Merchants Of Doubt Author Exposes False Science Spin - BC Lectures

The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) is presenting two lectures by Dr. Naomi Oreskes, co-author of the award-wining book, Merchants of Doubt, and 2011 Climate Change Communicator of the Year award winner.

PICS is a collaboration of British Columbia’s four-research intensive universities, hosted and led by the University of Victoria. PICS executive director Tom Pedersen says hosting Oreskes is a great privilege for the institute.

“Merchants of Doubt is groundbreaking research that exposes how the scientific facts on climate change, among other key issues, have been heavily distorted and misrepresented by spinmeisters. The end result—the public mistakenly believes there is debate among practising scientists over whether climate change is actually happening. This book crucially opened peoples’ eyes to what was happening behind the scenes.”

In Merchants of Doubt, historians Oreskes and Erik Conway reveal how a group of high-level scientists with extensive political connections ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific proof over issues including acid rain, the ozone hole, global warming, DDT and the harmful effects of tobacco. Named best book of 2010 by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Merchants of Doubt has attracted widespread accolades from media, the scientific community and a former US vice-president.

Oreskes visits Victoria and Vancouver next week as part of a global tour of speaking invitations following the book’s 2010 release. She says Merchants of Doubt is the result of five years of painstaking investigative research. “This long campaign of sowing doubt, which found its roots in the Cold War, in strategies developed by the tobacco industry and in the ideology of free market fundamentalism, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.”

The two free lectures offer British Columbians the opportunity to learn first-hand about the courage and determination it took to expose the truth (and organizations) behind the scientific lies and manipulations. Media are welcome to attend or to request an interview with Oreskes.

Time and location (Victoria): Monday, June 27, 7:30–9 p.m., Flury Hall, Bob Wright Centre, University of Victoria with live webcast at http://www.pics.uvic.ca/broadcast.php

Time and location (Vancouver): Tuesday, June 28, 7:30– 9 p.m., room 3200, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. (entrance off West Cordova St. between Cambie and Abbott), Vancouver

Oreskes is one of the world leading historians on science. A professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, and adjunct professor of geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, she was recently voted Climate Change Communicator of the Year for 2011 by George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. Her full biography can be found at: www.merchantsofdoubt.org/authors.html

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