Polar bears have long been a symbol of a warming climate, a visible victim of shrinking sea ice cover and changing weather patterns. The bears’ loss of habitat was among the early signs of climate change, and one that was easily communicated to the public.

But in recent years, a sprawling network of climate change deniers are, strangely, using the symbol of the polar bear in their fight against climate science.

“If you tell a lie big enough, often enough, people will begin to believe it,” says Ian Stirling, a prominent polar bear biologist.

Stirling is a co-author on a new paper in the journal BioScience that describes a tactic used by climate-denial blogs to attack visible symbols of climate change instead of the science backing it.

“Because this evidence is so overwhelming, it would be virtually impossible to debunk; the main strategy of denier blogs is therefore to focus on topics that are showy and in which it is therefore easy to generate public interest,” the authors write.

“Proponents of creationism and intelligent design use the same strategy: Instead of providing scientific evidence in favor of their opinions, they instead focus selectively on certain lines of evidence for evolution and attempt to cast doubt on them.”

One of the darlings of this network of denial blogs is a University of Victoria adjunct professor named Susan Crockford.

Crockford is a zoologist who has never published a peer-reviewed paper on polar bears, or conducted any original research on them, yet who has been referred to by the Heartland Institute as “one of the world’s foremost experts on polar bears.”

Crockford Built up by Denial Organizations, Blogs

Real polar bear researcher Stirling, who spent more than four decades studying polar bears and publishing over 150 papers and five books on the topic, says Crockford has “zero” authority on the subject.

“The denier websites have been using her and building her up as an expert,” says Stirling.

The paper found that 80 per cent of the denier blogs they studied had referred to her blog. Crockford has also been featured as a speaker and panelist at Heartland Institute conferences.

Her popularity in denier circles is no surprise, given Crockford’s comforting, status quo-friendly stance.

A favourite line of reasoning Crockford returns to is that polar bears will be able to adapt to changes in sea ice — if the ice is in fact disappearing at all.

“Quite simply, the fact that a few individuals die during early breakup years in Western Hudson Bay is a good thing for future polar bears, not a catastrophe,” Crockford wrote on her blog, arguing that evolution will happen at a fast enough rate that the population will benefit from years of low sea ice.

That view is not shared by the paper’s authors.

“If you tell a lie big enough, often enough, people will begin to believe it.” https://t.co/g6i09Gv2UN #climatechange

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 30, 2017

Adaptation an Uphill Battle for Polar Bears

“Sea-ice habitat reductions during past interglacial periods occurred over millennia (rather than over the decadal scales that accompany AGW), giving the bears more time to adjust their behavior and distribution,” write the authors, among whom, once again, are actual polar bear researchers who do actual research on polar bears.

“Because current warming cannot be reversed without human action, the prognosis for polar bears and other Arctic biota without GHG mitigation is bleak.”

A study last year by University of Alberta researcher Andrew Derocher found that the predators are not able to get enough energy from alternative food sources, like bird eggs, that they can find on land.

“It’s a nice idea, but the energy density of these foods is low, their abundance is low — and there’s a whole other idea that if it was really a significant potential contribution, the bears would have been using this, and using it all along,” Derocher told me for an article in CBC when the paper was released in September 2016.

“And of course that’s not what we’ve seen.”

Crockford would likely be a lonely voice in the corner if it weren’t for the amplifying impact of larger climate-denial blogs like Junk Science and Climate Depot. But given her convenient narrative of fat, happy polar bears snubbing their noses at climate change, she has become a star. That’s a problem for actual science.

“The considerable influence that blogs exert on public opinion and decision-making should not be underestimated,” write the study’s authors.

“Among users, trust for blogs has been reported to exceed that of other traditional news or information sources.“

The paper calls on scientists to play a more public role in defending their work and to challenge the unscientific claims of climate deniers.

Stirling says it’s a mistake to let the sideshow go on any longer.

“They distract the public at large, particularly in the U.S.… from taking on the biggest threat that the world has ever experienced,” he says.

“Eventually these people will all be disproved but we’re going to pay a terrible price.”

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We’re living in a time of records. More renewable energy came on stream in 2015 than ever — 147 gigawatts, equal to Africa’s entire generating capacity — and investment in the sector broke records worldwide. Costs for producing solar and wind power have hit record lows. Portugal obtained all its electricity from renewable sources for four straight days in May — the longest achieved by any country — and Germany was able to meet 90 per cent of its electricity needs with renewable power for a brief period. Clean energy employment and job growth now outpace the fossil fuel industry by a wide margin.

