EID 2 bak

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SEE MAIN

NOTE ALL FF CEO HERE:

note with horner hit man on climate lawsuits AG

SEE FTI

see spencer walrath

pielke

see SAAB

energy in depth

SEE IPAA:eid a pjt of ipaa itself says

thugswarm on "foreign billionaire" sir hohn ~XR

primary on WSJ, FTI,frack?

not technically a trade front gp like api, but look at all mjr players

bak txt htMl indep assessments

Karl Racine restarts 'Exxon knew' climate-fraud probe}:

Washington Times

https://www.washingtontimes.com › news › mar › ka...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/28/karl-racine-restarts-exxon-knew-climate-fraud-prob/)

Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Thursday, March 28, 2019

For three years, former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s dream of nailing ExxonMobil for “climate fraud” has been stuck in neutral, but now the District is preparing to step on the gas.

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine has solicited private legal counsel to work on an investigation — and potential litigation — against the world’s largest oil company on a contingency-fee basis. The request for bids ends Friday.

Despite its research, “Exxon has failed to inform consumers about the effects of its fossil fuel products on climate change,” said the solicitation. “Exxon has also engaged or funded efforts to mislead DC consumers and others about the potential impacts of climate change.”

Mr. Racine’s decision to pursue the climate-fraud strategy caught industry onlookers by surprise, given the decline of the coalition of 17 liberal attorneys general known as AGs United for Clean Power, unveiled amid much fanfare at a March 2016 event with former Vice President Al Gore.

So far only one state — New York — has filed a lawsuit. Massachusetts has been mired for years in a legal fight with Exxon over documents. The Virgin Islands attorney general retreated early on from his attempt to subpoena documents from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Schneiderman himself no longer leads the coalition after resigning his office abruptly last year over allegations of physically abusing four women. If other states investigated Exxon behind the scenes, they have yet to result in legal action.

“The timing is bizarre,” said Spencer Walrath, research director of Energy in Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Newsom boosts climate cred by suing ‘Big Oil’ as California struggles to tap brakes on fossil fuels

Why now? So far Mr. Racine has offered no public insight into his decision-making, but as one of the AGs United for Clean Power — made up of 16 Democrats and one independent — he has supported the Massachusetts and New York investigations.

In 2016, he joined an amicus brief in support of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s investigation. He also signed a 2017 letter objecting to congressional subpoenas against the New York and Massachusetts prosecutors.

“Passionate about protecting our environment? Join our team!” Mr. Racine wrote in a March 15 tweet. “Our office is seeking outside legal counsel to support OAG’s climate change work.”

Passionate about protecting our environment? Join our team!

Our office is seeking outside legal counsel to support OAG’s climate change work: https://t.co/ZMZpEdcEuk

— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) March 15, 2019

Chris Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pointed out that the District’s Attorney General’s Office hired Sarah Kogel-Smucker last year as a “special assistant attorney general” paid for by the Bloomberg-funded State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at New York University, which places lawyers with state prosecutors to assist in “promoting clean energy.”

“A year later, one of the big reasons for bringing her on bears fruit: [the] DC OAG decides to hire an outside, plaintiffs’ firm to escalate the shakedown,” said Mr. Horner in an email.

A spokesman for the District’s Attorney General’s Office had no comment about a timetable. Under the solicitation, two lawyers and one paralegal would be contracted on a contingency basis, meaning they would be paid only if their work resulted in a monetary award, which Mr. Horner described as “unusual.”

Also drawing attention is a clause in the solicitation that says the contractor “may assign to a bank, trust company, or other financing institution funds due or to become due as a result of the performance of this contract.”

“In other words, a third party — like a hedge fund — can finance the contractor’s work in this investigation, allowing that entity rights to any winnings from the case,” said Mr. Walrath in a March 20 post. “The arrangement raises the possibility that wealthy entities or individuals supportive of the investigations against ExxonMobil, including the Rockefeller family, could directly fund and even profit from any eventual litigation.”

He cited comments by the Cato Institute’s Andrew Grossman in the Daily Caller, who said the arrangement “gives a whole new meaning to ‘policing for profit.’”

As climate litigation goes, the focus has shifted in the last year to lawsuits filed by municipalities and one state — Rhode Island — against major oil-and-gas companies seeking billions for climate-related mitigation efforts to infrastructure.

“Those costs involve building sea walls, implementing public-health programs, and taking other resiliency measures to protect the public and municipal property from rising sea levels, increased heat and precipitation, more frequent extreme weather, and other threats,” said the New York City appeal.

That legal avenue has its own potholes. Last year, federal judges threw out the public-nuisance lawsuits filed by New York City, San Francisco and Oakland, ruling that the climate-change debate should be resolved by the legislative and not judicial branch.

Both Oakland and San Francisco filed an appeal earlier this month with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, while New York City has filed an appeal in the 2nd Circuit.

Also gaining support from activists is litigation filed by children against federal and state governments demanding action on climate change. So far nine children’s lawsuits have been filed, and three of the state-level cases have been dismissed, according to InsideClimate News.

Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.*}:

---

NEW 10 23 CA LAWSUIT BS

https://eidclimate.org/energy-starved-california-files-climate-lawsuit-against-u-s-oil-and-natural-gas-companies-heres-what-to-know/}:

ENERGY-STARVED CALIFORNIA FILES CLIMATE LAWSUIT AGAINST U.S. OIL AND NATURAL GAS COMPANIES: HERE’S WHAT TO KNOW

SEPTEMBER 16, 2023 | MANDI RISKO

Four years after the climate lawsuit pushed by the New York Attorney General’s office was dealt a comprehensive defeat, California is putting forward its own case based on the same debunked theory that completely fell apart for Eric Schneiderman all those years ago – ironically, on New York’s turf and apparently ignorant that the Empire State’s loss even happened.

California’s lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Rob Bonta, follows a pump fake by former AG Kamala Harris and a decade-long pressure campaign from wealthy donors, academics, and fringe activist groups to file litigation. Ironically, the lawsuit filing comes against a backdrop of Californians paying some of the highest prices in the country for gasoline and electricity.

Now, with California joining the flailing nationally-coordinated climate litigation campaign, and Gov. Gavin Newsom set to discuss the case during the opening ceremony of NYC Climate Week, here’s what you need to know:

California’s case is a repeat of the failed and “hyperbolic” New York climate lawsuit, based on a legal premise that went nowhere in a case that was wholly defeated by the New York State Supreme Court.

California is the birthplace of the nationally coordinated, Hollywood-and-foreign-billionaire-funded litigation campaign. Sher Edling, the law firm that bases its entire business around representing plaintiffs in lawsuits against the oil and gas industry, including the three California municipalities that filed the very first climate suits in 2017, is based in San Francisco.

Litigation would only worsen the state’s already backwards energy policies – the energy-starved state already pays 88 percent more for a kilowatt hour of electricity than the national average and almost $2 more for a gallon of gasoline.

