James Hoggan, the director of the James Hoggan & Associates public relations firm, has authored a book titled Climate Cover Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, in which he describes PR techniques that industry groups use to create the impression of a scientific controversy about climate change. Industries set up front groups, Hoggan says, like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which tried to convince Americans in electoral swing states that coal is clean. Front groups like Americans for Prosperity, which organized the disruptive August, 2009 town hall meeting protests, started out by paying for protesters. Hoggan reports seeing documents that show PR firms charged $1800 per protester. "Companies can buy protesters, and if you are clever with your framing of the issue, these paid protesters attract real protesters," Hoggan explains. His book also reveals the strategy of framing global warming as a United Nations scheme, or a scam by international scientists, to appeal to people who "don't like being told what to do by the UN or some foreigners." The most powerful tools used to manipulate public opinion, Hoggan says, are focus groups, which help PR companies understand how people think on certain issues. Another is the creation of "echo chambers," that involve generating favorable news reports that are repeated over and over by media outlets until the public finally starts repeating it back. "Get Dick Cheney and George Bush and Fox News and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to talk and then just keep repeating what they say -- 'the science is not settled, the science is not settled, the science is not settled' -- until the public starts repeating it back. It’s a frightening phenomenon," Hogan says.

by Lisa Graves

Check out Johann Hari's review of James Hansen's terrific new book, "Storms of My Grandchildren." Both describe the Bush Administration's efforts to distort public opinion about global warming and climate change through hiring flacks and hacks from coal to suppress science and truth. You've read the dry versions of the story in news clips, but the book itself is so thoughtfully and powerfully written, it's definitely worth picking it up at your local bookstore.

Hari's take is insightful and crisp: "[N]otoriously, the second Bush administration started to appoint former employees of Big Coal to run NASA's communications. They blocked press releases warning about global warming and tried to stop Hansen from giving interviews. One of the appointees explained his job was to "make the President look good." When Hansen argued back, they cut his research budget by 20 percent. Hansen said he had a duty to speak out because the first line of NASA's mission statement is a pledge "to understand and protect our home planet"—so the Bush appointees deleted the commitment. Yes: They erased the commitment to protect planet Earth. (An independent investigation by the Inspector General later confirmed all this.) Most scientists would have backed down or given up. Hansen didn't—and from his prickly prose, you can tell why."

Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that the chief constable of Kent police, Mike Fuller, lobbied the power generation company E.ON UK to seek injunctions to counter protests against the proposed Kingsnorth power station. In a letter to the head of security at E.ON, Fuller wrote that he was "surprised" that the company had not used injunctions to "restrain" protesters and urged the company to initiate legal action "in advance of protests, where possible, and if not as soon as possible after" they start. "My concern was that E.ON should improve their own site security, which if neglected could cause unnecessary costs for the policing of protests, not that individuals who wished to protest should be prevented from doing so," Fuller told the Guardian. However, in an earlier report the Guardian had revealed that the police had also lobbied "the local council to assist with automatic number plate recognition cameras to track protesters. When the council voiced objections, officials were told that senior officers were 'less than impressed, given the importance of this operation as the new power station build is likely to create a considerable number of jobs'."

Juliet Eilperin reports that "two Washington lobbyists, Jeffrey R. Holmstead and Roger R. Martella, Jr., helped craft" the original version of an amendment proposed by Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski which would "bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act." Holmstead, who heads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell & Giuliani, confirmed that last September he worked with Murkowski's staff on the wording of the amendment. Both Holmstead and a Murkowski aide confirmed that Martella, a partner at Sidley Austin, also worked on crafting the amendments. Holmstead's client list on climate issues includes Southern Company, Duke Energy, Progress Energy and the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council on climate matters while Martella is the registered lobbyist for the National Alliance of Forest Owners and the Alliance of Food Associations on the same subject. Brendan Demelle notes on DeSmog Blog that Murkowski "has received $470,000 in campaign contributions from dirty energy and mining interests since 2005, according to the Center for Responsive Politics."

McGuireWoods Consulting, a Chicago-based PR and lobbying firm, has been hired by the FutureGen Alliance to lobby Illinois legislators to financially support FutureGen, a proposed coal-fired power station which would use the experimental Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. (CCS is often touted as "clean coal".) "Their task," writes Kurt Erickson, is "to convince the state to buy all the electricity the plant produces. Such a move would help FutureGen secure federal funding" to underwrite the plant's costs. While proposed legislation mandating the purchase of electricity from the plant has won support from an Illinois Senate committee, others have been wary as "FutureGen has not been able to say exactly how much taxpayers would be charged." Working on the account at McGuireWoods Consulting are Tom Londrigan, a former attorney during the first term of former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s and Kyle Barry, a former attorney for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

Two years after Rupert Murdoch won control of the Wall Street Journal, the paper's news pages have shifted to the right under the combined influence of Robert Thomson, the editor, and his deputy editor, Gerard Baker. David Carr writes in the New York Times that Thomson and Baker have shaped the paper's Washington coverage, "adopting a more conservative tone, and editing and headlining articles to reflect a chronic skepticism of the current administration." Carr writes that Baker, "a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride." As the Center for Media and Democracy recently discussed the Wall Street Journal has become the "top" U.S. paper in circulation.