The Climate Inquisition: Attorney Generals Go Rogue

No matter what voters say in the upcoming US election, a coalition of Attorney Generals intend to push for 'even more aggressive' climate action.

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Bill McKibben Says It's Urgent

In the world inhabited by this environmental crusader, climate change is “a crisis that’s breaking over our heads at this moment,” ExxonMobil peddles petroleum the way drug dealers peddle heroin, and we “have no choice” but to turn our backs on fossil fuels.

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The Royal Society's Big Oil Award

The UK’s Royal Society awarded an Esso Energy medal annually for 25 years. A short time later, when opinions on climate change diverged, the society began painting Esso’s parent company, ExxonMobil, as demon spawn.

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BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot

In what passes for debate about climate change one of the most tiresome allegations is that skeptics are lavishly funded by big oil. As a result of this funding, so the argument goes, the public has been confused by those who'll say anything in exchange for a paycheck.

"Follow the money" we're told and you'll discover that climate skeptics are irredeemably tainted. Ergo nothing they say can be trusted. Ergo their concerns, questions, and objections should be dismissed out of hand.

It's therefore amusing that the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now drawing attention to the close relationship between climate change activists and BP – aka British Petroleum, an entity for which the descriptor "big oil" was surely invented.

According to the Washington Post the green group Nature Conservancy – which encourages ordinary citizens to personally pledge to fight climate change - "has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years."

Gee, didn't Greenpeace build an entire ExxonSecrets website to expose the allegedly diabolical fact that, over a 9-year-period (1998-2006) ExxonMobil donated a grand total of $2.2 million to a conservative think tank?

$10 million versus $2 million. Who do we suppose has the cozier relationship with big oil?

But that's just the beginning. The Washington Post also points out that Conservation International, another green group which insists climate change represents a "profound threat," has "accepted $2 million in donations from BP over the years and partnered with the company on a number of projects."

Funny, Greenpeace doesn't talk about that. Nor does it mention:

• that BP is funding research into "ways of tackling the world's climate problem" at Princeton University to the tune of $2 million per year for 15 years
• that BP is funding an energy research institute involving two other US universities to the tune of $500 million – the aim of which is "to develop new sources of energy and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment"
• that ExxonMobil itself has donated $100 million to Stanford university so that researchers there can find "ways to meet growing energy needs without worsening global warming"

The only dollar amounts Greenpeace cites in its explanation of why it decided to launch ExxonSecrets is that measly $2.2 million. Versus 10 + 2 + 30 + 500 + 100. Let's see, which all adds up to…wait for it…$642 million.

If the world is divided into two factions – one that believes climate change is a serious problem and another that thinks human influence on the climate is so minimal it's indistinguishable from background noise – one group has pulled off a bank heist while the other has been panhandling in front of the liquor store.

In the same document in which Greenpeace talks about the ExxonMobil money it chillingly asserts that climate "deniers" aren't entitled to free speech. Why? Because "Freedom of speech does not apply to misinformation and propaganda."

Actually, the big thinkers on the subject have consistently taken the opposite view. John Stuart Mill was adamant that no one has the right to decide what is or is not propaganda on everyone else's behalf. He would have looked Greenpeace in the eye and told it to stop imagining that its own judgment is infallible.

More than a hundred years later Noam Chomsky famously declared that if you don't believe in freedom of expression for opinions you despise you don't believe in it at all.

If Greenpeace would like to have a serious conversation about who, exactly, is spreading misinformation I'm up for that - since it's overwhelming obvious that the big oil jackpot was awarded to those on the Greenpeace side of the debate.

The fact that climate change activists have enjoyed such a powerful funding advantage and yet insisted all the while that the exact opposite was the case is troubling. It tells us a good deal about their intellectual rigour. About their character. And about their ability to distinguish fact from fiction.

If there really is a climate crisis, if our grandchildren's future really is imperiled, these aren't the people to lead us out of the wilderness.

Serious conversation sound bite Undercover Blues sound bites

Jeff Blue (Dennis Quaid), Undercover Blues

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UPDATE (June 6): Reader Terry Kesteloot alerted me to the fact that the Greenpeace.org website is apparently infected with a "very low" risk computer virus. The links in this post to Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets FAQ have therefore been replaced with links to a copy of the document that resides at Archive.org (scroll down once the page loads).

If your machine has virus protection, the document may be viewed directly on the Greenpeace website HERE.

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>> Slurs, smears & money
>> Independent bloggers vs corporate environmentalists
>> Money to burn
>> Shielding climate orthodoxy from free speech

How Much Is a Bird's Life Worth? (Part 1)

ExxonMobil, long considered an uber villain by environmentalists, recently agreed to pay $600,000 in fines. Its crime? Over a five-year period, 85 migratory birds (17 per year) died after landing in Exxon wastewater facilities across five US states.

CNN says the birds died after they ingested or became coated with hydrocarbons. These included a hawk, ducks, owls and other species. None are considered endangered but at least some are classified as "protected."

Exxon's fine works out to $7,059 per bird. In an effort to save the lives of less than two dozen such birds a year the company has apparently already spent $2.5 million covering and draining the bodies of wastewater and "will spend quite a bit more to implement the environmental compliance plan."

Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cruden says this case represents "a great win for the environment." Members of the public who left comments on CNN's website appear to agree. Observed one: "Seems like such a small amount of money for loss of animal life. Exxon always seems to get away with careless destruction of wildlife."

A person named Clayton concurred that the fine was too small. Another implied that additional prosecutions were necessary "to stave off the decline in numbers of much of our wildlife."

