And it's something scientists haven't thought well of since the time of Galileo, if not before. It is also far from settled whether or not humankind would benefit from global warming if it is occurring. Could Be Worse Than the Disease . Nor have we received any money, nor any gifts in-kind, from anyone who has attempted to tell us what our views on climate change should be. Let me suggest that we have a really big opportunity coming up this year, in 1997.
Climate change is underway.
We have already changed the atmosphere through fossil fuel emissions. That's a scientific fact beyond denial. The effects are starting to show up. And there's going to be a treaty negotiation in Kyoto, in Japan, at the end of this year to try to set national plans to control global warming. But its an unhappy fact that the oil companies and the coal companies in the United States have joined in a conspiracy to hire pseudo scientists to deny the facts, and then begin raising political arguments that are essentially fraudulent, that we can so this with the economy, the same kind of arguments they used against acid rain, they used against the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.