Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
From Climate Science Watch (March 18, 2010): To the libertarians, the widely-shared scientific assessment that human-caused climate change will likely produce major harmful consequences — and the communication of this evidence to the public by the leading climate scientists — poses a particularly serious threat. An informed public concerned about the likelihood of harmful impacts of unchecked global climatic disruption is more likely to call for significant government action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In order to block proactive government policymaking and keep corporate interests unregulated, libertarian groups have focused a significant part of their efforts on climate change on distorting the science to confuse public opinion, denying the seriousness of the problem, and, most recently, impugning the integrity of the climate science community. The Koch brothers have stepped forward with deep pockets to bankroll such efforts.
Many people have already heard about the libertarian billionaire businessmen brothers Charles and David Koch who have helped to found and/or fund a number of non-profit organizations and think tanks—including the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Federalist Society, the Reason Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation—whose aim seems to be the advancement of the Kochs’ agenda “that government taxes and regulations impinge on prosperity.”
What many people may not be aware of is the number of academic centers/institutions that the Kochs are also helping to fund at both public and private colleges and universities—including Florida State University, West Virginia University, Brown University, Troy University, and Utah State University.
I’m going to focus on just one of these Koch-funded academic centers in this post—the Mercatus Center, a conservative think tank located at George Mason University in Virginia—and on Susan B. Dudley, a woman who worked at Mercatus and was then appointed to a regulatory position at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2007.
THE MERCATUS CENTER
In a 2004 Wall Street Journal article, the Mercatus Center was described as “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of.” Previously known as the Center for the Study of Free Market Processes, the Mercatus Center was founded by Richard Fink—with a grant from Charles Koch. Koch currently serves on the center’s Board of Directors—as does Fink who is also an executive vice president and a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries, Inc.
Jane Mayer wrote the following in Covert Operations, an article that appeared in the New Yorker in 2010: The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.
Public Citizen, a group founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, has called the Mercatus Center “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries and other corporate interests.” Richard Fink claims, however, that the center does not actively promote the Koch company’s private interests. He said that Koch “has other means of fighting its battles” in Washington and that they never had a nonprofit advance their agenda. Some people would disagree.
Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in environmental issues, told Mayer that “Koch has been constantly in trouble with the E.P.A., and Mercatus has constantly hammered on the agency.” Another environmental lawyer who spoke to Mayer said that Mercatus was “a means of laundering economic aims.” The lawyer described the strategy: “You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank,” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.”
Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist, told Mayer that the relationship between George Mason University and Mercatus is an unusual arrangement. “George Mason is a public university, and receives public funds. Virginia is hosting an institution that the Kochs practically control.” Stein claimed that Mercatus was “ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”
According to Sourcewatch, Mercatus “has engaged in campaigns involving deregulation, especially environmental deregulation.” It has been reported that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that George W. Bush put on his hit list were first suggested by academics who worked at the Mercatus Center.
In 2010, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute released a study that named Koch Industries as one of this country’s top ten polluters. That same year, Greenpeace released a report titled Koch Industries Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine. In the report’s executive summary, Greenpeace stated that Koch Industries had “become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.” (Greenpeace also reported that Koch foundations have contributed more than $48 million in grants to “climate opposition groups” since 1997—and that more than half of that has been donated since 2005.)
MEET SUSAN B. DUDLEY
Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, wrote in 2007 about George W. Bush’s re-nomination of “a veritable rogues’ gallery of anti-environmental figures to key posts in federal agencies.” O’Donnell said that Susan B. Dudley, one of the nominees, was “a true anti-regulatory zealot. As director of regulatory studies at the industry-funded Mercatus Center, Dudley was like a wrecking ball out to smash key safeguards.” He added, “Putting Dudley in this key federal post would be like naming comedian Michael Richards to head the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.”
According to Lee Fang of Think Progress, George W. Bush appointed Susan B. Dudley, the director of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center, to head the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—after the center had attacked the “EPA regulation of tailpipe greenhouse gases by challenging the science of climate change.” (Dudley’s was a recess appointment in 2007.)
