Surprised nobody has commented on this - so I will.
"Merchants of Doubt" is a must read if you are scratching your head wondering why little progress has been made on changing public opinion on climate change. While reading it there were several moments of enlightenment producing exclamations from me like "Of course!". This could easily be a quite boring book since it covers basically the same sequence of historical events repeating themselves the only difference being the environmental harm being caused: DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, CFCs etc. However the writing must be really good because I found it to be a page turner even on the climate change section - most of the history of which I already knew. And (similar to reviews of the film) the book incites a gut reaction of anger at what is being perpetrated. The more I think about it, the more I think that this is one of the most serious issues to be tackled this century - even if climate change is somehow successfully dealt with in this century there will be the next issue, and the one after that and you can be sure that the same events will repeat with many of the same characters and organisations. The (only) positive take from the book is that the battle was eventually won on many of the issues e.g. CFCs, tobacco etc.