That’s just a portion of the good news. Oil prices have fallen so low that some more damaging activities are becoming unprofitable, a record number of coal companies are going bankrupt or filing for bankruptcy, and fewer coal mines are operating in the U.S.

But are the good records enough to help us deal with the bad? Global average temperatures are hitting record highs every recent month and year, and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are rising steadily, to levels unheard of in human history. Arctic sea ice is vanishing at unprecedented levels, mass bleaching is killing the Great Barrier Reef, and record-setting droughts, floods, heatwaves and extreme weather are happening around the world.

As Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research told the Guardian: “These are very worrying signs and I think it shows we are on a crash course with the Paris targets unless we change course very, very fast. I hope people realize that global warming is not something down the road, but it is here now and is affecting us now.”

The Paris Agreement, accepted in December by most nations, offered hope that world leaders are aware of this serious problem and know that unless we quickly employ a range of solutions — from renewable energy to reducing consumption to changing dietary and agricultural practices — humanity is at risk.

Despite overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change, the fossil fuel industry continues to employ shady people and organizations to fool fearful and apparently blind followers into believing the problem doesn’t exist or isn’t serious enough to worry about. Their messaging follows a pattern: Spread a simplistic lie until it becomes so discredited that few people accept it and then move on to another simplistic lie.

The most recent from Canadian industry propagandists like Patrick Moore, Tom Harris (of the misnamed International Climate Science Coalition) and their pals at organizations like the U.S. Heartland Institute is that CO2 is not a pollutant, just a benign or beneficial gas that stimulates plant growth. It’s true CO2 is good for plants. So is nitrogen, but when it runs into waterways and the oceans, it pollutes them. Overwhelming scientific evidence proves that increased atmospheric CO2 is a major cause of global warming. The profound effects of that warming are already here, and new and frightening aspects are also coming to light, such as ocean oxygen depletion.

Recent bankruptcy filings for Peabody Energy showed the U.S. coal company owes money to a range of deniers and their organizations, including the also misnamed Calgary-based Friends of Science. It claims the sun and not human activity drives climate change (and that the world is cooling, not warming), a ridiculous assertion, often repeated by coal companies, that real scientists have thoroughly debunked. Extensive research shows coal, oil and gas interests have pumped huge amounts of money into these denial campaigns, all the while knowing that human-caused climate change is real and dangerous.

It’s good that deniers’ voices are being drowned out by evidence and rational arguments and that solutions are becoming better, cheaper and more readily available daily. But we no longer have time to allow compromised politicians, greedy industrialists and dishonest organizations to stall progress. We need record numbers of people to do all they can — develop solutions, write letters, sign petitions, talk to politicians, vote and take to the streets — to demand that governments, industry and society treat climate change with the seriousness it deserves.

Humanity’s fate depends on the choices we make today. We can’t let a polluting sunset industry and its minions block progress to a cleaner, healthier future.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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Professional climate science deniers and delayers have been busy playing the victim card here at the Paris climate change talks.

As we head into the guts of week two, negotiators at the vast Le Bourget venue are heading into the business end of agreeing a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

In The Australian, environment editor Graham Lloyd wrote under the headline “Greens want muzzle on ‘climate deniers’” how environment groups wanted “alternative views on climate science silenced in Paris.”

That’s an interesting choice of phrase – alternative view. Try, wrong. There are some people in the world with an “alternative view” on the age and the shape of the planet, or the theory of evolution and the safety of vaccines.

But you wouldn’t expect them to be taken seriously at a major medical conference or the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Reuters also had a story where Heartland Institute communications director Jim Lakely complained that they had to “make their own space and time” to be heard in Paris.  Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow's Marc Morano complained to Politico that the UN saw the denialists as the "turd in the punch bowl".

The Heartland Institute, which received $736,000 from Exxon between 1998 and 2006, is ever keen to promote climate science denial, holding annual conferences in the US and abroad, launching “alternative” climate reports and comparing anyone who accepts climate science to tyrants and murderers.

So are climate science denialists and “sceptics” really excluded from the United Nations climate process? 

The Committee for Constructive Tomorrow has been granted official press conference time and space at previous climate talks in Lima, Warsaw, Durban, Doha and Bonn. 

