Doubt is Our Product – the Story of Science Denial

I’m building up to the release of Robby Kenner’s film of Naomi Oreskes’ and Eric Conway’s book,  “Merchants of Doubt”.

I’ve seen the film, and I believe the timing is right for this to be a very impactful piece – one that will be much discussed, and perhaps finally raise to public awareness the depth of the disinformation scam that’s been executed around climate change.  It’s possible this could be “An Inconvenient Truth” for this decade.

The science-denial movement, cynically created in large part by the tobacco barons, developed a specific set of tactics to deliberately confuse the public about what science is, how it works, and what it does, is directly related not only to the industry around climate denial, but to the breakdown of public trust in, for instance, vaccines,  the rise of “Creation Museums”, “Christians Against Dinosaurs”,  and the fetid sewers of flim flam, conspiracy theory, and nonsense that has poisoned so much of our public discussion.

Also, turns out that I’ve interviewed many of the individuals that the film follows – so I’m building the next “This is Not Cool” video around the movie and its topic.

I first met Director Robby Kenner (who also produced the highly regarded “Food Inc”) at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting several years ago, where he was pulling together the first threads of the film.  He discussed that in our recent chat, so I can shed some light on his process.

This short piece from Climate Reality, above, is a good thumbnail of the infamous-but-not-well-enough-known story of the tobacco industry’s role in sowing doubt on climate science.

Below, trailer for “Food Inc”, if you haven’t seen it.