California is literally biting the hand that feeds it: from enabling agriculture, to fueling drivers on the freeway, to powering the state’s fragile grid, California relies on oil and natural gas to stay afloat. In fact, it is the largest consumer of jet fuel and second-largest consumer of motor gasoline in the nation. The state also decided to expand a large natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon just a few weeks ago.

Governor Gavin Newsom has praised the climate lawsuit and is set to speak more about it tomorrow. However, he’s previously acknowledged the irony of restricting oil production in the United States while increasing reliance on foreign imports, stating: “we’re making up for a lack of domestic production from Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Colombia, and that’s hardly an environmental solution when you look globally.”

Catch up more below:

New York’s Case Defeated and Widely Ridiculed

California Attorney General Bonta’s complaint alleges that the U.S. oil and natural gas industry “misled consumers and the public about climate change.” However, that’s the same theory that former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman used all the way back in 2015 as the basis for a years-long investigation that he was eventually forced to abandon after several high-profile shifts in legal strategy.

At the start of his failed climate lawsuit, AG Schneiderman first alleged that the defendant had failed to disclose the risk that some of its assets may become “stranded,” or uneconomical to produce under possible future climate policies. Then, in 2017, Schneiderman changed the state’s complaint to examine whether the company misled investors by failing to apply a “proxy cost of carbon” to its business operations.

The complete departure from the original theory even prompted the Washington Post to declare, “New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has gotten very far away from where he started in his office’s investigation.”

By the time the case finally went to trial in 2019, Schneiderman was long gone, and his predecessor was handed a total defeat in what New York State Supreme Court Judge Barry Ostrager called a “hyperbolic” lawsuit.

It All Goes Back to La Jolla

California’s lawsuit, New York’s failed case, and the entire climate litigation campaign, were born in the small Pacific beach town of La Jolla, which in 2012 hosted an infamous gathering of academics, attorneys, and activists that plotted the legal, political, and PR playbook for these lawsuits.

The conference was sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rockefeller-funded Climate Accountability Institute, and Harvard researcher Naomi Oreskes, who the New York Times reported to have “conceived” the meeting and was later revealed to be on retainer with Sher Edling, the plaintiffs’ law firm representing climate cases around the country.

One of the key developments from the La Jolla conference was the conclusion that recruiting a “single sympathetic attorney general” would be a key goal of the climate litigation campaign. To that end, activists found their sympathetic chief enforcement officer in then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who launched the first climate change investigation in 2015.

Schneiderman and the activists propping up his case recruited other attorneys general to join the cause. In 2016, Schneiderman held a press conference with Vice President Al Gore and other attorneys general announcing the “AGs United for Clean Power” coalition, of which then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris was a member.

Through this group – termed the “Green 20” – state attorneys general including AG Harris strategized about how to investigate and ultimately sue energy companies for damages attributed to the effects of climate change.

The coalition conducted backdoor strategy sessions with activists leading up to the launch. Public records showed that attorney Matt Pawa, who worked hand-in-hand with activists and donors to launch several climate lawsuits against oil and gas producers, briefed the members of the Green 20 the day before the coalition was publicly announced and then was instructed to conceal his involvement from journalists. Pawa also gave an April 2016 presentation to Attorney General Harris and other state attorneys general in April 2016 on “What Exxon Knew – And What It Did Anyway.”

Importantly, AG Harris and many of the other Green 20 members also signed a Common Interest Agreement to keep their legal strategy secret and hide their conversations about climate change litigation from the public. Reuters called it a “previously unknown level of coordination with outside advisers” before the arrangement was revealed through an open records request.

Despite the heavy-handed support from activists, the Green 20 fell apart within months, and subpoenas were quickly withdrawn. In 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported that AG Harris’ office had launched an #ExxonKnew investigation, though her office never confirmed it and nothing seemingly came from the investigation. Three years later, at a Democratic presidential debate, Harris tried to out-activist other candidates on the stage by falsely stating, “I have sued ExxonMobil,” revealing that her investigation was nothing more than a political gesture all along.

In the end, Schneiderman was the only Green 20 AG to have actually filed a lawsuit – which decisively failed – although the office spent over three years rifling through more than four million pages of corporate internal documents.

The State Remains a Hotbed of Litigation Activity

Beyond La Jolla, academics, activists, and plaintiffs’ attorneys have long used California as a home base to finance and coordinate climate lawsuits in the state and across the country.

It was the Los Angeles Times that helped kick start the climate litigation campaign back in 2015 with a series of articles on the energy industry’s understanding of climate change. Later, a funding trail revealed that the newspaper had failed to disclose that the stories were paid for by the Rockefeller Family Fund, presumably to bolster attorney generals’ investigations, prompting a scolding on journalistic ethics from the Columbia Journalism Review.

While the New York Attorney General’s investigation floundered and the Green 20 collapsed, activists honed in on several California municipalities, which became the very first plaintiffs to file public nuisance lawsuits against energy companies in July 2017. Reporting from the Daily Mail later revealed that the strategy behind the San Francisco and Oakland lawsuits was authored and pitched by activist attorney Matt Pawa and paid for by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer.

The California municipalities ended up switching attorneys from Pawa’s firm to Sher Edling, a San Francisco based law firm now representing more than a dozen states and municipalities around the country in their climate lawsuits. Although Sher Edling represents states and municipalities on a contingency fee basis where it stands to make tens of millions on any given suit, it also has received millions in dark-money grants to fund its lawsuits against energy companies.

Last year, reporting from Fox News Digital revealed that Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio and other wealthy left-wing donors have been funneling money to Sher Edling through non-profit pass-throughs since at least 2017. This funding system was partially orchestrated by Ann Carlson, former UCLA law professor and Biden administration official, and Dan Emmett, a Los Angeles real estate mogul who funds the UCLA program that employed Carlson. News of Carlson’s role in the scheme and her support for radical climate policies ultimately forced the White House to pull her nomination to lead the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

A Blow to Californian Workers and Consumers, But a Gift to OPEC

By attacking American energy companies, California AG Bonta’s new lawsuit adds to the slew of policies enacted by California’s legislature that literally starve the state of energy and hamper the economy. Californians already pay 88 percent more for a kilowatt hour of electricity than the national average and almost $2 more for a gallon of gasoline. Additionally, the oil and gas industry provides approximately 366,000 jobs in the state and contributes $152.3 billion in total economic output. Lawsuits like California’s will just diminish the role of American energy on the national and global stage and raise costs for consumers.