CFACT communications director Marc Morano, who launched his Climate Hustle denialist documentary in Paris on Tuesday evening, told me they have a press conference planned within the Paris talks, in an official room, for later this week. CFACT has also had an official booth at the Paris talks.

The United Nations has also granted official delegate status to representatives from CFACT and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, another US conservative think tank that refuses to accept the evidence of the severe implications of fossil fuel emissions.

Yet while the likes of CFACT and Heartland cry wolf over their victim status, there’s an apparent hypocrisy in their claims.

When CFACT joined other groups in a room at the aptly-titled Hotel California (as the Eagles sang, ‘what a nice surprise, bring your alibis’) for a day of denialist speeches, the event was initially advertised as being public.

But when journalists from DeSmog turned up, the event suddenly became private and the journalists were excluded.

I had initially been granted a seat for the premiere of the Climate Hustle documentary, but was later declined.  At the screening event last night (more information about that quite bizarre experience to come), I asked again to be allowed in, but was told it was full. 

Dr John Cook, a climate communication fellow at the University of Queensland and founder of the SkepticalScience website, was also told he wouldn’t be allowed to actually watch the film, after initially expecting to be allowed in.

The ideologically-motivated climate science denial that Heartland and CFACT promotes cuts no ice here inside the Paris talks. But that’s not to say it has no impact.

Writing in the New Republic, Jonathan Katz points out how the Republican party’s denial of the science in the US could impact on the negotiations. Negotiators, Katz argues, “know better than anyone that the Republican Congress will not approve any climate change deal President Barack Obama puts in front of them.”  

Blog Image: Professional climate science denialists in Paris at the premiere of Climate Hustle. From left to right, Marc Morano, Tom Harris, Craig Rucker, Christopher Monckton, [Teddy Bear?], Bob Carter, Christopher Essex, Fred Singer, Willie Soon, Patrick Moore.  Photo Credit: Brendan Montague

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Accredited journalists were kicked out of a sparsely attended climate denial conference hosted by the US oil-and tobacco-funded Heartland Institute today in Paris.

Heartland's ‘Day of Examining the Data’ event was repeatedly advertised as open to the public and media. However the freedom-of-speech espousing think tank had French security guards from the Hotel California outside the COP21 official venue remove DeSmog UK journalists.

Why? Because the 9 am press conference was now apparently a private event.

An archived copy of the Heartland Institute Website shows the conference advertised as "open to the public"

With the two DeSmog journalists gone, this left the likes of Marc Morano from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Christopher Monckton preaching to a small choir of under 30 people, the majority of which were elderly men. Ironically, tomorrow is gender day at the official Paris COP21 climate conference.

The formerly open to the public Heartland climate denial conference just cut number of women present by a third pic.twitter.com/8uUZzRDcyu

— Kyla Mandel (@kylamandel) December 7, 2015

This isn’t the first time such a climate denial conference has been underwhelming.

Last April, Heartland and CFACT travelled to Rome to try and pursuade the Pope not to speak on climate change. Aside from a very minimal media presence at the first day of their press stunt, there was no one except the climate denial faithful on day 2.

It also isn’t the first time for this group to refuse journalists entry to their events. In June, accredited journalists were barred from attending Heartland’s annual climate conference — and the media that did get in was cordoned off in a separate room unable to actually stand in the conference hall.

Sources tell DeSmog UK that Jim Lakely, Heartland’s communications director, is now standing guard outside the locked doors of the CFACT-Heartland climate denial conference in Paris.

This comes after The Australian published a story earlier today headlined “Greens want muzzle on ‘climate deniers’”.

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BY BRENDAN MONTAGUE AND KYLA MANDEL IN PARIS

Coral Bleach, from the Billionaire United Mining Services, arrived this morning at the Heartland Institute's much vaunted Day of Examining Data repleat with an emerald-studed hard hat, high-viz jacket, and furs. But her excitement soon turned to dissapointment.

The fearless champions of freedom of speech at the Chicago-based free market think tank were quick to call the security at the California Hotel in Paris – and two undercover police officers touting walky-talkies were not far behind.

For Ms Bleach was a fraud, a prankster, a troublemaker – of the most curteous and humourous kind. Deborah Hart, 45, from Australia is co-founder of the ClimActs protest group and author of the popular children's book on climate, Guarding Eden.

She was protesting the Heartland Institute press event with activists from the Climate Games because of concerns that the oil and tobacco funded think tank was successfully spreading disinformation about climate science.

