Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by Richard Littlemore James Hoggan Read Free Book Online

things that they could not get printed in the peer-reviewed scientific press. And they were taking advantage of mainstream journalists’ willingness—even eagerness—to feature contrarian and controversial science stories, regardless of whether the controversy was actually occurring in reputable scientific publications.
    The next example of a transparent effort to manipulate public opinion on a range of issues, including climate change, started out as a project of the tobacco giant Philip Morris. Big Tobacco had been playing this game since the days of Bernays, at first trying to surround cigarettes with a patina of glamor and then wrapping the death sticks in a cocoon of doubt. It began with the founding of the Tobacco Institute in the 1950s and specifically with the creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, later the Council for Tobacco Research. The Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research were both tireless in funding and promoting any research that would cast doubt on the health effects of smoking. There is a great scene in the 2005 movie Thank You for Smoking in which the main character, Nick Naylor (played by Aaron Eckhart), talks admiringly about a cigarette industry scientist who had done research on tobacco for thirty years without finding a link to cancer. About which Naylor says, sardonically, “The man’s a genius.”
    From the emergence of the tobacco lobby in the 1950s until the tobacco companies started losing huge health-related lawsuits in the 1990s, the tobacco industry’s message was admirable for its consistency: the link to cancer (and, later, the cancer link to secondhand smoke) was not “proven.” Tobacco defenders said the alleged link was based on epidemiological studies that established a correlation but couldn’t prove cause and effect beyond a reasonable doubt. They also made arguments that seemed calculated to distract people from the actual issue. They said that lots of things caused cancer, so it was unreasonable to try to pin all lung cancer deaths on tobacco or to pick on cigarettes and not deal with all the other causes at the same time. And they criticized as zealots anyone who tried to educate or legislate against tobacco use, saying that the health advocates, government bureaucrats, or responsible politicians were creating a nanny state that would interfere with people’s rights.
    This was a highly effective mixed-message strategy. The smoky executives knew they were never going to win the health argument, so they muddied the scientific waters and tried to reposition the debate to be about free choice. According to a document obtained by the organization TobaccoFreedom .org, 2 the executives even co-opted the American Civil Liberties Union, providing big donations to the ACLU in return for its support in recasting smoking as a matter of freedom and individual choice.
    Still, by the late 1980s the public had grown tired of tobacco industry “geniuses” telling them smoking was harmless, and skeptical of tobacco company employees or institute “experts” fighting against increasingly popular smoking restrictions. So Philip Morris opened up two new fronts. First, working with the public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, Philip Morris financed the creation of the National Smokers Alliance, a purported grassroots association that mustered smokers together to fight for their “rights.”
    From a tactical standpoint this was a brilliant strategy. True grassroots organizations are one of the great expressions of democracy. In them, theoretically at least, you have a group of independent citizens bound together in common interest rising up and demanding to be heard. Reporters have grown appropriately cynical of corporate manipulation, and they are generally suspicious of established interest groups, from environmentalists to consumer advocates, who have made what appears to be common cause with government regulators. They find it refreshing to see an