MARC MORANO CLIMATE SKEPTIC IN THE LIMELIGHT….

Posted By on December 16th, 2009

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/12/15/this-week-in-conservative-media-climate-change-denier-in-the-spotlight.aspx

Newsweek – Tuesday, December 15, 2009

This Week in Conservative Media: Climate-Change Denier in the Spotlight

Eve Conant

Marc Morano, the longtime spokesman of climate change skeptic Sen. James M. Inhofe, left his perch on the Hill earlier this year to start up ClimateDepot, a Web site devoted to aggregating every scrap of information available that supports his basic position: when it comes to global warming, there is zero to worry about.

While on the Hill, Morano was more like a wire service than a spokesman, pumping out scads of e-mails each week, sometimes each day, to reporters covering climate change. His targeted e-mail list now counts 5,000 recipients, quite a jump from his fax blasts of the early ’90s. My inbox almost always has something from Marc in it, and I’m not alone in the reporting world. The New York Times has also noted the “blizzard of email” many reporters received during his years with Inhofe.

Morano was influential if not just through sheer relentlessness. With “Climategate”—the release last month of thousands of hacked e-mails showing debate about climate change may have been stifled—he is now getting more attention than ever before. As of last Friday, according to one the many e-mails this—and probably most—reporters get, he’s currently stationed at ground zero of the climate-change debate, Copenhagen, which he points out in e-mails, “is extremely cold.” (Several independent reviews of the hacked e-mails conclude that some scientists were engaging in embarrassing and at times unethical discussions, but the scientific consensus showing anthropogenic global warming was neither compromised nor fabricated).

He has been on countless news shows lately, including the BBC and CNN where he’s engaged in what he described to me as “lively and hostile debates.” He’s also appeared on the national radio shows of Sean Hannity, Fred Thomspon, and Lars Larsen. One of his fans (and a former boss of Morano’s) is Rush Limbaugh, who last month inadvertently shut down Morano’s site by urging listeners to follow his coverage of Climategate. The race to Morano’s site came after Rush gave this blessing: “Morano’s probably single-handedly, in a civilian sense, the guy€other than me, of course€doing a better job of ringing the bells alarming people of what’s going on here.”

Progressive media like Mother Jones is keeping tabs on Morano and what it says may be the “most popular denial site” out there. “ClimateDepot is bankrolled by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit with a $1.5 million budget, which in turn has received money from Exxon, Chevron, and foundations tied to conservative billionaire and Clinton nemesis Richard Mellon Scaife” according to writer Josh Harkinson. But it’s popularity is growing. The Daily Beast has quoted from reports describing ClimateDepot as, at one point, “‘bringing in more visitors than RedState.com, one of the most popular conservative blogs on the Web.”

Morano is soaking it up. “I want to personally thank the mainstream media for ignoring Climategate for so long. It allowed me to frame the issue of Climategate and present the information to the public without interference from the defenders of the global warming establishment in the media. Climategate’s revelations have been a joy to behold for the many skeptical scientists who have struggled for years to get their story told about the UN’s ‘manufactured” consensus.’”

Looking ahead, Morano just wants to keep the status quo. “My fervent hope is the mainstream media continues to ignore Climategate, as this will ensure the public will continue to receive the most accurate and balanced information about the scandal,” Morano wrote me in an e-mail. Climate-change deniers are getting much more attention these days, however. And Morano, undeniably, is quickly becoming king of the skeptics.

Tag(s): press, Climate Change

Marc Morano
ClimateDepot.com
CFACT
1875 Eye Street, NW
Fifth Floor
Washington, D.C. 20006

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