"We use satire because that is the most effective form of straight talking," she told DeSmog UK. "They are misleading and deceptive and well funded. They are extremely effective. They have industry behind them, and the Australian media behind them."

Extremely Disingenuous

She added: "This small group of people are extremely disingenuous and evil."

Jonathan Adams, 25, from Minneapolis in Minnesota, is an activist from Rising Tide North America. He attended the Heartland event briefly before being ushered out by security.

He asked the Heartland staffers whether they really believed that 97 percent of the world's scientists were lying about their research, and challenged whether white, older, wealthy Americans should be telling people in Africa how to run their countries.

"We were asked to behave. People were telling us we were being childish, that we were behaving like five-year-olds. And then we were pushed out."

Sam Castro, 45, a full time activist and mother of three from Australia was performing Greg Hunt – the "minister for killing everything."

She said: "The Heartland Institute in the US work closely with the Institute of Public Affairs in Australia. There is no way they can meet in Paris without being challenged. This is our children's future.

"These people are producing anti-science propaganda and this is used by the Australian government to justify inaction."

The Heartland press conference was advertised as open to the public but DeSmog UK reporters were told to leave before the event had even begun.

Jim Lakely, the hapless press officer, explained the ban was in place because the reporters had distributed printed materials at an earlier event in Rome.

After the banned press and public left there were just two women in attendance prior to the event starting. 

The formerly open to the public Heartland climate denial conference just cut number of women present by a third pic.twitter.com/8uUZzRDcyu

— Kyla Mandel (@kylamandel) December 7, 2015

Will Morano be arrested for being 'Climate Criminal' in Paris?! Movie premiere set for tonight! pic.twitter.com/LSKyaqfpzJ

— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) December 7, 2015

Wanted posters with the faces of Heartland attendees Myron Ebell and Chris Horner had been pasted outside the hotel. 

Among those due to give presentations at the Paris event were Dr Willie Soon, who has been funded by ExxonMobil for decades; Dr S Fred Singer, the grandfather of climate denial who shilled for the tobacco industry, and Ebell from the ExxonMobil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Lord Christopher Monckton was also in attendance. Last week he explained his theory to DeSmog UK that Barack Obama was among a group of "totalitarians" who were trying to use the UNFCCC climate talks as a mechanism to install a Communist-Fascist State. 

@brendanmontague

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By Charles Mandel. This article originally appeared on the National Observer.

Ecojustice, on behalf of a group of prominent Canadians, filed a complaint Thursday with the federal Competition Bureau, asking it to investigate false and misleading representations made by climate change denier groups.

In their application to the Commissioner of Competition, the group called for “a thorough rigorous inquiry of the denier groups and their climate science misrepresentations.”

The group is also pressing for the commission to refer their application to the Attorney-General of Canada for criminal charges against the denier groups.

Ecojustice filed the complaint of behalf of Stephen Lewis, the former Canadian Ambassador to the UN and chair of the 1988 World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere; Tzeporah Berman, author and adjunct professor at York University; and Thomas Duck, an atmospheric scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Other complainants are David Schindler, the Killam Memorial professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, and Danny Harvey, an University of Toronto professor and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author.

The complaint cites The Friends of Science, The International Climate Science Coalition and the Heartland Institute for misleading billboard advertisements, website representations and a poster made available as a free download on a website.

“These groups attempt to discredit the established scientific consensus that global warming and climate change are real and caused by human activity,” Duck said in a statement. “The reality, causes and consequences of climate change are well understood.”

Canada’s Competition Act prohibits the making of materially false or misleading representations for the purpose of promoting any business interest such as fossil fuel development.

In its application, Ecojustice states that it believes the case should be referred to the Attorney General as a criminal matter. Potential prosecution can take place if it can be demonstrated that there’s clear and compelling evidence that accused knowingly or recklessly made false or misleading representations to the public.

The competition bureau must also be satisfied that criminal prosecution would be in the public interest.

The application notes that two Friends of Science billboards were the subject of 96 complaints to Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) during their display in Montreal in 2014. The council reviewed the billboard ads against the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards and determined they were false and misleading advertising.

The Friends of Science appealed the ruling, but it was upheld. Just months after the decision, the Friends of Science put up a new video billboard making climate science misrepresentations in Montreal and in November 2015 put up more billboards in Edmonton and Calgary.

