Fossil fuel funding manufactured doubt that made climate change a partisan media issue

Evidence

In 1988, President George H. W. Bush promised to fight the “greenhouse effect” with the “White House effect” long before climate change became a political issue. Over the next few years, however, global warming became deeply partisan. The oil companies had started doing their own “research,” and they wanted the media to cover it. Simultaneously, they were contributing money to and lobbying government officials. We now understand that all of this was merely “manufactured doubt” meant to obscure the fact that the world’s climate scientists had all but reached consensus on the fact that climate change was occurring and that human activity was responsible for it. But too much money was at stake to let this issue be left to the scientists. And as long as there were “skeptics” out there, the media felt duty-bound to report climate change as a disputed topic. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 160

Categorization

• XREF: The coined term ‘manufactured doubt’ connects to work on mercenary doubt and how funding manufactured skepticism tracks to the reader’s weapons-of-ignorance material. — connects to: Major news outlets abandoned false-equivalence coverage of climate change — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 317; Climate-change denial organizations were directly funded by tobacco and fossil-fuel interests — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 71; Manufactured doubt, not genuine debate, explains public confusion over climate science consensus — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 75 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Partisan identity now drives belief in human-caused global warming #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2762
• Corporations manufacture doubt as a deliberate product to block climate action #expands (0.82) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 108
• Think tanks deliberately manufacture public doubt about settled science to shape policy #corroborates (0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 626
• Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927
• The fossil fuel industry replicated the tobacco denial playbook #corroborates (0.80) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 246
• Climate denial functions as a symbol-laden conservative culture war, not reasoned science debate #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2538
• Fossil fuel companies knowingly obscure climate science rather than believe their denial #corroborates (0.78) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 247
• Corporate climate misinformation differs categorically from conspiracist fabulation #qualifies (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 245
• Most climate-change denial publications trace back to conservative think tanks #expands (0.72) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 248
• News outlets demanded false balance on climate because backers and advertisers bought it #contradicts (0.70) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 162
• Conspiracist climate denial rejects expertise itself, unlike corporate misinformation #qualifies (0.70) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 249