Shrinking the role of American energy doesn’t hurt everyone, though; OPEC+ should be thrilled. Because California will still need oil and natural gas, exemplified by the state’s decision to expand a large natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon just a few weeks ago, it will simply continue to rely on foreign imports, [we do not import frackked gas; we do import canadian tar sands to sf?] primarily from OPEC+ nations. Over the past 40 years, California’s oil consumption has remained steady, but the state has gone from relying primarily on U.S. production to depending on foreign imports from state-owned oil companies. Governor Newsom, who has praised AG Bonta’s climate lawsuit, has previously acknowledged the irony of cutting oil production in the United States while increasing reliance on foreign imports:

“We’re making up for a lack of domestic production from Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Colombia, and that’s hardly an environmental solution when you look globally.” (emphasis added)

To the Governor’s point, climate litigation does nothing to promote environmental progress. Phil Goldberg, Special Counsel to the Manufacturers Accountability Project pointed out this contradiction in response to California’s filing:

“The challenge of our time is developing technologies and public policies so that the world can produce and use energy in ways that are affordable for people and sustainable for the planet. It should not be figuring out how to creatively plead lawsuits that seek to monetize climate change and provide no solutions.” (emphasis added)

Bottom line: As California continues to be the largest consumer of jet fuel and second-largest consumer of motor gasoline in the nation, this new lawsuit couldn’t be more hypocritical. Rather than giving in to activist groups behind these lawsuits and shaming the industry that powers homes and vehicles, policymakers in the state should be reversing their slew of policies that impede on consumers’ ability to access reliable and safe energy.

Read the full piece on EIDClimate.org.

TAGS: Climate Litigation, climate week

LINKS

realclear invest links to EID?!

no docs

https://eidclimate.org/failure-to-disclose-new-report-exposes-academics-with-financial-ties-to-law-firms/

no lnx see realclear invest

FAILURE TO DISCLOSE: NEW REPORT EXPOSES ACADEMICS WITH FINANCIAL TIES TO LAW FIRMS

MAY 24, 2021| WILLIAM ALLISON

Just a week after the bombshell admission that a Harvard academic is working under a retainer agreement with a top plaintiffs’ attorney firm without any previous disclosure,a new report puts the spotlight on this practice happening at universities across the country.

The report, “Private Funders, Public Institutions: ‘Climate’ Litigation and a Crisis of Integrity,” published by [NOT THE REAL] Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C. (GAO), uncovers the coordination taking place between public officials, activist organizations, wealthy donors, and university faculty to bring climate change-related cases against energy companies, with a specific focus on the lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in June 2020.

Why the Naomi Oreskes-Sher Edling Retainer Presents Multiple Conflicts of Interest

The GAO report’s release couldn’t have come at a more apt time. Earlier this month, news broke that Harvard professor and longtime climate litigation activist Naomi Oreskes is on retainer with Sher Edling, LLP, the environmental plaintiffs’ law firm representing the majority of municipalities and states, including Minnesota, that have filed climate change lawsuits against the energy industry in recent years.

When Oreskes and fellow Harvard researcher Geoffrey Supran released a new study focused on climate change communications (that was just as flawed as their previous work), they did not seem prepared for the news that Oreskes is on retainer with Sher Edling to break. Notably, this wasn’t disclosed via a game of telephone, either, but Oreskes herself said so while under oath in a recent deposition.

It now appears that Oreskes sought to redefine her business relationship with Sher Edling after it hit the press, as she and Supran provided several different explanations to reporters when asked about her retainer disclosure. While Oreskes may be uncertain about the nature of her involvement with Sher Edling and its implications, others are not.

Academics took to Twitter to point out that this relationship should absolutely been disclosed:

:{A significant (an undisclosed) conflict of interest

https://t.co/IPX2PgtsJ8}:

— Judith Curry(@curryja) May 14, 2021

Shot ‘n Chaser

LEFT – Authors of new paper about Exxon-Mobil complicity in downplaying climate states they have no relevant financial ties

RIGHT – Same author disclosing in a recent deposition (Mann vs CEI) that she is on retainer for a law firm suing Exxon-Mobil

This is fine pic.twitter.com/UGTxjAPizf

— Roger Pielke Jr.(@RogerPielkeJr) May 14, 2021

The Academic-Activist Behind the Curtain in Minnesota

The report shows that Oreskes is far from the only academic who is working directly with top attorneys involved in the climate litigation campaign.

In Minnesota, the report outlines the critical role that University of Minnesota law professor Alexandra Klassplayed in orchestratingAttorney General Ellison’s lawsuit. In April 2019, she signed a memo titled “Potential Lawsuit against Fossil Fuel Companies for Minnesota Climate Change Damages” to be shared with the newly sworn-in Ellison.

Newly released documents in the report show that Klass was approached by anoutside activist groupthat provided funding for her students to write the memo, reviewed by other attorneys supporting climate litigation, and backed by theRockefeller network that has manufactured entire national litigation campaign.

None of this involvement by Klass was ever disclosed to the public, whether when moderating a forum on campus with Ellison, providing quotes in local newspapers, or in podcasts discussing the lawsuit.

Highlighting emails obtained through public records requests, the report shows that in late 2018, Klass was approached by Michael Noble, executive director of local activist group Fresh Energy about enlisting her help with potential litigation in Minnesota. In conversations with Klass, Noble spoke of a “big idea” and sent along climate pleadings from previously filed cases, and that he was looking for Klass’s “reaction (and hopefully enthusiasm).”

Roughly one month later, in December 2018, Noble asked if Klass wanted “to do a phone call with the lawyers advising the Rockefeller family fund” (sic) and the climate case was off to the metaphorical races.

Image via GAO

By early 2019, Klass had a contract through Fresh Energy to hire several law students to assist her in drafting the legal memo focused on a potential Minnesota climate change lawsuit that was eventually sent to Ellison.

Image via GAO]

In October 2019, Klass helped to host a panel discussion at the University of Minnesota Law School on “the legal and scientific case for recovering climate change damages in Minnesota from fossil fuel companies” which featured both Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Sher Edling’s Vic Sher, whose law firm now represents Minnesota in its climate change deception case.

At the time, the event was framed as an academic discussion. But what the public didn’t know was that Klass had already written a memo to Ellison earlier that year laying out the proposed legal theories that could back a climate change-focused lawsuit targeting the energy industry. Furthermore, the event was coordinated by Sam Duggan – one of the students who helped write the memo.

Despite her direct involvement in the drafting of the lawsuit, Klass has continued to present herself as an impartial expert on Minnesota state law. When Ellison initially filed his climate case last summer, Klass was quoted in news stories, including coverage from the Minneapolis Star Tribune as a professor of environmental law and thus, a neutral third-party expert. To date, she has not publicly spoken about her lack of disclosure regarding her involvement in helping put the idea of climate litigation in front of Ellison.

Efforts to keep government actions hidden from the public has even extended to Ellison’s office.Earlier this year, Ellison wrote an op-ed in the Star Tribune touting his office’s transparency, but the hiring of two Bloomberg-funded Special Assistant Attorneys General from another university – the NYU Law School’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center – raises serious questions. Ellison’s claim that these SAAGs “report to me and no one else,” and thus solely loyalty is to Minnesota taxpayers, is hard to believe when the job description for a similar position with the New York Attorney General explained:

“Fellows hosted by the OAG as special assistants will have responsibilities that include… preparing periodic reports of activities and progress for the State Impact Center.”

