My awakening was a petition, signed by 17,800 "scientists," denying global warming. It said "CO2 emissions are beneficial, not harmful . . . the industrial age's gift to society . . . promoting plant growth and, by extension, the animals that eat the plants."

I wondered, "Could this be the same fraudulent petition repudiated by the National Academy of Science in 1998 and Scientific American in 2001?" Sure enough.

They found its "research" was unscientific, unpublished, and not peer reviewed; the mass-mailed petition was deceptively made to look like an official NAS publication; most who signed the petition were misled by its contents and would withdraw their names based on what they've learned since.

But, who'd instigate a disinformation campaign to: "raise questions about and undercut the prevailing scientific wisdom" on global warming? Was it: a) political partisans for the energy corporations, b) fundamentalist religious ideologues believing in apocalyptic prophecy or c) the fossil fuel industry and its financial beneficiaries. Turns out it was all three.

Among them: political partisans Rupert Murdoch (Fox News) and the Richard M. Scaife (Gulf Oil), both right-wing extremists; religious ideologues led by Rev. Sun Myung Moon (Washington Times), the Coors family (John Birch Society) and Arthur B. Robinson, a Christian fundamentalist who cobbled together the petition's specious "research"; and fossil fuel industry's ExxonMobil and American Petroleum Institute - fronted by Frederick Seitz, 95 (president of NAS 35 years earlier), who signed the petition's cover letter.

This was the same Frederick Seitz who, from 1975 to 1989, lent his name, reputation and credentials to shill for RJ Reynolds and big tobacco. He oversaw distribution of $45 million in tobacco payoff money, inducing various laboratories to publish phony scientific research discrediting the mounting evidence of a causal link between tobacco, lung cancer and other fatal illnesses. That deception ended when 46 state attorneys general sued big tobacco for fraud, winning billions of dollars.

So, who's hurt by a massive disinformation campaign against global warming science? First, the mainstream media, which, for balance, tend to report all sides of a "controversy" as equally valid - without checking. Thus, they reported as authentic the undocumented views of self-serving political extremists, religious ideologues and unqualified energy industry partisans.

That amplified those views as having equal weight with the documented information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the world's climatologists. Result? The media's "he said/she said" reporting between "dueling scientists" is balanced to a fault - and in the interest of truth, a lie is told.

Second, some politicians are so compromised, ideologically extreme or scientifically challenged that they hide behind Seitz's fraudulent petition or Michael Crichton's deceiving novel, State of Fear, to dismiss global warming science as "science fiction." Those politicians, corrupted by campaign donations from big oil and coal, perpetuate our addiction to carbon-based fuels - feeding the flames of global warming.

And third, citizens are misled when depending on the mainstream media for accurate information to vote intelligently.

The options? If the science is wrong, we lose nothing by acting immediately to curtail CO2 - except pollution's degradation of our health, economy and environment. But if the science is right and we don't act now, civilization dies. Is it moral to gamble with what we can't afford to lose - our children's future?

---

* GERALD WILLMORE is chairman of the Council for a Sustainable Future and president of a leadership training company in Salt Lake City.