Home » Posts tagged 'climate denial'

Tag Archives: climate denial

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

Delaware Just Sued 30 Fossil Fuel Companies and the American Petroleum Institute Over Climate ‘Denial and Disinformation’

September 13, 2020

Delaware Just Sued 30 Fossil Fuel Companies and the American Petroleum Institute Over Climate ‘Denial and Disinformation’

Flood damage from Hurricane Irene at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.

Delaware, the home state of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, announced on Thursday, September 10 that it is taking dozens of major oil and gas companies including BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil to court over the rising costs of climate impacts such as sea level rise and coastal flooding.

Like other U.S. states and municipalities suing the fossil fuel industry, Delaware says that the industry knew half a century ago about the likely climate impacts resulting from the use of its products, but instead of warning the public or changing their business model, the fossil fuel companies engaged in campaigns to attack climate science and downplay the risks of burning coal, oil, and gas in order to stave off policy responses.

“Delawareans are already paying for the malfeasance of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies,” Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in a press release. “Exxon, Chevron, and other mega-corporations knew exactly what kind of sacrifices the world would make to support their profits, and they deceived the public for decades. Now we are staring down a crisis at our shores, and taxpayers are once again footing the bill for damage to our roads, our beaches, our environment, and our economy. We are seeking accountability from some of the world’s most powerful businesses to pay for the mess they’ve made.”

The lawsuit, filed September 10 in Delaware Superior Court, a state court, seeks monetary damages to help pay for costs the state is already incurring and that are expected to mount as climate impacts worsen.

As noted in Delaware’s complaint, the state has the lowest average elevation of any state in the country and more than 22,000 residents are currently threatened by coastal flooding.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canadian Oilsands Firm Denied Its Own Science On Climate Change

December 12, 2019

Canadian Oilsands Firm Denied Its Own Science On Climate Change

While Imperial Oil was calling the link between fossil fuels and global warming an ‘unproven hypothesis,’ internal reports had confirmed the connection.

SmokestacksSunset.jpg
Contradicting the company’s own assessment of CO2 from 1970, Imperial Oil’s then chairman wrote in 1998, ‘Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but an essential ingredient of life on this planet.’ Photo by Jonathan Franson, the Canadian Press.

Oilsands giant Imperial Oil continued to call the link between fossil fuels and global temperature rise an “unproven hypothesis” decades after its own research confirmed the industry’s role in global warming, newly released documents show.

That decision made Imperial Oil, which is majority-owned by Exxon, an early supporter of an oil industry campaign of climate denial that continues to slow progress in combating the greatest existential challenge of our time. 

Brendan DeMelle, executive director of the research group DeSmog, said the documents show that as early as the 1970s Imperial Oil had confirmed the link between fossil fuels and global warming. DeSmog and the Climate Investigations Center last week published thousands of pages of official Imperial Oil documents found in an archive in Calgary.

DeMelle said that with pressure building in the late 1990s for Canadian climate change solutions that might reduce fossil fuel consumption and hurt the company’s business model, “they start talking about scientific uncertainties and doubt.”

Imperial Oil declined to provide comment for this story, instead pointing The Tyee to its website, which states that “We believe that climate change risks warrant action and it’s going to take all of us — business, governments and consumers — to make meaningful progress.” 

That was not what the company was arguing in the late 1990s, however, as its 1996 Annual Report makes clear.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Doubling Down: The Military, Big Bankers and Big Oil Are Not In Climate Denial, They Are in Control and Plan to Keep It That Way.

July 6, 2019

Doubling Down: The Military, Big Bankers and Big Oil Are Not In Climate Denial, They Are in Control and Plan to Keep It That Way.

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

“Capitalism, militarism and imperialism are disastrously intertwined with the fossil fuel economy….A globalized economy predicated on growth at any social or environmental costs, carbon dependent international trade, the limitless extraction of natural resources, and a view of citizens as nothing more than consumers cannot be the basis…for tackling climate change….Little wonder then that the elites have nothing to offer beyond continued militarisation and trust in techno-fixes.”

— Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes [1]

The ruling class may be an utter failure but that is not stopping them taking aggressive action on climate change. Their chief concern: maintaining power, control and profits at all costs.

The plan is well underway and it sure ain’t the Green New Deal. Just imagine a more extreme version of the world that already exists: where healthcare is rationed; where wealth inequality strangles democracy; where austerity is a weapon of class warfare; where millions die prematurely from toxins in air and water; where war and incarceration is the solution of choice; where people are rounded up in concentration camps; where corporations rule unchallenged; where extreme weather wrecks havoc in an expanding circle of misery. The only new thing about their solution is the stench of fascism that grows ever stronger and more odious.

The Bosses Want More of the Same

When Trump and the Republicans deny climate change, when Pelosi, Pallone, Perez, Biden and Obama join with Trump in sabotaging the Green New Deal or dismissing climate action as too expensive, too dreamy, not practical or too pure — they are all bold-faced liars and frauds.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Science Deniers Start Feeling the Heat. Now it is Foot-Dragging Time!

May 3, 2019

Climate Science Deniers Start Feeling the Heat. Now it is Foot-Dragging Time!

Greta Thunberg is both a cause and an effect in the great shift that’s ongoing in the public opinion about climate change. Climate science deniers are feeling the pressure and they are preparing to change their strategy. No more denying that AGW exists and that it is a danger for all of us. It is time to move to foot-dragging for profit.  

A post by Tim Ball on the despicable WUWT blog is well worth reading because it summarizes the plight of climate science deniers in the current debate. Ball says that he calls it quits because:

“you are asking people to believe that a small group of people managed to deceive the world into believing that a trace gas (0.04% of the total atmosphere) was changing the entire climate because of humans. In addition, that group convinced many others to participate in the deception.

The public view is that deceiving so many is just not possible. “Stark clear: Ball perfectly summarizes the problem for him and his band of science-deniers: how could anyone believe what they are saying? With Greta Thunberg bursting into the debate, their position is rapidly becoming untenable. So, they are shifting away from discussing whether AGW exists or not. Ball says, 

“I decided to stop trying to educate people about the global deception that is AGW. … The challenge now is to help people understand the differences between deceptively derived policies, and what is the best, most adaptive, most profitable, and most rewarding strategy for survival of the individual, business, or industry. “

And I couldn’t have said it more clearly. Ball and his ilk are preparing for a war of attrition against the attempt to do something to save humankind before it is too late, all in the name of the “most profitable” strategy. 

Let’s do follow the climate money!

January 7, 2019

Let’s do follow the climate money!

Let’s do follow the climate money!

The climate crisis industry incessantly claims that fossil fuel emissions are causing unprecedented temperature, climate and weather changes that pose existential threats to human civilization and our planet. The only solution, Climate Crisis, Inc. insists, is to eliminate the oil, coal and natural gas that provide 80% of the energy that makes US and global economies, health and living standards possible.

Failing that, CCI demands steadily increasing taxes on carbon-based fuels and carbon dioxide emissions.

However, as France’s Yellow Vest protests and the latest climate confab in Poland demonstrated, the world is not prepared to go down that dark path. Countries worldwide are expanding their reliable fossil fuel use, and families do not want to reduce their living standards or their aspirations for better lives.

Moreover, climate computer model forecasts are completely out of touch with real-world observations. There is no evidence to support claims that the slight temperature, climate and weather changes we’ve experienced are dangerous, unprecedented or caused by humans, instead of by the powerful solar, oceanic and other natural forces that have driven similar or far more serious changes throughout history.

More importantly, the CCI “solutions” would cause unprecedented disruption of modern industrialized societies; permanent poverty and disease in poor countries; and serious ecological damage worldwide.

Nothing that is required to harness breezes and sunshine to power civilization is clean, green, renewable, climate-friendly or sustainable. Tens of billions of tons of rock would have to be removed, to extract billions of tons of ores, to create millions of tons of metals, concrete and other materials, to manufacture millions of wind turbines and solar panels, and install them on millions of acres of wildlife habitats – to generate expensive, intermittent energy that would be grossly insufficient for humanity’s needs. Every step in this process requires fossil fuels – and some of the mining involves child labor.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fossil Fuels and Climate Denial Still Reign in Louisiana Despite Scientists’ Dire Warnings for the State

December 22, 2018

Fossil Fuels and Climate Denial Still Reign in Louisiana Despite Scientists’ Dire Warnings for the State

Christmas lights on homes across from the Meraux Refinery in Meraux, New Orleans.

