A BBC investigation has found that after more than two years the program has boosted electricity bills and given windfall profits to power companies without achieving its touted objective of slashing carbon emissions.

The more sharp-eyed among you may have noticed a new item in DeSmogBlog's sidebar. It's our big donation button!

There is no doubt that we have caught the attention of US think tanks and well-known climate change deniers like Steve "the Junkman" Milloy, the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Senator James Inhofe.

But now we're ready to take our US operations to the next level. Our goals are to increase our research capabilities, hire a Washington insider and enhance our US political and media monitoring.

James Hoggan is the president of the public relations firm James Hoggan & Associates. Over the past two decades, Jim has earned a reputation as one of Canada’s leading public relations professionals. His clients have included A&W Foods, the North West Cruise Ship Association, Vancouver Port Authority, Canadian Tire, Business Objects and Canadian Pacific Rail.

He is the author of the PR Tips that regularly appear on the front page of the business section in The Vancouver Sun, and In 2003, James Hoggan & Associates won the Public Relations Society of North America’s most prestigious award – The Silver Anvil for the best crisis communications campaign in North America.

James Hoggan is Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, an executive member of the Urban Development Institute and Future Generations and a Trustee of the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education. He helped establish the Suzuki Foundation Business Council on Sustainability to encourage collaboration between the environmental and business communities. Jim’s interest in climate change and his commitment to practicing ethical public relations converged recently in the creation of the popular website DeSmogBlog. The blog exists to identify unethical PR tactics and to expose the PR people who are trying to confuse the public about climate change.

It seems that the American Association of Petroleum Geologists is softening its former hard-line stance on global warming.

A new proposed position paper on their site contains a lukewarm acknowledgment of the role human activity and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels plays in the present warming. They state:

Humans, simply by virtue of the size of the world's population, represent a new agent of change through our significant modifications related to land use, urbanization, industrial activity, and through changes in atmospheric composition related to fuel combustion and deforestation."