“The most slimy essay ever from the Guardian and Columbia University“. Anthony Watts is somehow surprised to find himself connected to lobbyists that have also fought for a variety of profitable but destructive industries in the Guardian (other newspapers too!) article Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain. The ever-helpful Watts gives his readers some useful ways to harass the Guardian author.

I would have thought that losing his hearing and both parents to tobacco-related diseases would have given Anthony some insight into the consequences of the denialist machinery. When you spend so much time singing the denialist praises of Fred Singer the erstwhile tobacco industry spin artist you’ve got to nurse a pretty massive case of tunnel vision not to connect the dots.

As for Anthony’s assertion that the denialists are simply a “growing revolution of like minded people”, I think that right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation are cultivating the passions of libertarians for their own benefit through flattery and not cash. As the Tea Party movement shows, there’s a pretty big undercurrent of easily exploited right-wing anxiety out there. But the goofy “CO2 is good!” television commercials and those Washington foundation staffs only come from the cold hard stuff.