Frontline: Hot Politics

PBS' Frontline last night broadcast a program on the politics behind U.S. (lack of effective) policy on greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. You can watch the full program online, and the website provides supporting information.

Note especially this assertion:

Campaigning for president, Texas Governor George W. Bush pledges to cap carbon dioxide fumes and require power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions "within a reasonable period of time."

The Bush administration quickly broke the campaign pledge, and still, seven years later is blocking serious caps to carbon dioxide emissions.

The program suggests the political motivation and processes behind the Bush administration's efforts to smear scientific results that ran counter to its policy preferences with the term "junk science", and linked the use of the term with respect to global warming with slightly earlier efforts to discredit scientific results about the dangers of smoking made by the cigarette industry.