O’Donnell said that as head of OIRA Dudley would have one “of the most obscure yet powerful jobs in Washington. The person in this position can, largely without public scrutiny, interfere with actions of agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and become a conduit for industries seeking to avoid federal health, environmental and safety standards.”
The Cost is Too High: How Susan Dudley Threatens Public Protections, a report produced by Public Citizen and OMB Watch in 2006, said that while Dudley worked at Mercatus, she “attacked proposed regulations in formal submissions to government agencies and orchestrated campaigns to derail other safeguards already on the books.” The report also claimed that Dudley displayed “an extreme anti-regulatory ideology” and “questioned the merit of regulation altogether in congressional testimony and regulatory comments, and she has urged weakening, if not eliminating entirely, public safeguards.”
Dudley worked to oppose public health regulations as a “hidden tax” that hinders profits when she was at Mercatus. She opposed all of the following: EPA plans that would have set tougher standards for smog; lower-polluting cars and SUVs—as well as cleaner gasoline; air bags in cars; stronger regulations for arsenic in drinking water; measures that could help curb global warming. (Think Progress)
Dudley has been quoted as stating that the “evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and…if a slight warming does occur, historical evidence suggests it is likely to be beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles.” In her testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety/Committee on Environment and Public on April 24, 1997, Dudley said: “Ozone in the troposphere, like ozone in the stratosphere, has the beneficial effect of screening ultraviolet radiation, which is known to have various health and welfare effects including melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer, cataracts, and crop and fishery damage.”
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of more than seventy universities that offer Ph.D.s in atmospheric and related sciences, doesn’t see it the same way Dudley does. UCAR has said the following about ozone in the troposphere:
Ozone occurs naturally at ground-level in low concentrations. The two major sources of natural ground-level ozone are hydrocarbons, which are released by plants and soil, and small amounts of stratospheric ozone, which occasionally migrate down to the earth’s surface. Neither of these sources contributes enough ozone to be considered a threat to the health of humans or the environment.
But the ozone that is a byproduct of certain human activities does become a problem at ground level and this is what we think of as ‘bad’ ozone. With increasing populations, more automobiles, and more industry, there’s more ozone in the lower atmosphere. Since 1900 the amount of ozone near the earth’s surface has more than doubled. Unlike most other air pollutants, ozone is not directly emitted from any one source. Tropospheric ozone is formed by the interaction of sunlight, particularly ultraviolet light, with hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, which are emitted by automobiles, gasoline vapors, fossil fuel power plants, refineries, and certain other industries.
And this is what UCAR said about the negative impacts of tropospheric ozone:
While stratospheric ozone shields us from ultraviolet radiation, in the troposphere this irritating, reactive molecule damages forests and crops; destroys nylon, rubber, and other materials; and injures or destroys living tissue. It is a particular threat to people who exercise outdoors or who already have respiratory problems.
Ozone affects plants in several ways. High concentrations of ozone cause plants to close their stomata. These are the cells on the underside of the plant that allow carbon dioxide and water to diffuse into the plant tissue. This slows down photosynthesis and plant growth. Ozone may also enter the plants through the stomata and directly damage internal cells.
Rubber, textile dyes, fibers, and certain paints may be weakened or damaged by exposure to ozone. Some elastic materials can become brittle and crack, while paints and fabric dyes may fade more quickly.
When ozone pollution reaches high levels, pollution alerts are issued urging people with respiratory problems to take extra precautions or to remain indoors. Smog can damage respiratory tissues through inhalation. Ozone has been linked to tissue decay, the promotion of scar tissue formation, and cell damage by oxidation. It can impair an athlete’s performance, create more frequent attacks for individuals with asthma, cause eye irritation, chest pain, coughing, nausea, headaches and chest congestion and discomfort. It can worsen heart disease, bronchitis, and emphysema.
Prior to Dudley’s appointment to OIRA, Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, wrote in an email exchange with Media Transparency that “Dudley would be the most anti-regulatory zealot within the Bush Administration, bar none. Her ideology is based upon a core belief that regulations are generally bad and there should be no regulation unless it can be proven to be cost effective and supported from within the market place.”
