Local Regina publication, Prairie Dog Magazine, is laying down the gauntlet by asking climate change skeptics to record their doubts on paper.

The magazine has created a declaration that outlines various scenarios for rejecting scientific consensus and has mailed it to several public figures who have openly expressed skepticism on the issue of global warming, including Stephen Harper, Margaret Wente, Rex Murphy, Tim Ball and Ross McKitrick amongst others. 

The plan to check in with the skeptics in 10 years is all about "accountability" and the magazine states that should they be wrong they will give credit where credit is due. And if they're right.....it's a sad bet to win.

The Post gets one right;

the Globe chooses cowardice over context

Two recent newspaper pieces throw a peculiarly Canadian slant on the scandalously unprofessional job that many in mainstream media have been doing in covering climate change.

The most shocking - and wonderful - contribution came last week from the National Post, the home of some of Canada's silliest and most beligerent climate change deniers, including Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, Lawrence Solomon and Rex Murphy. In an excellent critique of blindly ideological climate change denial, Post Comment Pages Editor Jonathan Kay says flatly that, Global-warming deniers are a liability to the conservative cause. Kay then dismantles several laughable positions championed by journalists he does not name - but whom he will now have to avoid in the Post lunchroom.

The second article appeared last Saturday in the Globe, under the heading: The Endless Summer. Noting that it's "the hottest year in recorded history, the Globe offers 659 mostly well-researched words on the details of our planetary fever without once mentioning the phrases "climate change" or "global warming." At one point, the writers, Anna Mehler Paperny and Patrick White, say, "International climate experts are at a loss to explain why these local phenomena are happening all at once."

Really?

This a piece I wrote last week on Huffington Post, don't know why I didn't cross-post here on DeSmog.

When former US President Bill Clinton went for an "unofficial" visit to North Korea to negotiate the release of two imprisoned American journalists he asked John Podesta to accompany him.

When current US President Barack Obama needed someone to head his transition into the role of president, it was John Podesta who he asked.

In other words, John Podesta is a very powerful man when it comes to US politics and while he does not speak on behalf of the Obama administration in an official capacity - he runs a major think tank called the Center for American Progress - his public statements on policy are something to pay attention to.

In what has become an annual non-event, the Heartland Institute will gather the who's-who of the global warming denial network together in Chicago this weekend for the fourth International Conference on Climate Change. 

As in years past, the event is expected to receive very little mainstream media coverage.  The deniers like to think the reason is some liberal media conspiracy.  In reality, the lack of interest stems chiefly from the fact that this denial-a-palooza fest is dripping with oil money and represents a blatant industry effort to greenwash oil and coal while simultaneously attacking the credibility of climate scientists.

Despite the lack of press interest, the show must go on.  After all, the Chicago meet-up will provide deniers and industry front groups a chance to coordinate their ongoing efforts to smear the reputation of the IPCC, and they can reminisce about the Climategate non-scandal like boys in the schoolyard kicking around a rusty old can.

For insight into the underlying aim of the Chicago denier conference, let us take a look at the funding sources for the sponsoring organizations.

The recently launched Astroturf platform AlbertaIsEnergy.ca is yet another faulty step by the captains of the Alberta oil and gas industry – people more interested in ill-advised public relations campaigns than in coming to grips with the challenges facing their industry.

AlbertaIsEnergy.ca is the website and foundational platform of a new PR push, launched last week by a group of industry associations closely tied to Alberta oil and gas. The campaign was launched with a Calgary Chamber of Commerce speech by Dave Collyer, the President of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).

Let me concede this right off the bat: the executives who control CAPP have every right to launch PR campaigns. They have a responsibility to their members – even to their members shareholders and employees – to make their point of view known in the community. But they also have a responsibility to do so in a transparent and forthright fashion.

Canada's libertarian think-tank, the Fraser Institute, has a knack for providing excellent PR and advocacy services for the oil industry in Canada.  That might be because they practically are the oil industry. 

Out of 47 directors, 9 can be clearly linked to the oil, gas and coal industries.  Since Canadian oil companies extract dirty tar sands, which have a much larger environmental impact and carbon footprint than run-of-the-mill dirty oil, the industry relies on top-notch spin to massage its image in the public eye.