One wonders then, how Mr. Cruden and his employer, the US Department of Justice, feel about the worldwide push to increase the use of wind power? Because if 17 bird deaths annually are worthy of legal prosecution and multi-million-dollar remediation, it's difficult to imagine how windmill companies are going to stave off bankruptcy.

Bats, after all, aren't mere birds - they're warm-blooded mammals. And it turns out that windmills alter air pressure in a way that causes the lungs of bats to explode. Researchers studying the issue apparently had little difficulty locating 188 dead bats from wind farms located solely in one part of one Canadian province.

According to a press release from the university with which the researchers are associated:

"The majority of bats killed at wind turbines are the migratory bats that roost in trees, including hoary bats, eastern red bats, and silver-haired bats. While little is known about their population sizes...their deaths could have far-reaching consequences. Bats typically live for many years, in some cases reaching ages of 30 or more. Most also have just one or two pups at a time, and not necessarily every year...All three species of migratory bats killed by wind turbines fly at night, eating thousands of insects—including many crop pests—per day as they go. Therefore, bat losses in one area could have very real effects on ecosystems miles away, along the bats' migration routes."

A summary of the bat research paper begins with the observation that the danger windmills pose to birds has been known for decades. A different study suggests that for every three bats that lose their lives due to wind turbines, an additional two birds are killed.

A 2004 California Energy Commission study estimated that as many as 4,720 birds from 40 different species - "including as many as 1,300 protected raptors" - are killed each year by a single wind farm. The Audubon Society says that more than 100 of those birds are golden eagles.

In fairness, this particular California wind farm is said to be unusually deadly, but 4,700 birds a year!

So tell me again why Exxon has been put through the wringer for causing the deaths of 17 birds at the exact same time that wind turbines are massacring them by the thousands?

Either every bird killed by the energy industry should result in a $7k fine - or none should.

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Slurs, Smears & Money

The debate about global warming is a nasty one. Anonymous people calling other people "climate criminals" online. Scientists getting watchlisted on Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets website even when they deny categorically any association with any oil company.

Accusations, as we all know, are not proof. Everyone has a right to be presumed innocent - especially when being accused by anonymous individuals on the Internet.

With so many aspersions being cast so casually, separating fact from fiction is difficult. Is it possible some scientists have accepted research funding from oil companies and that their conclusions were improperly influenced? Absolutely. But does that mean all of their work - including research conducted beforehand or ten years later - should be disregarded? Does it mean that nothing they might say is worth listening to?

Hard-core environmentalists frequently advise people like me (who insist on hearing all sides of the global warming debate) to "follow the money." All right then. Let's do that.

Al Gore's speaking fee is $175,000. If financial gain isn't part of his motivation, why doesn't he deliver the same speech for, say, $50,000? That way, audiences inspired by his talk could use the remaining $125,000 to do good things for the environment in their own communities.

Greenpeace (which would receive fewer public donations if it weren't constantly hyping the fragility of the planet) makes a huge deal about the fact that ExxonMobil donated $2.2 million to the Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank between 1998 and 2006. This works out to less than $250,000 annually for nine years. These are, by the way, the only hard numbers in Greenpeace's lengthy ExxonSecrets FAQ.

Let's compare those numbers to the funding received by people whose research happens to align with the theory of global warming. Back in 2000, Daniel Sarewitz observed that the US federal government was spending $1.8 billion annually on the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program. That's one initiative, in one country, in one year.

On some level, people employed by such programs know they might be out of a job if they all wake up one morning and declare climate change to be a minor phenomenon unworthy of concern. Do we really suppose this fact never influences their research?

Which takes us back to Greenpeace. According to its annual report, it spent $40 million in US dollars on climate-change-related campaigns in 2007, up 11% from the previous year. In the space of two years, then, one environmental group amongst dozens spent $70 million on activities intended to persuade all of us - including climate scientists - that global warming is a crisis.

And it has the nerve to whine about the improper influence Exxon might have exerted when it spent a measly half-million in a similar time frame? 140 to 1. That's the skew we're talking about here. It appears that, when it beats up on little kids in the playground, Greenpeace thinks those kids should have both hands tied behind their back and be blindfolded, too.

It gets worse. In August 2007, Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson, sharply criticized a cover story his magazine had run the previous week:

If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."

Coincidentally, this isn't just a fair summation of the article, it encapsulates nicely Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets FAQ. Trouble is, as Samuelson points out, that narrative is "fundamentally misleading."

There are practical, real-world reasons, writes Samuelson, why advanced economies cannot quickly switch from one kind of energy source to another. Any news story that scapegoats skeptical scientists is "peripheral and highly contrived." He continues:

NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability. The company says it knew nothing of the global-warming grant, which involved issues of climate modeling. And its 2006 contribution to the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was small: $240,000 out of a $28 million budget.) [emphasis added]

The fact that a neutral third party considers allegations of this type less-than-credible hasn't discouraged Greenpeace from using them, to this day, to justify its ExxonSecrets watchlist website. (Like Roman Catholic hardliners with their Index of banned books, climate idealogues appear to consider this list of those-to-whom-thou-shalt-not-lend-thine-ear to be the final word.)

It's time to end this foolishness. Between them, governments, charitable foundations and environmental organizations spend billions - that's a "B" - of dollars each year on research and educational campaigns that start from the premise that life as we know it is endangered by global warming.

The notion that scientific research and public debate has been unduly influenced by Exxon's relatively puny expenditures is a sick joke.

When I was 19, I joined a peace group protesting American cruise missile testing over Canada's north. Back then we'd daydream about a world in which schools were adequately funded while the military was required to hold bake sales.

In the climate debates, one side is, indeed, lavishly funded. The skeptics, meanwhile, are making rice krispie squares.

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