(“Margie, he’s tellin’ lies again!” “Arful, I went online: he’s telling the truth.”) The current issue of Catalyst, the magazine of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Vol. 14, Summer 2015 (pages 8-13) provides access to 340 pages of documents obtained by the Climate Investigations Center and others that the fossil fuel industry knows that climate change is caused by human-generated pollution and has spent tens of millions of dollars over three decades to deceive the public. BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, coal producer Peabody Energy, utility business Southern Company, Shell and others were forced to release internal documents through the Freedom of Information Act.
(http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/07/The-Climate-Deception-Dossiers.pdf)
Climate denier Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, claimed that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming. His work was thoroughly debunked earlier this year. New data shows he received more than $1.2 million over a decade from ExxonMobil, Southern Company and Charles Koch. He appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work. His was among many deceptive studies.
The fossil fuel industry, in conjunction with the American Petroleum Institute (API, the gas and oil industry’s premier trade organization) sowed doubt and promoted contrarian arguments in congress, the media, and the American public. They created front groups, funded supposedly independent studies, such as those of Soon, and forged letters from nonprofit groups. “Recognizing that the tide might turn against fossil fuels, the API generated materials for teachers and their students (of the National Science Teachers Association) that directly countered scientific evidence.”
In 1998, the API developed a roadmap for climate deception: “Victory will be achieved when average American citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’…Unless ‘climate change’ becomes a non-issue meaning the Kyoto proposal is defeated and there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of climate change, there may be no moment when we can declare victory for our effort.”
Congress was debating the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 to institute a federal carbon emissions reduction plan. Two weeks prior to the vote, Rep. Tom Perriello (D, VA) received a letter opposing the legislation from Creciendo Juntos, a non-profit Latino organization based in his Charlottesville district. Only after the bill died in the Senate did Rep. Perriello learn that the letter was a fraud.
The letter on Creciendo Juntos stationery was not the only forgery. Other members of Congress received forged letters opposing the bill, sent purportedly on behalf of orga-nizations including the National Association of the Advance-ment of Colored People, the American Association of University Women, the American Legion, and the Jefferson Area Board on Aging. Public exposure of the fraud resulted in a congressional investigation and hearing before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. The congres-sional investigation revealed that the fraud was perpetrated by Bonner and Associates, a lobbying firm subcontracted by a front group called the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), composed of and funded primarily by coal industry representatives. The ACCCE, which remains in operation today, counts among its corporate members Arch Coal, Murray Energy, and Peabody Energy.
In 2014, the Western States Petroleum Institute created fake grassroots groups to undermine authentic public discourse in California which boasts a roughly 70 percent voter approval on clean energy issues. Concerns are raised by groups of purportedly every day citizens when, in fact, they are disguised messages from fossil fuel companies seeking to undermine climate legislation.
Please read the report for many more details. While 93 percent of scientists know that human-produced climate change is real, many of the rest are frauds.
Ed Fisher is a Morning Sun columnist.
