The O.J. tactic
Climate change skeptics sound like Simpson's lawyers: If the winter glove won't fit, you must acquit.
By Bill McKibben
LA Times
5:00 PM PST, February 24, 2010
In recent years, every major scientific body in the world has produced reports confirming the peril of climate change. All 15 of the warmest years on record have come in the last two decades. And Earth's major natural systems are all showing undeniable signs of rapid flux: melting Arctic and glacial ice, rapidly acidifying seawater and so on.
Yet because of a recent onslaught of attacks on the science of climate change, fewer Americans now believe humans are warming the planet than did just a few years ago.
The doubters of climate science have launched an enormously clever -- and effective -- campaign, and it's worth trying to understand how they've done it. The best analogy is perhaps the O.J. Simpson trial.
The "dream team" of lawyers assembled for Simpson's defense had a problem: The evidence against their client was formidable. Nicole Brown Simpson's blood was all over his socks, and that was just the beginning. So Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian et al decided to attack the process, arguing that it put Simpson's guilt in doubt -- and doubt, of course, was all they needed. Hence, those days of cross-examination about exactly how Dennis Fung had transported blood samples and which racial slurs LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman had used.
(More here.)
By Bill McKibben
LA Times
5:00 PM PST, February 24, 2010
In recent years, every major scientific body in the world has produced reports confirming the peril of climate change. All 15 of the warmest years on record have come in the last two decades. And Earth's major natural systems are all showing undeniable signs of rapid flux: melting Arctic and glacial ice, rapidly acidifying seawater and so on.
Yet because of a recent onslaught of attacks on the science of climate change, fewer Americans now believe humans are warming the planet than did just a few years ago.
The doubters of climate science have launched an enormously clever -- and effective -- campaign, and it's worth trying to understand how they've done it. The best analogy is perhaps the O.J. Simpson trial.
The "dream team" of lawyers assembled for Simpson's defense had a problem: The evidence against their client was formidable. Nicole Brown Simpson's blood was all over his socks, and that was just the beginning. So Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian et al decided to attack the process, arguing that it put Simpson's guilt in doubt -- and doubt, of course, was all they needed. Hence, those days of cross-examination about exactly how Dennis Fung had transported blood samples and which racial slurs LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman had used.
(More here.)
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