Lawrence Solomon, the National Post’s champion of imagined climate change Deniers complained in a weekend column that Anna Maria Tremonti, host of the CBC radio show, The Current, was too hard on him and too soft on me in a series of interviews last week.

In this, Solomon reminds me of some PR clients I have had over the years, people who, in the midst of a problem of their own making complain about the questions reporters ask rather than accepting that they looked bad because they didn’t have good answers.

Solomon’s in a tough spot because nobody could gracefully answer the questions he was asked.

He wants to say that climate change isn’t happening, even when an overwhelming majority of the world’s best scientists say otherwise. He wants to call people like the UK astrophysicist Nigel Weiss “deniers,” when they respond that his work is a “slanderous fabrication.” And when Tremonti challenges him on these assertions, he blames her for treating him roughly.

Solomon should understand: all questions are hardball when you don’t know – or can’t stomach – the answers.

As for answers, Solomon demanded some from me in that same weekend column. He posed a series of questions that he wished Tremonti had asked, actually going so far as to attribute them to her in his presentation.

I have repeated the questions here verbatim, though I have replaced her name with his. Tremonti is too good and impartial reporter to have made the minor blunders or major ideological assumptions characterized in these questions. My answers follow.

Climate Change itself, however, is as bad as ever

The National Post's Denier-in-Chief Lawrence Solomon has weighed in again with an irrelevant and inaccurate celebration that, in the U.S. at least, people are becoming LESS concerned about climate change.

Of course, Solomon didn't offer any actual evidence for this contention, other than vague references to unspecified public opinion polls. His strongest source was this: "Andrew Revkin, The New York Times reporter entrusted with the global warming scare beat, has for months lamented “the public’s waning interest in global warming."

As for actual climate change science - apparently of little interest to Solomon or his readers - he offered no sources whatever. Instead, he repeated the denier talking points ("Not only has the globe not warmed over the last decade but the Arctic ice is returning, the Antarctic isn’t shrinking, polar bear populations aren’t diminishing, hurricanes aren’t becoming more extreme."), ignoring such actual evidence as the new Nature article warning that Antarctic ice is, in fact, declining at historic rates, or the latest warning from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Speaker

Trading on His Fraudulent Book Title

Self-described "environmentalist" Lawrence Solomon has become the toast of the oil-industry-backed climate change denier community ever since the spring 2008 release of his book, The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (and those who are too fearful to do so).

The problem, then and still, is that nobody in Solomon's overheated text actually denies that humans are causing climate change. He admits as much on Page 45 of his book, saying:

"As these rather dramatic reversals for the doomsday view mounted, however, I also noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers.

"None of them were deniers."

Lorne Gunter, part of the National Post climate change denier team (see also Terry Corcoran, Larry Solomon), has revived the fraudulent claim that advancing world glaciers demonstrate an end to climate change.

Gunter claimed in a National Post opinion piece on Monday that "worldwide, there are nearly half as many glaciers advancing as retreating." And other, unsuspecting or conspiratorial papers under the wing of Canada's largest news conglomerate (CanWest Global) have been picking the story up through the week. (See Vancouver Sun)

But the claim - unsourced in Gunter's article - appears to be purest fiction.

"... the Alberta government's assumption that humans are responsible for global warming might be on the verge of being downgraded, revised or even discredited."

Mark Milke, National Post, July 16, 2008

Equally, we might be on the verge of discovering evidence of an intelligent underground dinosaur culture living on Mars - but I don't think so.

Lawrence Solomon - he of the imaginary legion of top scientists who deny climate change - has launched an attack on the credibility of Wikipedia, complaining especially that Wiki has the temerity to acknowledge climate change and to censor unfounded counter arguments.

Unfortunately, Solomon pegs his own case to the reputation of the notoriously unreliable Benny Peiser, leaving the Wiki editors looking admirably clever.