Climate Denial and Climate Fraud

We've known it for a long time, but a recent analysis of court documents has provided further proof that fossil fuel corporations and trade associations (aka, lobbyists) have intentionally worked to mislead the public about man-made climate change. From the Guardian:

Analysis of Peabody Energy court documents show company backed trade groups, lobbyists and think tanks dubbed ‘heart and soul of climate denial.’ The company has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on manmade climate change and oppose environment regulations.

Peabody Energy is the euphemistically deceptive name for the biggest coal mining company in the United States (but hey, Peabody Coal sounds dirty, so voila, it's Peabody Energy). On April 11, 2016 the firm declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which meant in order to avoid paying their debts they had to file substantial financial records with the courts. Those records, like other bankruptcy filings for other companies before them, have documented how Peabody and other fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists have funded the denial of climate science for decades.

Among the deniers being funded by Peabody Energy are:

• Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (aka, CO2 Science), who routinely promotes the benefits of CO2 to plants while dismissing the warming impacts.
• American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the infamous conservative legislation-writing lobbying firm responsible for blocking renewable energy and blocking emissions control efforts.
• Americans for Prosperity chapters, which is a Koch lobbying firm and conservative lobbyist.
• George C. Marshall Institute, the lobbying group started by Reagan appointees and involved in every instance of science denial since the 1980s.

Individual denier scientists were also funded by Peabody (and others), including:

• Richard Lindzen, formerly of MIT but now paid by the Cato Institute, a libertarian lobbyist.
• Willie Soon, the infamous provider of "deliverables" to ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute
• Roy Spencer, whose recent work, like Lindzen's, seems to have difficulty standing up to scientific scrutiny. Spencer, of course, is also on the Board of the aforementioned George C. Marshall Institute.

And these are not the only ones. Bankruptcy filings by Alpha Natural Resources (another euphemism for one of the country's largest coal companies) revealed that Chris Horner, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (itself a lobbying firm), was being paid to protect coal interests (hence his constant misrepresentation of the science). In addition, records show another climate denier and lobbyist, Patrick Moore, has been paid by coal interests to speak on their behalf.

Peabody's reach was extensive:

“The breadth of the groups with financial ties to Peabody is extraordinary. Thinktanks, litigation groups, climate scientists, political organisations, dozens of organisations blocking action on climate all receiving funding from the coal industry,” said Nick Surgey, director of research for the Center for Media and Democracy. 

Peabody Energy and Alpha Natural Resources are not alone in funding climate denial. Records show that Exxon was well aware that fossil fuel burning was causing man-made global warming as far back as the 1960s. They initially undertook an extensive scientific program to determine the cause and effect, but after determining that the ramifications to their profit margins were significant, they shut down the program and instead invested in denying the science and funding climate denial and a broad network of lobbyists, front groups, and malleable scientists like Fred Singer and others. Collusion among the various lobbyists, key spokespeople, and media outlets also recently came to light.

The prior knowledge and then suppression of that knowledge by Exxon follows the playbook of the tobacco industry to deny smoking causes cancer. In both cases, corporate denial and subterfuge results in huge human health and environmental costs to society. The similarity to the tactics used by the tobacco industry is why once again many state attorneys general have banded together to launch investigations into Exxon's (now ExxonMobil) deceit. As a public company, stockholders have raised the questions to corporate executives of whether their knowledge and obfuscation endangers their stock holdings.

So once again fossil fuel interests have been caught paying for climate deniers to mislead the public and misrepresent the science, all to protect the profit margins of fossil fuel corporations. As these bankruptcies show, however, fossil fuels have peaked and businesses are failing due to a combination of mismanagement, fraud, and the higher and higher costs of trying to extract fossil fuels from ever more difficult locations. Still, these companies aren't going to give up their remaining profits without a fight, no matter how much deceit and collusion needed to do so.

Antarctica is Melting and Attorneys General are Going After ExxonMobil

Two major stories rise to the surface this week in climate news. A new study warns that melting in Antarctica could raise sea levels substantially more and faster than previously thought. And the Attorneys General from several states band together to investigate "what Exxon knew" about climate change...and when.

Antarctica

Antarctica (i.e., the South Pole) is a favorite of climate deniers because it serves as a convenient counterpoint whenever the Arctic (i.e., the North Pole) sea ice extent is reaching another record low. The denier position, like all denier positions, is both wrong and intentionally fraudulent for a variety of reasons. And now it's getting even worse.

A new study published in the scientific journal Nature suggests that previous sea level rise estimates could be vast underestimated. The last IPCC report in late 2013 estimated a mean sea level rise of between about 1.5 to over 3 feet by the end of the this century. The new study suggests the reality might be more like 5 feet in that time, double or even triple the previous estimates.

This new study comes is independent of another recent study published by James Hansen and 18 co-authors also warning of catastrophic sea level rise due to melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.

It actually gets worse, so read up on this issue here, and here, here, and here. The full peer-reviewed paper in Nature can be downloaded for free here.

ExxonMobil

It came as no shock to most insiders when it was recently made public Exxon knew that fossil fuel consumption was warming the climate. They've known it for decades and their own internal scientists were the ones telling them. Like most big corporations, Exxon (and the combined ExxonMobil, as well as all the other big fossil fuel companies) has many scientists on staff. Some focus on resource development (e.g., finding new oil, gas, and coal reserves) while others focus on a wide range of testing, both to develop new products and to comply with health and safety regulations. Scientists at these companies are often the cream of the crop, that is, they are very good scientists. It is these scientists who long ago informed Exxon (and other companies through the American Petroleum Institute, the primary trade association/lobbying firm for the fossil fuel industry) that the vastly increased carbon emissions from their products were causing dramatic and dangerous warming the climate system.

