Okanagan Shuswap E.D.A.

Mike De Souza
Victoria Times Colonist
Canwest News Service

http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=39dcb77d-8816-45e2-b880-555f707adafd

Public relations executive James Hoggan says there’s no doubt that his new book is provoking some angry reactions from people with its revelations about what is shaping public opinion on global warming.

In fact, the Vancouver businessman says the point of the book, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, was to shock people.

The book examines the research organizations and academics who question whether human activity is causing dangerous global warming, and trace their arguments back to funding from the fossil-fuel industry and evidence their goal is to confuse the public and slow down or stop government
action.

“My message is just really simple,” said Hoggan, 63, during a recent stop at the University of Ottawa as part of the book launch.

“This should be illegal. People should not be able to pull off this kind of deception and get away with it. And I’m not saying let’s bring out the chains and lock up free speech. What I’m saying is that we should know who is paying for these things.”

While some people might be aware about how free market think-tanks and industry groups are trying to influence public opinion about the science, Hoggan said many people, including environmentalist David Suzuki, are still shocked when they see all of the pieces put together.

“I sent the first draft of this book to [Suzuki] and he stayed up all night reading the thing,” said Hoggan.

“He phoned me the next day, furious, and said: ‘I had no idea [this was going on].’”

Hoggan said he’s also frustrated with false information that is circulated by global-warming skeptics, including a recent claim that a majority of glaciers were increasing in size that was proved to be false after George Monbiot, a British author and investigative journalist, attempted to track down and verify its source.

“It’s not even so much about climate change for me,” said Hoggan. “It’s more about the deception and the PR. It was just taken too far.”

LINKS:
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-cover-up
http://beyondpr.blogspot.com/2009/10/climate-cover-up-crusade-to-deny-global.html