Merchants of Doubt

source: Merchants of Doubt

I made the mistake of reading the user reviews before watching and was expecting a mediocre film. Thankfully it was much better than that. I found it to be thoroughly interesting and entertaining while doing a great job of detailing the depth of scumbaggery and deception behind the climate change denialist movement. The imagery, interview editing, flow of the narrative, choice of people to interview, camera work were all outstanding. I highly recommend that anyone who is not already committed to denialism watch it. Some might find some parts shocking but overwhelmingly the evidence points to the views expressed in this film being correct.

This documentary is as false and phony as it is possible to create such a vehicle. They start of with the notion that the smoking of tobacco causes lung cancer. There is however not a single scientific article published which shows a correlation between the smoking of tobacco and subsequently retrieving lung cancer. Then they go on to argue that the evidence for the thesis that smoking causes lung cancer is found inside internal documents from the seven big corporations of Tobacco. Public relations firm Hill and Knowlton reportedly said to the heads of all the big tobacco companies: "You can't deny the evidence. You can't say smoking doesn't cause cancer. But what you can do is cast doubt." This sentence, as is found inside a report from the big Tobacco corporations, is definite proof according the makers of this documentary that "smoking causes cancer". It is however still not a valid scientific proof. The ultimate doubt was of course the public testimony "I believe nicotine is not addictive." "The tobacco issue broke into the public consciousness in 1953", the same year as the National Security Agency (NSA) was founded. Rumors have it that the NSA was in fact founded by the Russian KGB as their North American head office. It was also the year that all wars ever since fought by the US Army were lost or tied up in sometimes the most strange ways. 1953 was also the year where the KGB started to kill off their CIA opponents by handing out poisoned cigarettes. The makers then arrive at yet another precarious carbon related issue, that of Global Warming. Again the narrative of Merchants of Doubt states that Global Warming is for real. In 1988 a physicist Dr. James Hansen working as a scientist at NASA came to the conclusion that the planet Venus was so hot at 600 degrees because of the greenhouse effect. CO2 amplifies and stores heat. Venus has 96.5% carbon dioxide and hence the conclusion has since been, if we want to fight Global Warming we need to put a halt to increasing CO2 levels. What the makers of the documentary seem to leave out is that CO2 levels on our planet Earth are very very low in comparison, and hence can never explain a thing like Global Warming. As a matter of fact according Ian Plimer, a professor in Geology, current levels of CO2 are less than 0.4%, and if through sequestering of CO2, according the Paris Climate Change Treaty, the level is halved to 0.2% we would have no terrestrial plants at all, because then the Osmotic pressure of CO2 would become to low and the process of Photosynthesis and hence the production of oxygen and growth of plants would seize to function. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEPW_P7GVB8

This is a most engaging and informative movie about some most important topics. The movie shows, with many illustrations, the way certain financial and political interests have used the tactic of spreading doubt to delay action being taken to remedy serious social and environmental problems. The examples chosen in the movie include smoking, flame retardants (sofas cause fires!) and global warming. The presentation is sharp and funny. Since global warming is the most serious problem facing the world at the moment, this movie couldn't be more important. The movie is based on the book "Merchants of Doubt" which works through a detailed history of these topics, also including acid rain and the ozone layer destruction. The story is also very depressing because the latest problem, global warming, is unlikely to be remedied before its too late to repair or avoid the consequences. That the "merchants" have been largely successful, in the USA at least, is illustrated by some of the user comments. Or maybe those negative comments were inserted by professional doubters?

Merchants of Doubt Of course, there are scientists on both sides that exaggerate, but everyone knows that climate change is real, and that humans are the main cause. Ice core matches up perfectly with the start of the Industrial Revolution-(hint: that's the big one), as well as other volcanic eruptions that date further back in history; which also caused the climate to change. So that's not even a question anymore. Go back to school if you don't believe me. It's never too late. Take some environmental science courses. That way, you can just argue all your bs to the teacher. And when s/he kicks you out of the class for holding everyone back, you'll still be a hero somewhere in Texas. Weather is analyzed on a day to day basis. Climate is the study of those patterns over a long period of time. Climate change is probably a better term to use than global warming, only because people can grasp the meaning better. The United States had the hottest summer on record last year. It also had the coldest February, this year, than it has had in the last 80 to 100 years, in most states. Climate change does not mean it's just going to be hot all the time. It means the climate will change more often. We will see severe patterns of weather more frequently. I like how this documentary ties in the PR aspect. The only reason climate change became a political issue is because of the effects it has on business. Merchants of Doubt

