CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti had tough questions for me this week, but none for a global warming propagandist.

You probably missed my heated on-air debate Thursday morning with Anna Maria Tremonto, host of CBC's The Current. You certainly missed my superheated off-air debate in her studio immediately afterwards, when Tremonti lit into me for my skepticism of global warming orthodoxy. I don't recall being berated after an interview by a broadcaster before, certainly not be a consummate professional like Tremonti. But Tremonti was visibly upset, so much so that she ended the second debate by turning away from me without the courtesy of a goodbye (she did properly thank me on air at the conclusion of our broadcast debate.

Climate change has been a frequent theme on The Current over the years — a Google search of the three search terms, “CBC,” “The Current,” and “climate change,” turns up 251,000 hits, an indication of this show’s reach. My appearance Thursday morning was, to my knowledge, just about the only time that The Current has ever invited a climate change skeptic.

For this I was grateful, even if I wasn’t the headliner on the show that morning: That honour went to James Hoggan, the owner of a public relations firm who was promoting Climate Coverup, his book attacking global warming skeptics. I was third in the lineup, following a computer programmer who determines through Google searches of his own that credible global warming skeptics are rarely cited. My role Thursday morning, a CBC producer told me several days earlier, would be to respond to the two global warming asserters preceding me.

That role didn’t last long. The interview quickly turned confrontational with Tremonti — using her vaunted investigative skills — attempting to challenge my credibility. I don’t begrudge her aggressive questions — that’s fair game for good investigative journalists and, in any event, I believe they backfired. But I did think she cut me off excessively — an average of once every 30 seconds after her initial questions, when she seemed curious rather than confrontational.

I do begrudge her gentle, almost fawning treatment of Hoggan. Rather than serve her audience through probing questions that tested Hoggan’s thesis and explored his motivations, Tremonti posed questions that could have been scripted by his PR firm. (Hoggan’s firm or his website did provide her with at least some of the “gotcha” questions she posed to me, inadvertently laying a trap for her when the “gotchas” proved to be fabrications.) Tremonti even immunized herself against the obvious criticism that she was giving credibility in this global warming debate to a PR man, of all people, by airing what many in her audience must have been thinking: “You have a lifelong career in public relations. You’re also the chair of the Suzuki Foundation. Some would think you’re spinning me,” she stated, accepting as satisfactory his response that "I’m not telling you that I’m an expert in climate science and I’m not being funded by anyone.”

What would the investigative Tremonti of old — she was a correspondent and host of CBC’s Fifth Estate — have asked Hoggan? Here are some alternatives to the softball questions that Tremonti posed to him.

Tremonti:
Mr. Hoggan, during this interview you have three times cited NASA in making your point that the science is settled on climate change. How does that square with the comments two years ago from the head of NASA, Mr. Michael Griffin, a scientist with six degrees, who said that global garming is nothing to worry about? Or with calculations by a group of NASA scientists, recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, which cites reduced solar activity as the most important cause of stagnating global warming?

Tremonti:
You paint the corporate sector as working behind the scenes to undermine global warming legislation such as the Waxman-Markey bill, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed recently. Yet it is well known that this bill was largely written by a powerful lobby called the United States Climate Action Partnership. This lobby is dominated by a long list of multinationals, including major oil multinationals that you love to excoriate such as BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips. Doesn’t this support the claims of the skeptics, who point to the immense
profits that the multinationals stand to make should global warming legislation pass?

Tremonti:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            I’d like to follow up on why my listeners should trust someone in the PR business to be impartial in this debate. When I look at your client list on your firm’s corporate website, I see that it includes ALCOA among your firm’s blue chip clients. ALCOA happens to be part of this lobby, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, that’s pushing climate change legislation. Can you explain why exactly you don’t have a conflict of interest here, when you are attacking those who would derail your client’s legislation? While you’re at it, can you elaborate on the “Hoggan Credo” that you advertise on your website. The way I read it, your advice to corporations is that they need PR services, but that they should be sure that the public doesn’t know it’s having a PR job done on it.

Tremonti asked none of these questions. She not once interrupted Hoggan, or tried to throw him off his stride. Her favourite follow-ups, after letting him expound at will, were supportive interjections such as "Tell me more.”

Did Tremonti knowingly conduct a puff-piece of an interview with Hoggan? I doubt it. Does she herself have a conflic of interest as a journalist in the global warming issue? Unlikely in the extreme. Does she suspect that she has been a victim of PR spin? I have no way of knowing.

All I do know is that when it comes to global warming, Anna Maria Tremonti set aside her journalistic instincts. It would be impossible for any investigative reporter, let alone one as talented as she, to objectively delve into global warming and conclude that the science was settled.

Hear Anna Maria Tremonti's interview of Solomon here.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.