The Group in the Middle of It All? The Rockefellers

To the surprise of no one who has is even remotely familiar with the climate litigation campaign, the Rockefellers are one of the common threads between Oreskes and Klass.

The Rockefeller Family Fund supported all three of Oreskes’ major studies focused on the energy industry,and if there was any doubt that the wealthy foundation that supports climate litigation wouldn’t have any subjective effect on this research, then let Oreskes herself explain how the source of a researcher’s funding can lead to unconscious bias.

As Oreskes stated in published a letter she co-authored in 2015:

“But the issue is deeper than one of obeying rules; the important question is why those rules are necessary. The answer is that even if we think of ourselves as honest, objective, and independent, scientific evidence demonstrates that our research can be influenced by the sources of our funding… Many of us are reluctant to accept this funding because it seems to imply that our colleagues—including individuals we may know and respect—have been corrupted. Corruption exists, but the funding effect may more often be the result of unconscious bias.” (emphasis added)

In Minnesota, the Rockefeller Family Fund has been just as active. The group, and its director Lee Wasserman in particular, put the idea of a climate lawsuit in front of Michael Noble right after Ellison was elected in November 2018, as the report shows:

Image via GAO]

In turn, Noble then went to Klass where he explained the Rockefeller Family Fund’s role in supporting a climate lawsuit in Minnesota:

Images via GAO]

The “lawyers advising Rockefeller family fund” that Noble mentions is the Center for Climate Integrity, an activist group that’s supporting climate lawsuits across the country and which has received more than $3 million from the Rockefeller Family Fund. The group was also a sponsor of the 2019 panel that Ellison and Klass attended, and two senior officials from the group, Judith Enck andAlyssa Johl, provided feedback on Klass’s memo:

Images via GAO

With the memo prepared, Noble then went about bringing all the threads togethers by arranging a meeting of the key players, including Klass and officials with the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Center for Climate Integrity:

Finally, shortly after Ellison introduced the lawsuit, Noble couldn’t help but tout his own work when he admitted on a public webinar that he and the Rockefeller-funded Center for Center for Climate Integrity convinced the attorney general to file the case.

West Coast Edition

The coordination among academics and law firms is indeed happening from coast to coast, includingAnn Carlson, the UCLA Law professortaking a leave of absence to serve in the Biden Administration.

Previously, Carlson has worked as a consultant with Sher Edling, the same firm that has Naomi Oreskes on retainer. Carlson also appeared on a panel discussion on climate litigation alongside Vic Sher at the University of Hawai’i Richardson School of Law in May 2019, just ten months before the City & County of Honolulu filed its own climate lawsuit.

The report outlines Carlson’s work at theUCLA Law School and the financial support she received:

“Consider another relevant example, revealed in a recent public-record production obtained from UCLA Law School by Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C. That production of documents revealed certain details of how donors named Dan Emmett and Ralph and Shirley Shapiro gave a combined $1.5 million to a ‘Carlson discretionary fund’ which, according to the Shapiros’ instruction, is ‘to be used at the discretion of Professor Ann Carlson… in her sole discretion as she deems appropriate.’” (emphasis added)

Conclusion

As Energy In Depth as shown for years, the Rockefellers have manufactured the entire climate litigation campaign and their work hasn’t slowed down.

This new paper from Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C. uncovers the role that academics have played in supporting these lawsuits with Minnesota the latest example of the lack of disclosure between government officials, activist groups, and college professors.

Added on top of the bombshell news that Harvard professorNaomi Oreskes is on retainer with a top plaintiffs firm, this nationally coordinated campaign becomes more interconnected by the day.

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walrath 12/17

https://eidclimate.org/calif-climate-suits-not-climate-theyre-bringing-energy-producers/

Several California communities have recently brought suits as part of a larger political campaign to attack the oil and gas industry, but a profile of one of the lawyers leading the cases published by VICE this morning leaves no question about the motive of these cases. The plaintiffs aren’t seeking to protect themselves from climate change; they’re trying to “bring down the fossil fuel companies.”

VICE’s article profiles Steve Berman of the notorious anti-corporate law firm Hagens Berman. VICE ticks off Berman’s accomplishments:

He forced Jack-in-the-Box to pay $12 million for causing an E. coli outbreak that killed four children. He won a $215 million settlement against Enron for defrauding investors and wiping out employee retirement accounts. He represented auto dealers in a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Volkswagen for cheating on diesel emissions.

Berman is best known, though, for suing big tobacco in the 1990s. At the end of that fight, he helped negotiate a $206 billion settlement from cigarette makers like Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Brown & Williamson for causing cancer. It remains the largest legal settlement of its kind in history.

Somehow VICE forgot to mention the time Hagens Berman had to pay $10.8 million to its own clients[not named, botl water unsafe?] after it was judged that they failed to act in their clients’ best interest. The firm was also fined for “bad faith advocacy” after a U.S. District judge ruled that Hagens Berman had moved forward with several cases even though they knew the cases were “baseless.” The judge said that one of Hagens Berman’s allegations “gives new meaning to ‘frivolous.’”

Turning to his lawsuits against the oil and gas industry, VICE continues:

The stakes are even higher in his big oil lawsuit. Berman is not just trying to get oil companies to pay for seawalls in the Bay Area. In a broader sense he’s attempting to hold them responsible for endangering all human life on earth. “This is different in kind from anything else,” Timothy Crosland, the director of a UK-based climate law group called Plan B, told me. “Once you get started, you get one case that goes through, this is an avalanche. It’s got the potential really to bring down the fossil fuel companies.” (emphasis added)

That’s what this is and always has been about. Santa Cruz and San Francisco may be legitimately concerned about the effects of climate change on their communities, but their concern is being co-opted by money-hungry lawyers and environmental activists seeking to eliminate fossil fuel companies.

Don’t believe that Berman’s only in this for the money? Per VICE:

As our interview came to a close I asked Berman to describe the best-case scenario for all this. “Imagine if I could get ten or 15 cities to all sue and put the same pressure on the oil companies that we did with tobacco companies and create some kind of massive settlement,” he said. He acted as if it was the first time he’d thought of the idea. But I got the feeling it wasn’t. (emphasis added)

Berman’s already succeeded in securing the largest settlement ever and the only way he can outdo himself is to set his sights on the industry that literally powers the world.

