How have climate change skeptics managed to muddy the public’s perceptions, creating uncertainty long after science concluded that the Earth is warming and that humans are largely to blame? Erik Conway, co-author (with Maomi Oreskes) of Merchants of Doubt, told a Climate One audience that oil and coal companies, aided by their ideological allies at conservative think tanks, have used tactics borrowed from the tobacco industry to sow doubt – and that journalists, striving for “balance,” gave them a critical, if unwitting, boost.