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If the pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. is content to cower behind a 20-something blog manager rather than acknowledge its role in the recent attack on the patriotism of Canadian environmentalists, what hope have we that the company would ever stand accountable for the accidents that will occur – inevitably – if Northern Gateway ever gets built?

That’s a rhetorical question, but a pressing one, given the environmental time-bomb that Enbridge proposes to lay out between the Canadian tar sands and the pristine B.C. coastline.

We actually don’t know for sure that Enbridge is behind the so-called Ethical Oil Institute, a phony grassroots organization that was established by Ezra Levant and run for most of its first year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s current Director of Planning, Alykhan Velshi. But you might come to your own conclusions by watching this clip or reading the transcript below.

It comes from an interview on the CBC show Power and Politics, in which the host, Evan Solomon, asks current EthicalOil.org manager Kathryn Marshall a question she just can’t bring herself to answer:

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On Thursday December 1st, Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente declared herself a defender of scientific integrity by calling upon the scientific community to replace the “rhetoric” of climate change with open, honest debate.

According to Ms. Wente, the impacts of climate change remain a future fantasy, unquantifiable by data collected through “insanely complicated” climate science. Her perspective is informed by the omission of facts, falsehoods, and fake experts. In a dance with smoke and mirrors she creates issues where none exist and ignores others that do.

There was a time when I couldn’t understand what motivated writers like Wente to stand so firmly against such clear and solid science. The psychology of “confirmation bias” has provided the answer for me. 

Like all of us, Wente has her biases, and most of us, like her, like to have those biases confirmed. So we seek out the information that confirms what we already believe and disregard that information that might prove us wrong.

As a columnist, Wente presents the information which confirms her ideological beliefs as truths and facts to the readers of the Globe and Mail. She excels as a columnist in part because she mocks and jeers her detractors. This pleases the people who agree with her but makes her loathed by those who don’t.  It provokes reaction on both sides, and eliminates any possibility of civil conversation.

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Getting people to believe that they really can make a difference in the struggle to the save the planet from human folly can be just as important as encouraging them to take action, according to one of the world’s leading Buddhist scholars.

In Vancouver for a week of teaching and lectures, Buddhist monk, poet, peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh, sat down with David Suzuki and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson for an hour-long conversation on what it’s going to take to bring about the change in human behavior that is needed to put the world on a path that will ensure a healthy planet for future generations.

Faced with the question “What gives you hope that we can bring about the collective awakening needed to restore health to the planet? the three discussed a range of issues and ideas centred on actions that can make a real difference.

Their conversation, based on the premise that it is well known that humans are harming the earth, destroying its ecosystems and disrupting the climate, focused on the path forward to a more sustainable way of living.

Thich Nhat Hanh warned against the danger of people becoming overwhelmed by a feeling that the challenges are too big to overcome and therefore doing nothing to address them. Individuals need to know that they can make a difference if they remain hopeful and develop their inner strength.

Two short segments from the conversation are available here.

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New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman has a must-read piece today noting the “cynical careerism” of climate deniers who won’t even acknowledge the truth when one of “their own” discovers that climate science is sound.  Singling out Anthony Watts as an example of this head-in-the-sand approach, Krugman notes that Watts and other climate skeptics changed their tune about the Koch-funded Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project when its lead researcher testified in front of Congress last week that climate change is real and man-made.  It wasn’t what the skeptics - or the anti-science GOP - wanted to hear.

UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller - whose reputation as a climate skeptic and funding by a Koch foundation the Republicans likely assumed made him one of “theirs” - instead shocked the hearing by reporting that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend “very similar to that reported by the prior groups.”

Krugman notes that Anthony Watts had recently “praised the Berkeley project and piously declared himself ‘prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.’”

But then of course when Professor Muller announced the preliminary results of his study upholding the scientific basis of climate disruption, Watts ridiculed the hearing Muller attended as “post normal science political theater.”

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DeSmogBlog was launched five years ago to clear the PR pollution that clouds climate science by exposing the influence of polluter interests working to mislead the public about global climate change.  While we have educated millions of people along the way, the success of the fossil fuel industries’ ongoing campaign to create confusion and ensure policy inaction demonstrates that our work has never been more important than it is right now.

As we mark the 5th anniversary of DeSmogBlog.com, the DeSmog Project is excited to announce new leadership, improvements to our website, additions to our team of writers and researchers, and a glimpse at our plans for 2011.

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Bjorn Lomborg is in the spin business, plain and simple.  In his Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, the Danish game theorist pretends to be so surprised that people were confused by his ‘change of heart’ last month — when he suddenly recognised that climate change is “one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and advocated for a $100 billion annual investment and a carbon tax — after years spent arguing that the world shouldn’t spend a penny on the problem. 

Hardly surprising to anyone who has followed Lomborg’s long trail of disingenuous spin, the ‘change of heart’ was nothing more than a ploy manufactured to tease his forthcoming book. 

Spinning like a top, Lomborg starts off his oddly defensive opinion piece with this twister:

“After years of being accused of believing something I didn’t believe—or, more accurately, not believing something I really did—I made headlines last month for changing my mind even though I hadn’t.”

Dizzy yet? Well let’s review Lomborg’s history of spin.