Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore (Greystone Books, 2009)Regular readers know that I’ve basically lost the … what is it? cussedness? … required to spend time debunking skeptic arguments about the existence of climate change. It’s like being a zombie hunter, shooting, hacking, and defenestrating talking points only to watch them lurch back to life and stumble on. And every time they drag their carcasses into public again, the media covers them again, they get shot again … and so on, and on, to this day.
Ever wonder what keeps bringing those zombies to life? Turns out it’s a toxic blend of ideology and money. Mostly money. The same well-funded movement that spent so long delaying regulations on tobacco is still out there, busy polluting public discussion with fear, uncertainty, and doubt about climate change. They do it knowingly, and they profit from it.
Thankfully, not everyone’s lost their cussedness. Some have only become more cussed over time, like DeSmogBlog, a Canadian outfit that has its teeth in the skeptic movement’s arse like it was made of sirloin. Now they’ve got a book out: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. It offers chapter and verse on the industry groups, scientists for hire, and lazy-ass media that have colluded to leave the public in its current state of ignorance on the most important scientific question of our time. This isn’t just bloggy ranting either: the guys know how to dig, and they’ve uncovered original documents. Tasty, tasty documents.
Besides, it’s been blurbed by Leo Dicaprio, James Hansen, Bill McKibben, and Neve Campbell. You gonna argue with that posse?
