The answer to the question at left is that there is an entire industry that has formed over the last half century whose purpose is to sew doubt into the public mind regarding the validity of anthropogenic global warming.  In the absence of this doubt, the Earth’s citizens would be demanding a swift phase-out of the use of all fossil fuels, because the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions are so catastrophic (floods, droughts, wildfires, etc.) that the public consciousness wouldn’t insist upon a change.

What we have now is a world (at least a country, the United States) in which the more poorly educated believe what they’re told, i.e., that, where scientists can send a rocket into space and land it back on Earth on something the size of a table lamp, that anything associate with the climate is “junk” science, designed to destroy the U.S. economy.

It’s pathetic, but it’s fantastically effective.

Trusting Scientists Re: Climate Change