Once again Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist, has been promoting nuclear power as a solution to global warming without disclosing that he is a consultant to the Nuclear Energy Institute's front group, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. In a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star, Moore railed against the ability of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind to replace 'existing nuclear and coal-fired" power stations. "The fact of the matter is these renewables are intermittent power sources that can supplement (but not supplant) "always on" baseload power sources such as nuclear energy," he wrote. However, the Financial Times reported that France, which which relies on nuclear power for approximately 80 percent of its electricity, "is being forced to import electricity from Britain to cope with a summer heatwave that has helped to put a third of its nuclear power stations out of action."

At first look, one might not think that the health insurance industry has much in common with the tobacco industry. After all, one sells a product that kills people and the other sells a product nominally aimed at putting people back together. But when it comes to deceitful public relations techniques, the health insurance industry has been learning well from Big Tobacco, which employed a panoply of shady but highly successful public relations tactics to fend off changes to its business for generations.

One of things I said in my testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on June 24 is that the health insurance industry engages in duplicitous public relations campaigns to influence public opinion and the debate on health care reform. By that I mean there are campaigns they want you to you know about, and those they don’t.

When you hear insurance company executives talk about how much they support health care reform and can be counted on by the President and Congress to be there for them, that's the campaign they want you to be aware of. I call it their PR charm offensive.

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The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), an Australian corporate funded think tank think, has decided to dump its Senior Fellow, Jennifer Marohasy. Marohasy, a self-proclaimed global warming skeptic, has written that, after six years with the think tank, her contract "is not being renewed." During her time with the IPA, Marohasy was noted for contesting the severity of the problem with reduced water flows in the Murray-Darling river system. What she hadn't disclosed was that her work was being funded by Murray Irrigation Limited, a major irrigator. Marohasy was also a founder of the IPA front group, the Australian Environment Foundation, which initially listed the IPA office (pdf) as its address. In her farewell note, she thanked former IPA director Mike Nahan but made no mention of the current Executive Director, John Roskam.

As the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill nears a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, environmental groups are "teetering at the edge of existential crisis," writes Josh Harkinson. "Almost all environmental groups agree that Waxman-Markey is far from ideal," but some are supporting it, while others "believe the bill is so deeply flawed it might actually make matters worse." Critics say the bill "lines the pockets of polluters with little to show for it. The most it would cut carbon emissions by 2020 is 17 percent below 1990 levels, nowhere near the 25 to 40 percent reduction sought by scientists and international climate negotiators." Other concerns are that the bill may decrease clean energy production, as it would overrule higher renewable mandates in states like California; it would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants; and it would auction just 15 percent of emissions permits, giving a whopping 50 percent "to the fossil fuel industry for free." Some environmentalists blame the United States Climate Action Partnership, "a coalition of industry and moderate environmental groups," for sticking with a "quietly hammered out" agreement developed during the Bush administration. Others criticize President Obama, "who spoke out in favor of auctioning off pollution permits during his campaign ... but is now thought likely to sign whatever bill crosses his desk." Meanwhile, the industry front group Cooler Heads Coalition is planning efforts to oppose the bill, with "scientific skeptics and legislative critics," reports Greenwire.

The new Virginia-based group "Citizens for a Safe Alexandria" describes itself as a grassroots group, but its founder works for a public relations firm that specializes in "'grassroots' and 'grasstops' media strategies." Citizens for a Safe Alexandria's Sara Raak has appeared on local television news, urging the Obama administration not to "put those of us in the Alexandria neighborhood at risk" by bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the area to stand trial. Raak's day job is with OnPoint Advocacy, which runs Democracy Data & Communications, a member of the Public Affairs Council recently linked to an Astroturf website pushing for continued U.S. military spending on F-22 Raptor fighter jets. Raak's also worked for the DCI Group and Progress for America and managed "grassroots advocacy programs" for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She said OnPoint / DDC have "nothing to do" with Citizens for a Safe Alexandria, except for helping with the group's website. She added that the new group has "no funding," except "what she, her husband and two associates who are 'other moms' in Alexandria put into the effort." Raak said the group will be "'put[ting] out some pamphlets' against Guantanamo detainees going on trial in Alexandria and distribute them in Old Town and at area flea markets."

"The advertising firm behind the heavily-aired 'America's Power' campaign, R&R Partners - Advertising, has come out with its own brag-sheet detailing the ad work it did for the coal industry's main front group," the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), reports Kevin Grandia. According to R&R's public relations account supervisor, Rob Van Raaphorst, the firm "educate[d] our audiences on the importance of coal in their daily lives," using "grassroots" outreach, "earned media, paid media and advocacy tactics that created a 'surround-sound' effect." The "grassroots" outreach included "street teams, walking billboards, mobile billboards and recruitment and mobilization of an ACCCE Army ... at presidential primaries, debates, conventions and other key campaign events." R&R also worked on a $400,000 website, CleanCoalUSA.org, "to establish Coal-Based Generation Stakeholders as a recognized advocacy group and source for information about clean-coal technologies."

According to ExxonMobil's 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report and Worldwide Giving Report, the oil giant is still funding global warming skeptics. Following an unprecedented rebuke from Britain's Royal Society in 2006, Exxon said it would stop funding -- in the Society's words -- groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change." However, Exxon funding is still flowing to the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory, the home of skeptics Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. Baliunas "built her denial career downplaying the significance of the destruction of the ozone layer," at the George C. Marshall Institute, an Exxon-funded think tank. Soon has "become one of the go-to skeptics, appearing as a key speaker" at the Heartland Institute's conferences questioning climate change. Though the "Observatory is the research arm of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics," writes Greenpeace's Kert Davies, it "has little to do with either the Smithsonian or Harvard," while "Smithsonian has distanced itself from Baliunas, who discredits their name."

The National Cancer Institute has awarded a five-year, $2.7 million grant to Northeastern University Law School to research how the tobacco, fast food and sweetened beverage industries use and exploit the concepts of "personal responsibility" and "choice" to avoid liability and litigation for diseases that result from use of their products. Law professor and public health advocate Richard A. Daynard will lead the project to analyze legal and regulatory forums, advertising, public relations campaigns and news coverage to examine how the tobacco industry utilizes personal responsibility rhetoric to influence courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies and public opinion. The project will then examine the extent to which the food and beverage industries have applied the same, or similar strategies to shift blame from source to consumer to avoid legal responsibility for widespread health problems. "If the burden for addressing the harm is left with the consumer rather than the manufacturer," Daynard said, "the manufacturer benefits -- often at the expense of public health."

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-headquartered think tank that has taken on the role of trying to coordinate the disparate global warming skeptics, has organized yet another conference to be held in Washington this week disputing the reality of global warming. "The real science and economics of climate change support the view that global warming is not a crisis and that immediate action to reduce emissions is not necessary," they claim.

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The Guardian, a major British news publisher, is hosting The Guardian Climate Change Summit 2009, which it states aims to "explore how business can build and maintain a commitment to tackling climate change through the recession and beyond." The conference, which is sponsored by the energy company E.ON UK and the Food and Drink Federation, includes a session titled "communications & reputation: avoiding greenwash at all costs." Another panel includes Dr. Paul Golby, the chief executive officer of E.ON UK, which faces strong opposition to its proposal to build the Kingsnorth power station. In a 2008 opinion column, published in the Guardian, Golby claimed that the plant would be "built ready to be fitted" with carbon capture and storage equipment. E.ON U.K's parent company, E.ON, plans to build another dozen new coal-fired power stations across Europe.