• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

A leaked document widely being referred to as the “Danish text” at the Copenhagen climate conference, has caused serious anger and resentment from delegates of poor nations. A draft document between the US, UK, and Denmark was leaked to the Guardian newspaper, which reported that “world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.” While climate justice activists from around the world demand why ordinary people should suffer because of the high-carbon-impact luxury lifestyles of the West, there is a growing skepticism among Western consumers that global warming is even a problem. But the science has been known and accepted fore more than 150 years. In 1824 French physicist Joseph Fourier first postulated that gases like carbon dioxide absorb heat and form a warming blanket around the world. In the 1850s Irish physicist John Tyndall figured out a way to measure the capacity of various gases including nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and ozone to absorb and transmit radiant energy. Tyndall proved Fourier’s theory in 1858. Then, 130 years later, US president George H.W. Bush signed into law the National Energy Policy Act in 1988 to protect the global environment from carbon dioxide. Where there was once agreement with science on global warming, now there is debate, even as the Earth’s warming accelerates. We spend the rest of the hour with James Hoggan, author of Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. In his book Hoggan reveals how carbon intense Industry Associations with environmentally-friendly sounding names use the same tactics as the tobacco industry did to cloud and confuse the public on unanimously accepted and peer-reviewed science.

GUEST: James Hoggan, president of public relations firm Hoggan & Associates, and the author of Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming