Free Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by Richard Littlemore James Hoggan Page B

need unbiased polling and good press coverage. 8
    Nowhere in any of this material does Harris say that we need good science. The kind of articles that Vincent Gray is writing these days don’t turn up in the reputable pages of Science or Nature. They appear on the opinion pages of middle-market newspapers, whence they are photocopied and submitted to other middle-market newspapers, as Harris says, “all over North America and Europe.” And if one of those newspapers actually runs the article again, Harris has his “grassroots” legions follow up with flattering phone calls and congratulatory letters.
    We are left, then, with a trail of misdirection. It began with an organization (the Friends of Science) whose principals admitted they were trying to cover up their funding sources. It transformed into a second organization that was clumsy enough to allow its sources to be exposed. And that transformed into a new and more international organization that is not directly subject to Canadian or American laws demanding financial disclosure. Then again, transparency has never been the order of the day. After the University of Calgary audit showing the adventures of Professor Barry Cooper—the transparent attempt to hide the source of oil-and-gas industry funding—no one paid a price. No taxes were recaptured from people who had received tax receipts to which they were not legally entitled. No wrists were slapped. The University changed some of its internal processes, but the government of Canada dropped its investigations without prosecuting or imposing tax penalties.
    The Friends of Science also dodged a bullet on their campaign activities. Having solicited money and targeted swing ridings for a radio advertising campaign during the 2006 Canadian federal election, after stating publicly that its purpose was “to have a major impact on the next election,” 9 the Friends of Science were absolved of responsibility by Elections Canada. Without explanation, and certainly with no mention of the relationship between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Barry Cooper—the federal regulatory agency announced that it was dropping its investigation and planned no further action, even though on the face of it, the Friends’ activities were apparently designed to affect a federal election in a way that is specifically proscribed in law. 10
    Thus we have a series of “grassroots” organizations whose actual roots appear to track directly to the fossil fuel industry. We also have a continuing campaign, first outlined so clearly in the Western Fuels Association, TASSC, and API strategy documents, to sow doubt and confusion—to raise questions about science in the public mind without ever actually embracing or referencing the work of leading scientists in the field. Once again, if doubt reigns in the minds of the public, it appears to be anything but accidental.

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MANGLING THE LANGUAGE
Making doubt reliable and science unbelievable
    Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
    GEORGE ORWELL, “ POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE”
    T here must have been people before George Orwell who recognized and deplored the use of language to hide meaning— to divert, deceive, or confuse rather than to illuminate. But when Orwell wrote the words above in 1946, he identified a tactic that offended both his thirst for clarity and his