Causes to Celebrate: DeSmog

One of my favorite sites about climate disinformation is called DeSmog.  I found them a few years ago when I was looking into the idea of climate change and trying to learn more about it; so that, I could hold my own in a discussion (or argument.)  The articles produced by their team and their Global Warming Disinformation Database are incredibly well-written and well-researched.  But like many sites of this sort, much of it is done by independent journalists who likely work elsewhere but are passionate about protecting the environment and calling out lies and misinformation when they see it.

Based in Seattle, WA, the site was started in 2006 and has since won numerous awards for its reporting.  Their findings and research have also featured prominently in other national publications, and they've helped several major news networks create compelling stories that highlight the problems with climate change denial.  Here is their stated mission taken from their About page:

DeSmog exists to clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change.

An overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the globe is warming — the world's climate is changing — and that the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels is to blame. We know that the risks are incalculable and, increasingly, we understand that the solutions are affordable.

Unfortunately, a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign is poisoning the climate change debate. Using tricks and stunts that unsavory PR firms invented for the tobacco lobby, energy-industry contrarians are trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits. DeSmog is here to cry foul — to shine the light on techniques and tactics that reflect badly on the PR industry and are, ultimately, bad for the planet.

But perhaps their most valuable resource for learning about those involved with perpetuating climate disinformation is their Global Warming Disinformation Database.  It links various organizations, clubs, and companies to those that support them, following the money trail to shine a light on where there are obvious conflicts of interest.  It also lists the names of prominent men and women who are being paid to perpetuate lies or promote bad science regarding the climate--some of them scientists themselves, but many of them just simply part of the grift that surrounds the energy industry.

More than a few times as I was reading an article that sought to deny climate change, I've gone and looked up the organization or person promoting it only to find that the money trail leads back to companies or individuals who benefit from that continued denial.  And at this point, if that isn't willing to make people skeptical, I really don't know what else to do or say that will change their minds.

Save, of course, to simply promote this site.  If you're skeptical of climate change, global warming, and the science of climatology, I ask only that you take some time to look over the work that is being done at DeSmog and judge for yourself whether they're simply making all of this up, or, as these journalists and scientists assert, that this is yet another move by big corporations and PR firms and lobbyists to maintain the status quo for their own profit and benefit.

I firmly believe in the work that the people of DeSmog are doing, and I feel that their work is intended to inform and ensure a better tomorrow for all the people of this world.  And that is why, today, I am happy to name DeSmog a cause worth celebrating.