Gore Condemns Dirty Industry PR Tactics that Sow Doubt on Global Warming

Al GoreAlmost two years ago, former health insurance PR executive Wendell Potter published his tell-all book, Deadly Spin, about the deceptive media campaigns and PR trickery the health insurance industry uses to beat back meaningful health care reform in the U.S. Potter pointed out the striking similarities between the insurers' tactics and those the tobacco industry applied for decades to delay regulation and confuse people about the health hazards of smoking and secondhand smoke. These manipulative PR tactics held off meaningful tobacco regulation for over 40 years, and also proved highly successful for the insurance industry, which used the same strategies to defeat true health care reform. Now Al Gore is pointing out that the energy, steel and utility industries are applying those same, tricky and time-worn PR strategies to confuse people about global warming and delay efforts to address it.

Companies pay networks of pseudoscientists to create arguments supporting their viewpoint and finance multi-million dollar advertising and PR campaigns that ruthlessly attack the massive body of research concluding global warming is real and threatens our civilization. Gore says people constantly wash industry-created arguments back at him "over and over and over again," and accuses corporate executives of putting profits above the well-being of society. Corporations pour huge sums of money into sowing doubt about highly conclusive scientific research to protect their bottom line, and it works, over and over again. It's time for people to understand those strategies and push back against them. 

Comments

PRWatch should take a close look at the PR tactics of the AGW crowd. They do a great disservice for anybody serious about understanding the impact of C02 driven climate change. Ever recall a movement so apt to fritter away its privilege of mainstream acceptance simply by the way they respond to adverse information?

http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com/2011/08/environmental-group-uses-racism-to.html

East Anglia's CRU hired a PR firm shortly after their emails were accessed or hacked and released to the public. This is an unusual move by an organization who's science should hold up to public scrutiny on its own.

Look at the "Blue Ribbon Panels" used to exonerate the scientists involved with the email scandal. Look familiar? 3rd party technique - the same type of panel used to exonerate researchers involved with G.D. Searle, aspartame, and the Bressler Report.

Primary question: Why do they insist on using the data called into question by the email scandal? Instead of polishing the turd that is East Anglia, why not walk away from the stench and renew the study, sans Mann and company?

If PRWatch is serious about examining how the public is duped by PR, AGW PR should not escape scrutiny.

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-08-11-how-we-know-were-causing-global-warming-in-one-handy-graphic

Half of the posts in the link I previous provided address discrepancies in the assertions put forth in the cheesy Grist graphic. Perhaps they should consult with East Anglia's PR firm.

Instead of thumping your chest and definitively declaring that your "scientific consensus" is correct, take a look at what's going on.

Address the issues -

Why the PR firm?

Why continuing to cover for East Anglia? Is that all you got?

Why are contradictory studies refused peer review?

Why are scientists pushing for censorship at the BBC?

Why the refusal to share data?

Why do AGW proponents refuse debates?

This is not the behavior of a group with the truth on their side.

I agree with you, interceptmedia. Another problem that PR Watch is politely overlooking is how industry is also piling in on the Green Revolution lobbying - to ensure subsidies for eco-disasters like biofuels, the smart grid (all of those nice new gadgets IBM and GE can sell us), electric cars and solar panels (that consume so much more CO2 to make than they will ever save)- there is an environmental-industrial complex that is lobbying hard and controlling subsidies and legislation far more than Koch or Exxon (Toyota funds more research than Exxon - to prove that climate change is man-made!). PR Watch is following ideology rather than integrity. Expected, but still disappointing.

Indeed, as we ordinary citizens are made confused about different PR tactics on CO2 emissions relevant to global warming, companies do not realized that they can make us fool. Of course, we understand where and who contributes much in CO2 emission. All we pray is to make themselves realize that we on the same planet, whatever one does affects another. And worst even those who are about to come out to this world... our so called future generations. Stop those PR tactics, be transparent and sympathetic. Al Gore has all his point about his advocacy and I support him too.

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