But even if Berman doesn’t get to a settlement, if he can just convince a judge to hear his case, he may get everything he thinks he needs:

As far as Berman is concerned the story isn’t over. On climate change he thinks it’s just getting started. If a judge decides his case can be heard—a big if, considering that no lawsuit against big oil has made it to that stage—then Berman can call on Exxon, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron to make internal reports and research into climate change available. “[I’m] dying to get to those documents,” he said. “I’m convinced they’re going to be smoking hot.” (emphasis added)

This dogged pursuit of industry documents tracks with a memo Berman’s new partner, #ExxonKnew activist Matt Pawa, sent to billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer. Pawa wrote a memo in 2015 pitching Steyer on the idea of convincing Californian communities to sue the oil and gas industry over climate change. The memo suggests that “simply proceeding to the discovery phase of a global warming case would be significant.” Pawa’s firm was acquiredby Hagens Bermanearlier this year “in an effort to pursue climate change litigation against companies,” and Pawa is now leading the San Francisco and Oakland cases.

There is hope that these cases will not progress that far. In her 2009 decision in a related case, U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong wrote, “There is no realistic possibility of tracing any particular alleged effect of global warming to any particular emissions by an specific person, entity, group at any particular point in time.”

“The litigants misunderstand nuisance law,” attorney Scott Segal told the Washington Post earlier this year. “In the case of global climate change, a molecule of carbon is literally around the world in seven days. The requisite causation needed for nuisance suits is missing and unprovable.”

Having failed to pass a national climate policy out of Congress and after watching President Trump dismantle President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, these activists are completely sidelining democracy and trying to push their agenda through the courts. If successful, a handful of extremists will have imposed their radical anti-fossil fuel policy on the entire country, which has repeatedly rejected their efforts.

They're About “Bring[ing] Down” Energy Producers - EID Climate

https://eidclimate.org › calif-climate-suits-not-climate-th...

Dec 22, 2017 — Berman is best known, though, for suing big tobacco in the 1990s. At the end of that fight, he helped negotiate a $206 billion settlement from ...

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/13/1995473/-NYTimes-Reveals-FTI-Exxon-Mobil-As-The-Man-Behind-The-Man-Behind-The-Curtain

no lnx

thirteen years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report detailing the millions of dollars ExxonMobil pumped into climate denial groups, and in response, it pledged to discontinue, as of 2008, its contributions “to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion…” about environmentally responsible energy.

And that year, they did indeed cut off some of the biggest groups, like Cato, CEI and Heartland. But, as Elliott Negin recounted a couple years ago, they never actually stopped funding disinformation, even after coming under fire for it when investigators revealed the depth of their understanding of the issue that prompted these disinformation campaigns. (And they’re still at it, as Negin recently showed, with hundreds of thousands given to at least eight climate denial groups in 2019.)

One of the groups ExxonMobil continued paying to oppose climate action is FTI Consulting, a PR group whose shady efforts have been brought further into the light by Hiroko Tabuchi in the New York Times.

Through an investigation of filings, archived websites and registration info, and interviews with a dozen former employees, Tabuchi reports that “FTI has been involved in the operations of at least 15 current and past influence campaigns promoting fossil-fuel interests in addition to its direct work for oil and gas clients.”

Among them is ExxonMobil. It’s a key backer of Energy in Depth, and although it discloses that it’s a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, it doesn’t disclose that, Tabuchi reports, “the site’s content had direction from Exxon Mobil, one of the major clients of the FTI division that worked on these oil and gas campaigns.” Now the difference between Exxon Mobil and IPAA may seem arbitrary, but given that one of Energy in Depth’s most consistent topics is defending Exxon Mobil against the allegations that it funded front groups to spread disinformation, it’s actually kind of important!

Similarly, anyone who might have seen something from the Arctic Energy Center might have wanted to know that the information there was funded by Exxon, who was paying FTI to run a social-media campaign around the now-offline website.

And that’s the sort of thing that recurs throughout Tabuchi’s reporting. Time and again, FTI set up self-proclaimed “grass-roots” groups, circulated petitions, wrote misleading reports, placed op-eds in local papers, and created other messaging products. Despite charging top dollar, it seems they often include sloppy give-aways, like using stock photos to accompany "testimonials" that, even now, they insist are totally real.

Tabuchi's breakdown of TCI's online sockpuppet accounts is particularly enlightening for anyone who’s been confused about the belligerence often on display in online conversations about energy. In essence, FTI strategically pollutes comment sections and floods otherwise productive conversations about climate and energy with messages designed to make people disengage.

Because not only did they set up fake accounts to spy on Dakota Access protesters, feeding pipeline clients information as granular as how much food and supplies protesters were gathering as a way to infer the size of their camp, but they also “studied and developed strategies designed to influence public discourse,” as seen in a 2015 document obtained and published by the Times.

It includes eight archetypes of comment-clutterers, from “the drunken conspiracy theorist uncle” who “agrees with the Negative Commenter but conflates other unrelated and offensive issues into it, lumping it all together into an unpalatable whole.”

Or there’s the “semantic nitpicker” who “asks an endless series of questions,” the “patronizing voice of reason,” and “The concern hipster (new archetype!)” who “says that the issue raised by Negative Commenter is not as important as another issue they feel very passionately about.”

So if you ever notice a pattern of these sorts of accounts talking to each other, complete with “Dog typing on a keyboard” user who “chimes in with very poor grammar, spelling and punctuation and posts frequently to clutter up the thread and make it hard to read,” just remember: It’s definitely not some ExxonMobil-hired FTI flack deliberately trying to distract people from climate solutions, because ExxonMobil totally promised it’d stop doing that way back in 2007.

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Thirteen years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report detailing the millions of dollars ExxonMobil pumped into climate denial groups, and in response, it pledged to discontinue, as of 2008, its contributions “to several public policy research groups whose positions on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion…” about environmentally responsible energy.

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https://www.energyindepth.org/tag/exxon-knew/

EXXON KNEW TAG

NATIONAL Oct 26, 2020

Everyone Knew: Story On Automakers Reaffirms Broad Understanding Of Climate Change

NATIONAL Sep 14, 2020

Echoes Of New York’s Failure: Connecticut Files Climate Lawsuit

NATIONAL Jan 13, 2020

It’s Official: New York’s Case Against ExxonMobil Is Over

NATIONAL Dec 16, 2019

Rockefeller Director Disappointed That the Rockefeller-Funded Exxon Investigation Failed

NATIONAL Nov 08, 2019

Exxon Attorney Calls New York’s Lawsuit a ‘Cruel Joke’ in Defiant Closing Statement

NATIONAL Nov 07, 2019

New York Attorney General Cuts and Runs on Half of its Bogus Claims Against Exxon at the 11th Hour

NATIONAL Nov 06, 2019

The Seinfeld Trial (Trial about Nothing): Six Questions for the NYAG as Closing Statements Begin

NATIONAL Oct 29, 2019

Rex Tillerson to Testify in NY AG Case

NATIONAL Oct 29, 2019

NY AG’s Expert Witnesses Employ Flawed Methodology and Are Scientifically Unreliable

NATIONAL Oct 27, 2019

The New York Attorney General’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

NATIONAL Oct 22, 2019

Rockefeller Echo Chamber Activated Ahead of ExxonMobil New York Attorney General Trial – 5 Things to Know

NATIONAL Oct 21, 2019

’Exxon Knew’ Desperation Continues: Activists Publish ‘Report’ Ahead of NY Trial

Jan 09, 2018

Did Calif. Municipalities Suing Energy Companies Over Climate Commit Securities Fraud?