The impacts to the region, such as worsening floods, heat waves, and sea level rise, will only be intensified as the globe continues warming, warn federal scientists in the latest National Climate Assessment report.

But instead of heeding scientists’ warnings, Louisiana’s government continues to welcome the prospects of new billion-dollar petrochemical plants, liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities, and an oil export hub, all without a mention of their climate change impacts.

Leading the pack, Gov. John Bel Edwards continues to gush over turning Louisiana into a world leader in natural gas and oilexports.

Louisiana politicians continue to claim natural gas is a “clean” source of energy, and usher in not only LNG facilities, but also petrochemical plants fueled by natural gas production.

In Plaquemines Parish, a peninsula south of New Orleans that, like all of southern Louisiana, is plagued by coastal erosion, the governor has hailed a new crude oil export terminal and a massive LNG facility that don’t yet have permits.

Embracing Fossil Fuels But Ignoring Climate Warnings

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards
Gov. John Bel Edwards, when he was still a candidate for Louisiana Governor at a Democratic Party fundraiser in New Orleans in 2015.

I asked the governor’s press secretary what he thought about the Fourth National Climate Assessment, an exhaustive review of environmental data by a team of hundreds of scientists that puts Louisiana square in the eye of physical and financial hardship due to climate change — and got no reply.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Scientist Michael Mann Releases Emails Ahead of University of Arizona Response to E&E Legal

November 30, 2018

Climate Scientist Michael Mann Releases Emails Ahead of University of Arizona Response to E&E Legal

Michael Mann

Nearly a decade ago, in late 2009, a server at the University of East Anglia was hacked and thousands of emails from the university’s Climatic Research Unit were subsequently released in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks. Within these thousands of emails, climate change deniers attempted to cherry-pick a few sentences to falsely suggest scientific malfeasance. This so-called “Climategate” incident managed to briefly cast doubt on the public’s acceptance of the scientific realities of climate change. But ultimately, numerous investigations found there was no wrongdoing, and the media storm was found to only have a fleeting public impact.

I have discussed the manufactured scandal in the context of the larger industry-funded, bad faith attack on climate science in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

In increasingly desperate attempts to recreate this short-lived machination, there have since been repeated efforts to obtain my and other climate scientists’ emails via fishing expeditions through misuse of the legal system. Led by David Schnare, one coal-funded group masquerading as a think tank — which currently goes by the name of Energy & Environment Legal Institute(E&E Legal) — brought a lawsuit in Virginia seeking to obtain virtually every email I had ever sent or received during the six years I was a professor at the University of Virginia.

The case was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court, but E&E Legal has continued to essentially relitigate the matter in friendlier forums. E&E Legal targeted two other prominent climate scientists at the University of Arizona, Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes (the latter being one of my longtime co-authors), seeking a total of 13 years of emails from them, including correspondence with or about me or my research.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

By Enforcing Climate Change Denial, Trump Puts Us All in Peril

September 20, 2018

By Enforcing Climate Change Denial, Trump Puts Us All in Peril

North Carolina has been hit with a storm of biblical ferocity.

Florence has left at least 17 dead there, 500,000 without power, with flash flooding across the state from the coast to the western mountains. Landslides and infectious diseases are predicted to follow. North Carolina is not alone, of course.

We’ve witnessed the devastation wrought by Katrina in New Orleans, Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey, Hurricane Harvey in Houston and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Maria is now estimated to have taken 2,975 lives, nearly as many as died on Sept. 11, 2001.

As economics historian J. Bradford DeLong summarizes, the four storms — all in the past 15 years — are among the most damaging in U.S. history. No one storm can be attributed to any one cause. But repeated storms of greater force are the “predictable result” of catastrophic climate change, and they are a mild augury of what is likely to follow.

