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Guardian columnist George Monbiot steps out with a great analysis of internet-based astroturfing and the very effective way that it disrupts the public conversation about important (and economically momentous) issues.

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Citizens from around the world will convene in Copenhagen next week for the COP15 U.N. climate conference, ready to voice their frustration at the slow pace of global action to address climate change. Friends of the Earth International recently launched ‘The Angry Mermaid Award,’ inviting everyone to vote for the worst corporate lobbyists who are primarily responsible for obstructing progress toward a global agreement.

Copenhagen is home to The Little Mermaid statue, a Danish landmark honoring Hans Christian Andersen’s famous fairy tale character. In Andersen’s tale, the Little Mermaid saves the life of a shipwrecked prince and then risks her voice and tail to win his love. If the prince chooses another bride, she is destined to turn into sea foam and disappear forever.

The Angry Mermaid Award is designed to shine a spotlight on the worst industry lobbyists whose actions have done the most to cripple international action on climate change, a delay which now risks unleashing climate chaos. In this real life story, it won’t be a fictional mermaid who disappears beneath the sea forever - it will be low-lying island nations like the Maldives. 

Lobbyists for polluting industries have worked tirelessly to block effective action, while also seeking every possible way for their corporate clients to benefit from any agreement the nations of the world manage to reach eventually.

Cast your vote in the Angry Mermaid Award today and help decide which company or lobby group is doing the most to sabotage effective action on climate change.

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With characteristic attention to the facts, Dennis Avery, Monsanto’s man in the organic food debate, killed both climate change and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a post yesterday on his Centre for Global Food Issues website.

“Consensus on man-made warming is shattering,” Avery announced, basing this wild-eyed overstatement on last week’s story that:

Physics & Society, The journal of the 46,000-member American Physical Societ, just published “Climate Sensitivity Revisited,” by Viscount Christopher Monckton. Monckton is an avowed man-made warming skeptic, and former science advisor to the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. (My emphasis.)

This whole story is afloat in hogwash, a fact that APS President Arthur Bienenstock has been at pains to point out.