According to publicly available court records, US coal company Peabody Energyrecently submitted expert testimony to the Minnesota Public Utilities commission arguing that, ”CO2 is not harmful and is actually good for the planet” and that “there is no empirical scientific evidence for significant climate effects of rising CO2 levels, and there is no convincing evidence that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) will produce catastrophic climate changes.”
These statements and many more were included in “expert” presentations made to the Minnesota Public Utilities commission in June of this year by Roy Spencer and Roger Bezdek, who were both testifying on behalf of Peabody Energy.
The hearings were conducted by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission which is investigating the environmental and socioeconomic costs of carbon and greenhouse gases.
Roger Bezdek, an economist and president of a consulting firm called Management Information Services, Inc, offered testimony on behalf of Peabody Energy on June 1, 2015.
According to court documents, Bezdek’s purpose for appearing in front of the commission on behalf of Peabody was to “assess whether the Commission should adopt a new environmental cost value for CO2 based on the benefits of CO2 emissions and the problems with the federal social cost of carbon (SCC).”
Bezdek did not respond to a request for clarification on his relationship with Peabody Energy or what his financial compensation was for his expert opinion.
Looking at the provided footnotes that accompanied Bezdek’s testimony, it relies heavily on the work of well known climate deniers with historical ties to the fossil fuel industry, like Fred Singer, Craig Idso and Willie Soon.
In his testimony, Bezdek made the following claims regarding climate change and carbon pollution:
“CO2 is not harmful and is actually good for the planet…”
“The federal SCC [social costs of carbon] estimates do not adequately consider the benefits 27 of fossil fuels andCO2 emission.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
