{"id":11489,"date":"2015-08-26T09:43:09","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T14:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11489"},"modified":"2015-08-26T09:43:09","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T14:43:09","slug":"peabody-energy-experts-sow-doubt-about-reality-of-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11489","title":{"rendered":"Peabody Energy ‘Experts’ Sow Doubt About Reality of Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Peabody Energy ‘Experts’ Sow Doubt About Reality of Climate Change<\/a><\/h3>\n

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According to publicly available court records,\u00a0US<\/span>\u00a0coal company Peabody Energy<\/a>recently submitted expert testimony to the Minnesota Public Utilities commission arguing that,\u00a0\u201dCO<\/span>2 is not harmful and is actually good for the planet\u201d and that \u201cthere is no empirical scientific evidence for significant climate effects of rising\u00a0CO<\/span>2 levels, and there is no convincing evidence that anthropogenic global warming (AGW<\/span>) will produce catastrophic climate\u00a0changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

These statements and many more were included in \u201cexpert\u201d 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\u00a0Energy.<\/p>\n

The hearings were conducted by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission\u00a0which is investigating<\/a>\u00a0the environmental and socioeconomic costs of carbon and greenhouse\u00a0gases.<\/p>\n

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,\u00a02015.<\/p>\n

According to court documents, Bezdek’s purpose for appearing in front of the commission on behalf of Peabody was to \u201cassess whether the Commission should adopt a new environmental cost value for\u00a0CO<\/span>2 based on the benefits of\u00a0CO<\/span>2 emissions and the problems with the federal social cost of carbon (SCC<\/span>).\u201d<\/p>\n

Bezdek did not respond to a request for clarification on his relationship with Peabody Energy or what his financial compensation was for his expert\u00a0opinion.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Fred Singer<\/a>,\u00a0Craig Idso<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Willie Soon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his testimony, Bezdek made the following claims regarding climate change and carbon\u00a0pollution:<\/p>\n

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\u201cCO<\/span>2 is not harmful and is actually good for the\u00a0planet\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal\u00a0SCC<\/span>\u00a0[social costs of carbon] estimates do not adequately consider the benefits 27 of fossil fuels andCO<\/span>2\u00a0emission.\u201d<\/p>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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Peabody Energy ‘Experts’ Sow Doubt About Reality of Climate Change According to publicly available court records,\u00a0US\u00a0coal company Peabody Energyrecently submitted expert testimony to the Minnesota Public Utilities commission arguing that,\u00a0\u201dCO2 is not harmful and is actually good for the planet\u201d and that \u201cthere is no empirical scientific evidence for significant climate effects of rising\u00a0CO2 levels, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[113,141,1004,147,5317,8449,328,386,1162],"class_list":["post-11489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-desmog-blog","tag-expert-testimony","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-peabody-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11490,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11489\/revisions\/11490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}