President Donald Trump has enforced climate denial in Washington. He has systematically sought to repeal even the inadequate steps the U.S. had taken to begin to address the problem. Last year he announced the U.S. was withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.

He’s geared up to repeal President Barack Obama’s executive orders on energy, climate and gas mileage. He’s opening up more public lands to mining and drilling and weakening environmental restrictions on coal, oil and natural gas, including most alarmingly, restrictions on the release of methane gas from natural gas pipes.

Web pages with climate change information have been removed or buried at the EPA and the Interior and Energy departments. The rest of the world vows to continue to deal with climate change, but with the wealthiest nation in the world scorning the effort, it is certain to be more inadequate than it already is.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Denial by a Different Name

April 17, 2018

NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 20: Environmental activists protest outside of the Harvard Club where Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt was scheduled to speak, June 20, 2017 in New York City. Pruitt abruptly cancelled his appearance, where he was supposed to discuss the United States' environmental role in the world following the decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

DENIAL BY A DIFFERENT NAME

It’s Time to Admit That Half Measures Can’t Stop Climate Change

IT CAN FEEL GOOD to make fun of climate deniers. So let’s take a little romp with one: Wolfgang Müller.

Here he is in a Dusseldorf hotel conference room, 100 people gathered to take a group photo before him. He’s distributing stemware and pouring champagne, at the 11th annual International Conference on Climate and Energy, a convening this past November of some of Europe’s pre-eminent denialist minds.

Given that this is Europe, it’s not a huge crowd. Müller and company fit the stereotype: cranks poking holes in scientific consensus, railing against the pointy-headed academics — often, though not in his case, with generous industry funding. This particular gathering is co-hosted by the European Institute for Climate and Energy, known as its German abbreviation EIKE; the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an American outfit; and a handful of smaller groups of self-identified climate skeptics.

It’s not hard to see why EIKE sits on the margins. In one presentation, a historical building preservationist argued that medieval building practices — castles with 2-foot-thick stone walls — were better suited to insulate heat than Germany’s apparently tyrannical energy efficiency standards, in a talk that included an extended, only half-joking anecdote involving sex and boar skins. A session on renewables pleads sympathy for wildlife; literature handed out by the presenter features a picture of a dead bird at the foot of a wind turbine. The sole caption, in German, asks: “Bird shredder?”

Billed as a “Contra-COP23,” it takes place about an hour’s train ride from COP23, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 23rd annual Conference of Parties talks in Bonn, where the world is vowing to redouble its efforts to combat climate change in spite of the spurning of U.S. President Donald Trump.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New study on climate sensitivity not what poor media headlines, deniers are saying

January 22, 2018

New study on climate sensitivity not what poor media headlines, deniers are saying

Courtesy Skeptical Science

One swallow doesn’t make a spring, and nor does one scientific paper change a whole body of evidence. But you could be mistaken for thinking so after the poor media coverage last week of a new piece of climate research.

A study published last week in Nature(“Emergent constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity from global temperature variability”) claims to tighten the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), range for (short-term) Estimated Climate Sensitivity (ECS), the amount of warming to be expected from a doubling of carbon dioxide  (CO2) in the atmosphere.

The study puts its best guess at 2.8C, which is pretty squarely in the middle of what scientists have thought all along. It also affirms that the best-case scenario of little-to-no warming, which deniers point to as justification for inaction, is unlikely, as are the worst-case, “black swan” scenarios.

But because the AFP write-up was framed around the worst-case scenarios being “not credible,” deniers are celebrating the study as some sort of win.

Now this study, and particularly AFP’s coverage, isn’t particularly helpful from either a scientific or a communications standpoint. For one thing, it’s based on recent short-term variation, not thousands of years of temperature data, like other paleo-climate based ECS studies. Plus, it uses a brand new modeling methodology–not exactly a tried-and-true approach. But apparently those who rail against climate models as hopelessly inaccurate will eagerly believe model outputs if they think it supports their denial.

