The Philip Morris Theory of Global Warming

Damn the facts. Climate change is not happening, just like smoking doesn't cause cancer.

We all know the long history of Big Tobacco and their attempts to kill bans on second-hand smoke and their hire-a-scientist strategy to delay regulatory impact on their pocketbooks.

For those not in the know, here's the best summary I've seen:

My all-time favorite line: "I got a BA in kicking ass and taking names."

Many of the same people who worked on the tobacco front shifted gears to the issue of climate change when they realized that the fossil fuel industry would pay the big bucks to apply the same strategies honed in the tobacco debate. An example would be Fox News contributor Steve Milloy. You can check out the kinds of things he was up to on tobacco with a quick read of the archived tobacco documents.

The tobacco companies were sued by the US government for this behavior and I suspect such a suit will be filed someday against the companies (i.e. ExxonMobil), the organizations (i.e. the Competitive Enterprise Institute) and the individuals (i.e. Steve Milloy) who perpetrated the attack on climate science.

All this leads to a shameless plug.

Jim Hoggan, co-founder of the DeSmogBlog Project, which I have managed for the last four years has written a book that chronicles the history of PR spindoctors working to confuse the realities of climate change (and tobacco). It's called Climate Cover Up: the crusade to deny global warming and it comes out in hard copy in the US on Oct. 20th. You can get it now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble if you can't wait.

People who have read the book tell me that they're angry. And its time for everyone to get angry about this and start holding people like Milloy accountable for what they've done.

Here's a recent interview Jim did on the release of his book:

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Comments

[Kim Klausner]

Visit the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu) to view previously-secret documents about Steven Milloy. Enter "milloy" without the quotes in the query box or use this link: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/search/expert?p=1&q=milloy&asf=ddu&asd=&fd=1&sf=&_rs=&ps=10&_ef=&ef=on&sd=&ed=&c=at&c=ba&c=bw&c=ct&c=da&c=ll&c=lm&c=mg&c=mm&c=pm&c=py&c=re&c=rj&c=ti&c=ub&c=us.

The tobacco industry is indeed a master at manipulating the scientific process but the pharmaceutical industry might be surpassing it. See what they've done at the Drug Industry Document Archive -- http://dida.library.ucsf.edu.

Kim Klausner
Industry Document Digital Libraries Manager
University of California, San Francisco Library and Center for Knowledge Management

[unenergy]

There is a book called "High and Dry" by an Author called Guy Pearse which details Australia's political and fossil fuel energy company ties and efforts to thwart any efforts to address C02 emissions. The group involved actually labelled themselves 'The Greenhouse Mafia'.
I have read Guy's book and agree if Jim Hoggans book is anything like the conspiracy which Guy mapped out, then there is certainly a case to be heard. In other words the things these people have knowingly done to our atmosphere in pursuit of profits are infuriating.
I've ordered the book above. Scheduled to be delivered on November 4 to Australia. More and more I think we need to shine a light on the activities of the past so we can confront and face up to the challenges of what lies in store for us in the future with respect to what the climate will do.

[Kevin Grandia - Huffpost Blogger]

Awesome. Email me and let me know what you think: desmogblog­@gmail.com