Professional denying of the climate change - scary but true.

There is really an industry that denies climate change. Not only from people who think differently or have doubts about details but are paid to deny how GHG affects the climate, the size and speed of the effects, and the perils of the effect. What makes it an industry is that it is linked closely to denial of other well established scientific facts such as hazards from smoking. This is revealed in a book that will be released in only a few days, Heat - How to stop the planet burning, by George Monbiot, and it seems to be scary stuff!

The denial industry is at least in one case very well mapped and that is how Exxon pay large sums to several different institutes and organisations which have made it their business to sow doubts. It is in this group of organisations that you find the people behind the well-known advertisement "They call it pollution. We call it life". Have a  look if you have strong nerves and a resilient mind! Even Exxon seems to have backed away from this one!

George Monbiot points out that the articles and the writings upon which the deniers base their arguments have never been published in peer-reviewed magazines or conferences. Such publication is otherwise the standard procedure to tell the difference between science and non-science.

For us laymen it will therefore continue to be difficult to know what the truth is and what is not. A simple rule when it comes to energy could however be to consider the efforts for a sustainable society as an insurance. The consequences of a climate change will be so terrible so it is worth paying the insurance to avoid them. Especially as many of the measure do not cost but pays for themselves. We could start with applying the road-map that the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research has made. And rely on their view that early adaptation is much more smooth and painless than late.