Tom Harris is a Canadian mechanical engineer, executive director

Executive director

Executive director is a term sometimes applied to the chief executive officer or managing director of an organization, company, or corporation. It is widely used in North American non-profit organizations, though in recent decades many U.S. nonprofits have adopted the title "President/CEO"...

 International Climate Science Coalition

International Climate Science Coalition

The International Climate Science Coalition is an organization which espouses global warming skepticism. According to its web site, it is "an international association of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts working to promote better public understanding of climate change science...

, former executive director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project

Natural Resources Stewardship Project

The Natural Resources Stewardship Project is a Canadian non-profit organization that presents itself as undertaking "a proactive grassroots campaign to counter the Kyoto Protocol and other greenhouse gas reduction schemes while promoting sensible climate change policy." The group was founded in...

 and a global warming skeptic. From May to September 2006, he was Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 operations director of the High Park Group

High Park Group

High Park Group is a public affairs and policy consulting firm with an office in Toronto. The firm took a leading role in the establishment of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, an organization promoting global warming skepticism- Global Warming :...

, a public relations

Public relations

Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....

 and lobbying

Lobbying

Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...

 firm active in the debate over global warming

Global warming

Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

, whose clients include the Canadian Electricity Association, the Canadian Gas Association as well as those focused on the promotion of alternative energy. The Natural Resources Stewardship Project has been accused [by whom?] of being an astroturfing

Astroturfing

Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some...

 organization set up by High Park Group to promote the interests of its clients.

Speech at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

At the "2008 International Conference on Climate Change" hosted by the Heartland Institute

Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute is a libertarian, American public policy think tank based in Chicago, Illinois which advocates free market policies. The Institute is designated as a 501 non-profit by the Internal Revenue Service and advised by a 15 member board of directors, which meets quarterly. As of...

, Tom Harris gave a speech in which he discussed what he called "information sharing" and "coordinated local activism":

[...] We need regular high-impact media coverage of the findings of leading scientists — not just one or two publications, but we need to have hundreds all over the world. We need to have a high degree of information sharing and cooperation between groups, so that when Vincent Gray

Vincent R. Gray

Vincent R. Gray is a New Zealand-based chemist, and a founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. He has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cambridge University after studies on incendiaty bomb fluids made from aluminium soaps, He has had a long scientific career in the UK, France,...

for example has an article published in New Zealand, we can take the same piece and we can (say) submit it to newspapers all over North America and Europe.

Then we have a nicely well-coordinated response, where letters to the editor and phone calls are made. "Congratulations on publishing that article!" You know, it's interesting because I've had many of my articles opposed so strongly, by environmentalists through phone calls and letters to the editor, that they just simply dry up, they just won't publish us again. So this does have feedback, I mean, these are people that run these newspapers, and they're scared, and impressed, and encouraged, depending on the feedback they get.

We have to have grassroots organizations doing exactly that kind of thing: coordinated local activism.