The Cost is Too High report said that Dudley’s radicalism put her “right at home at Mercatus”—which was “founded by corporate interests and endowed by large corporations, free-market oriented foundations, and leaders from the corporate world” and “has long operated at the intersection of money, power, and influence in order to promote corporate special interests at the expense of the public interest.”
Note: Susan B. Dudley is a Research Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration and is serving as the Director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
EPA Nemesis: Mercatus Center Another Koch Think Tank (Sourcewatch/Center for Media and Democracy)
Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group Mercatus Center (Greenpeace)
From Promoting Acid Rain To Climate Denial: Over 20 Years Of David Koch’s Polluter Front Groups (Think Progress)
The White House’s Agents Of Environmental Corruption (Think Progress)
Koch’s Web of Influence (Center for Public Integrity)
Koch-Powered Tea Party Pushes Climate Denial Bill In New Hampshire (Think Progress)
Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. (The New Yorker)
The White House’s Agents Of Environmental Corruption (Think Progress)
Does Bush know how to pick ’em or does he know how to pick ’em? (Daily Kos)
The Cost is Too High: How Susan Dudley Threatens Public Protections (Public Citizen & OMB Watch)
Bush Nominates Anti-Regulatory Zealot To Head ‘Super-Powerful’ Public Safety Office (Think Progress)
Stop Susan Dudley: The air you breathe depends on it (Public Citizen)
Dudley Do-Wrong of George Mason University (Media Transparency)
With Senate on break, Bush appoints officials: The three, including a contentious regulatory director, most likely would not have been approved by lawmakers. (Los Angeles Times)
I Am OMB and I Write the Rules (Washington Post)
On First Day Of New Congress, Koch Operatives Met With GOP Chairman Planning To Gut The Clean Air Act (Think Progress)
ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection (The Nation)
Exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution (ThinkProgress)
The Koch Energy and Commerce Committee (Turley Blog)
Koch Industries multibillionaire Koch brothers bankroll attacks on climate change science and policy (Climate Science Watch)
The Most Important Think Tank You’ve Never Heard Of (Richard C. Young)
Rule Breaker: In Washington, Tiny Think Tank Wields Big Stick on Regulation (Mercatus)
Meet Koch Industries (Oil Watchdog)
Mercatus Center—Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial [REPORT] (PolluterWatch)
Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial [REPORT] (PolluterWatch)
Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial 2011 Update (Greenpeace)
Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine (Greenpeace)
The Kochs’ Mercatus Center and Environmental Deregulation (The Green Market)
Does This Matter? Eliminating the EPA? (Watchdog Progressive)
REPORT: Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers At Universities Across The Country (ThinkProgress)
FSU Accepts Funds From Charles Koch In Return For Control Over Its Academic Freedom (ThinkProgress)
Billionaire’s role in hiring decisions at Florida State University raises questions (St. Petersburg Times)
VIDEO: Why Oil Billionaire David Koch Is Secretly Funding Astroturf To Repeal CA Clean Energy Law AB 32 (Think Progress)
Wegman scandal rocks cornerstone of climate denial (Think Progress)
Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) – Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group (Greenpeace)
Bush Obstructs EPA, OSHA, CDC Regulations (Mother Jones)
Koch Industries and Lobbying in Washington (Desmogblog)
Koch and George Mason University (Desmogblog)
Still Hiring Tree Haters (Tom Paine)
Another big time fox nominated to be gatekeeper to the henhouse (Watching the Watchers)
Charles Koch’s Assault on Academic Freedom (Mother Jones)
In Washington, Tiny Think Tank Wields Big Stick on Regulation: With White House Ex-Staffers, Mercatus Helps Zap Codes It Says Restrict Business (Wall Street Journal)
Statutory Interpretation in the Era of OIRA (Georgetown University law Center)
Testimony of Susan E. Dudley
Before the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety
Committee on Environment and Public Works
April 24, 1997
Ms. Elaine you should see the fishing reports from the Gulf it’s been an outstanding year.
Bron,
“And yes if you look at the densities in cities there would be plenty of land for farming.”
