Film delves into work of professional doubters

Doc draws parallels between climate change skeptics and tobacco defenders

MERCHANTS OF DOUBT

★★ ★ 1/2

Starring: Frederick Singer, Naomi Oreskes, Jamy Ian Swiss Directed by: Robert Kenner

Running time: 96 minutes

For complexity, there’s nothing quite like a book, but there’s a simple, undeniable reality to documentaries that can make them a more emotionally appealing foray into a topic. That inherent appeal is partially addressed in Merchants of Doubt.

The film traces the tactics of generating public doubt, from tobacco companies (the original masters) to the varied forces arrayed against climate change, solidly but familiarly portraying all of them as deeply cynical if not outright amoral groups that are exceptionally skilled at manipulating the public, whatever the truth of a matter may be.

Directly inspired by the book of the same name by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt justifies its film adaptation entirely just by featuring Marc Morano, a frequent news channel guest and the founder of ClimateDepot.com. Like most of the pseudo-experts profiled here, Morano argues strongly against climate change — whether it’s even happening, whether it’s manmade, whatever — but for him in particular the issue just feels like the most obvious way to relish in a gloves-off public debate.

He is not a man of conviction so much as invective, and the way he glories in the fight — which for him includes publishing climate scientists’ email addresses, so they can get public abuse, beyond the more garden-variety lies and slanders — reveals a certain sickness at the cynical heart of many of these professional doubters: He just wants his predetermined world view to win, no matter what he has to ignore or distort to get it. At one point, he even admits that all the climate-change deniers have to do to win is delay; they’re running out the clock, not trying to get anything done.

Although it’s built off the standard-template of a well-funded big issue doc — jaunty framing device (in this case, magic tricks), slick animation, bouncy history lessons and a despair-to-hope structure that is particularly unjustified on this issue — Merchants is full of incredibly telling interactions and visuals to help make its case.

(A skeptic) even admits that all the climate change deniers have to do to win is delay.

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS Scientist James Hansen, one of the first scientists to link carbon emissions to climate change, is interviewed in Merchants of Doubt.