Newsweek has an in-depth look at who's behind the global warming denial movement. Basically, Republicans and others not capable of critical thought are being manipulated by a massive industry funded propaganda campaign.

Of course, we already knew that, but this article has an interesting look at the history of the movement, who they are, and their tactics:

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. 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.

Read the whole thing to learn how their propaganda campaign has successfully fooled 64% of Americans into thinking there is "a lot of scientific disagreement on climate change."

Read how Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute proposed a $5 million campaign starting in 1998 to convince the public that "the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty."

Read how they infiltrated the Bush administration to have official reports sanitized and sprinkled with doubt through "careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said" to make sure that "every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial -- and therefore no basis for making policy."

Read how ExxonMobil is paying willing scientists $10,000 to write articles discrediting the latest IPCC report on climate change.

In related news, Al Gore spoke to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Singapore yesterday, saying:

"There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community. In actuality, there is very little disagreement."

Gore went on to say that "This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science. We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion," and singled out Exxon Mobile as one of the major companies behind the disinformation campaign. Exxon Mobile responded by calling Gore's claims "completely false" and simply a recycling of "discredited conspiracy theory."