A coalition of US coal and electricity companies set the tone in the 1990s with the creation of the Information Council on the Environment (ICE). It's purpose: to "reposition climate change as a theory not a fact".ICE hired a PR firm to create advertising messages. These ranged from the ridiculous - "Who told you the Earth was getting warmer... Chicken Little?" - to the blatantly false - "If the Earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis getting colder?" But the focus groups found them effective, and that is all that mattered.
ICE also hired scientists to sign querulous opinion-page articles and PR agencies to harass journalists. Today, journalists - embattled, overwhelmed and committed to "balance", no matter how spurious - are useful conduits for spreading doubt.
Other corporate tactics include the creation of phoney grass-roots organisations. The pioneer was The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), set up in 1993 by a group of tobacco, nuclear energy, agribusiness, chemicals and oil companies. TASSC's stated goal was to "encourage the public to question - from the grass roots up - the validity of scientific studies."
From Living in Denial: How Corporations Manufacture Doubt by Richard Littlemore, May 20, 2010.
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