Climate PR effort heats up - POLITICO.com Print View

"Folks are enraged about this, rightly so, and are looking for ways to educate," said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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Despite mounting evidence that the greenhouse gas buildup in the Earth's atmosphere is causing runaway changes to the climate – NASA this month declared 2010 the hottest year on record – several pollsters say the American public isn't listening.
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Enter the next phase of the climate education campaign.
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Expecting a surge next year in Republican-led House hearings on global warming science, the Union of Concerned Scientists sent experts out earlier this month to Washington and New York for meetings with reporters from 60 Minutes, Time, USA Today, Reuters, Bloomberg, MSNBC and other news organizations. Frumhoff said the journalists “were keenly interested in understanding how casting doubt about mainstream scientific findings that upset powerful financial interests, from the health risks of tobacco to the reality and risks of global warming, is a tactic that has been used time and again to delay or avoid regulation.”

UCS has also been leading [orchestrated, well-funded?] behind-the-scenes efforts to get its scientists on television, radio and in print stories, as well as in front of Rotary clubs and editorial boards.
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Lieberman said he thinks there's a need for more TV and radio commercials that capture the most eye-catching images. “Just show people what's happening," he said. "Show them satellite pictures of the ice caps.”
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"No matter what they do, whether it means being more articulate or anything else, they're fighting a losing battle because the science is cooked," Inhofe told POLITICO. "The trouble is they're not trying to educate the public. They're trying to influence the public."
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"The problem is that we now have people create their own set of realities and then debate that," said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.). "If I said the world is round, and there's substantial evidence to believe that, and someone else said the world is flat, the report is there's a dispute on the shape of the world. Well, there's not a dispute at all."

"It's easier to discredit something than it is to build the case for it too often," added Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). "That's why these guys are so good about lying about stuff."