The application alleges that the Friends of Science’s continued display of climate science misrepresentations after numerous consumer complaints and a former censure by the ASC is clear and compelling evidence that the group knowingly or recklessly made such misrepresentations.

“When combined with the overwhelming public importance of the context in which the climate science misrepresentations are made — including the effect of climate change on the Canadian economy, and the negative effects of climate science misrepresentations on competition in key markets for stimulating the transition to a low carbon economy in Canada — we believe the Commissioner’s inquiry should proceed on the criminal track,” the application states.

Ecojustice and the individuals it represents allege that the climate change denier groups misrepresent climate change science to promote their own business interests and those of their anonymous funders.

“While the denier groups do not publically disclose the identities of their funds, available public information suggests their funding comes at least in part from individuals and corporations with business interests in the production and use of fossil fuels,” the application to the Competition Bureau alleges.

The application states that Talisman Energy Inc., a Calgary-based oil and gas exploration and production company, donated $175,000 to Friends of Science in 2004 to fund the production of a specific video and other activities.

Mike De Souza, an environmental journalist then with the Ottawa Citizen, wrote in 2012 how the energy company, contributed to a pair of trust accounts at the University of Calgary in 2004 to produce a video and engage in public relations, advertising and lobbying activities against the Kyoto Protocol and government measures to restrict fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

The accounts were formed at the request of Friends of Science, whom de Souza described as “retired oil industry workers and academics who oppose the Kyoto Protocol and reject the validity of peer-reviewed science on the causes of climate change observed in recent decades.”

In an earlier submission to Alberta’s Privacy and Information Commissioner, Talisman said that an university audit turned up nothing to suggest that the school was aware of its own funds “being used for political purposes,” De Souza reported.

A Talisman spokesperson told De Souza that “the donation was a decision made by the company’s former president, who had ‘different views on climate change science.’

“Today, Talisman’s position is quite different and Talisman does believe that [greenhouse gas emissions] pose a significant risk to the industry,” the spokesperson said.

In its application, Ecojustice states that climate science misrepresentations are inherently harmful to the proper functioning of markets in Canada. “The confusion they sow makes low-carbon technologies less competitive and distorts capital investment toward high-carbon industries, risking a carbon bubble.”

The Competition Act gives the commissioner investigatory powers to examine witnesses and order the production of documents, such as lists of donors, to advance an inquiry. If the information gathered by the commissioner shows the act has been violated, the matter may be referred to the Attorney General of Canada for prosecution or civil proceedings before the courts.

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Thanks to a recent poll from ABC News and the Washington Post, we know that nearly two-thirds of American adults think global warming is “a serious problem facing the country.”

And now, thanks to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change (full study available at this link), we know exactly how many people are out there taking money from dirty energy interests to try and confuse Americans about climate changeto derail overdue action and protect the fossil fuel industries' profits.

Justin Farrell, a professor of sociology at Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the author of the report, studied both the institutional and social network structure of the climate denier movement and found that there are some 4,556 individuals with ties to 164 organizations that are involved in pushing anti-climate science views on the public.

“The individuals in this bipartite network include interlocking board members, as well as many more informal and overlapping social, political, economic and scientific ties,” Farrell wrote in the report. “The organizations include a complex network of think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, trade associations, and ad hoc groups.”

Farrell notes that while funding from ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have notoriously played a part in building the climate denial movement, there was very little empirical evidence demonstrating exactly how much influence these corporate benefactors had on the actual output of climate deniers and, in turn, how much they affected what politicians and other decisionmakers were saying about climate change.

So Farrell studied all of the written and verbal texts relating to climate change produced between 1993 and 2013 by climate denial organizations (40,785 documents comprising nearly 40 million words), as well as any mention of global warming and climate science by three major news channels (14,943 documents), every US president (1,930 documents) and the US Congress (7,786 documents).

He focused on Exxon and the Koch Brothers’ family foundations because, he writes, they are “reliable indicators of a much larger effort of corporate lobbying in the climate change counter-movement."

What Farrell found was that organizations taking funds from “elite” corporate funders of climate denial like Exxon and the Koch Brothers — groups like the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute — “have greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information” than other denial groups.

After performing a sophisticated semantic analysis, Farrell was able to show that climate denial organizations with ties to those two major funders were more successful at getting their viewpoint echoed in national news media. Presidential speeches and debate on the floor of Congress showed less of an impact.

