A little taste of Inhofe's Committee of Misinformation

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It is an early Christmas gift indeed to be writing on what will most likely be Sen. Jim Inhofe’s last kick at the climate change misinformation can. Tomorrow morning, the Committee for Public Works and the Environment will hear testimony on the media’s reporting on the issue of climate change. Thanks to DeSmog’s vast information network and army of DeSmog Detectives, we have received advanced copies of the all of the testimony, but I think we’ll just give you a teaser today.

Attached is the testimony of Dan Gainor who has absolutely no background in climate change and boasts a Master’s Degree in Production Design. Mr. Gainor is a staffer at the Business and Media Institute, a subsidiary mouthpiece of the ExxonMobil funded Media Research Centre.

The introductory paragraph sets the tone for Gainor’s unsubstantiated rant on the unfair treatment fringe scientists get from the media:

“Thank you Mr. Chairman, Senators, ladies and gentlemen. We’re here to discuss the media coverage of the climate change debate. But there’s only one problem, there is almost none of that debate actually in the media.”

Of course, Gainor is compeletely incorrect according to this 2004 study by actual, real live researchers (attached), who found that, “of 636 stories published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal between 1988 and 2002. They found that 53 percent of these articles “gave roughly equal attention to the views that humans contribute to global warming and that climate change is exclusively the result of natural fluctuations.”

The rest of Gainor’s testimony pretty much speaks for itself. Same old song and dance, and hopefully the last for Gainor and his ilk in front of the Senate Committee on the Environment.

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Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmogBlog.

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 DeSmogBlog, 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.

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