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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

Leaded gas was a big one, AGW denial is a big one.

The reason things like leaded fuel, cigarettes, DDT, CFCs (freon), and countless other conspiracies were so egregious is because 'influencers' were able to convince authoritative figures and the media to conspire in misleading the public. People, as in unaffiliated individuals, ought be free to believe whatever they want to. The problem is when authoritative figures are saying things they don't actually believe, generally because of some sort of a kickback. There have been a handful of instances there such as with 'Willie' Wei-Hock Soon, but for the most part everything has been, more or less, on the up and up - at least so far as we know for certain as of today. However, the media and authoritative figures are predominately in favor of AGW. Thus the conspiracy, if one were to exist, would be these individuals stating things they felt to be either untrue, or not as strongly supported as claimed.

People will probably deride me for saying this, but there's a legitimate criticism to be made of the ability for reasonable people to question global warming alarmism.

In my mind, I dont believe people have changed. People are still religious, our priests are just getting smarter at it by making more sensible crusades (and one that has legitimate environmental and especially world-security implications with respect to Russia standing to gain enormous competitive advantage). The politicians and Leonardo DiCaprio's flying around the world on private jets on one day flights to pick up participation trophies (yes, for global warming) see you as cattle, just as always. If they cared, the state of governance: corporatism and cronyism would be the exception.

I'd tend to agree, but I wonder if it's not really our priests getting better or smarter - but rather that this is the first time that the internet has brought issues to everybody's front door. For instance we all know about leaded fuel and can tell the stories of what happened, but I don't think anybody can imagine what it would have been like to really experience such a thing, let alone to actively interact with others on the topic. And stories are also always going to be told with hindsight bias, even when trying to avoid such things.

Whatever the outcome of things like global warming, I just hope that the internet leaves more of a living record that people can try to learn and understand what it was like to experience this while living through it. We need many more organizations like archive.org. They, in the long run, may be providing one of the most relevant services in our society today. Here [1] is an archive of this site from 12 years ago. Outside of historical record it's also just remarkably interesting browsing. Now imagine when that is from 100 years ago, or 1000.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb...

What's AGW?

Google says "Anthropogenic Global Warming", the concept that human activity has an impact on global warming

Scientists lied about sugar, maybe they're also lying about anthropogenic global warming. They were also wrong about lead, mercury, asbestos, DDT.

Not sure what you're saying, there was never a doubt about lead or mercury or asbestos harmfulness, the scientists are not the one putting it to market or regulating it.

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