Then there’s the whole “single-study-syndrome” issue, so we should take the findings with a grain of salt, especially given other recent studies putting ECS at the higher end of what’s likely. This new modeling exercise doesn’t take tipping points into account, meaning that – oops – those worst-case scenarios are still very much on the table if steady warming triggers rapid changes in glacier melt or ocean circulations or any other unexpected surprises.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hurricane Harvey, Climate Denial, Fake News and ExxonMobil

September 6, 2017

Hurricane Harvey, Climate Denial, Fake News and ExxonMobil

For well over twenty years, climate deniers have tried to stymie discussion of extreme weather events and climate change. Why? Because extreme weather kills people, destroys property, trashes things and costs billions of dollars.  And that’s when people start searching for accountability blame. Hurricane Harvey’s damage is breaking records. Who will pay, remains an unanswered question.  What we do know is that a concerted campaign of climate denial, over the past three decades, has measurably slowed down society’s reaction to the climate crisis and has wasted valuable time and money.

For example, in October 1998, the Cooler Heads Coalition put together a “Media and Congressional Briefing” titled “Extreme Weather and Climate Change”, held in the Cannon House of Representatives office building. The sponsoring organizations are a who’s who of ‘free market’ anti-government groups. Many of the organizations are connected to Koch money and most of them were being funded by ExxonMobil in 1998 and subsequent years. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell was the chair of Cooler Heads then and now. CEI received $85,000 from Exxon in 1998. The full roster of Cooler Heads members got over $472,000 in grants from Exxon that year.

The guest speaker was the famous hurricane scientist Wizard of Oz, Dr. William Gray (who passed away in 2016).

In the wake of hurricane Harvey, its important to recall the corporate fake news campaign of 2006 to suppress the discussion of hurricanes and climate change.  The campaign was spearheaded by DCI Group, then employed by ExxonMobil, and connected to TechCentralStation, a news site DCI Group set up to insert corporate friendly messages and third party messengers onto the internet before blogs were really a thing.  Video cassettes with a prepared news segment were distributed to Gulf state local TV stations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bill Nye the Science Guy Takes On Climate Denialist Joe Bastardi the ‘Goebbels’ Guy

April 22, 2016

Bill Nye the Science Guy Takes On Climate Denialist Joe Bastardi the ‘Goebbels’ Guy

The quote is often used to illustrate how people’s allegiances can sometimes gum up their cognitive ability or just cause them to ignore truths inconvenient to their cause, or their customer’s cause.

TV presenter and science advocate Bill Nye “the Science Guy” dusted off Sinclair’s 1935 quote in a new video, in which he challenged climate science denialist and weatherman Joe Bastardi to two $10,000 bets. Nye bet Bastardi, a regular guest on conservative media, that 2016 would be one of the top ten hottest years on record.

He also bet Bastardi that the current decade would the hottest on record (Nye was responding to this November 2015 from Bastardi, published in the Patriot Post).

In a string of responses on Twitter, reported on EcoWatch, Bastardi dismissed Nye’s bets, saying that in any case “I don’t have 20k”.

The bets are the same as those Nye offered to another climate science denier, Marc Morano, as revealed on DeSmog last week.

As I wrote on The Guardian, one study published in a Royal Society journal last year shows that Nye would be almost certain to win. Any bets placed in any year after about 1970 against that current decade being warmer than the previous one would have lost.

But what about the Upton Sinclair quote?  Nye was pointing out that Bastardi was a regular guest speaker at fossil fuel industry events.

Directing a statement at Bastardi, Nye said: “Where you speak is your business, but it also seems to be your business, telling your audiences what they want to hear.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exclusive: Climate Hustle’s Marc Morano Turns Down $20k Global Warming Bets From Bill Nye The Science Guy

April 12, 2016

Exclusive: Climate Hustle’s Marc Morano Turns Down $20k Global Warming Bets From Bill Nye The Science Guy

Offering the two bets to Marc Morano, of the conservative think tank the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), is popular television science presenter Bill Nye, “the science guy”.

Nye said he was willing to bet Morano that 2016 would be one of the ten hottest years on record. He also offered a bet the current decade would be the hottest on record.

Morano turned down both bets, telling DeSmog it was “silly” to take a bet when it was “obvious” the official records would show more global warming.

