"The process of deception by the biggest carbon polluters started in the years prior to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio - it grew to become the largest effort of its kind the world has ever seen. Their aim was to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.
"These professional climate skeptics have had an outsize impact on the politics of the issue. The reason for their devastating impact was clearly understood by the denier network from the outset of the campaign. One of their advisers (to the Bush government) described the strategic rationale in these words: 'Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.'"Brain scientists have identified the specific parts of the brain within the frontal cortex that keep us on course once we decide to pursue a value-based goal over a long period of time. Significantly, they also note that that particular part of the human brain - the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (or DLPFG) - just above the temples may weaken in the presence of high stress and that the mental effort necessary to maintain its crucial function may be exhausted by excessive distraction and anxiety.
"The DLPFC keeps us on track by coordinating our ability to recall things from memory, plan for the future, and juggle all of the things competing for our attention. Take the DLPFC offline - with constant excessive levels of stress, for example - and we become locked in the here and now, with little care for the past and an ambivalence for the future. Unsurprisingly, there is overwhelming evidence that modern societies routinely generate much higher levels of stress than was common in previous centuries."
Al Gore, Our Choice
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