Just like how the tobacco denial movement was a conspiracy by tobacco companies (this was proved in court) ... there are some proposing that the global warming denial movement is a similar oil company conspiracy.
On Democracy Now this morning (http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2008/7/3) they covered this idea pretty deeply. You can easily listen/watch the show online.
Groundbreaking Lawsuit Accuses Big Oil of Conspiracy to Deceive Public About Climate Change
Attorney Stephen Susman helped file a groundbreaking lawsuit earlier this year on behalf of 400 Inupiat villagers in the Alaskan town of Kivalina who are being forced to relocate because of flooding caused by global warming. The suit accuses twenty oil, gas and electric companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Peabody, of being responsible for emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gases causing the Arctic ice to melt.
And
Leading scientist John Holdren says ‘global warming’ is not the correct term to use, he prefers ‘global disruption.’ “Global warming] is misleading, it implies something that is mainly about temperature, that’s gradual, and that’s uniform across the planet,” says Holdren. “In fact, temperature is only one of the things that’s changing it’s sort of an index of the state of the climate. The whole climate is changing: the winds, the ocean currents, the storm patterns, snowpack, snowmelt, flooding, droughts—temperature is just a bit of it.”
