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You have to wonder what happened to Tom Borelli. Here’s a guy who studied at the New York Medical College - who was smart enough and hard-working enough to get a PHD in biochemistry - and now he spends his time trying to hasten … not really the end of the world, but an end to human habitability.

Of course, poisoning humans, rather than saving them, appears to have been Borelli’s life work. He was a Philip Morris operative in the ’90s, proudly fighting for the rights of tobacco fans to blow smoke in the face of passing children - passing anybody, really. Now, as sometimes-DeSmogBlog contributor Kate Sheppard documents here, Borelli is gathering up oil money to finance an attack on any corporation that promotes responsible action on climate change.

Tom, we really hope you have a nice house. Because, according to Dante at least, in your next life, you will get a rather less fabulous choice of neighborhoods: either the Eighth and Ninth circle of hell (Fraud or Treachery).

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In his “exclusive” story, titled “Top Climate Scientist’s Exoneration Won’t Be the Last Word,” Fox News’ Ed Barnes suggests that the Penn State investigation that cleared Dr. Michael Mann of any wrong-doing was a “whitewash” designed to protect the “millions of dollars in grant money it gets by having Mann on the faculty.”

Barnes claims that Penn State’s decision to exonerate Mann generated “a storm of controversy” and “came under severe attack.”  Reading his inflammatory language, you might think that a whole lot of academics and scientists ridiculed the inquiry.  Who is this angry mob that generated such a “storm of controversy?” 

Actually, the Barnes storm is comprised of only three people - a mining executive, the wealthiest member of Congress, and a former FoxNews.com columnist.

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In the days and weeks following the theft of climate scientists’ emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in November, climate change skeptics and deniers flooded the blogosphere and mainstream press with reactions suggesting that the ‘scandal’ had proven global warming was a myth. 

In many instances, the reactions sounded like a choreographed choir singing from the same sheet of talking points, or at least the same sheet of of well-worn memes and cliches, like ‘smoking gun’ and ‘final nail in the coffin.’

The Desmog team took a look at several unique phrases that flew around the denier echo chamber in the aftermath of the CRU email hack, and how those memes were often adopted by the mainstream media as a result.  Here is a sampling of what we identified:

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” … that’s all he is and all he can be.”

The amazing thing about Esquire’s brilliantly written new profile on Marc Morano is that Morano himself probably loves it.

Per the quote above, Esquire writer John Richardson calls Morano a “turd in the punch bowl.” He calls him a liar, referring to “the method Morano loves best, using the laugh value of satire to displace the truth requirements of journalism.”

Yet Esquire still gives Morano 6,500 words of love and attention (the two are one and the same in Morano’s denier circles). The magazine even introduces him in the subhed as the guy who “broke the Swift Boat story and effectively stalled John Kerry’s presidential run.” (C’mon, you guys. He didn’t “break” it. He made it up.)

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George Monbiot’s ‘Top Ten Climate Change Deniers’ reads like a keynote speaker wishlist from the Heartland Institute. Enjoy!