“World’s top PR companies rule out working with climate deniers,” proclaimed the headline of a story on August 4 in The Guardian, Britian’s most influential leftist daily paper, and a fanatical fount of global warming alarmism. The subtitle of the piece by reporters Suzanne Goldenberg and Nishad Karim declared: “Ten firms say they will not represent clients that deny man-made climate change or seek to block emisson-reducing [sic] regulations.”
“Some of the world’s top PR companies have for the first time publicly ruled out working with climate change deniers,” reported The Guardian, “marking a fundamental shift in the multi-billion dollar industry that has grown up around the issue of global warming.”
“Public relations firms have played a critical role over the years in framing the debate on climate change and its solutions,” note Goldenberg and Karim, and now “a number of the top 25 global PR firms have told The Guardian they will not represent clients who deny man-made climate change, or take campaigns seeking to block regulations limiting carbon pollution. Companies include WPP, Waggener Edstrom (WE) Worldwide, Weber Shandwick, Text100, and Finn Partners.”
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“We would not knowingly partner with a client who denies the existence of climate change,” Rhian Rotz, spokesman for WE, told The Guardian.
Of course, The Guardian and Rhian Rotz would be hard pressed to name a single skeptic “who denies the existence of climate change.” Our planet’s climate is dynamic, always changing, and all of the skeptical scientists this reporter has ever read or interviewed acknowledge that fact. The “denier” tag is one of the most disingenuous and vicious smears employed by a frantic climate alarmist lobby that is desperately resorting to name-calling to draw attention away from its own mounting scandals and bogus science.
Among the numerous renowned scientists who fall into the “skeptic” camp (some prefer to be called climate “realists”), there are many disagreements over the degree to which mankind’s production of carbon dioxide and other emissions may be affecting the Earth’s climate. While many skeptical scientists acknowledge that man-made CO2 may have “significant” impact on climate, overall they seem to be in agreement that the weight of the evidence indicates that global temperature variations over the past several decades have not exceeded natural variability and that the climate alarmists are greatly exaggerating temperature changes, man’s contributions to these changes, and the supposed calamities these temperature variations will bring. The skeptics further challenge the discredited computer models used by the alarmists to produce their apocalyptic (and invariably false) predictions and reject the unscientific claims that there is a “climate crisis” demanding a radical “transformation” of the entire global political and economic system.
The Guardian’s PR Slip Is Showing
A closer look at the article in The Guardian quickly reveals that the real story doesn’t quite match the headlines. In fact, The Guardian is huffing and puffing mightily to make much of a “news” story manufactured by one of its fellow climate activists. “The PR firms were responding to surveys conducted independently by The Guardian and the Climate Investigations Centre, a Washington-based group that conducts research on climate disinformation campaigns,” The Guardian admits. What The Guardian doesn’t tell readers is that the Climate Investigations Centre is an alarmist outfit run by Kert Davies, a self-described “climate activist” and veteran militant-for-pay at Greenpeace. The ever-observant Australian blogger Joanne Nova exposed the Guardian-Davies PR stunt in a posting on August 5.
“As for The Climate Investigations Centre — it is a 2014 start up, has 64 ‘likes’ and is directed by a self-described climate activist who specializes in ad hominem attacks against scientists,” Nova wrote. She then quotes from Davies’ bio:
Kert Davies, a well-known researcher, media spokesperson and climate activist who has been conducting corporate accountability research and campaigns for more than 20 years. Davies was the chief architect of the Greenpeace web project ExxonSecrets.
The article in The Guardian, Nova points out, is itself total PR spin:
They frame the message to avoid saying that only 28% of PR firms agreed climate change was a threat or that 60% of PR firms ignored them completely. They only name five PR groups, and at least one (WPP) is a conglomerate of 150 firms which “will all make their own decisions.” So much for that.
“What is most telling,” she noted, “is that even after being repeatedly harassed by an activist by phone, mail and email from the Climate Investigations Centre, fully 60% of PR companies ignored them completely…. And watch the pea, 40% of companies responded, but not all of them ruled out working with ‘deniers.’ Only seven agreed ‘climate change’ was a threat. The number that would boycott ‘deniers’ was described as ‘smaller’ — too small to actually put a number on?”
The piece in The Guardian was aimed at pushing more companies into the climatist camp, implying that if they don’t get on board the green wagon, no PR firm will touch them; and the follow-up corollary is that if they oppose costly, destructive climate policies, they are likely to be targeted with a “denier” or “dirty dozen” PR campaign. But it is more bluff than substance. As Joanne Nova points out, there are plenty of PR firms that will take climate pariahs on as clients:
Looks like the mass of companies run by skeptical CEO’s will only have 70% of the world’s largest PR firms to work with. Shucks. They can work with any company not called “WPP, Waggener Edstrom (WE) Worldwide, Weber Shandwick, Text100, and Finn Partners.”
Kert Davies and The Guardian are trying hard to keep a favorite myth of the climate alarmism lobby afloat, which holds that all of the opposition to their blessed campaign to save the planet is being financed by the evil “fossil fuel industry,” i.e., Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas. Naturally, as with so many of the alarmists’ other claims, the truth is exactly the opposite; it is the alarmists who are swimming in cash — from Big Government, Big Foundations, and Big Corporations (including even Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas). According to a comprehensive study by the Climate Policy Initiative entitled The Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2013, the “climate industry” raked in $359 billion last year, or about $1 billion per day, down slightly from $364 billion in 2012.
And, as Alex Newman noted here on August 6, a newly released report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works exposes the billions of dollars being secretively funneled by super-rich activists such as Rockefeller, Gates, Schmidt, and Heinz to the fake green AstroTurf rent-a-mobs that are demanding “global governance” to stop the supposed crisis of catastrophic global warming. The new Senate report, The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA, further documents the dirty secret that some of the biggest corporations and biggest dynastic fortunes are bankrolling the environmental activists that regularly denounce and attack “capitalism” as the bane of our existence. The billionaire globalists are using their AstroTurf activists to push for “carbon pricing,” “carbon trading,” and “carbon budget” schemes that will allow them to grab a sizable chunk of the trillions of dollars these programs would transfer from taxpayers and middle class consumers to politically connected companies.
Related articles:
Lawless “Billionaire Club” Behind Green Scam, Senate Study Finds
CFR Pushes End to Sovereignty at UN’s Doha Climate Summit
Obama Vows to Bypass Congress on Climate Change
EU, World Bank Brutalize Africans for “Carbon Credits”
Dr. Arthur Robinson Explodes Bogus Global Warming Consensus (Video)
Cooking Climate Consensus Data: “97% of Scientists Affirm AGW” Debunked