According to Bloomberg, Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted similar research but was not involved in the Nature Climate Change study, said that Farrell’s findings beg a very obvious question:

"Why is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?”  

That is very similar to the questions posed by DeSmog's executive director Brendan DeMelle in his coverage of Justin Farrell's other recent study on this issue: Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media. DeMelle listed three questions for media outlets to ponder: 

Will this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation?

Will false balance — quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote — finally stop?

Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn’t published any longer?

Image credit: P.WOLMUTH/REPORT DIGITAL-REA/Redux

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about a Heartland Institute conference in Las Vegas where climate change deniers engaged in a failed attempt to poke holes in the massive body of scientific evidence for human-caused climate change. I quoted Bloomberg News: “Heartland's strategy seemed to be to throw many theories at the wall and see what stuck.”

A recent study came to a similar conclusion about contrarian “scientific” efforts to do the same. “Learning from mistakes in climate research,” published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, examined some of the tiny percentage of scientific papers that reject anthropogenic climate change, attempting to replicate their results.

In a Guardian article, co-author Dana Nuccitelli said their study found “no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming.” Instead, “Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on.”

Nuccitelli and fellow researchers Rasmus Benestad, Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland and John Cook note that about 97 per cent of experts worldwide agree on a cohesive, science-based theory of global warming, but those who don’t “are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.”

It’s astounding and tragic that, with all the evidence — from volumes of scientific research to the very real effects we are experiencing everywhere — some people stubbornly refuse to believe there’s a problem worth addressing. Sadder still: many of them are political leaders.

Part of the problem is that fossil fuel interests spend enormous amounts of money to sow doubt and confusion, often by funding or setting up organizations like the Heartland Institute in the U.S., the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the U.K., Ethical Oil and Friends of Science in Canada and the International Climate Science Coalition, based in this country but affiliated with similar organizations in Australia and New Zealand and with close ties to Heartland. A number of industry-funded websites also promote fossil fuels at the expense of human life, including Climate Depot and Watts Up With That?

These secretive organizations rarely reveal funding sources, prey on the uninformed and ignorant, and blanket the media with opinion articles, letters to editors and comments, often referring to misleading charts and graphs and bogus “studies” from organizations with names that imply they’re scientific when they’re anything but. They’re assisted by a compliant news media and politicians who also receive fossil fuel industry funding. It’s likely the people behind these organizations know they’re lying but care more about making money and preserving the lopsided benefits of a polluting sunset industry than finding ways to contribute to human health, well-being and survival.

Those who argue that seven billion people pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere aren’t having a serious negative impact are out to lunch.

Fortunately, most thinking people don’t buy the lies. People from all sectors and walks of life — religious, academic, business, political, activist, social justice and citizenry — are calling for an urgent response to the greatest threat humanity faces. From Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama to Islamic scholars and Hindu, Sikh and Jewish leaders; from Volvo, Ikea and Apple to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Health Organization; from every legitimate scientific academy and institution to enlightened political leaders — all have warned about the serious nature of global warming and the urgent need to do something about it.

Polls and marches, demonstrations and citizen initiatives show that people want action. Yet, despite this tremendous recognition of the reality of our situation, governments have failed to come up with a legally binding, ambitious and universal climate agreement, thanks in part to efforts by countries like Canada, Japan and Australia to stall or water down agreements at economic summits and UN climate conferences.

As world leaders prepare for the December UN climate meeting in Paris, Canadians must impress upon all those who hope to govern us after October 19 the importance of making a positive contribution. As voters, we have the power to make a difference in this critical conversation. Let’s exercise it.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

Brothers Charles and David Koch run Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company in the U.S., behind Cargill. They’ve given close to US$70 million to climate change denial front groups, some of which they helped start, including Americans for Prosperity, founded by David Koch and a major force behind the Tea Party movement.

Through their companies, the Kochs are the largest U.S. leaseholder in the Alberta oilsands. They’ve provided funding to Canada’s pro-oil Fraser Institute and are known to fuel the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, which claims a 1992 UN non-binding sustainable development proposal is a plot to remove property rights and other freedoms.

Researchers reveal they’re also behind many anti-transit initiatives in the U.S., in cities and states including Nashville, Indianapolis, Boston, Virginia, Florida and Los Angeles. They spend large amounts of money on campaigns to discredit climate science and the need to reduce greenhouse gases, and they fund sympathetic politicians.

