The fossil fuel and chemical industries spend millions of dollars every year to convince the public that global warming isn’t happening.  For example:

• An industry group paid and global warming skeptic Patrick Michaels, more than $165,000 to publish his own climate journal to refute mainstream global warming science.^[2]
• Exxon Mobil alone spends more than $1,000,000 per year on political action committees that do little more than hire fringe climatologists to testify before Congress on global warming.^[3]
• At least ten of the most vocal global warming skeptics, receive money from think tanks and political action committees that are funded by Exxon Mobil.^[4]
• In internal coal industry memo^[5] leaked in July 2006 shows that the Coal industry pays a small group of fringe scientists hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to sell their message and confuse the public.
• A memo^[6] leaked in 1998 shows that industry groups including the American Petroleum Institute have been plotting for almost a decade to dupe the public into believing that global warming science is bogus.^[7]

Other industry groups actually try to muzzle people who call for action on global climate change.  For example, in 1999 an environmental group took out an ad in the New York Times highlighting the causes, potential impacts and possible solutions to global warming.  The Coal industry filed a lawsuit against the environmental group, seeking to prevent groups from discussing global warming in a public forum because it hurt their business.  In other words, the coal industry wants to make it illegal for the public to talk about global warming. 

As the evidence supporting global warming has gotten stronger, some industry groups have shifted tactics: promoting the idea that even if global warming is happening, the public should not do anything about it.  One industry group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), even distributed a series of TV ads suggesting that carbon dioxide emissions will benefit mankind.^[8]  However, the scientist CEI quoted in their ads called the them “a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate” and noted that the industry group was “not telling the entire story to the public.”^[9]