Aug 22, 2017 3

Bombshell: Activists Admit #ExxonKnew Is About Attacking Free Speech

Jul 27, 2017 1

Did The Onion Predict the #ExxonKnew Campaign?

Jul 25, 2017 3

Serious Question: If #UtilitiesKnew about Climate Change in the 70s, And Everyone Else Did Too, Why Are We Still Using Hashtags?

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https://www.energyindepth.org/exxonknew-attempts-to-reset-flailing-campaign-witha-billboard/?154

[[eid a pjt of ipaa it says

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twt

NATIONAL

#EXXONKNEW ATTEMPTS TO RESET FLAILING CAMPAIGN WITH…A BILLBOARD?

BY SPENCER WALRATH OCT. 25, 2017 Leave a Comment

Public Citizen and a new project called the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) have launched a new campaign targeting oil and gas companies in the wake of recent hurricanes. The groups have put up two billboards in Houston asking when “climate polluters” will “pay their fair share” and directing people to visit WhoPaysForHarvey.com. But a peek behind the curtain reveals that this campaign isorganized by the same key players behind the #ExxonKnew campaign and is just the latest attempt to reset their struggling effort to attack the oil and gas industry.

As a refresher, Public Citizen has been active in the #ExxonKnew campaign for nearly two years. Rob Weissman, Public Citizen’s president, attended a secret closed-door meeting in January 2016 at the offices of the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF), which has bankrolled the #ExxonKnew campaign. Activists at that meeting included Kert Davies, Matt Pawa, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, and Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) president Carroll Muffett, among others.

The purpose of the meeting was “to establish in public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution,” and “to delegitimize them as a political actor.” After a quick break for lunch, the group reconvened to ask:

“Does this group want to establish a rapid response and coordination structure to react to new research, revelations and legal developments as they happen? A higher level of coordination with a war room, joint social media, and coordinated organizing and media pushes?”

Nearly two years later, we’ve seen the degree to which these groups have actively coordinated with each other and their allies.

CCI launched last month as a project of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD). IGSD was founded by Durwood Zaelke, who was the co-founder and president of CIEL from 1989-2003. Richard Wiles is the director of what is now CCI and is also the publisher of a new climate liability website, Climate Liability News (CLN), which launched in July. CLN has paid particularly close attention to developments in the investigations of and lawsuits against ExxonMobil, devoting a unique page on its website to the issue. Kert Davies, who attended the January 2016 RFF meeting, is listed as a member of CLN’s board, alongside Wiles and Alyssa Johl, a former CIEL attorney.

Matt Pawa,a trial lawyer who attended the January 2016 RFF meeting and serves on the board of CIEL, recently spoke at a conference with Public Citizen’s Weissman. Pawa has chased big payouts from companies for their contributions to climate change for years and is currently leading a climate change lawsuit filed by San Francisco and Oakland against five oil and gas companies.

Following the RFF group’s plan to “establish a rapid response and coordination structure to react to new…developments,” Bill McKibben, a top promoter of the #ExxonKnew campaign, tweeted a photo of one of the Houston billboards as soon as they went up.

Adrian Shelley, the director of Public Citizen Texas, told the Houston Chronicle that the billboards and website are “just the beginning of a larger national campaign.” WhoPaysForIrma.com has already been registered, though that site has not yet launched.

And while theslick website at WhoPaysForHarvey.com features all of eight sentences blaming oil and gas companies for Hurricane Harvey, it does not link to additional information or resources and offers no way to help the victims of Harvey and no solutions to address climate change. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry pledged over $32.3 million to Harvey relief efforts. [ASKED FOR BILLIONS$ TO FORTIFY SHIP CHANNEL?]It remains to be seen how this new campaign’s billboards and barebones website will help address climate change.

What is clear is that these various efforts to attempt to bring climate litigation against oil and gas companies are being perpetrated by the same handful of activists who have been pursuing these companies for years.The goal isn’t to win the cases; it’s to generate publicity– a goal shared by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman with his investigation of ExxonMobil.

Activists are trying to create a public narrative that oil and gas companies deserve all of the blame for climate change, thereby shifting the blame from the individuals who rely on fossil fuels (including these activists) to the companies providing fossil fuels. The goal, as laid out in their memo nearly two years ago, is to “delegitimize them” and convince the public that oil and gas companies are corrupt. Or, as that memo’s author put it:

TAGS: 350.org, Alyssa Johl, Bill McKibben, Carroll Muffett, CCI, Center for Climate Integrity, Center for International Environmental Law, CIEL, Climate Litigation News, CLN, Durwood Zaelke, Eric Schneiderman, Exxon, ExxonKnew, ExxonMobil, Harvey, IGSD, Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, Irma, Johl, Kenny Bruno, Kert Davies, Matt Pawa, Matthew Pawa, McKibben, Pawa, Public Citizen, RFF, Richard Wiles, Rob Weissman, Rockefeller Family Fund, Schneiderman, Weissman, Wiles, Zaelke

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LNX

public Citizen and a new project called the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) have launched a new campaign targeting oil and gas companies in the wake of recent hurricanes. The groups have put up two billboards in Houston asking when “climate polluters” will “pay their fair share” and directing people to visit WhoPaysForHarvey.com. But a peek behind the curtain reveals that this campaign is organized by the same key players behind the #ExxonKnew campaign and is just the latest attempt to reset their struggling effort to attack the oil and gas industry.

As a refresher, Public Citizen has been active in the #ExxonKnew campaign for nearly two years. Rob Weissman, Public Citizen’s president, attended a secret closed-door meeting in January 2016 at the offices of the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF), which has bankrolled the #ExxonKnew campaign. Activists at that meeting included Kert Davies, Matt Pawa, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, andCenter for International Environmental Law (CIEL) president Carroll Muffett, among others.

“Does this group want to establish a rapid response and coordination structure to react to new research, revelations and legal developments as they happen? A higher level of coordination with a war room, joint social media, and coordinated organizing and media pushes?”

Nearly two years later, we’ve seen the degree to which these groups have actively coordinated with each other and their allies.

Matt Pawa, a trial lawyer who attended the January 2016 RFF meeting and serves on the board of CIEL, recently spoke at a conference with Public Citizen’s Weissman. Pawa has chased big payouts from companies for their contributions to climate change for years and is currently leading a climate change lawsuit filed by San Francisco and Oakland against five oil and gas companies.

[tet pix]

adrian Shelley, the director of Public Citizen Texas, told the Houston Chronicle that the billboards and website are “just the beginning of a larger national campaign.” WhoPaysForIrma.com has already been registered, though that site has not yet launched.