In late January, 50 U.S. anti-government and pro-oil groups — including some tied to the Kochs and the pro-oil, pro-tobacco Heartland Institute — sent Congress a letter opposing a gas tax increase that would help fund public transit, in part because “Washington continues to spend federal dollars on projects that have nothing to do with roads like bike paths and transit.”

The letter says “transportation infrastructure has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” an argument similar to one used by opponents of the transportation plan Metro Vancouver residents are currently voting on. Vancouver’s anti-transit campaign is led by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation — a group that doesn’t reveal its funding sources and is on record as denying the existence of human-caused climate change — along with Hamish Marshall, a conservative strategist with ties to Ethical Oil.

American and Canadian transit opponents paint themselves as populist supporters of the common people, a tactic also used against carbon pricing. Marshall told Business in Vancouver, “I love the idea of working on a campaign where we can stand up for the little guy.” The U.S. letter claims the gas tax increase “would disproportionately hurt lower income Americans already hurt by trying times in our economy.” Both fail to note that poor and middle class families will benefit most from public transit and other sustainable transportation options.

Although many organizations that promote the fossil fuel industry and reject the need to address climate change — including the Heartland Institute, International Climate Science Coalition, Ethical Oil and Friends of Science — are secretive about their funding sources, a bit of digging often turns up oil, gas and coal money, often from the Kochs in the U.S. And most of their claims are easily debunked. In the case of the U.S. Heartland Institute, arguments stray into the absurd, like comparing climate researchers and those who accept the science to terrorists and murderers like the Unabomber and Charles Manson!

In some ways, it’s understandable why fossil fuel advocates would reject clean energy, conservation and sustainable transportation. Business people protect their interests — which isn’t necessarily bad. But anything that encourages people to drive less and conserve energy cuts into the fossil fuel industry’s massive profits. It’s unfortunate that greed trumps the ethical need to reduce pollution, limit climate change and conserve non-renewable resources.

It’s also poor economic strategy on a societal level. Besides contributing to pollution and global warming, fossil fuels are becoming increasingly difficult, dangerous and expensive to exploit as easily accessible sources are depleted — and markets are volatile, as we’ve recently seen. It’s crazy to go on wastefully burning these precious resources when they can be used more wisely, and when we have better options. Clean energy technology, transit improvements and conservation also create more jobs and economic activity and contribute to greater well-being and a more stable economy than fossil fuel industries.

To reduce pollution and address global warming, we must do everything we can, from conserving energy to shifting to cleaner energy sources. Improving transportation and transit infrastructure is one of the easiest ways to do so while providing more options for people to get around.

Those who profit from our continued reliance on fossil fuels will do what they can to convince us to stay on their expensive, destructive road. It’s up to all of us to help change course.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Canada ranks among the world’s countries least likely to agree that climate change is a result of human activity, according to recently released Ipsos MORI research. The study, “Global Trends 2014,” posed a number of survey questions to individuals in 20 countries and discovered agreement with climate science is lowest in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, Russia, Poland, Japan and Canada, respectively.

Agreement with climate science was highest in China, of all the countries surveyed, a fact that Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos MORI, attributes to high environmental concerns in China as a result of alarming environmental pollution in the country. “In many surveys in China, environment is top concern,” he said. “In contrast, in the west, it’s a long way down the list behind the economy and crime.”

Science and political journalist Chris Mooney, points out the survey results show an interesting correlation between climate denial or skepticism and speaking English.

He writes: “Not only is the United States clearly the worst in its climate denial, but Great Britain and Australia are second and third worst, respectively. Canada, meanwhile is the seventh worst. What do these four nations have in common? They all speak the language of Shakespeare.”

Mooney outlines two possible explanations for the pattern: political ideology and media ownership.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Sowing seeds of climate denial

A recent study published in Climatic Change showed the U.S. hosts a surprisingly high number of organizations that actively deny or dispute climate science.

This “climate change counter-movement” is comprised of 91 different groups including oil and gas-funded think tanks like the Heartland Institute (which hosts the world’s most established climate denial conference each year), astro-turf groups, and trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce.

In total, these groups bring in more than $900 million each year, some of which is used to cast doubt on the science of climate change.

Naomi Oreskes, history professor at Harvard and author of Merchants of Doubt, a book outlining the history, strategies and organizations behind climate denial, says denier groups are winning in the U.S. and beyond.