Where are your calculations? Have you done the math?
How much agricultural land is needed to sustain a population the size of New York City?
Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon Spill Effects on Fish Revealed
Oil spill resulted in dramatic effects on fish species in Louisiana marshes
National Science Foundation
September 26, 2011
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=121786
*****
Trace amounts of crude oil harm fish
Deepwater Horizon spill affected gene expression in Gulf killifish.
Melissa Gaskill
Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110926/full/news.2011.546.html
Elaine:
if all the world’s ice melted most of the land mass is still above water. And yes if you look at the densities in cities there would be plenty of land for farming. But since the change is land area is not all that significant there is still plenty of land left in all countries and greenland is a net gain.
Look at the map I linked to.
The water and air are much cleaner today than when I was a kid, so yes technology has helped do that.
If we have all this pollution regulation why are we getting dirtier water?
“Most pollution is taken care of by technology.”
and or tiny microbes to which act as a garbage disposal
The last (and only) defense against the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is tiny—billions of hydrocarbon-chewing microbes, such as Alcanivorax borkumensis. In fact, the primary motive for using the more than 830,000 gallons of chemical dispersants on the oil slick both above and below the surface of the sea is to break the oil into smaller droplets that bacteria can more easily consume.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-microbes-clean-up-oil-spills
Plastic Plague
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdhKl9r_fWY
Dr. Sylvia Earle on ocean acidification, fish sandwiches and Stephen Colbert
Bron,
Did you factor into your calculations the amount of land that would be needed to support food production–land for grazing animals,raising chickens, and growing crops? What about fresh water for drinking–and land for forests?
*****
“Most pollution is taken care of by technology.”
Is it really?
*****
Water pollution: Dawn of the ‘Dead Zones’
CNN
April 20, 2008
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-04-20/world/eco.waterpollution_1_pollutants-phosphorus-and-nitrogen-compounds-fertilizers-and-animal-waste?_s=PM:WORLD
Excerpt:
It’s thousands of square miles wide, virtually devoid of oxygen and it has been blamed for an increase in shark attacks: the Gulf of Mexico “Dead Zone” is getting bigger and forcing marine life — including sharks – into shore.
The zone has been caused by a flood of nutrients, such as agricultural fertilizers, which boost algae production in the sea. These growths consume huge amounts of oxygen creating a “marine desert” almost devoid of life.
The “Dead Zone” varies in size each year, but in 1999 it was 7,728 square miles — that’s nearly the size of Delaware and Connecticut combined.
*****
Toxic Waters: A Series about the Worsening Pollution in American Waters and Regulators’ Response
New York Times
September 30, 2011
http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters
Another key point from the article
But scientists have struggled to incorporate these ultraviolet (UV) signals into climate models.
Which means with out important data incorporated into the climate models the reliability of the models can not be trusted.
I’ve said time and time again.
Models are only as good as the information they are fed. A human feeds the model. It takes a well balanced meal in order to stay healthy.
If they keep putting garbage into the model runs it’s how do you say ?
garbage in, garbage out
Ahh Ha the new things we learn. Keep in mind the Satellite was launched in 2003 and is the first EVER to measure the suns solar radiation.
With that said we find out that the Sun’s 11-year cycle means we’re in for Arctic freeze this winter.
Piers Corbyn just got a big pat on the back. Of course this is nothing new for him. He knew this way before they even launched the satellite.
By Leon Watson
Last updated at 12:27 PM on 10th October 2011
Dr Adam Scaife, from the Met Office, one of the study’s authors, said: ‘Our research establishes the link between the solar cycle and winter climate as more than just coincidence.
‘We’ve been able to reproduce a consistent climate pattern, confirm how it works, and quantify it using a computer model.
‘This isn’t the sole driver of winter climate over our region, but it is a significant factor and understanding it is important for seasonal to decadal forecasting.’
But scientists have struggled to incorporate these ultraviolet (UV) signals into climate models.
Today’s findings, published in Nature Geoscience, used satellite measurements from NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) to reveal that differences in UV light reaching the Earth during the 11-year solar cycle are larger than previously thought.
The satellite, launched in 2003, is the first ever to measure solar radiation across the entire UV spectrum.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2047338/Back-vengeance-Scientists-say-suns-11-year-cycle-shows-Arctic-freeze-return-winter.html#ixzz1b2vcXlr4
The world population is the total number of living humans on the planet Earth, currently estimated to be 6.97 billion by the United States Census Bureau as of October 5, 2011.
Area of the US in square miles – 3.79 million square miles
Population density of New York City – 29,480 people per square mile in neighborhood density.
Population Density in land area the size of the US – 1,839 people per square mile.
1,196 inhabitants per square mile in New Jersey
18,943 people per square mile in Singapore or almost 10 times what it would be in a land area the size of the US.
So there is plenty of land for human population. So why worry about the polar ice caps melting? There will be plenty of land left if the ice caps melted.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/spaceart/earthicefree.jpg
Looks like like a hell of a lot of land left to me. And Look at green land, wow an entire continent is there.
Most of the environments are still in existence.
So even if we could warm the earth enough to melt all of the ice into water we would still have most of the land mass intact. In fact with the addition of Greenland we might have a net gain.
There is no way human activity is going to increase temperatures enough to melt all of the ice caps in the world.
Most pollution is taken care of by technology. If CO2 is a pollutant then we better kill every living thing in the world.
This would be laughable if so many people didnt take it seriously.
Winter ice loss is the reason the Arctic isn’t full of 5,000 year old sea ice.
In 2007, the Arctic lost a massive amount of thick, multiyear sea ice, contributing to that year’s record-low extent of Arctic sea ice. A new NASA-led study has found that the record loss that year was due in part to the absence of “ice arches,” naturally-forming, curved ice structures that span the openings between two land points. These arches block sea ice from being pushed by winds or currents through narrow passages and out of the Arctic basin.
Beginning each fall, sea ice spreads across the surface of the Arctic Ocean until it becomes confined by surrounding continents. Only a few passages — including the Fram Strait and Nares Strait — allow sea ice to escape.
Despite Nares’ narrow width, the team reports that in 2007, ice loss through Nares equaled more than 10 percent of the amount emptied on average each year through the wider Fram Strait.
They found that in 2007, Nares Strait drained the Arctic Ocean of 88,060 square kilometers (34,000 square miles) of sea ice, or a volume of 60 cubic miles. The amount was more than twice the average amount lost through Nares each year between 1997 and 2009.
The ice lost through Nares Strait was some of the thickest and oldest in the Arctic Ocean.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20100218.html
Elaine,
I will avoid math any way that I can! So all of China and Inia and Indonesia along with all of the USA could live “comfortably” in the US? Of course Bron, you do realize that much of our lower coastline areas would be under water, don’t you?
Bron,
I’m not considering just the melting of ice caps. I’m taking into consideration the pollution of the air, oceans and other bodies of water, land–and the destruction of different habitats.
“the entire human race can fit comfortably in a land mass the size of the US.”
Good luck with that!
*****
rafflaw,
Just do the math, will ya???
😉
The Arctic has been relatively ice free before.
Ten times she is able to surface. Once, at the North Pole, where crewmen performed a mission of sentiment, scattering the ashes of polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. In 1931, he was the first to attempt a submarine cruise to the Pole. Now, the Skate’s twelve-day three thousand mile voyage under the ice, shown in Defense Department films, demonstrates that missile-carrying nuclear subs could lurk under the Polar Ice Cap, safe from attack, to emerge at will, and fire off H-bomb missiles to any target on Earth.
A powerful, retaliatory weapon for America’s defense.
“the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick. The ice moves from Alaska to Iceland and the wind and tides causes open water as the ice breaks up. The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice. We had sonar equipment that would find these open or thin areas to come up through, thus limiting any damage to the submarine. The ice would also close in and cover these areas crushing together making large ice ridges both above and below the water. We came up through a very large opening in 1958 that was 1/2 mile long and 200 yards wide. The wind came up and closed the opening within 2 hours. On both trips we were able to find open water. We were not able to surface through ice thicker than 3 feet.”
