Seventeen years ago, on this day, May 18, 2006, American denialists tried to confuse the public, again.
Following the release of the film, An Inconvenient Truth, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a group funded in part by ExxonMobil, launches an advertisement campaign welcoming increased carbon dioxide pollution. “Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution, we call it life,” the ad says. [Competitive Enterprise Institute, 5/2006; New York Times, 9/21/2006]
May 18, 2006-May 28, 2006: Global Warming Skeptic Organization Launches Pro- Greenhouse Gas Advertising Campaign
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=CEIadverts200605#CEIadverts20060
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth was coming out, and therefore the denialists wanted to be able to get journalists to quote “an opposing view” for what is laughably called “balance.” And so they reused their “greening Earth co2 is plant food” claim because it’s simple, and seems commonsensical.
What I think we can learn from this
And this is part of the manipulation of the media that had already been identified by Boykoff and Boykoff in 2004 – “Balance as Bias”. This is a classic example of the way that cashed-up and well-connected entities can game the system. And of course, if their views aren’t quoted, people can then flak the journalist and say “classic liberal censorship,” “echo chamber,” et cetera. So it’s a win win.
What happened next
The CEI kept doing this bullshit, without shame, without remorse, because that’s who these people are.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.