Who is the Bernie Madoff of Climate Change?

onNov 5, 2009 @ 00:39 PST

DeSmog co-founder James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore have been taking to the airwaves regularly over the last few weeks to tackle recent news stories and promote Climate Cover-Up.

On Monday, Jim was interviewed by Josepha Planta of www.thecommentary.ca – you can listen to the interview here.

On Tuesday, Jim and Richard were featured on Thom Hartmann’s Midday show on WYPR – one of the most listened-to progressive talk shows in America. Also featured during the same show was notorious (and widely discredited) climate denier Fred Singer. Singer’s argument of the day, as far as we could tell, was that the fact that it was a nice day meant climate change was not real.

Dr. Cindy Parker, Co-Director of the Program on Global Sustainability and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was another guest. She put the perspective of real, credible, and up-to-date climate scientists well:

“I am uncomfortable with the fact that radio talk shows such as this continue to give Dr. Singer airtime to present his views as if they were science and as if there was still some scientific debate…because there isn’t any scientific debate. 2500 scientists from around the world versus Dr. Fred Singer – that’s not a reasonable debate.”

As Jim put it “Asking Fred Singer for advice on climate change is like asking Bernie Madoff to manage your money.” Touché.

You can listen to that show in full here.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.