized an issue of science (at least in the United States).

The most recent is being mounted former tobacco company lobbyist Steve "the Junkman" Milloy and the fossil-fuel industry backed Business and Media Institute (BMI).