So, seriously, have these people never even heard of the tobacco industry?

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

"The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied," the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

"Oh, and, uh... doubt is our product," the experts added.

This is too great.



In case it gets taken down (which it surely will once Barton figures out why it's gotten a couple of hundred times more views than any of his other videos), here's a helpful transcript:

Rep. Barton: You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?
Sec. Chu: (laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology, and in that time also the plates have moved around, and so, um, it’s the combination of where the sources of the oil and gas are–
Rep. Barton: But, but wouldn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole. It wasn’t a big pipeline that we created in Texas and shipped it up there and then put it under ground so that we can now pump it out and ship it back.
Sec. Chu: No. There are–there’s continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages–
Rep. Barton: So it just drifted up there?
Sec. Chu: That’s certainly what happened. And so it’s a result of things like that.

(Note: if you're just reading the transcript, you don't really get the full benefit of the sarcasm dripping off of Barton's words when he asks, "So it just drifted up there?")

Anyone can lack a basic understanding of geology. To be so out of it that you think you've stumped the Nobel Prize-winning Energy Secretary with a question from 8th-grade science class -- a question that you yourself clearly cannot answer? Well, that takes a Republican from Texas.

(First seen at Wonkette. Helpful transcript via Twitter Room.)