And while the slick website at WhoPaysForHarvey.com features all of eight sentences blaming oil and gas companies for Hurricane Harvey, it does not link to additional information or resources and offers no way to help the victims of Harvey and no solutions to address climate change. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry pledged over $32.3 million to Harvey relief efforts. It remains to be seen how this new campaign’s billboards and barebones website will help address climate change.

What is clear is that these various efforts to attempt to bring climate litigation against oil and gas companies are being perpetrated by the same handful of activists who have been pursuing these companies for years. The goal isn’t to win the cases; it’s to generate publicity – a goal shared by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman with his investigation of ExxonMobil.

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FTI

December 24, 2019

A HuffPost investigation revealed that FTI Consulting was hired by Energy in Depth (EID) to implement a disinformation campaign to discredit scientists who exposed the environmental consequences of fossil fuel extraction and consumption.42

EID received approximately $2 million per year in 2018 and 2019 from the Independent Petroleum Association of America, an industry trade organization that has received support from oil giants such as BP, Shell, Chevron, and Halliburton. The money was delivered in spite of many of IPAA’s member organizations publicly calling for action on climate change.43

EID employed FTI consultants to engage in a campaign of “research, education and public outreach” to dispute factual claims made by scientists and environmentalists, such as dismissing the effects of hydraulic fracturing on water quality.44

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new

https://www.huffpost.com/topic/fti-consulting

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-denial-energy-in-depth_n_5df7eff6e4b0ae01a1e59371

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eNVIRONMENT

Fossil Fuel Giants Claim To Support Climate Science, Yet Still Fund Denial

Fourteen oil and gas companies are funding a website that attacks scientists and undermines their work.

Paul D. Thacker

Dec. 18, 2019,

overtime to show that our climate commitment is...

Most energy companies now acknowledge that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet. And yet many continue to fund disinformation about industry’s role in climate change and its harm to human health.

In the latest example, documents and recordings reviewed by HuffPost show that the Independent Petroleum Association of America has spent almost $2 million a year for the last two years on Energy In Depth, a “research, education and public outreach campaign” that regularly attacks scientists whose research is critical of industry. The campaign has received financial backing from 14 different oil and gas companies including Shell, Occidental Petroleum, BP, Chevron and Halliburton.

These revelations come as world leaders adjourn the COP25 in Madrid, an international summit held to discuss detailed ways to address the rapidly warming planet. In a recent review, scientists writing for The Lancet stated that climate change will affect the health of every child born today as populations face weather extremes, food and water insecurity and changing patterns of infectious disease. “The only solution is to get rid of fossil fuels in power production, industry and transportation,” Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said upon releasing the report.

Announcing Energy in Depth in a 2009press release now removed from its website, the Independent Petroleum Association of America described EID as a campaign to combat new environmental regulations, especially on hydraulic fracturing. EID’s website includes fact sheets, videos and analysis, and promises to clearly explain oil and gas development while “straightening out the myths you may have heard.”

Although it’s not apparent from the EID website, many of the site’s writers are employees ofFTI Consulting, a global consulting firm that has come under scrutiny for its work for oil and gas companies, Monsanto, Delta Air Lines and the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a front group created to stop universal health care. The documents reviewed by HuffPost provide further insight into the specific funders of EID and how FTI Consulting helps companies burnish their images.

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At a 2014 oil and gas conference in Brazil, FTI explained how Energy in Depth helped generate and guide media “behind the scenes,” influencing hundreds of articles and opinion pieces. Most importantly, FTI claimed that the site and its surrogates had the ability “to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”

At the IPAA’s 2017 retreat, an employee told members that the site is “a bunch of companies that have come together to fight some of this fake news that’s out there about our industry.” An attendee recorded the session and provided it to HuffPost.

“EID has now grown into what many consider the industry’s lead research and rapid response platform,” states an IPAA report presented at a June 2019 board of directors meeting. The report adds that EID helps beat back attempts to stop fossil fuel extraction and addresses research that finds fracking harmful.

EID has posted several pages attacking the research of Harvard scholars Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran, calling their published study that showed Exxon Mobil misled the public on the dangers of climate change “incomplete” and “activist.” In another example, EID points to Exxon Mobil-funded research to undermine the scholars’ studies.

“This EID case demonstrates that although fossil fuel companies now claim to support climate action, they continue to misrepresent scientific work in order to protect profits and protect themselves from liability or responsibility,” said Supran, a research fellow studying the history of science.

“When science threatens their interest, they attack or attempt to undermine it,” said Oreskes, a professor of history of science. “And when they can’t do that, they attempt to discredit the scientists who produced it.”

“Although fossil fuel companies now claim to support climate action, they continue to misrepresent scientific work in order to protect profits and protect themselves from liability or responsibility.”

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- Geoffrey Supran, Harvard research fellow

On EID’s website, Rebecca Simons, field director for Energy In Depth-Mountain States, excoriated Lisa McKenzie, an assistant professor in the department of environmental and occupational health at the University of Colorado whose published studies find air pollution caused by fracking to be harmful to humans. In a Denver Post op-ed, Simons dismissed McKenzie’s research, writing that it allows “activists” to argue that “energy production is somehow a pernicious threat to public health.” According to her LinkedIn page, Simons left FTI Consulting this year to join Encana, one of the energy firms that helped start EID.

“They attack anyone without using evidence,” said McKenzie. “They respond sometimes before they could even have read a study.” Earlier this month, public health scholars published a perspective in the New England Journal of Medicine noting that fracking is linked to water contamination, air pollution, radiation releases and ecosystem damage.

Jeff Eshelman, senior vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America and founder of EID, said in an interview that he was not familiar with the academics whom EID has criticized, but emphasized that America now has the cleanest air in 20 years thanks to natural gas.

“Since 1929, IPAA’s mission has been to tell the truth about the importance of America’s natural gas and oil resources to consumers and policy makers,” said Eshelman. “We are a 90-year-old advocacy association. That’s quite obvious and transparent.”

Several of the fossil fuel companies behind Energy In Depth have made statements avowing the science on climate change and the need to take action.

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“Burning fossil fuels is the primary contributor to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere,” states BP in a handout on climate change.

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“The world needs to take urgent action to tackle climate change,” Shell states on its website. “Our ambition is to make sure the energy we sell is in tune with society as it moves towards that goal.”

HuffPost contacted the oil and gas companies that funded EID and asked them to explain their support for a group that attacks researchers working on climate change. Shell, BP and Chevron were asked to explain why they support such actions while simultaneously embracing the science on climate change.

“Your questions are better addressed to EID or IPAA,” said Ashley Alemayehu, a spokesperson for Exxon Mobil, the parent company of XTO Energy.

“BP has not provided funding or been a member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) since January 2014,” wrote BP spokesperson Jason Ryan.

The other companies did not respond.