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
Scroll down to see the pics of the nuclear sub USS Skate at the above link to see for yourself.
rafflaw:
the US is plenty big enough to support the worlds entire population. Do the math yourself, it works.
It would be worth preventing if it were a real calamity but I think it is a manufactured calamity with a political motive at its root.
Bron,
With all due respect, how the hell can the entire world live in a land mass the size of the United States and how is that situation not a calamity and not worth preventing?
Elaine:
how is a point of no return possible? What is the worst thing that can happen? If all of the ice in the world melts and we end up having less land what is the problem? the entire human race can fit comfortably in a land mass the size of the US.
And how would all the ice melt anyway? You would have to increase the average temperature of the polar regions to above 0 degrees Celsius for a prolonged period of time. How would that be possible? The average earth temperature now is about 16 degrees Celsius.
It would take a long time for 7,000′ of Antarctic ice to melt in any event.
The average temperature at the Arctic and Antarctic poles are -17 degrees Celsius and -52 degree Celsius respectively.
You would have to raise the Polar temperatures by 18 and 53 degrees to start melting the ice. But again so what? Earth had plenty of living creatures when average temperatures were much warmer than now.
How many degree rise in average earth temperature would it take to raise the temperature of the poles to melt ice? Does anyone even know for a fact or is it all supposition?
Elaine,
You are probably right…But ..today…. re are some things outside of my control and yours….They are the requirement of businesses not to pollute…..They have to pay to clean up….well…Under Ronnie…they got to take it off off of the return….You and I pay….
AY,
“I am trying to say that it will change…the weather just like the seasons…Some years are spectacular some are not..Pollution happens naturally (by people) and organically…Some are worse than others…But nature will figure out a way to cure itself..”
Do you really believe that no matter how much we pollute this planet…no matter how many habitats we destroy that the Earth will be able to “cure itself?” I do think we may some day reach the point of no return.
Quick Fact: Beck guest host revives debunked climate email claim in attack on Mann
January 15, 2010
http://mediamatters.org/research/201001150049
Excerpts:
Glenn Beck guest host Eric Bolling and guest Tom Borelli, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), used a grant awarded under the stimulus bill to climate scientist Michael Mann to revive the debunked claim that emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, some of which were written by Mann, undermine the scientific consensus that manmade global warming exists. Further, at no point during the segment did Bolling or Borelli disclose that NCPPR has received funding from the oil industry.
***
Fact: Climate experts, fact-checkers dispute notion that emails undermine climate change consensus
Fact-checks: Emails “misrepresented by global-warming skeptics.” As Media Matters has documented, fact-checks by the Associated Press, PolitiFact.com, and FactCheck.org have examined the emails and came to similar conclusions. The AP found that “the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked”; PolitiFact stated that “[i]ndependent of CRU’s data, agencies and academics all over the world are coming to essentially the same conclusion: Climate change is happening”; FactCheck stated that “many of the e-mails that are being held up as ‘smoking guns’ have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics eager to find evidence of a conspiracy. And even if they showed what the critics claim, there remains ample evidence that the earth is getting warmer.”
Nature: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real.” A December 2 editorial in the science journal Nature stated: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.”
Climate experts agree that voluminous evidence exists backing up manmade global warming. More than 1,700 scientists from the United Kingdom signed a statement responding “to the ongoing questioning of core climate science and methods,” stating in part that “We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive.” Similarly, the American Meteorological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science both issued statements reaffirming the idea of manmade climate change; in the words of the AAAS, “The vast preponderance of evidence, based on years of research conducted by a wide array of different investigators at many institutions, clearly indicates that global climate change is real, it is caused largely by human activities, and the need to take action is urgent.”
Fact: Borelli’s group has received funding from the oil industry
Since 2001, National Center for Public Policy Research received $390,000 from Exxon Mobil. According to Conservative Transparency (operated by Media Matters for America’s sister organization Media Matters Action Network), NCPPR received $390,000 in funding from Exxon Mobil from 2001 through 2008. According to the NCPPR’s website, the group “advocates private, free market solutions to today’s environmental challenges.”