Ainda sobre o debate sobre o aquecimento global

Não poderia vir mais a-propósito - à luz do que se diz nas duas últimas notas - este artigo de George Monbiot, no Guardian, Climate denial 'astroturfers' should stop hiding behind pseudonyms Environment guardian.co.uk. Um excerto (parte dele, inseri-o num comentário ao apontamento do Blasfémias referido na minha antepenúltima nota):

"On the Guardian's environment site in particular, and to a lesser extent on threads across the Guardian's output, considered discussion is being drowned in a tide of vituperative gibberish. A few hundred commenters appear to be engaged in a competition to reach the outer limits of stupidity. They post so often and shout so loudly that intelligent debate appears to have fled from many threads, as other posters have simply given up in disgust. I've now reached the point at which I can't be bothered to read beyond the first page or so of comments. It is simply too depressing.

The pattern, where environmental issues are concerned, is always the same. You can raise any issue you like, introduce a dossier of new information, deploy a novel argument, drop a shocking revelation. The comments which follow appear almost to have been pre-written. Whether or not you mentioned it, large numbers will concentrate on climate change – or rather on denying its existence. Another tranche will concentrate on attacking the parentage and lifestyle of the author. Very few address the substance of the article.

I believe that much of this is native idiocy: the infantile blathering of people who have no idea how to engage in debate. Many of the posters appear to have fallen for the nonsense produced by professional climate change deniers, and to have adopted their rhetoric and methods. But it is implausible to suppose that this is all that's going on. As I documented extensively in my book Heat, and as sites like DeSmogBlog and Exxonsecrets show, there is a large and well-funded campaign by oil, coal and electricity companies to insert their views into the media.

They have two main modes of operating: paying people to masquerade as independent experts, and paying people to masquerade as members of the public. These fake "concerned citizens" claim to be worried about a conspiracy by governments and scientists to raise taxes and restrict their freedoms in the name of tackling a non-existent issue. This tactic is called astroturfing. It's a well-trodden technique, also deployed extensively by the tobacco industry. You pay a public relations company to create a fake grassroots (astroturf) movement, composed of people who are paid for their services. They lobby against government attempts to regulate the industry and seek to drown out and discredit people who draw attention to the issues the corporations want the public to ignore.

Considering the lengths to which these companies have gone to insert themselves into publications where there is a risk of exposure, it is inconceivable that they are not making use of the Guardian's threads, where they are protected by the posters' anonymity. Some of the commenters on these threads have been paid to disseminate their nonsense, but we have no means, under the current system, of knowing which ones they are.

Two months ago I read some comments by a person using the moniker scunnered52, whose tone and content reminded me of material published by professional deniers. I called him out, asking "Is my suspicion correct? How about providing a verifiable identity to lay this concern to rest?" I repeated my challenge in another thread. He used distraction and avoidance in his replies, but would not answer or even address my question, which gave me the strong impression that my suspicion was correct. "

Só idiotas, e idiotas ignorantes, não contemporâneos do seu tempo, é que pensam que o assunto não é sério, mesmo do ponto de vista político, e, principalmente, mesmo do ponto de vista da esquerda - o Bloco de Esquerda, tão esquerda esquerda, tão esquerda intelectual, tão esquerda moderna, tem neste aspecto um bom indicador do que é efectivamente; a ser algo de sério, à esquerda, deveria ser também o partido do combate ao aquecimento global, o partido da eficiência energética, etc. etc. (o PS de Sócrates - repito, o de Sócrates - está muito mais à frente deles, nessas matérias).