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
Bdaman:
that Kaiser thing is a big deal, it looks like he ponied up the cash and Obama gave him a big fat loan so he could pony up more cash for the 2012 election. that way Kaiser doesnt have to work as hard at bundling, he can just stroke a check paid for by tax payers.
WTF?
Rasmussen reports that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who say this is Very Likely. Twenty-two percent (22%) don’t think it’s likely some scientists have falsified global warming data, including just six percent (6%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 10% are undecided.
Fifty-seven percent (57%) believe there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming, up five points from late 2009. One in four (25%) believes scientists agree on global warming. Another 18% aren’t sure.
Republicans and adults not affiliated with either major political party feel stronger than Democrats that some scientists have falsified data to support their global warming theories, but 51% of Democrats also agree.
Men are more likely than women to believe some scientists have put out false information on the issue.
Democrats are more likely to support immediate action on global warming compared to those from other party affiliations.
Bdaman:
are you implying GW scientists are making false comparisons and fudging data to make it look like there is an increase in temperature when what may actually be happening is a decrease in temperature?
Yes and this is the reason why the tide has turned. Look at the latest polls on the subject and see how people poll when asked that question.
They have gotten away with lying through their teeth and it has finally caught up to them.
Then there’s this
Solar company with $1.2 billion taxpayer loan guarantee, political connections exhibits signs of financial trouble
As failed solar panel manufacturer Solyndra rides through the investigative ringer in Congress, revelations of another politically-connected company that received what appears to be a less-than-virtuous $1.2 billion loan guarantee are surfacing.
The company, SunPower, received its $1.2 billion loan guarantee in September, immediately before the program’s deadline.
SunPower isn’t as financially sound as the public was led to believe when it secured a loan guarantee twice the size of Solyndra’s $535 million loan. Just this week — less than a month after taxpayers landed on the hook for SunPower’s $1.2 billion loan guarantee — company executives announced that they expect to lower their 2011 earnings projections.
The company also carries $820 million in debt, which is $20 million more than its market capitalization.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/11/solar-company-with-1-2-billion-taxpayer-loan-guarantee-political-connections-exhibits-signs-of-financial-trouble/#ixzz1ahXPg7OV
Bron check this out.
Solyndra funder Kaiser paid zero taxes for years
Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser has been in the headlines in recent months thanks to his role as a major investor in Solyndra LLC, the now-bankrupt California solar panel maker hailed by President Obama as a model for America’s “clean energy future.”
Congress is investigating why the Obama administration gave Solyndra a $535 million loan guarantee despite multiple warnings from career bureaucrats and private sector investment experts that the company was a poor risk, lacked a realistic business model and was likely to go bankrupt as a result.
But the Solyndra scandal is far from Kaiser’s first brush with political controversy. As the Sunlight Foundation’s Bill Allison reports today, Kaiser has become extraordinarily wealthy by taking advantage of the federal tax code in ways that some tax experts – including the IRS – believe to be illegal.
As Allison describes it in his Sunlight post today, “in one six year period, during which he increased his net worth enough to land him on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, Kaiser reported taxable income to the Internal Revenue Service just once, totaling $11,699–equivalent to a full-time hourly wage of $5.62.”
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/solyndra-funder-kaiser-paid-zero-taxes-years
Bdaman:
are you implying GW scientists are making false comparisons and fudging data to make it look like there is an increase in temperature when what may actually be happening is a decrease in temperature?
When I was in grade school they were talking about a new ice age coming.
OCTOBER 12, 2011
by Paul Homewood
Back in August Katharine Hayhoe, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech University, gave an interview to Yale Environment 360 which was published in full by the Guardian in the UK as well as many other press outlets.
In the interview, in answer to the question “have you seen sizeable increases in average temperatures that could be defined as climate change?”, she is quoted as saying :-
“What we’ve actually seen, at least in West Texas, is an increase primarily in winter temperatures. Our very cold days are getting less frequent and our winter temperatures are increasing in nearly every station we look at across Texas and Oklahoma.”
