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Comment by rybosome | Hacker News Reader

Hear, hear. The fossil-fuel industry fought long and hard to sow doubt that ambient lead levels in the atmosphere were increasing due to the burning of leaded gasoline. Losing on that point, they then attempted to prove that low levels of lead are not harmful to humans; this has since been shown to be wildly inaccurate.

It blows my fucking mind that people accuse scientists of being untrustworthy due to having a financial interest in proving global warming to be true; this is in spite of the fact that the fossil-fuel industry has already been caught putting out junk science that justified poisoning humans to protect their profit.

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> The fossil-fuel industry fought long and hard to sow doubt that ambient lead levels in the atmosphere were increasing due to the burning of leaded gasoline. Losing on that point, they then attempted to prove that low levels of lead are not harmful to humans; this has since been shown to be wildly inaccurate.

The oil industry didn't give a shit about whether or not TEL was put in gasoline. It was the auto companies who put it in there in the first place, and the auto and chemical companies who fought its removal.

> It blows my fucking mind that people accuse scientists of being untrustworthy due to having a financial interest in proving global warming to be true; this is in spite of the fact that the fossil-fuel industry has already been caught putting out junk science that justified poisoning humans to protect their profit.

It blows my mind that people judge scientific work based on its funding source over its content and merits. Not saying its irrelevant, but good science is good science and bad science is bad science, regardless of who paid for it.

>> It blows my mind that people judge scientific work based on its funding source over its content and merits. Not saying its irrelevant, but good science is good science and bad science is bad science, regardless of who paid for it.

I don't think anyone would argue with that, but I think determining what is "good" science and what is "bad" science is out of the reach of most people, let alone people who understand the scientific process. There's also often more than one conclusion to be drawn from any data, as well as the difficulty in gathering sufficient data or even knowing whether the data gathered is enough to provide any kind of accuracy. I think the "who paid for it" question has been used more and more try and provide more context (sometimes useful, sometimes harmful) into scientific or psuedoscientific conclusions... of course it gets misused as a non-sequitur just like everything else in rhetoric.

Again, not saying it's right, just trying to provide the context for _why_ people might use financial motives to judge scientific merit.

> It blows my mind that people judge scientific work based on its funding source over its content and merits.

Given limited time and flawed or incomplete domain expertise, I think "follow the money" is an excellent heuristic shortcut.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

They lied about lead: why in hell should we ever believe them again?

No, what blows my fucking mind is that the environmental conversation switched from concrete short term problems (pollution) to abstract long term problems (global warming). One is really easy for laymen to reason, the other is nearly impossible. It makes as much sense as the Bible to atheists. It's not about evidence. Modern environmentalists put down the gun and brought a hot dog to the gun fight.

You have hard evidence in the form of visible undeniable toxic pollution occurring in China due to rampant and unchecked fossil fuel usage. This is not data extrapolated decades out—it's happening right now! Instead of using this as evidence to justify current "stringent" environmental regulations in the West and why we should continue them, you have people still talking about melting glaciers and rising ocean temperatures.

Shifting the conversation back to pollution and renewable energy achieves the same result: stopping catastrophic climate change. And it'll get us there faster than the current Bible-thumping message.

Well-said. There's financial interests on both sides but oil industry has shown itself to go to any lengths to keep its conflict high.

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