Winning the easy way
Sep 24, 2011
Bishop Hill in Climate: Sceptics

I chanced upon this article by Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones, which says we sceptics have won.

It's news to me, but that's not actually what attracted my attention. I was intrigued by the intricate flowchart showing how big business and big energy drives the thinktanks who drive the front organisations, who drive the media machine. In particular I was interested in the "front organisations" that link the think tanks and the media machine (including bloggers like me).

Examples of these front organisations are given as The Global Climate Coalition, The Information Council for the Environment, the Center for Energy and Economic Development, the Greening Earth Society and the Cooler Heads Coalition.

Who?

Actually, I've heard of some of them, but not recently. With this is mind, I checked them out:

Only the Cooler Heads Coalition actually appears to be still in action, although I sense that they may have a certain lack of web traffic - their Alexa rank is around the 400,000 mark (cf Anthony W at 17,000).

So Josh Harkinson's article is doubly remarkable: firstly because of the welcome news that we sceptics have won and secondly because we appear to have done it largely by using a series of front organisations that don't actually exist.

Who says laissez-faire doesn't work?

 

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