Attempted Bloggery: Forbes: "What Greenhouse Effect?"

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Forbes: "What Greenhouse Effect?"

Climate change denial is nothing new. In 1990, Forbes put its towering journalistic reputation on the line, questioning the science of what was then termed "…the greenhouse effect—a.k.a. global warming…" in its own pages and through advertising in the influential pages of The New Yorker (and perhaps other publications). The conservative business magazine took out a two-page ad, the first page of which reproduced a large detail of a colorful primitive painting by Henri Rousseau, The Dream (1910, the Museum of Modern Art) showing a female nude in the jungle. Meanwhile the ad copy reassured The New Yorker's perennially well-informed readers "...that the effects of the greenhouse effect are—at worst—minimal" while warning that "the cure being touted could easily result in a revolt of the poor countries against the rich and hurl the world economy into the red." Capitalist Tool, indeed.