Merchants Of Doubt

I have been waiting to see the documentary Merchants of Doubt for years. Technically. Kind of.

Let me back track. When I was an undergraduate at UNC, I was also a security guard. Paid well, and I got to do homework/watch movies during shifts. During one desk shift at a building, there was a talk from some lady. Apparently there was a gun nut in attendance who disagreed a lot with her and asked a bunch of awkward questions, noting he had a gun and then left. I of course wasn’t anywhere near it, but was told after he left to be on the look out.

The speaker was Naomi Oreskes, one of the authors of the book. The talk she gave was probably wonderful, but I wasn’t able to see it obviously. So I bought the book instead, Merchants of Doubt, telling myself I would totally read it. This was back in 2010 or 2011.

Obviously I never read the book. But last year I found out that a documentary would be made of the same name! Hooray! Now I don’t have to read the book I bought so many years ago! I can just spend a little over an hour and a half, getting all of the same information in easy to digest form! So although when I bought the book I didn’t know it would become a documentary, I somehow knew then I wished it was the whole time.

Either way, long intro aside, this documentary has one main point: The same science fucks who sided with the smoking companies saying there was no evidence of smoke being bad / cigarettes being addictive are the fucks who are also denying climate change.

This is one of those fucks right here.

Of course it isn’t as simple as that. First of all, the title comes from the strategy that tobacco companies used once there began to be evidence of bad things. They used doubt. People went on the TV, to spread confusion. They told people that scientists didn’t know, some say yes, some say no, no real proof yet, but they are working on it. This worked for a long, long time. So other companies began to use it as well. Oil, pesticides, pharmaceutical companies, you name it.

And again the fact that the scientists involved to back these claims up also tend to be on the “company side” more often than not sounds beyond sketch. Because you know, it is in fact sketch.

This documentary goes into great detail through both the history and how it affects today’s scientific and political landscape. Long story short: think tanks, ran by corporations secretly, to make it seem like things like climate change are controversial and not completely agreed upon. They even help make reports look identical to the IPCC report, with opposite conclusions, to confuse people further.

Shit’s fucked up, and now Republicans all disagree with man made climate change (despite most saying it was real back in ’08) because that is where the money is. End of story.

A very informative documentary, one that should be watched by more people to see the shady shit that happens in politics, in order to make money.