Echoes of Denial: Climate Science and Tobacco Tactics

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This chapter examines the troubling parallels between historical tobacco industry tactics and contemporary climate change denial. It highlights the involvement of influential scientists in undermining scientific consensus for personal and financial gain, drawing attention to the erosion of public trust in scientific expertise. The discussion also considers the intersection of political ideology and climate skepticism, revealing how narratives are manipulated to shape public perception and policy responses.

Shermer and Lipsky discuss: the scientists who first sounded the alarm about climate change • science consensus that global warming is real and human caused • the politicization of climate change • George H.W. Bush and Obama • a collective action problem • climate skeptics • Climategate • strategies of global warming skeptics • connection between cigarette smoking/tobacco industry and climate change • what is to be done now.

David Lipsky is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories, and many others. His new book is The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial.