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hatrack

(59,439 posts)
Mon Mar 2, 2015, 08:36 AM Mar 2015

"Merchants Of Doubt" - The Documentary - Opens March 6th

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Joining the fray is filmmaker Robert Kenner, whose surprisingly rollicking screen adaptation of Merchants of Doubt opens March 6 in New York and Los Angeles. It’s a worthy follow-up to his 2008 Oscar-nominated Food, Inc., which arrived when Americans were primed to point fat fingers at Big Agra. This time, Doubt lands amid a national debate over science—legit, pseudo or just plain bad—that intensifies with every foot of Boston snow or new case of Disneyland measles.

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When I read Merchants of Doubt, I didn’t think, Wow, great cinematic potential. What did you see there?

I didn’t think it was a movie, frankly, but it led me into an arena. And actually, very little of the book made it into the movie. We used the general thesis, which is all about regulations and what is done to stop regulations—this thinking that the free market knows all. A perverse form of capitalism has taken over.

When the Freds—Seitz and Singer—popped up in the movie, I thought, Didn't they read the book? How did you convince them to participate?

Well, Fred Seitz had died [in 2008], so the footage we used of him was from many years ago.... When I met Fred Singer, he told me he was doing a book on food and pesticides and he thought we could collaborate. I said, “What’s the name of your book?” and he said, “Pesticides Can Save the World.” I said, “We really are coming at this from very different angles,” but that didn’t deter him whatsoever. My impression is that he thinks he can win people over.... I’m hoping to represent him in a way he presented himself to me.

Many of these people, including Fred Singer, worked for [Big] Tobacco or were funded by Tobacco and went on to work on numerous other issues, including energy and climate, and used the same arguments they had used for Tobacco. Singer is an ideologue. I think he’s made some money at it, but I make money, we all make money. I think his motivation was a real fear of communism. He was a very good scientist, and Fred Seitz was a major scientist who had done very impressive work. You get those few credible scientists who are ready to pervert their understanding of science to favor their ideological beliefs, and it creates a rocket that takes off. It leads us into this strange territory of the anti-Enlightenment.

It's hard not to come away without some admiration for them.

I really get offended when people on the left say, “Oh, these people are so stupid.” They’re not stupid. They’re really smart. Tim Phillips [president of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political action committee] is really smart. He’s able to go out there and deliver this message, and he makes money for the Kochs. Marc Morano [climate change skeptic and frequent Fox News interviewee] said, “Our job is simple. All we have to do is stop action.” I think he’s very funny, he’s very smart. And I wish he was backing other things.

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http://www.newsweek.com/exposing-doubt-mongers-trying-convince-you-climate-change-isnt-real-310372

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