CBC's news magazine show the fifth estate slammed Dr. S. Fred Singer and company out of the park last evening with the " Denial Machine" , a 40-minute documentary that gave context to the current climate change debate.

Australian Labour Party MP, Tony Burke, pens a great piece today in the  Daily Telegraph castigating "… a handful of sceptics willing to rail against the weight of scientfic opinion," on issues ranging from climate change to tobacco to asbestos.

As MP Burke rightly states: "We should remember, when those with something to lose ignored the information about the dangers of smoking and asbestos, some very real victims emerged."

Well said, and as regular DeSmog readers know full well, many of the same people who told us not to worry about tobacco smoke and asbestos are now telling us not to worry about climate change.

Here are a few examples:

Dr. S. Fred Singer
On Asbestos
"The US has spent billions of dollars removing asbestos from schools, and for no good health reason." (link)

On Climate Change
"So, the global climate doesn't seem to be warming, causing considerable embararassment to scientists." (link)

National Centre for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) president Amy Ridenour is in high dudgeon, accusing ThinkProgress of libel for posting the Bonner Cohen clip that the deSmogBlog noticed yesterday. Ridenour says it is "false and defamatory" for ThinkProgress to have suggested that the NCPPR or its associates are under the paid influence of the fossil fuel industry, from which Ridenour reports "total donations to us: less than one percent of our revenues, and for most of our history, zero percent."

Posted first by thinkprogress.org, check this spin-job by the literally unbelievable Bonner Cohen. Like many other former tobacco industry apologists, Cohen has reshaped himself as an expert on the science behind climate change.

Here's the whole interview, and below is a good example of Bonner's spin, and a comparison to his old arguments on second-hand tobacco smoke: 

Caller: "I do believe in global warming… how do you foresee the future if we keep going with the pedal to metal so to speak?"

Bonner: "Your grandchildren would be best served, when considering climate change that we not allow ourselves to be driven by idle speculation, not by computer models. Simply look at the scientific data and see if in fact we are experiencing anything out of the ordinary."

"…. what i think is vitally important is that for everyone, that we make the decisions that we make with respect to our environmental and energy policies based on the best available scientific data that we have. We cannot afford to do that based on speculation alone."