Brief backgrounder
Robinson "acknowledges he has done no direct research into global warming."
Robinson is the founder of a group called the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” (OISM ), which markets, among other things, a home-schooling kit for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools" and books on how to survive nuclear war.
In April 1998, Robinson’s Oregon Institute, along with the Exxon-backed George C. Marshall Institute, released a petition on global warming and the Kyoto Protocol that was so misleading it prompted the National Academy of Science to issue a news release stating that: "The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol.”
There are few parties in the public realm that are more credible than a "grassroots organization" - a group of citizens who rise up with no agenda other than to speak frankly about a public issue. Politicians are inevitably suspect and businesses are clearly self-interested, so reporters are always searching for the "common man" - the "person on the street" - or from impartial experts. No news source wraps up those characteristics more efficiently than the true grass roots organization.