A quick look at the NCDC data showed this was not the case. In Texas, winter temperatures have declined by 0.06F per decade over the last 100 years and the 2010/11 winter was the 36th coldest during that time. Furthermore the temperature has declined by 0.51F per decade since 1990.
When challenged about this on the “Reasonable Doubt on Climate Change” website Dr Hayhoe replied that :-
“In this case, my comment on winter temperatures is based on my analysis of the 50-odd stations in West TX, OK and NM that fall into the Koppen climate classification of cold semi-arid, or Bsk.”
http://reasonabledoubtclimate.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/texas-winters-hayhoe-warming-effect/
However an analysis of 10 stations in the area of West Texas she is referring to shows quite clearly that there is no long term warming trend. Indeed the pattern is exactly the same as the whole of Texas.
When I questioned Dr Hayhoe about this apparent anomaly, she replied “I’m always referring to long-term climate trends — in the case of this analysis, from 1965 to 2010 “
In other words the trend is drawn from the middle of the coldest decade on record since 1930.
I was keen to give Katharine the chance to tell her side of the story and so asked for her answers to the following questions.
1) Would you agree that the winter temperatures in the part of West Texas you referred to in the Yale 360 interview have from 2001-2011 been about the same as the average from 1931-2000?
2) Is there any long term trend in temperature since 1930 and if so what?
3) You say you can identify climatic trends over a period of 30 years or so. Is 30 years enough to do this when there is evidence that PDO and AMO cycles typically last 50-60 years? Please give your reasoning.
4) Do you agree the 1930-60 period saw warmer temperatures compared to the 1960-90 period that followed it? Can you identify the causes of this cooling?
5) Assuming that we agree that this cooling happened, can we be sure that the warming seen principally in the 1990′s was not caused by the same factors that caused the earlier cooling?
6) Do you agree that temperatures for the last 40 years are about the same on average as the period 1931-70? If so is there any reason not to regard current temperatures as anything other than “normal” (by 20th C standards!!).
You say you are keen to talk to sceptics,so I guess it is over to you now, Katharine.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/questions-for-katharine/
Speaker Boehner’s New Energy Policy Advisor Is A Global Warming Denier
May 03, 2011
http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201105030012
Excerpt:
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) just announced the appointment of Michael Catanzaro, formerly of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the Bush administration, as his new energy policy advisor. Boehner’s press release announcing the hiring doesn’t mention climate change, or any other environmental concern, but that’s no surprise given Catanzaro’s history of mocking the threat of global warming.
While serving as communications director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee during President Bush’s first term, Catanzaro’s vitriolic attacks on “climate alarmists” frequently appeared on the far-right Human Events website. Catanzaro’s pieces cited of the likes of Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Competitive Enterprise Institute — right-wing organizations driven by ideology, not science. (CSE was founded by Koch Industries, the far-right polluters and oil thieves who bankroll much of the conservative movement. CEI has also enjoyed significant funding from big polluters like Koch and Exxon Mobil.)
Background claims by state Senate’s global-warming skeptic fail to check out
By Don Shelby | Published Wed, Jun 15 2011
http://www.minnpost.com/donshelby/2011/06/15/29151/background_claims_by_state_senates_global-warming_skeptic_fail_to_check_out
Excerpt;
The Minnesota Senate’s most notable authority on global warming comes from East Bethel. Michael Jungbauer was once its mayor. He is in his third term at the state Legislature and he has fashioned himself into a force of nature when it comes to the environment.
But Jungbauer doesn’t believe the planet is warming. In fact, he told me, “I think the earth is going to cool.” From his position on the Senate Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee, he has the power to change the way Minnesota approaches the issue. And his influence is apparent. The Minnesota Legislature has been busy undoing much of Minnesota’s nation-leading policies enacted to deal with global warming.
He is also a television star, of sorts. He makes little videos on his pet theories and puts them on his webpage and on YouTube.com.
No scientist
The problem is, he is not a scientist. Even though his published biography lists his higher education credits from Moody Bible Institute, Anoka Ramsey Community College and Metropolitan State University and that he is working on his master’s degree in environmental policy and that he has a background in biochemistry, it turns out he has never graduated from college. He doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree.
He is an ordained minister, of sorts. But, although his official biography says he has a degree from Moody, he does not. In direct answer to my question, Jungbauer responded: “No I did not graduate. But I have a certificate.”
The truth is that Jungbauer was ordained by Christian Motor Sports International out of Gilbert, Ariz. His Senate biography says the organization provides “chapel services, pastoral care, outreach and Christian fellowship at car races, car shows, cruise-ins and tractor pulls.”
Now, if you are going to take on the most noted scientists in the world working on CO₂ and its effects on a warming planet, you would need a background in science. And he is ready to tell the members of his committee and witnesses who come to testify that they are dealing with a man not to be toyed with. A sample of his officious, talking-down-to-the-rest-of-us approach can be seen here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dAoca8Qu_Vg
He has said he has a major in biochemistry. That suggests he received a degree with enough credit hours to give him a major in that important science. But he does not have a degree in biochemistry. He told me that he is getting a master’s degree in environmental policy at Metropolitan State University, but that school doesn’t have a master’s program in environmental policy. When I asked him about that, he said: “Well, that’s what they told me.”
Debunking Lord Monckton Part 1
The Koch Brothers’ Vast Right-Wing Media Conspiracy
Watched any conservative programs lately? Chances are, you’ve seen an oil-funded pundit.
—By Kate Sheppard
Mother Jones, 2/4/2011
http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/02/koch-brothers-media-beck-greenpeace
Excerpt:
Last June, Glenn Beck paused in the middle of a rant about the economy and climate on his television show for an important, if rather unexpected, aside. “I want to thank Charles Koch for this information,” he said. Beck’s statement was totally without context, thrown in amid jabs at Al Gore and endorsements of the free market. Months later, it came to light that he recently had been a guest of honor at a semiannual confab sponsored by fossil-fuel billionaire Charles Koch and his brother, David, an event the pair hosts to connect conservative think tanks, politicos, and media types like Beck.
Koch Industries, a Kansas-based company founded in 1940 by father Fred Koch, is the second largest privately held company in America. Charles and David Koch are tied as the fifth wealthiest people in the nation, worth a combined $43 billion. Their money comes through a variety of business interests—ranching, mining, oil refining, and production of paper products, fertilizer, and chemicals. It would be an understatement to say that they have much at stake when it comes to efforts to cut climate-changing emissions.
Indeed, the brothers have spent $31.3 million since 2005 on organizations that deny or downplay climate change, according to a forthcoming report from Greenpeace that updates its report on Koch’s climate denial work released last year. But it’s the web of media influence the Kochs have created that perhaps accounts best for their power—particularly when it comes to sowing doubt about climate change.
Koch Industries describes its semiannual shindigs, which began in 2003, as an “opportunity for attendees and presenters to discuss ways of preserving and advancing economic freedom in the United States and to share ideas about the free-market principles that have made our country great.” The guest list for last weekend’s meeting is still under wraps, but the June 2010 event in Aspen drew a who’s who of conservative media stars; Besides Beck, there were Philip Anschutz, owner of the Examiner newspapers and the Weekly Standard; Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist and Weekly Standard contributor; Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal editorial board member; and Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor for The National Review.
Andrew Breitbart, the mastermind behind the conservative news sites Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv, made his presence at the meeting known by rollerblading out to heckle some of the 1,500 protestors who’d gathered outside of the gate.
The Kochs’ influence over the conservative media may be obvious at such powwows. But to the general public, it’s not always apparent that the pundits they read about in blogs and see on TV have a direct relationship to the company. So says Derek Cressman, regional director of state operations with Common Cause, the group that organized the protests outside the Koch Bros gates. “They don’t see that connection between the pundit and the fact that it’s funded by an oil company,” says Cressman. “The global warming deniers aren’t being candid that their funding is coming from people with an enormous financial stake in how we deal with climate change.”
Take, for example, Planet Gore, the denialist blog at National Review Online. Planet Gore, along with NRO’s main blog, The Corner, regularly features guest posts by representatives of think-tanks and foundations that have benefited from the Koch’s largesse. Prime examples include Chris Horner and Ian Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who have each posted hundreds of items on the site. NRO’s blogs regularly promote the institute’s work to undermine climate science, such as the lawsuit the group filed against NASA last fall for temperature records. CEI has received more than $700,000 in Koch funds over the years.
Pat Michaels, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, is another regular guest blogger. Cato has received $13 million from Koch family foundations since 1998. (Michaels’ refusal to disclose how much money he’s taken from fossil fuel interests has drawn scrutiny—most recently when a senior House Democrat raised questions about whether he lied on his resume about his funding from energy interests.)
Other guests representing Koch-funded organizations featured on National Review Online include Jim Manzi of the Manhattan Institute (which has received $1.5 million in Koch family money), Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity ($5.5 million), and Jonathan Adler of the Federalist Society ($2 million).*
The Koch brothers also spent $1 million on a ballot measure last fall to derail California’s landmark climate law, and funded groups, including the California branch of Americans for Prosperity, that were key in promoting the measure. The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI), which has received $1.2 million in Koch money, also rallied against the climate law with a report that made extreme claims about potential job losses it would cause. The day after the report appeared, author and PRI senior fellow Benjamin Zycher appeared on the Planet Gore blog to tout it. (The ballot measure failed despite all these efforts.)
The Kochs’ influence isn’t limited to fringe media. Krauthammer has used his Washington Post column to blast the “Church of the Environment” that believes the global warming is real, and he has appeared on Fox News to discuss why any legislation addressing climate change is “dead on arrival.”
The Wall Street Journal has regularly offered up its opinion pages to Cato’s Michaels to bash climate scientists. The Weekly Standard, too, has provided a platform for Koch-backed organizations like the American Enterprise Institute to accuse scientists of being a “corrupt cabal of global warming alarmists.”
Denying global warming with John Stossel
By Lisa Chiu
The Center for Public Integrity
July 31, 2008
http://www.iwatchnews.org/2008/07/31/3088/denying-global-warming-john-stossel?gclid=CKHT-NTd5asCFYxx5Qod3l1fGw
Excerpt:
ABC News reporter John Stossel doesn’t fear global warming, and he’s working to make sure you don’t, either.
As part of the Center’s research on global warming critics, we recorded footage of Stossel giving a closing speech at a gathering of climate change skeptics in NYC in March.
After equating news reports on global warming to fears of killer bees and the Y2K bug, Stossel then criticized coverage of the first day of the conference by the “socialist media,” including The Washington Post , The Independent , and The New York Times .
Then, finished with alerting the audience to the scourge of global warming “scare mongering,” Stossel turned his attention to helping the 400-plus attendees better sell their skepticism to the media. One tip: They should emphasize specific words to get through to “dumb” reporters.
“It’s important that you make the effort to get through that dumb layer,” Stossel said. “Some of you are brilliant scientists, but you can’t talk worth a damn, but you can learn how to do this better.”
******
Note: Stossel is no longer with ABC. He works for FOX.
Perry Officials Censored Climate Change Report
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality doesn’t want you to know that climate change is causing sea level rise in Galveston Bay.
—By Kate Sheppard
Mother Jones, 10/12/2011
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/perry-officials-censored-climate-report
Excerpt:
Rick Perry takes Texas pride in being a climate change denier—and his administration acts accordingly.
Top environmental officials under Perry have gutted a recent report on sea level rise in Galveston Bay, removing all mentions of climate change. For the past decade, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which is run by Perry political appointees, including famed global warming denier Bryan Shaw, has contracted with the Houston Advanced Research Center to produce regular reports on the state of the Bay. But when HARC submitted its most recent State of the Bay publication to the commission earlier this year, officials decided they couldn’t accept a report that said climate change is caused by human activity and is causing the sea level to rise. Top officials at the commission proceeded to edit the paper to censor its references to human-induced climate change or future projections on how much the bay will rise.
John Anderson, the oceanographer at Rice University who wrote the chapter, provided Mother Jones with a copy of the edited document, complete with tracked changes from top TCEQ officials. You can see the cuts—which include how much sea level rise has increased over the years, as well as the statement that this rise “is one of the main impacts of global climate change”—here and embedded at the end of this story. As the document shows, most of the tracked changes came from Katherine Nelson, the assistant director in the water quality planning division. Her boss, Kelly Holligan, is listed as a reviewer on the document as well.
Holligan and Nelson are top managers at Perry’s commission; lower-ranking staff at the agency had already approved the document, according to the publication’s editor. The changes came only after the two women reviewed the issue. TCEQ’s commissioners, who are direct political appointees of the governor, select the top managers at TCEQ. Although the director and assistant director jobs aren’t technically political appointments, those hires are usually vetted by the governor’s office.
Anderson, whose complaints were first reported by the Houston Chronicle on Monday, says that the cuts to his paper were political and had nothing to do with science. The research underlying the study was peer-reviewed and is part of a decadelong study Anderson has conducted in partnership with other scientists. The Geological Society of America published the scientists’ results in 2008. “I was a bit astonished,” Anderson tells Mother Jones. “Really this paper is just a review of papers we published previously. There’s no denying the fact that sea level rise has significantly accelerated. The scientific community is not at all divided on that issue.”
TCEQ even deleted a reference to the fact that the bay is currently rising by 3 millimeters a year—five times faster than the long-term average. The edited version that TCEQ sent back also killed a line noting that the bay’s “future will be strongly regulated by the now rising sea,” as well as the factual assertion that the disappearance of the wetlands is “due mainly to direct human intervention.” The officials also cut out the statement that the water level rise “is one of the main impacts of global climate change.”
Anderson has refused to let TCEQ publish the heavily edited version of his work. “It would not have been a worthwhile paper,” he says. “It would not have said anything.”
Jim Lester, the co-editor of the State of the Bay and vice president of the Houston Advanced Research Center, notes that the scientists self-censored before submitting the paper to TCEQ, removing references to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a favorite target of climate skeptics) and largely avoiding the question of whether humans were causing the climate to change. But that wasn’t enough to keep the paper out of the commission’s crosshairs. The report was supposed to be published in 2010, as the title of it suggests, but it has been delayed. Lester and his co-editor have also said they don’t want their names attached to something that is factually inaccurate. “It damages our scientific credibility,” Lester said.
Bdaman:
what are you saying? that melting ice sheets will cool the ocean waters? Or that the rise in Ocean level is only measured since 1994 [maybe the launch of the satellite?] and therefore not a large enough sampling to really tell us anything at all? Or possibly that a good deal of water infiltrates the soil and recharges aquifers? Or that cycles of Nino and Nina have been going on for millions of years? Or maybe that Texas study doesnt take into account the dynamic nature of a coastline with man or without man’s influence?
What are you saying?
Bdaman,
Back from vacation? Finished with all those important things you had to do?
😉
*****
lotta,
Thanks for the link to that story.
Have a great day everyone !!!!!!!!!!
Sb Their sorry it’s still dark in my room 🙂
Dr. John B. Anderson (pictured, left), an oceanographer at Rice University, told Raw Story that his report on the Galveston Bay estuary, and the effects of rising sea levels on its fragile ecosystem, was censored for purely “political” reasons.
Global Sea Level Drops 6 mm in 2010
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-262
I’ll let you ponder there explanation. Your homework is to figure out why part of it, lets say 75 % is wrong. Now get to work.
Bron, yea, some people are denying global warning:
“Texas agency censors climate change references in key scientific report
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) doesn’t want to say who’s responsible for deleting all mentions of climate change from part of a forthcoming scientific report, and that’s got at least one scientist hopping mad.
Dr. John B. Anderson (pictured, left), an oceanographer at Rice University, told Raw Story that his report on the Galveston Bay estuary, and the effects of rising sea levels on its fragile ecosystem, was censored for purely “political” reasons.
“This is a clear-cut case of censorship,” he said in an exclusive interview. “It’s not scientific editing. It was strictly deletion of virtually any information that related to global change.”
But more pressing for today, Anderson’s report cites recent, dramatic changes in the sea level that stand in stark contrast with historical norms. If these changes are not acknowledged and action is not taken to mitigate the consequences, he said, the ecosystems along the Texas gulf coast could suffer severely in the coming years. …”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/12/texas-agency-censors-climate-change-references-in-key-scientific-report/