First let me start off by saying that burning of fossil fuels for energy is stupid. The energy this planet gets from the sun (which causes the wind) is more than we'll ever need. All we need to do is learn to harness and store it economically and efficiently. Every human caused global warming / climate change "scientist" says essentially the same thing, "the last 20 years have been the warmest on record". But the record that they refer to is only the last 150 years. They ignore EVERYTHING we know about the ENTIRE climate history of the planet, as you will find by googling "geologic climate history". Your research will show you that the earth has been unusually cool for the last 35 million years. This is like saying that the last week of March has been the warmest all month, and ignoring all of the other 11 months, the cycle of the seasons etc. Merchants of Doubt starts off with the deception of the tobacco industry, which is irrefutable, throws in a little about the fire retardant industry for good measure, then tries to show a correlation to global warming. REAL science never ignores ANY facts, yet global warming scientists ignore the majority of facts. The fact that the most abundant life in Earth's history was during the Jurassic period, when the average global temperature was 14C higher than it is now, compared to 1C lower pre-industrial level, and CO2 levels were over 4,000ppm, compared to today's 450ppm and the 300ppm pre- industrial levels; that the polar ice caps have melted and reformed many times, and extended as far south as Missouri just 500,000 years ago. That the Antarctic Ice Sheet is 2 miles thick and growing. Merchants of Doubt doesn't get into the science. Instead it tries to get you to discount REAL science, by making you believe that anyone who shares real scientific information is merely doing what the tobacco industry did.

I had no problem with much of this documentary, but I cannot agree with its conclusions on global warming. Publications such as Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery's "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years" is a well researched book that has been well received by the scientific community. The earth's climate has in the past been much warmer and much colder than it is today and many of these shifts occurred back when the human race numbered less than one million people. What is truly alarming is that the most vitally important fact finding mission ever conceived got shelved by the George W Bush Dick Cheney administration in 2000. The Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite (Triana) was finally launched this February, after 15+ years in mothballs. At long last we will have precise measurements of the earth's climate budget - the amount of the sun's radiation earth receives and how much energy it radiates back into space - ergo a quantitative measurement of the greenhouse effect. This will finally determine whether we can believe the climate skeptics or the eco-terrorists. I find this sort of science far more satisfying than the study of growth rings of Moroccan Atlas cedar trees, or a stalagmite formation that grew in a Scottish cave beneath a peat bog. I find organizations like the David Suzuki Foundation and Greenpeace to be far more culpable of yellow journalism and the dissemination of misinformation than any of the so-called merchants of climate doubt.

When I saw the trailer for the move I was under the impression that the movie was going to be about so-called "experts" who get paid by certain businesses to say that their product is safe but it really is not. The movie begins like that but it ends with propaganda about Global warming that does not completely focus on the purpose of the film. Yeah, they start out with the obvious, Smoking. No matter what you think, smoking is bad for you, everyone knows that, that's a given. They lay out the info of why smoking is bad for you and how the Tobacco companies miss guide you into believing this is not true, including hiring scientist who beliefs on the subject differ than the beliefs of every other scientist, and passing those scientist off as people who are not being paid to tell you that smoking is OK. The film does this for I think two more subjects in the first thirty or so minutes. Than it goes into Global warming. Honestly, my opinion of this movie has nothing to do with my opinion with Global warming, but I must say I don't like to be preached to, especially when that preaching seems to be your own personal agenda. That's what I got from this movie, a lot of info about Global warming being our fault, beaten over my head like I just spilled grape juice on my mom's carpet. I understood the segments about smoking because these segments are well- rounded (ironically because these segments do lean towards one opinion greatly). In fairness to the filmmakers just saying "don't smoke" is actually in perspective a lot easier to comprehend. The movie reminds me of America: Imagine the World without her, in which filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza made a lot a very good, but not favorable points on African Americans, Native Americans, Capitalism, and a few other topics, but it all went down the toilet when he made the movie his own personal agenda about him vs. Obama. That's what happen with this flick. I think this documentary would have worked better if I saw at lease a glimpse of a solution to the problem which I never got. If they looked hard enough, I'm sure they could have found someone (or paid a Scientist) to come up with one, but all I get was the complaint and that's not worth watching.

