Hamblin, Jacob D. ed., Roundtable Review of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. H-Environment Roundtable Reviews 1, no. 2 (July 2011), www.h‐net.org/~environ/roundtables/env‐roundtable‐1‐2.pdf.
Why do we continue to talk about the debate over global warming as if it were a scientific controversy? It is easy to explain why politicians, economists, and global oil corporations might want to do away with the science of climate change. But what is the basis of the scientific counterpoint to the “consensus” view outlined by Oreskes? This is the subject of Merchants of Doubt, a team effort by Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, the historian of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
(Text adapted from Jacob D. Hamblin’s introduction to the Roundtable Review.)
H-Environment’s Roundtable Book Reviews provide multiple perspectives on books and allow the authors the opportunity to respond. This unique dialogue can be a valuable insight into recent scholarship.
Copyright © 2011 H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, H-Environment, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online.