In a commentary on the upcoming movie, The Day After Tomorrow, Sandy Starr writes on Spiked-Online:

“So is this film the work of an inventive bunch of storytellers out to entertain, or the work of environmentalist crusaders out to debate science? The answer you get from the filmmakers depends on whether they stand to gain publicity from a scientific debate about the film (in which case, it’s serious), or whether you’re taking them to task over the film’s scientific accuracy (in which case, it’s just entertainment). You have to hand it to the marketing department – the blurring of fact and fiction is an ingenious promotional technique. But serious scientists wouldn’t fall for it – would they?”

The blurring of fact and fiction is indeed an ingenious promotional technique. But the movie’s producers aren’t the first to put this technique to work: its business as usual across the political spectrum on the issue of climate change.

Examples:

Left taking right to task here.

Right taking left to task here.

A better approach: Climate Change Fact or Fiction? It Doesn’t Matter.

Read our article from 2000 in The Atlantic Monthly, Breaking the Global Warming Gridlock.