Astroturf. It’s not just for smoking anymore
October 9, 2009
Quiz time.
Astroturf is:
A) A type of artificial playing surface that looks or feels nothing like real grass.
B) A particularly potent strain of marijuana.
C) A cynical professionally run public relations campaign designed to appear as though it’s a grass-roots movement — kind of like what Fox News did with their orchestrated teabagger parties.
If you guessed all of the above, go to the head of the class.
If you didn’t guess C), then you need to read the new book on “astroturfing” by our friends over DeSmogBlog.
Written by 35-year PR veteran Jim Hoggan, Climate Cover Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming shows how slimy PR firms have been creating fake grassroots campaigns and bankrolling third-party groups to attack climate change science, keep the oil flowing and basically undermine democracy.
We’ve written before about people like Marc Morano, former lackey of Sen. James Inhoffe, R-Big Oil, who now runs Climatedepot.com, a climate-change denier website.
We’ve also written about Jim Sims of the benignly named Western Business Roundtable, which purports to be an organization of CEOs around the West, but which is really just a slick front for the oil and gas industry.
These guys will do almost anything to get people to believe that global warming is a hoax so that their own oil money spigot never gets turned off.
If you want to read Hoggan’s book, we’d suggest you check you local non-chain bookstore. In the meantime, here’s a video to whet your appetite.
In the meantime, if you can’t find a copy, we’ll give you a chance to win one.
Since we started with a quiz, we’ll end with one, courtesy of the folks at DeSmogblog. First one to answer all three questions in the comment section wins:
Q: The American Petroleum Institute increased its lobbying budget by what percent in the second quarter of 2009, relative to 2008?
A:
Q: How many lobbyists representing the Oil and Gas industry were registered in the US in 2008?
Q: What percent of American energy demand is filled by renewable energy sources?
A:
Post your answers in the comment section before Oct. 15, and we’ll mail you your copy.
– John D’Anna
October 15, 2009 at 7:59 am
[...] and read their research. We don’t pretend to know everything, but we’ve seen enough disinformation and hidden financial motives from the deniers to set our B.S. detectors to DefCon [...]
October 30, 2009 at 2:21 pm
[...] Astroturf. It’s not just for smoking anymore [...]