Climate skeptics are, not surprisingly, hitting the European speaking circuit in the weeks leading up to the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. But what is surprising is that notorious global warming denier S. Fred Singer was described at a skeptic conference today as a Nobel prize winner, a flat out lie.

According to a Belgian journalist who alerted DeSmog to Singer’s appearance today at a skeptic conference in the European Parliament building, Singer was described in event materials as:

The idea that Fred Singer shares any part in the IPCC/Gore Nobel prize is laughable, of course.  Other than Mr. Gore, the Nobel committee recognized only the IPCC authors, and they all received framed Nobel certificates.  If Singer can produce a framed Nobel, I’ll produce my Olympic gold medal (Singer must eat cereal too, I sure enjoy the prizes inside, although I've never seen a Nobel peace prize before).

Updated: June 15, 2009

There is a line between public relations and propaganda - or there should be. And there is a difference between using your skills, in good faith, to help rescue a battered reputation and using them to twist the truth - to sow confusion and doubt on an issue that is critical to human survival.

And it is infuriating - as a public relations professional - to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.

That's what is happening today, and I think it's a disgrace. On one hand, you have the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – as well as the science academies of every developed nation in the world – confirming that:

• climate change is real;
• it is caused by human activity; and
• it is threatening the planet in ways we can only begin to imagine.

On the other hand, you have an ongoing public debate - not about how to respond, but about whether we should bother, about whether climate change is even a scientific certainty. While those who stand in denial of climate change have failed in the last 15 years to produce a single, peer-reviewed scientific journal article that challenges the theory and evidence of human-induced climate change, mainstream media was, until very recently, covering the story (in more than half the cases, according to the academic researchers Boykoff and Boykoff) by quoting one scientist talking about the risks and one purported expert saying that climate change was not happening – or might actually be a good thing.

At some level, it’s hard not to feel an ounce of sympathy for global warming skeptics. Surely it must take a lot of resolve and perseverance to keep pushing an idea that everyone else (presumably, they, too) knows is blatantly false. That is, until you actually start reading some of the material they try to pass off as sober-minded research.

What I find pathetic is not so much the content, which, as we all know, is easily disprovable, but the fact that their views have barely evolved over the years – even as the science has progressed and become less vague. A perfect example of this regressive mentality is a speech that was recently given by Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

This is the text of a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper from 60 "accredited experts" who deny the reality of climate change. See the next post for additional information on the reliability of this group: