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An All-Kidding-Aside Critique

At first glance, DeSmogBlog.com sounds impressive. Its "About" page tells us it:

  • produces articles that get routinely mentioned in "the world's most popular news blogs"
  • has won a "Leadership in Communication" award
  • was voted Canada's "Best Group Blog" 
  • is well-regarded by prominent international news outlets that quote it favorably and seek its assistance in developing news stories

James Hoggan, its founder, is chairman of the David Suzuki Foundation. Its operations manager, Kevin Grandia, has "been trained by Al Gore."

DeSmogBlog describes itself as "the world’s number one source for accurate, fact based information regarding Global Warming misinformation campaigns." It takes the position that "An overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the globe is warming...and that the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels is to blame." (Einstein didn't think majority opinion decided scientific disputes, but that's another discussion.)

DeSmogBlog alleges that those who doubt global warming theory are part of a "a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign" that is "trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits."

In this comic-book view of the world, environmental issues aren't complex matters involving imperfect tradeoffs, limited resources, and inadequate technologies.  Nor is it necessary to consider ideas from multiple perspectives in order to understand them thoroughly. 

In the DeSmogBlog universe, good guys and bad guys are readily identifiable and the way forward is clear. Although DeSmogBlog implies that its concern is with industry lobbying efforts, in reality anyone who disagrees with its perspective gets slimed. Satirist Rex Murphy, for example, is called "resolutely stupid" because his bracing commentaries on global warming contrast with the DeSmogBlog point-of-view.

Insults are one thing. Asserting that others have no right to speak is quite another. As demonstrated below, DeSmogBlog trashes free speech on every page of its website.

Rather than being hard to find, this black-and-gold sidebar is ever-present on the DeSmogBlog site:

      Paragraph 1: Just prior to accusing others of undermining democracy, DeSmogBlog arbitrarily redefines it. The need for free and open debate gets supplanted. Rather, accuracy of the information available to the electorate is held up as the principle upon which democracy "is utterly dependent."

Tyrants in Iran and elsewhere demand that media coverage be truthful and accurate. What they really mean is: it must not offend the authorities. Any society that says accuracy is more important than free speech, is a society in which democracy has left the building.


Paragraph 2: Strike 2 against freedom of expression is this breathtaking statement: "Free speech does not include the right to deceive." DeSmogBlog contends that people who express alternative points-of-view are deliberate liars. (In an especially Orwellian turn of phrase, it adds that they also "subvert the public awareness.")

As John Stuart Mill observed 150 years ago, "We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still."

Mill points out that people who want to suppress the views of others "are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind...To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty."


Paragraphs 3 & 4: Folks with whom DeSmogBlog disagrees are accused of "creating confusion" in the minds of the public - which it considers too gullible to sort wheat from chaff. In Strike 3 against free speech, DeSmogBlog accuses the media, government officials, and business leaders of permitting these "fringe players" to mislead the masses. The implication is clear: DeSmogBlog advocates the silencing of non-mainstream points-of-view by elite members of society.




It's worth noting that some personality types get off on outing their neighbors. In Iran and elsewhere, people volunteer for the religious or secret police. These individuals enjoy bullying their fellow citizens. Via peer pressure and implicit threats, they help ensure that the official line is toed, that the dogma-of-the-moment is enforced. For such people, ideas are not debatable and tolerance is not a virtue. Instead, ferreting out, denouncing, and demonizing non-conformist views is a way of life.

Given that DeSmogBlog's anti-free-expression philosophy is displayed so brazenly, what should we conclude about the prominent media outlets that portray this website favorably and apparently follow its direction when reporting on global warming? Can so many professional journalists be that blind? Do they not recognize anti-democratic impulses when the banners flutter beneath their noses?

Individuals who consider their own views to be the only permissible ones are, by definition, predictable in their analyses and conclusions. DeSmogBlog says its personnel are "research experts in Global Warming misinformation campaigns." How is this different from Scientologists painting themselves as bona fide critics of psychiatry? Both these organizations approach their subject matter armed with an entrenched, hostile agenda.

DeSmogBlog views environmental issues through a highly selective lens. Far worse, however, is that it aggressively repudiates free speech in the same breath that it accuses other people of undermining democracy.


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“Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress
those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.”
Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)