Merchants of Doubt - 9781596916104

"Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have demonstrated what many of us have long suspected: that the 'debate' over the climate crisisùand many other environmental issues-was manufactured by the same people who brought you 'safe' cigarettes. Anyone con iar-neil about the state of democracy in America should read this book."ùformer vice president Al Gore, author of An Inconvenient Truth

"Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have written an important and timely book. Merchants of Doubt should finally put to rest the question of whether the science of climate change is settled. It is, and we ignore this message at our peril."-Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change

"As the science of global warming has grown more certain over the last two decades, the attack on that science has grown more shrill: this volume helps explain that paradox, and not only for climate change. A fascinating account of a very thorny problem."-Bill McKibben, author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

The troubling story of how a cadre of influential science policymakers has clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda.

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on public health and environmental science. Our scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subgroup of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers.

Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisors, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over themselves. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly : Some of the same figures who have claimed the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These -experts- supplied it.

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of American science, showing how the ideology of market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most critical issues of our era.