The problem is what Exxon and others did with this knowledge and the best comparison is to the actions of the tobacco industry. In both cases the industry dealt with the knowledge of harm by suppressing it. On top of this they funded front groups and consultants to create doubt about the science.

After this "revelation" of suppression of knowledge became public recently, public pressure helped initiate investigations by a now growing body of state Attorneys General. A federal Justice Department investigation is also either underway or contemplated. Support for investigations has reached at least 15 Attorneys General, with more likely in the future.

While independent, these two issues are helping to push man-made climate change to the forefront again. A recent poll showed the highest public concern about climate change in a long time. In addition, the Arctic has just set the lowest annual maximum on record, not a good start to the annual meltdown that threatens to produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean for periods of the summer sometime in the future.

As noted previously, 2016 could surpass 2015 as the hottest year ever, continuing a trend of a warming climate. This could very well be a critical year in climate policy action.

Climate Debate, Climate Pope, Climate Republicans, and Exxon Lies - The Week in Climate Change

This is a big week in climate change, though if you watched the Republican debate last night you would have missed it. Also, the Pope comes to the United States and talks about climate, while a new report shows how Exxon (now ExxonMobil) studied climate change as far back as the 1970s and then lied about it for decades. Here is a quick round up of climate news you definitely need to know.

Republican Debate

All one hundred (or 17, no 16, no 15) Republican candidates for the 2016 nomination engaged in a tag-team debate on CNN on September 16th. The early debate featured the lowest polling Republicans, minus one former Governor who couldn't garner enough support to be included even in this low-threshold affair, and another former Governor who decided he couldn't afford the airfare to California from Texas. The later debate featured everyone else.

In four and a half hours there was exactly one question related to climate change, answered by only three candidates, and totaling a breathtakingly inconsequential three minutes of air time. That in itself is why we need to have a Science Debate. Marco Rubio (Florida, which faces life-endangering sea level rise), Chris Christie (New Jersey, which was devastated by Superstorm Sandy just a few years ago), and Scott Walker (Wisconsin, whose warming temperatures will likely be offset by more extreme winter storms), all trotted out the new "denier talking point of the month." Having exhausted the "I am not a scientist" line (while ignoring what scientists say), the fossil fuel lobbyist/public relations approved official Republican denier line is now "The U.S. can't make any impact alone." Not only is this false, but they ignore the worldwide commitments being made by all other nations serious about dealing with man-made climate change. As always, the Republican party simply denies climate science (thus disqualifying them for the job they seek) and actively tries to sabotage international action that will have greater impacts.

Bizarrely for the guy who many think is the smartest of the bunch, Marco Rubio even made an ill-conceived joke about the severe drought being experienced by California - where the debate was being held. And in the shadow of a model of Ronald Reagan's Air Force One (the debate was held in the Reagan Presidential Library), Chris Christie mocked Ronald Reagan's own Secretary of State as being out-of-touch. All of them denied climate change and any attempt to act on it.

The Pope Brings a Climate Message to Congress and the United Nations

Pope Francis begins his whirlwind tour of the United States next week, with stops in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia. The Pope shocked everyone a few months back by calling for an encyclical, which is Pope-speak for calling in experts on a particular issue to derive a policy. In June the results of that encyclical were released, with the Pope calling on all Catholics to acknowledge they have a moral obligation to steward God's gift to Man, i.e., the planet and the climate that lets us survive here. Other religions have also reiterated the moral obligation to take care of His creation.

Not surprisingly, the Republican party in the United States turned on the Pope, telling him he should "leave science to the scientists." These are the same Republican politicians who while saying "I am not a scientist" continue to tell scientists they don't know their own science. Breaking with corporate-Republican creed, there is a small group of Republicans who are honest about having to deal with the science. Perhaps eventually the rest will catch on that lying to your constituents won't stop sea level rise in Florida; droughts in Oklahoma, Texas, and California; or superstorms in New Jersey, New York, and New England. Until then, Republicans have disqualified themselves from positions requiring personal and professional responsibility.

Exxon Knew About Man-Made Climate Change in the 1970s

A new report compiled from thousands of Exxon documents and interviews with Exxon employees and others reveals that Exxon's own in-house research clearly demonstrated the role of fossil fuels in man-made climate change. And Exxon knew this all the way back in the 1970s. Concern about carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels had been raised decades earlier, and scientists were already studying the impacts. As the largest fossil fuel corporation on the planet, Exxon engaged in a research project in which its own scientists told them clearly and emphatically that fossil fuels were causing the climate to warm. Everyone at Exxon knew this, including senior management and CEO.

Rather than address the issue, Exxon buried it. They killed funding for the research and began a decades long campaign to deny man-made climate change. A series of industry front groups posing as "research organizations," many with intentionally deceptive names, was set up to "manufacture doubt." This was the same technique used by tobacco companies to deny smoking caused cancer. That network of lobbyists and front groups expanded to include other denial networks begun by the Koch brothers, libertarian and conservative lobbyists, and other anti-science organizations. Collusion among lobbyists, the media, and politicians became the norm. 

This page will have more about what Exxon (now ExxonMobil) knew in future posts. From my own personal knowledge I can say that Exxon scientists then, and now, continue to do good science and provide scientific information to the company and its management. Those scientists have made it clear that the science is unequivocal, and that ExxonMobil must find more sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel. Denial of the science falls solely on ExxonMobil management and the denial lobbyists they support.