Science gets in the way

Here is the problem with science, illustrated from the NYTimes article Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate.
There was a group that represented the interests of industries tied to burning fossil fuels called Global Climate Coalition during the 1990s. They had long stated that the burning of fossil fuels and increased greenhouse gases could not be connected to global warming. This is not unusual. Dirty industries have long been involved in doing anything they can to convince congressman and the public that GHGs and climate change aren't problems. The problem this time is that the GCC attempted to use science to prove their point.
If they simply said, "The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood," as they stated in the early 90s in a "backgrounder" for congress, they ought to back that position up, right? Well they tried. And now, thanks to documents that surfaced in a federal lawsuit, the opinions of their scientists have come out.
In 1995, an internal scientific report was issued by the Clobal Climate Coalition, stating essentially 'we are wrong.' "The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied." It doesn't get much clearer than that. And from the very scientists hired by a firm to represent the interests of the auto, oil, and coal industries of the United States. This finding was of course kept a secret by the organization, likely due to the fact that it countered the very purpose of it existing. It disbaned it 2002.

This is a damning story. The industry and its lobbyists knew then, or they were told by their scientific community, that they were wrong. But GCC didn't want to bother with science. Instead they wrote another internal paper, a 17 page primer for the company written up in 1995 that contained the above findings.
"'The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes, but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change,' the advisory committee said in the 17-page primer. According to the minutes of an advisory committee meeting that are among the disclosed documents, the primer was approved by the coalition’s operating committee early in 1996. But the approval came only after the operating committee had asked the advisers to omit the section that rebutted the contrarian arguments. 'This idea was accepted,' the minutes said, 'and that portion of the paper will be dropped.'

There you have it. Science gets in the way, and 14 years later we find out that it was suppressed by a group looking out for industry. One wonders why they bothered with the research at all?