Newsweek Mimics Tobacco Industry Tactics, Said SPPI

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwire - August 6, 2007) - Ewire -- "Newsweek's latest cover story predicting 'global warming' catastrophe is no more scientific and no less incredible than its story 30 years ago predicting 'global cooling,'" said Robert Ferguson, President of the influential Science and Public Policy Institute (www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org).

Ferguson continued, "Newsweek appears a naively willing party to a sophisticated but unsuccessful campaign strikingly similar to the tobacco industry's callous 40-year campaign challenging the established causative link between smoking and fatal diseases such as lung cancer. This strategy provides a positive "pro-science" public stance that masks the ignominious activity of institutional and professional persecution of numerous scientists whose honest work casts legitimate doubt upon the more alarmist projections of the supposed man-made global warming 'consensus.'"

Like the tobacco industry, this campaign (to which Newsweek has made itself party) has:

--  "Manufactured uncertainty and fear by stridently proclaiming certainty
    and consensus based on dubious and uncertain modeled results predicting
    disastrous consequences of a warmer climate. For a thorough understanding
    of the limits on the extent of the 'consensus' on climate change, please
    see:
    http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton_papers/consensus_what_consensus_among_climate_scientists_the_debate_is_not_over.html.
    
    
--  "Adopted a strategy of information laundering by acting as a seemingly
    independent and respectable front publicly to further the message of
    climate Apocalypse and thereby to profit by confusing and terrifying the
    public.
    
--  "Ignored or misrepresented peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-
    picked facts in an attempt to persuade the media and the public that
    current climate change is exceptional. In the entire Newsweek piece, there
    is not a single reference to any peer-reviewed scientific paper.
    
--  "Attempted to shift the focus away from research based on observation
    with misleading charges that journalistic balance on climate change is the
    enemy of free of speech, and that those who disagree with the hysterical
    view of 'global warming' should be silenced.
    
--  "Stifled legitimate debate on whether 'global warming' will be
    beneficial and on whether any measures to mitigate it will have any
    significant impact on the climate.
    
--  "Placed bad politics and deliberate misinformation before good science
    and rational understanding."
    

Lord Monckton, an international authority on climate-change policy, said: "One has only to cut away the alarmist rhetoric and the media distractions, one has only to focus on the central question in the climate-change debate, and at once the fact that there is no scientific consensus about climate change is laid bare. The central question is this: By how much will global temperature increase in response to any foreseeable increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide? On that question, the 'climate sensitivity question,' there is no consensus whatsoever among the scientific community. There is no scientific basis for the current panic."

Contact Information: Contact: Robert Ferguson 202 288 5699