The infamous book by Oreskes and Conway is put to the test here to see if it can become a reasonable theater experience. "Reasonable", is probably the best word for it. We see video evidence of the amazing claims in their book, it seems watered down, as a matter of fact, they have to take pains to balance screen impressions of true believers with skeptics, which is always a difficulty but it is made important by their very thesis, that the skeptics substitute their unqualified personalities for their lack of science. They try to prove this by presenting several segments with Professor Fred Singer, presenting him as a rocket scientist, implying indirectly that he should be a dunce at climate, perhaps. The only other person in the theater besides my group, said that the film was a sad experience, but that she was going to show it to her university students nevertheless "to teach them the truth". Dr. James Hansen, the original speaker-before-congress of Warming is shown commenting on his four arrests, which he admits was a sorry substitute for "banging on the president's desk". Perhaps President Obama saw this film, and got the message. There is an interview with Marc Morano which uses contrived editing to make it appear that emails with death threats received by scientists were sent by him. This is probably the lowest point of the movie. On the positive side, there is some notion of how large the energy business is, how many people depend on it, and how 'experimental' and far away the alternatives really are. There are two other characters that seem to be only in there to forward the author's point of view, one is a card mechanist/magician who gives the moral point of view of Oreskes, that his own intentions are "honorable", but that those "deceptions" which are not admitted are not. Another is Michael Schirmer, the administrator of the American Skeptics Society, someone who has always given me the creeps, since he doesn't come across as a real scientist, which he again does in this movie, with his pat anecdote about how he had to switch sides in order to agree with Global Warming, and also his shouting match with a doubter in his audience. The other is Bill Nye, who is an actor, but whom the narration represents as a typical scientist being talked over by the "paid professionals" of the skeptical side. You may wonder why I've given the movie less than 5 stars if I said it was above average. Well, that fact that I don't necessarily agree with most of the points or points of view that I heard is the reason, not to mention the major thesis, which is that "consensus" means that anyone who disagrees should be denied a seat at the table. If such a dogma is meant to pass as a kind of, "Communism", then it indeed passes the test.

Please note - I do not wish to express an opinion on whether the climate is warming or what may be responsible for it if it is. I only want to talk about the structure of this movie. OK, so the _point_ of this movie is to reinforce the idea that the climate is warming, and that it is man that is causing the warming through excessive usage of carbon. Secondarily, it supports the notion of a carbon tax to "battle global warming". How do they do it? First, they introduce an enemy no one can argue against - tobacco. They correctly show how professional deceivers and manipulators, "PR" companies, facilitated the continued killing of people all over the planet by weaving "doubt" into the public debate and therefore diluting the opinion against tobacco and short-circuiting or at least delaying and neutering laws that would tend to increase cigarette regulation. They interlace the magician/card-man into the narrative to sort of get you on their side by making you feel like an "insider", as if they are taking you into a private confidence. We are shown the magic and legal tricks and then we are shown the "suckers" who fall for the tricks. This makes us feel superior to the victims and reinforces the "insider" illusion. It _is_ an illusion because we are NOT insiders. We are just people watching a movie. No secrets are ever revealed. After they take us through the tobacco episode, they throw-in 3-card Monty and talk about the whole scam. For extra emphasis they even make the dealer and his shill black men just to take it over the top. After all, those guys cannot be trusted. Right? The use of racist stereotypes should be a clue for us as to the nature and character of the film makers. Once they firmly plant the idea that there are those who willingly deceive us for profit or other motives, and who are "bad men", we are set up to disbelieve anyone in a suit, or even any "so-called-expert" who tends to contradict the common opinion, after all everyone KNEW tobacco was killing people, it was the common opinion among the enlightened. And now for the point of the whole trick - Global Warming. Right off the bat they show us a science type, adjacent to the previously shown liars and con men as if in a prison line-up, who just happens to be presenting some pretty good evidence that there is more to global warming than just us driving our cars and heating our houses. BAM - guilt by association. And you never saw it coming. The thing is this: whatever you think about climate warming, that this film has deceived us by obvious manipulation should be an alarm. It goes to the character and intent of the film maker, and whether we should allow into our minds the "facts" they pretend to present. This film is a great piece of propaganda, whatever you think of the issue itself. I highly recommend it to students of manipulation. Compare to: the Fishead movie.