Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming

James Hoggan, Richard Littlemore

Greystone Books, 2009 - Nature - 266 pages

This “must-read book describes in disturbing detail” how the energy industry has fueled a bogus controversy about manmade climate change (Toronto Star).
 
This book rips the lid off the campaign to discredit scientists, confuse journalists, and deny climate change. The tactics have been slick, but PR expert James Hoggan and investigative journalist Richard Littlemore have compiled a readable, accessible guidebook through the muck. Beginning with leaked memos from the coal industry, the oil industry and the tobacco-sponsored lie-about-science industry, the authors expose the plans to "debunk" global warming; they track the execution of those plans; and they illuminate the results—confusion, inaction, and an epidemic of public mistrust.
 
Climate Cover-Up names names, identifying bogus experts who are actually paid lobbyists and flaks. The authors reveal the PR techniques used to misinform, to mangle the language, and to intimidate the media into maintaining a phony climate change debate. Exposing the seedy origins of that debate, this book will leave you fuming at the extent, the effect, and the ethical affront of the climate cover-up.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - jorgearanda - LibraryThing

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but the evidence presented in Climate Cover-Up (on the privately funded effort to sow uncertainty on climate change in the media) is inescapable. Some people are ...

User Review -

I read this book right before the "climate-gate" affair exposed the global warming industry as just that -- a multi-billion dollar scam orchestrated by governmental bodies like the IPCC. With scientists like Littlemore cranking out dire predictions from computer models (garbage-in/garbage-out), and crackpots like Al Gore spreading his apocalyptic vision, mere mortals naturally were scared out of their wits. And pity the fool who should ask if maybe the computer models could be wrong: the high priests of groupthink, such as Hoggan and Littlemore, have just the emotionally freighted word for him. "DENIER!"
This book is as one-sided, slanted and at times downright mean-spirited as it can be, which shouldn't be surprising, coming from a PR guy who knows all the buttons to push. It is also simply wrong, as when it tries to paint "denier" groups as well-funded tools of the oil companies. In fact, oil companies give much more money to "green" organizations (if only to assuage their guilt). But by far the greatest contributor to the global warming industry is government -- the US Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency, to name just two, have spent millions in recent years keeping the global warming balloon airborne.
The amount of atmospheric CO2 has increased dramatically over the past 15 years, yet the global mean temperature has barely budged. This, too, was discussed in the climate-gate emails. "A travesty," one researcher called this apparent contradiction. Rather than revise their hypothesis, the researchers decided to "hide the decline." Who are the "deniers" here anyway?  

About the author

Jim Hoggan is president of James Hoggan and Associates, an award-winning public relations firm that has been recognized with the highest honour awarded by the American Public Relations Society (the Silver Anvil). He is a leading authority on public perceptions pertaining to issues including the environment, climate change, and sustainability. Hoggan is also Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, a trustee of the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education, co-founder of DeSmogBlog.com, and a graduate of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth boot camp.

Richard Littlemore is a strategist and the senior writer at Hogan & Associates and the editor at the DeSmogBlog, one of the top climate change blogs on the Internet. He has written for newspapers including the Ottawa Citizen and the Vancouver Sun, and magazines while building a corporate career consulting and writing speeches for some of the West Coast's most accomplished business and academic leaders. He has also served on the Canadian government's Kyoto implementation process. He lives on Bowen Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming
• Authors: James Hoggan, Richard Littlemore
• Contributor: Richard Littlemore
• Publisher: Greystone Books, 2009
• ISBN: 1926706773, 9781926706771
• Length: 266 pages
• Subjects: Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection; Political Science / Propaganda; Political Science / Public Policy / Environmental Policy; Science / Environmental Science; Science / Global Warming & Climate Change; Social Science / Media Studies