In her book, Oreskes made a strong connection between the individuals, groups and ideologies behind the attack on not only climate science, but also the research linking tobacco to cancer, pollution and acid rain and the role CFCs played in creating the ozone hole.

Even after ‘outing’ these groups and their tactics, Oreskes recently told The Guardian things haven’t really changed.

“There are some new faces on the horizon, but recruiting ‘fresh voices’ has been a tactic for a long time. So even the things that may look new are in fact old,” she said.

“The Heartland Institute has become more visible, and the George Marshall Institute a bit less, but the overall picture continues: these groups continue to dismiss or disparage the science, attack scientists, and sow doubt.”

“They continue to try to block action by confusing us about the facts. And the arguments, the tactics, and the overall strategy has remained the same. And, they’ve been extremely successful. CO2 has reached 400 ppm, meaningful action is still not in sight, and people who really understand the science – understand what is at stake – are getting worried.”

Recently in Canada, long-time skeptic group Friends of Science bought billboard space in Calgary to display posters claiming global warming is due to the sun, rather than human activity like deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels (as the majority of the world’s scientists agree).

As Oreskes points out, politicians have done the public a disservice by parroting climate skeptic lines, or linking back to anti-science organizations like the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation.

Last month the Prime Ministers of both Canada and Australia publicly announced their countries wouldn’t take steps to prevent climate change at any cost to the economy. Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Prime Minister Tony Abbott disparaged the carbon tax.

Weeks later, Abbott announced Australia would repeal the carbon tax.

Media does matter 

The media, as DeSmog Canada pointed out after Harper and Abbott’s meeting, is no help in the matter. Harper’s suggested conflict between the environment and economy, for example, was met with zero pushback in traditional Canadian media coverage.

And the English-speaking world, as Mooney points out, is at a particular disadvantage with major media outlets linked together by Rupert Murdoch, a media magnate with an apparent tendency towards climate skepticism.

Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia are all home to Murdoch-owned news outlets NewsCorp and 21st Century Fox.

Mooney writes:

In the US, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal lead the way; research shows that Fox watching increases distrust of climate scientists. (You can also catch Fox News in Canada.) In Australia, a recent study found that slightly under a third of climate-related articles in 10 top Australian newspapers "did not accept" the scientific consensus on climate change, and that News Corp papers—the Australian, the Herald Sun, and the Daily Telegraph—were particular hotbeds of skepticism. "The Australian represents climate science as matter of opinion or debate rather than as a field for inquiry and investigation like all scientific fields," noted the study.

And then there's the UK. A 2010 academic study found that while News Corp outlets in this country from 1997 to 2007 did not produce as much strident climate skepticism as did their counterparts in the US and Australia, "the Sun newspaper offered a place for scornful skeptics on its opinion pages as did The Times and Sunday Times to a lesser extent." (There are also other outlets in the UK, such as the Daily Mail, that feature plenty of skepticism but aren't owned by News Corp.)

Mistrust runs deeper than climate

Although Canada is among the surveyed nations least likely to agree climate change is the result of human activity, Canadians still expressed some concern over the environment.

Canadians largely agreed (79 per cent) that companies do not pay enough attention to the environment and agreed (66.9 per cent) that society at large needs to change its bad habits if we are to avoid evironmental disaster.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Yet Canadians along with many other nationalities expressed concern that governments are using environmental issues to raise taxes. Canadians were also basically split over the issue of whether scientists really even know what they’re talking about when it comes to the environment.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

And interestingly the majority of Canadians report being okay with the "fuss" being made about the environment. The only countries that did express this majority green-fatigue were Brazil, India and Poland.*

Ipsos MORI, Global Trends 2014.

The general problem of fatigue and mistrust is something scientists, policy-makers, environmental advocates and climate change communicators are growing more aware of.

Recent research from the Environics Institute shows the majority of Canadians, although convinced of man-made climate change, are not convinced governments will do anything about it. In this situation Canadians believe governments bear the responsibility for taking climate action but – for political or ideological reasons – will not. If Canada’s absence of climate legislation is any indicator, Canadians have every reason to retain their skepticism about the current federal government’s climate capabilities.

Without a government prepared to make meaningful progress when it comes to emissions and fossil fuel consumption, society really finds itself between a rock and a…hot place.

*An earlier version of this post stated the majority of Canadians were 'tired of the fuss' but has since been corrected.

Image Credit: Prime Minister Stephen Harper attends the Calgary Stampede from the Prime Minister of Canada press gallery.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.