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Newsweek has done an article on Global Warming Deniers - and its timing and tenor is most interesting. First, the strength of the Deniers is remarkable given the massively accumulating evidence that indeed gloabal warming is taking place.

What emerges from the story is that the Global Warming Deniers are quite sophisticated.

They have used tactics similar to the Holocaust Deniers and the Smoking Lobby to attack the Science of Global Warming. First, large interests such the the petroleum companies (American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobile, and others), the North American carmakers (and even their unions) , and some utilities (notably those with large committments to coal fired plants) have contributed mightily to the quiet but concerted discrediting of Global Warming reports and initaives. Exxon Mobil has spent over $19 million alone; and is still active in campaigns to stall Gloabal Warming measures in government and industry.


What makes this Deniers campaign particularly vicious is the tight timetable for action - significant milestones will pass in 2010, 2015, and by 2020 - a teenager away in time, yet catastrophic go-nogo dates start to come up (again see here). The denier have had the Republican party and the President at their beck and call - President George Bush has refused to sign onto the Kyoto C2O Reductions while stalling other control efforts and legislation with his Republican congressional cohorts.

The political and interest groups are well financed so their briefings in Congress get equal time with Global Warming . And all they seek to do is to establish a measure of doubt or fall back to its not out of control and could change in for the better("see no terrible Hurricanes this year or last"). Finally, they are paying top dollar($10,00 or much more) to scientists who will write papers and or testify to doubts about Global Warming - tactics taken straight out of the Smoking Lobbies playbook.

Finally, Deniers raise the "Who is going to pay for all of this??" question - and accuse Global Warming supporters of being vested interests in bringing about change for their own gain. Inevitably there will be winners and losers - but the oil companies have had a 40 year opportunity to do 3 things which they have regularly pledged their support and have received billions in governement aid to achieve:
1)Energy independence for the US so that it is not dependent on foreign oil - net result the US has moved from less than 25% to kore than 60% dependence on foreign oil dpending on who does the couting;
2)Reduction of pollutants due to the use of oil product - and now that CO2, the number one byproduct of oil usage, has been declared a major polutant and cause of Global warming, they have become major Deniers;
3)transformation from being oil companies to energy companies with commitments to non-polluting sources such as solar, H2O cell, thermal energy, photo-voltaics, modified coal, water heating, wind-power and the dozens of technologies that were first proposed and investigated back in the 1970's Energy crunch. No oil company has made the transformation - even though those are among the fastest growing energy industries. And the reason is simple - without the cost of CO2 and pollution being absorbed by the oil companies, there return on investment is some of the highest in Business. So like Exxon with its 32% return on oil investments, they have every reason to be vociferous deniers - the easiest path to riches and business success is oil.

The problem is that markets again are not working well when pollution and Raiding the Commons are involved. Passing on a a future catastrophic cost is easier when you can pay $19million to deny it as in the case of Exxon Mobil. But change is coming. After losing both Houses of Congress, President Bush is quietly setting in place a move by the Republican party to not be on the wrong side of the Global Warming debate.
Now there will be hearings, and a Summit in September of 2007 on the topic. Bush knows that he still can do nothing under the rubric we are studying and planning for the problem.

Then he has taken the issue off the agenda in the upcoming 2008 presential election, because all of the solutions will be hurting the most profligate of the World's leading energy users - the US with 25% of energy consumption but only 6% of the World's population. He know the Democrats will be loath to unilaterally propose tough measures in a presidential election year - so "doing studies" is the last great fallback of the Global Warming Deniers.

Finally, Newsweek follows this story because a giant media conglomerate, News Corp with its purchase of Dow Jones and Barrons, now enters the domain of major Web/print/newspaper domains. This added to News Corps global newspapers, media (Warner Brothers and Fox TV and news network) plus Web presence (Facebook.com and others) presents a major competitor to Newsweek. At the same time that newsweek did the Global Warming Deniers story, it also did an expose on Murcdoch's War Plan for News Corp now that it owns the prestigous Dow-Jones and Wall Street Journal. It was not stated but implied that Murdoch's News Corp could see its vested Business and Corporate interests coinciding with the Global Warming Deniers.

But still even with this sideshow, Newsweek is doing readers a favor because they are being exposed to the growing policy dynamic that is a Bautocracy - where the rich are determined to get around the one man one vote nonsense and exercise their wealth weighted voices in diverse ways in policy making. The Global Warming Deniers is just one such - and a very telling example.