According to NASA measurements, 14 of the 16 hottest years on record have all happened since the year 2000.  Last year, 2015, was also the hottest on record.

Nye offered the bets during a yet-to-be-screened interview requested by Morano, who is busy promoting his new Climate Hustle film. Here is an excerpt of their exchange, including the bets offered by Nye to Morano:

As DeSmog has reported, Climate Hustle features a roll call of climate science deniers and is set to rehash old myths.

Showbusiness “bible” Variety magazine reported as an “exclusive” today that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was endorsing the movie – an “exclusive” based on a press release from 31 March.

Variety failed to note how many of the views expressed in Climate Hustle run counter to the conclusions of major science academies around the world and 97 per cent of climate scientists.

Morano is a regular guest on conservative-leaning media outlets, including Fox News, where he constantly challenges the overwhelming science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Senators Introduce “Merchants of Doubt” Amendment Into Energy Bill, Call On Fossil Fuel Industry To End Climate Denial and Deception

February 3, 2016

Senators Introduce “Merchants of Doubt” Amendment Into Energy Bill, Call On Fossil Fuel Industry To End Climate Denial and Deception

Democratic U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ed Markey (MA) and Brian Schatz (HI) introduced an amendment into the energy bill yesterday intended to express Congress’s disapproval of the use of industry-funded think tanks and misinformation tactics aimed at sowing doubt about climate change science.

The amendment evokes the history of notorious anti-science efforts by the tobacco and lead industries to avoid accountability for the damage caused by their products, focusing similar ire on the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long climate cover-up.

Although it doesn’t name specific companies, the amendment is surely inspired by recent revelations about ExxonMobil’s early and advanced knowledge of the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change — which was followed by the company’s subsequent, unconscionable climate science denial efforts.

Just as tobacco and lead companies sowed doubt about the dangers of their products through the use of front groups and third-party experts, so did ExxonMobil — through its funding of a sophisticated network of denialists — work to deceive the public about climate science and the need for political action to end the fossil fuel era.

The most recent and damning #ExxonKnew revelations were published late in 2015 in investigative articles by both InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times in collaboration with the Columbia School of Journalism.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined the amendment as a co-sponsor once it was introduced.

“It is the sense of the Senate that according to peer-reviewed scientific research and investigative reporting, fossil fuel companies have long known about the harmful climate effects of their products,” the amendment reads.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Greenpeace Sting, Professors Agree to Produce Research for Fossil Fuel Industry Without Disclosure

December 11, 2015

“How much have you taken from Peabody Coal?”

That was the question Greenpeace researcher Jesse Coleman asked prominent climate change skeptic and Princeton physicist William Happer in a Senate hearing room Tuesday afternoon, just as Happer was preparing to testify before Sen. Ted Cruz’s Commerce subcommittee.

Hours earlier, Happer had been exposed as one of the two victims of a sting in which Greenpeace researchers posed as consultants for the fossil fuel industry. They got Happer and a Pennsylvania State University professor to agree to accept funding to produce pro-industry research while concealing the source of that funding.

Happer was none too pleased with Coleman’s question.

“You son of a bitch, I haven’t taken a dime!” replied Happer. “I haven’t taken a dime, you son of a bitch.”

Watch the exchange:

In fact, in email exchanges he thought he was having with a business advisory firm based in Beirut, Happer had described his convoluted remuneration agreement with Peabody Coal: His fee, in return for his testimony at a regulatory hearing in Minnesota, was to go not directly to him, but to a nonprofit that paid some of his expenses.

The other sting victim was Frank Clemente, a professor emeritus of sociology at Penn State known for his pro-coal views. He received an email in which  Greenpeace U.K. investigators Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan posed as a fixer for an Indonesian energy company. They asked him to produce a “briefing paper” to “counter damaging studies on Indonesian coal deaths, which have appeared in run up to Paris [climate talks].”

Clemente replied that he would be “very interested” in the project, noting that he had “worked with the Coal Industry Advisory Board, International Energy Agency, World Coal Association, the American Coal Council and the NCC, as well as a number of private coal-based companies and groups.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Post navigation

← Older posts

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress