Greenpeace

Now that Bali is done, things are moving forward on the global policy front.  The Bush Administration was sent packing back to Washington, tail firmly between legs but not without weakening the agreement.  The fight now comes back to Capitol Hill where there are efforts afoot to try to craft more global warming legislation in 2008. And apparently the Denial Machine has also come back to DC where it tries to dig trenches in front of any potential momentum and progress.

Sen. James "Hoax" Inhofe, the Archbishop of Denial, and his alter boy Marc Morano (formerly of the Exxon funded Media Research Center), today released a report through the Environment and Public Works minority website, with the headline:

Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007 - Senate Report Debunks "Consensus"

Looking through Inhofe's list of disputers we find a large number of familiar names.

 
Here's an interactive ExxonSecrets map of the 35 plus we have already data on. 

These individuals have been linked through the years with:

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Tech Central Station - set up by Exxon's operatives at DCI Group

Heartland Institute

Cato Institute

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Frasier Institute

The Annapolis Center

The George Marshall Institute

...and numerous other Exxon-funded groups who have together received millions of dollars since 1998 from the corporation.

We'll now have to start researching the others named here and see who and what makes them tick.  Its interesting that the Inhofe list includes a String Theorist and a slew of TV weathermen, they have recruited far and wide.  For many of the folks listed and their words quoted, one wonders if they are outright skeptics, or just questioning certain conclusions or lines of reasoning - the normal scientific process as DotEarth noted today. 

 
We also wonder if the Inhofe 400 share the conclusions of this report or the author's overt agenda to delay and derail political action on climate.  Time will tell as they Google themselves and find their names linked to the tail end of Exxon's Denial Machine.

An op-ed is making the rounds in papers today penned by veteren global warming denier David Deming, Adjunct Scholar of the National Center for Policy Analysis. 

The op-ed catalogs a long list of unusual cold weather events in 2007, including the recent giant ice storm that crippled the central US.  These extreme weather events are cited as solid evidence that global warming is bunk, and since cold weather is obviously bad for humans, therefore policies to control global warming are misguided. 

Clearly behind the curve in reading his latest copy of the Deniers' fashion magazine, Deming doesn't realize that it's no longer vogue to deny the science outright, and that most of his pals are taking more of a bumper shot approach - admitting that warming is happening, but that it might not be that bad or that we should focus on adaptation...

Well thank goodness for old-school deniers like Deming still sticking to their guns! 

The last line of Deming's essay, "Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo."  really sums up how completely and dangerously out of touch with reality this crowd is.  Wow, we have a lot of work left.

The reality, again, is global warming doesn't mean uniform "warming" everywhere on earth.  In fact, what scientists have come to know, is adding heat to the weather system means chaotic and unpredictable weather, with average temps that trend warmer overall.

NCPA has received at least $465,900 from Exxon since 1998, including $75,000 per year for the past several years.

Speaking of animals that like things cold...we expect an answer out of the Bush Administration any day on their plan to protect (or not) the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.  The NCPA chimed in on polar bears this past May with a "Brief Analysis" by H. Sterling Burnett, citing "A new NCPA study by Dr. David Legates" which turns out to be an inaccurate assessment of ice dynamics combined with a weak analysis of bear population dynamics...Funny how the former State Climatologist of Delaware is suddenly a polar bear expert... how convenient.  Legates was also a co-author of the polar bear study we discussed here.

Hmmm...wonder why Dana Perino reacted with such passion to a question yesterday about Rep. Waxman's (proposed) report on climate science censorship by the Bush White House? 

Aside from her laughable and classic Bush-like response  - dismissing the report then admitting that she hadn't even read it but had "seen reports about the report".... a flub up reported nicely here on DeSmogBlog.

Add this to Perino's mishandling of White House censorship of Center for Disease Control Director's Senate testimony in late October, covered well by ThinkProgress and RollingStone.

Here at ExxonSecrets, we know a little more about Ms. Perino from our 10+ years of research on global warming backlash.  Her anti-environmental roots run deep. 

Kyoto Bashing in 1997 

First off, in our archives we have a press release she penned during her days on Capitol Hill in the late 1990s, when she was press officer for Representative Schaefer (R-CO). Her boss was admonishing the Clinton Administration in June 1997 to slow down the push toward Kyoto agreement in December 1997, saying there still were too many unanswered questions about the impact on the US economy and other common refrains of the day pushed by the Global Climate Coalition.

On the CEQ Denial Team 

Perino came back to DC to work as Director of Public Affairs for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where she was, in fact, running cover for climate criminals Jim Connaughton and Phil Cooney, the two main culprits in the Waxman report.

At CEQ, Perino was part of the global warming policy gatekeeper team, doing damage control and coordinating with other agencies on climate policy and communications.  There are many memos to and from Perino to Cooney including this one in the midst of Cooney's EPA report editing meltdown. Here she forwards Phil a comforting article by Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center, another Exxon funded front group.  Cooney responds hopefully, "do you know where this ran?"

Perino Hangs Out with Exxon's Main Front Group

Like Cooney, Perino also cozied up to Exxon's Denial Machine.  Here is an email from Perino to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Angela Logomasini asking for a lunch meeting and saying she had been reading the CEI's report The Environmental Source.  The global warming chapter of this anti-enviro tome, penned by Myron Ebell, looks like it became a key page in the CEQ playbook.  CEI at the time was the leading recipient of Exxon denial cash, but was dumped by the Exxon Foundation in 2006.

Here's another note from Perino to Cooney and Connaughton referencing a Myron Ebell piece in the Washington Times about a prank invitation to a CEQ reception for Lee Raymond.

Redacted Information 

Most of these documents were delivered to Greenpeace after multiple Freedom of Information Act requests (see previous blog) and can now be found on the White House web page and our web site.

However, many of the documents we got back from our FOIA request looked like this one, from Cooney to the entire staff including Perino - mostly redacted text, leading Waxman's team to look for what was under the black marker lines... Read their report for all the details of the investigation

What Else Has Perino Seen Behind White House Doors? 

One can only guess what else Dana Perino knows about the global warming Denial Machine within the White House.  She has certainly had a front row seat.  Maybe the press will ask her more questions about her experiences.  Eventually they will all be held accountable...stay tuned.

A new report was released yesterday by the US House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee detailing the conclusions of their extensive investigation into the obstruction and politicization of climate science by the bush Administration.  Happy reading. 

This investigation began when it was revealed that Phil Cooney, then of the White House Council on Environmental Quality was editing government climate reports, downplaying scientific certainty and urgency.  Cooney, who was at the American Petroleum Institute before the White House, left shortly thereafter to go work for, you guessed...Exxon.  Check out what we have on Cooney and friends at ExxonSecrets.

Our favorite part of the back story here, is when the Committee first asked the White House for relevant documents, they said (paraphrased) 'you might want the Greenpeace FOIAs to start'. 

We had peppered the WH for years for documents and had revealed in those docs hints at  the skulduggery that the Oversight Committee has now dug into.  Many of those documents are available here on Greenpeace Investigations in text searchable format and also on the White House webpage here and  here.

We are reminded once again by today's Washington Post coverage of Bali and the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, of Exxon's attacks on the IPCC process through the years. 

While Al Gore and IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri were on hand to receive the prize, we note that Dr. Robert Watson might have shared the stage and Nobel prize accolades..  Watson chaired the IPCC through the really tough years, fending off numerous attacks from Exxon's Denial Machine. 

A fax revealed in 2001 showed Exxon's lobbyists asking for Robert Watson's ouster from his post at IPCC.  He was displaced shortly thereafter and replaced by Pachauri, who has done a fine job.

The same Exxon memo goes on to ask for other government climate officials leftover from the Clinton Admin. to be removed and suggests replacements, including current Bush Administration climate negotiator Harlan Watson.

Both of today's Washington Post articles quote Harlan "No Mandatory Reductions" Watson in his typically negative tone.  Did someone say "duck"?

ExxonSecrets is happy to be cited in fine new piece of dirtdigging published on Scholars and Rogues over the past two days (part I, part II) . 

We learn that our old pal Steve Milloy is up to his old tricks with his latest anti-environmental vehicle, DemandDebate.com , where he recently conducted an 'opinion survey' on global warming science  - completely unbiased of course - first covered on Real Climate in October.  Gives us some new meat to add to Milloy's ExxonSecrets file.   We also have the goods on Kenneth Greene, AEI, Cato, Reason, etc and other groups and people mentioned in the Scholars piece on ExxonSecrets.

By the by, Milloy was, without a fitting and proper ceremony, un-funded by Exxon recently, as we revealed in our May 2007 ExxonSecrets report.  But he remains joined at the hip with many of Exxon's front groups and the larger extremist conservative and liberatrian think tank militia.

Added value here: The Canadian Broadcasting Company's Fifth Estate did cool TV episode called The Denial Machine, on the overlap between tobacco denial and global warming denial and the PR firm APCO and its connections to Milloy and friends.

And here: George Monbiot further explored this connection here revealing a memo from Milloy's lockbox on the early days of big tobacco funding his Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.  Monbiot wrote:

"By May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows, the fake citizens' group had a name: the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. It was important, further letters stated, "to ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of contributors"; to "link the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct' products"; and to associate scientific studies that cast smoking in a bad light with "broader questions about government research and regulations" - such as "global warming", "nuclear waste disposal" and "biotechnology". APCO would engage in the "intensive recruitment of high-profile representatives from business and industry, scientists, public officials, and other individuals interested in promoting the use of sound science". "

More dirt on Milloy is always a welcome treat! thanks. 

It turns out Exxon's comrades in Denial are a little upset by U.S. momentum on global warming policy at the state level.  I guess they see the writing on the wall - as the states move, so will the Fed.  While we know they are too late to stop the train leaving the station, we fear they will continue to try to derail it.

The Institute for Southern Studes revealed today that the John Locke Foundation launched state level attacks on the Center for Climate Strategies starting this September .  The Center coaches states on good climate policy ideas.  In a nice connect-the-dots analysis, the researchers reveal that the Locke gang teamed up with Exxon's pals at Heartland Institute and get funding from a slew of Exxon-funded organizations.

Here is an ExxonSecrets custom map of the players named in the investigation.  You can start from there and expand any of the organizations to show who else is tangled in this web.

Why would Exxon pay a known global warming denial scientist to spread doubt about the impact of global warming on polar bears?   Hmmm, interesting question.  More to the point, why would Exxon want to keep the public from connecting fossil fuel combustion and greenhouse gas emissions to the bear’s demise?

We discovered this plot in the spring, during the flood of discussion around our legal action to force the US Fish &Wildlife Service (FWS) to list the polar bear as an the endangered species.  This work, initiated by the Center for Biological Diversity in 2005, has helped to elevate attention to the polar bears' plight, generating wave upon wave of media coverage.  

During the public comment period on the proposed bear listing, a draft of a new polar bear science paper surfaced. It had been submitted to the obscure Journal of Ecological Complexity. The paper's lead author is Markus Dyck of Nunavut Arctic College, the co-authors include several lead ExxonSecrets actors, Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, David Legates and Tim Ball.

DeSmogBlog has more goods on Mr. Ball here.

Here's a new map of this gang and their wide connections to the Exxon-funded network of front groups.

These people and organizations are also detailed on our new wiki pages.  Please add more stuff if you've got it!

The Alaskan Department of Fish and Game even referenced the paper in its comments to the USFWS this spring.

Fast forward…Ecological Complexity finally published the paper this summer as a Viewpoint article - not peer reviewed.  Then the fun began...in the back page acknowledgments we read that Mr. Soon started this work with Dyck in 2002, but then he makes a startling admission:

“W. Soon’s effort for completion of this paper was partially supported by grants from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American Petroleum Institute and Exxon-Mobil Corporation.”

The Koch Foundation is a known contributor to several free-market libertarian organizations including the Cato Institute.  The Koch brothers recently bought Georgia Pacific Corporation using their oil bankroll.

We know Soon and Baliunas have been paid by API before, most notably for their 2003 attack on Micheal Mann’s “hockey stick” work published by the George Marshall Institute  as reported by Jeff Nesmith of Cox News Service in June 2003, just as we launched.

But direct funding from ExxonMobil Corporation is something very unusual to see in print and certainly demands some answers from Exxon.

After an October 17th House Science Committee hearing entitled, Disappearing Polar Bears and Permafrost: Is a Global Warming Tipping Point Embedded in the Ice?, Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina penned a letter to Exxon demanding answers.  He wrote, “Exxon has the right to fund any research or publications it wishes.  However, the Congress and the public have the right to know why ExxonMobil is funding a scientist whose writing is outside his area of expertise to create the impression that expert scientists have conducted rigorous, peer-reviewed work that says the problems with polar bears are unproven or unserious.”

ABC.com “The Blotter” covered Rep. Miller's letter well. New Scientist also covered the story, but fell for another corporate front group, quoting Craig Loehle, one of the editors of the Journal of Ecological Complexity, who defends Willie Soon's right to take corporate money.  New Scientist failed to note that Loehle's organization, the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. is funded by the timber and paper industry.  NCASI calls itself an "Independent non-profit research institute that focuses on environmental topics of interest to the forest products industry".  hmmm...www.kimberlyclarksecrets?

Back to the Dyck, Soon paper, there are so many blatant flaws in the “science” of the paper that leading polar bear scientists Sterling and Derocher felt compelled to respond here.  Derocher has been going back and forth with these characters for years its seems.

When we asked the ice scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center for their take on the Dyck, Soon paper, they sent back pages and pages of detailed analysis of the errors and omissions in the paper's sea ice assumptions and conclusions.

There are real questions remaining for you investigative reporters out there.

How much was Mr Soon paid?
Over what time period?  
Exactly what was the contract from Exxon?
Are there other scientists getting cash straight from Exxon Corporate?
Why doesn't the company report this "science" funding to its shareholders?

...Enough for now, but this story will continue.

Did you know that lead in children's products is not restricted to lead-based paint?  Many other children's products especially those made of vinyl plastics can contain lead and other biologically available hazards such as cadmium and phthalates.

In a 1998 CPSC Federal Register notice urged manufacturers to "eliminate lead in consumer products," including those made of vinyl plastics. The CPSC also reminded "any firm that purchases a product for resale is responsible for determining whether that product contains lead..."

Following the 1996 revelations of lead in vinyl plastic mini-blinds Greenpeace decided to test vinyl children's products and found lead, cadmium and plasticizers (phthalates) that were also bio-available to children.

Unfortunately the actions taken since by industry and the CPSC have been wholly inadequate. In the letter the groups cite recent examples of lead contamination in vinyl products (bibs and lunch boxes) and the need for broader testing of products, a phase out of the use of vinyl plastics in children's products and the need for better safety standards.

As a result we recommend a three step process:

1) The immediate testing for heavy metals and phthalates in children’s products now on the market starting with young children’s products.

2) A phase out of the use of vinyl in products intended for or likely to be used by children.

3) Establish mandatory, comprehensive federal safety standards that truly protect children from lead and other hazardous chemicals in children’s products.

To view the document collection related to toy toxicity beyond lead-based paints click here.

Greenpeace Analysis Sheds Light on Chemical Lobby:

INDUSTRY HAD 3 TIMES AS MUCH $$ FOR LOBBYING
AS DHS SPENT ON CHEMICAL SECURITY

As real chemical security standards languish, a Greenpeace analysis of 2006 lobbying records today identified 215 industry lobbyists that spent an estimated $16.4 million – and possibly as much as $74.5 million – to defeat strong chemical plant security legislation.  That is more than the $10 million the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spent on chemical security for the entire fiscal year of 2007 or the $25 million requested for chemical security by DHS for fiscal 2008.

The estimated range of $16.4 to $74.5 million available for chemical security lobbying represents 11 to 50 percent of the total reported lobbying expenditures of chemical industry and allied groups in 2006. This lobbying campaign successfully killed comprehensive chemical security legislation last year.  The weak law in its place doesn’t cover 3,000 water facilities using some of the most dangerous airborne chemicals, and doesn’t give DHS the authority to mandate safer technologies that could virtually eliminate the threat.

Greenpeace investigators worked from internal documents, public statements, testimony, news releases, industry lobby letters and emails, Freedom of Information Act document requests and web site postings by major chemical industry trade associations. They identified lobbyists representing 13 trade associations including the American Chemistry Council (ACC), American Petroleum Institute (API), U.S. Chamber of Commerce (including CEO Thomas Donahue) and Edison Electric Institute (EEI); their member companies such as Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil and Halliburton; and 13 lobby firms such as Akin Gump and Holland & Knight.

To read the full analysis, view related documents and learn more about the investigation, click here.

To view other supporting documents related to this investigation, click here.

You may also browse through the “Chemical Security” category on the left to view and download other investigative files related to Greenpeace’s work to protect the public from environmental risks related to chemical storage and transport.

For more information on Chemical Security Legislation go to Congresspedia.

For press related inquiries please contact Jane Kochersperger at (202) 319-2493.