It's also a great way to make a living if you have a surplus of greed and no scruples.

People who dispute climate change are sometimes called "skeptics." Other times, more plainly, they're called "deniers." This week's Newsweek cover story describes them in a couple of other ways: "a well-funded machine" is one of the nicer ones. There are times when you have your worst assumptions confirmed and take no pleasure in the vindication, because it means that exactly the kind of heinous nonsense you feared is, in fact, precisely what's happening, only it's worse than you thought.

As Sharon Begley's Newsweek story demonstrates, that's what's been happening with the people disputing global warming. The science on global warming is indisputable and conclusive: the planet's getting hotter and humans are doing it. But science has little to do with climate-change deniers' tactics. Their aim is confusion and inaction, which serves the needs of the oil companies paying for their work much better than science could anyway.

"Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change," Begley writes. "Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. 'They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,' says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. 'Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.'"

That technique's not new, as Wirth's allusion to the tobacco industry shows. And speaking of the tobacco business and that strategy, Thank You For Smoking, either the 2006 movie version or the 1994 novel by Christopher Buckley that it's based on show how it works. In this dialog from the movie, Nick Naylor explains to his son Joey what he does as a tobacco industry lobbyist.

Joey: So what happens when you're wrong?.

Nick: Well, Joey, I'm never wrong.

Joey: But you can't always be right.

Nick: Well, if it's your job to be right, then you're never wrong.

Joey: But what if you are wrong?.

Nick: Okay, let's say that you're defending chocolate and I'm defending vanilla. Now, if l were to say to you "Vanilla's the best flavor ice cream," you'd say--?

Joey: "No, chocolate is."

Nick: Exactly. But you can't win that argument. So I'll ask you, "So you think chocolate is the end-all and be-all of ice cream, do you?"

Joey: It's the best ice cream; I wouldn't order any other.

Nick: Oh. So it's all chocolate for you, is it?.

Joey: Yes, chocolate is all I need.

Nick: Well, I need more than chocolate. And for that matter, I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom and choice when it comes to our ice cream, and that, Joey Naylor -- that is the definition of liberty.

Joey: But that's not what we're talking about.

Nick: Ah, but that's what I'm talking about.

Joey: But you didn't prove that vanilla's the best.

Nick: I didn't have to. I proved that you're wrong and if you're wrong, I'm right.

Joey: But you still didn't convince me.

Nick: Because I'm not after you. I'm after them.