Eshelman told HuffPost that while his organization runs the EID website, he hired FTI Consulting to support it.In the past, FTI Consulting worked on behalf of several companies to defeat fracking regulations in Europe. Earlier this year, a member of the European Parliament complained about potential violations of lobbying transparency after FTI sent mailers to members of Parliament promising to donate 50 euros to UNICEF for answering a “perception audit” and agreeing to a meeting with FTI. FTI sent the letters on behalf of Eurogas, an association for Europe’s gas industry. And over the summer, a columnist at The Guardian referenced dozens of pages of internal court documents that pointed toFTI as part of Monsanto’s plan to destroy the columnist’s reputation.

“We will have to refer you to IPAA for any comment on IPAA or EID,” said FTI spokesperson Matthew E. Bashalany. He added that FTI does not comment on clients, per company policy.

While most Americans aren’t familiar with IPAA, the organization has close ties to the Trump administration, which denies much of the science on climate change. Shortly after Donald Trump took office, the IPAA celebrated when he picked the group’s former attorney David Bernhardt for the No. 2 spot at the Department of the Interior.

“We know him very well, and we have direct access to him, have conversations with him about issues ranging from federal land access to endangered species, to a lot of issues,” the IPAA’s political director told a group of gathered industry representatives at the time, according to a secret recording of an IPAA meeting provided to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Trump recently appointed Bernhardt as secretary of the Interior Department, and the IPAA has cultivated other powerful Trump appointees. A flyer for the IPAA’s annual conference last month listed two Trump officials as speakers: Larry A. Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, and Andrew Wheeler, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“All of this — both the attacks themselves and individual companies’ efforts to conceal their involvement — tells me the industry is scared,” said Ben Franta, a Stanford graduate student whom EID targeted for noting that the fossil fuel industry has a history of hiding what it knows about climate change. “It’s scared of the truth. And it should be, because the truth doesn’t look good for the fossil fuel industry.”

This story has been updated with comment from a BP spokesperson.

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...at the IPAA’s 2017 retreat, an employee told members that the site is “a bunch of companies that have come together to fight some of this fake news that’s out there about our industry.” An attendee recorded the session and provided it to HuffPost.

...on EID’s website, Rebecca Simons, field director for Energy In Depth-Mountain States, excoriated Lisa McKenzie, an assistant professor in the department of environmental and occupational health at the University of Colorado whose published studies find air pollution caused by fracking to be harmful to humans. In a Denver Post op-ed, Simons dismissed McKenzie’s research, writing that it allows “activists” to argue that “energy production is somehow a pernicious threat to public health.” According to her LinkedIn page, Simons leftFTI Consulting this year to join Encana, one of the energy firms that helped start EID.

Jeff Eshelman,senior vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America and founder of EID, said in an interview that he was not familiar with the academics whom EID has criticized, but emphasized that America now has the cleanest air in 20 years thanks to natural gas.

Several of the fossil fuel companies behind Energy In Depth have made statements avowing the science on climate change and the need to take action.

“Burning fossil fuels is the primary contributor to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere,” states BP in a handout on climate change.

“Your questions are better addressed to EID or IPAA,” said Ashley Alemayehu, a spokesperson for Exxon Mobil, the parent company of XTO Energy....

"BP has not provided funding or been a member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) since January 2014,” wrote BP spokesperson Jason Ryan.

The other companies did not respond.

Eshelman told HuffPost that while his organization runs the EID website, he hired FTI Consulting to support it. In the past, FTI Consulting worked on behalf of several companies to defeat fracking regulations in Europe. Earlier this year, a member of the European Parliament complained about potential violations of lobbying transparency after FTI sent mailers to members of Parliament promising to donate 50 euros to UNICEF for answering a “perception audit” and agreeing to a meeting with FTI. FTI sent the letters on behalf of Eurogas, an association for Europe’s gas industry. And over the summer, a columnist at The Guardian referenced dozens of pages of internal court documents that pointed to FTI as part of Monsanto’s plan to destroy the columnist’s reputation.

“We will have to refer you to IPAA for any comment on IPAA or EID,” said FTI spokesperson Matthew E. Bashalany. He added that FTI does not comment on clients, per company policy.

While most Americans aren’t familiar with IPAA, the organization has close ties to the Trump administration, which denies much of the science on climate change. Shortly after Donald Trump took office, the IPAA celebrated when he picked the group’s former attorney David Bernhardt for the No. 2 spot at the Department of the Interior.

Trump recently appointed Bernhardt as secretary of the Interior Department, and the IPAA has cultivated other powerful Trump appointees. A flyer for the IPAA’s annual conference last month listed two Trump officials as speakers:Larry A. Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, and Andrew Wheeler, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“All of this — both the attacks themselves and individual companies’ efforts to conceal their involvement — tells me the industry is scared,” said Ben Franta, a Stanford graduate student whom EID targeted for noting that the fossil fuel industry has a history of hiding what it knows about climate change. “It’s scared of the truth. And it should be, because the truth doesn’t look good for the fossil fuel industry.”

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ctr-? attack Oreskes and Westervelt

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~ lawsuits:

https://**eidclimate.org**/an-orchestrated-campaign/

lawsuits that focus on climate liability—suing companies to make them pay for climate change damages—are part of a long-running strategy by anti-oil and gas activists. However, this campaign is far from a grassroots effort. It’s funded and directed by wealthy donors, and its activists are well-connected with scholars, journalists and politicians who subscribe to the “keep-it-in-the-ground” philosophy.

Well-devised and generously funded environmental campaigns are nothing new. But from the very beginning, the climate litigation campaign has been different. This campaign started with an argument that ExxonMobil had known about climate change long before the public and even the United States government but had tried to cover up this knowledge and mislead the public. This “Exxon Knew” argument was thoroughly debunked and failed in the courts. Yet the #ExxonKnew campaign had a lasting effect and expanded beyond focusing solely on ExxonMobil. It has grown into a well-funded and highly-coordinated collection of activists, politicians, lawyers, academics and pay-for-play journalists, and they have created an echo chamber not just as a vehicle for advocacy, but also to prod government officials to open investigations into oil and gas companies, whom they believe they can harass into obsolescence.

The key goal of the #ExxonKnew campaign according to the agenda of a meeting held at the Rockefeller Family Fund is, “To establish in public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution that has pushed humanity (and all creation) toward climate chaos and grave harm.”

To meet this goal, activists have targeted the company and the entire industry in various ways to create and amplify the #ExxonKnew narrative and obtain internal company documents. Activists partnered with friendly state attorneys general to investigate the company and make use of their vast subpoena powers to gain unprecedented access to internal company documents and attempt to build a legal case. The NY AG is one of the few AGs to continually investigate for years and ultimately filed a lawsuit—under a completely different legal theory than when the investigation was opened. Activists also partnered with lawmakers in Congress who initiated additional investigations. Finally, activists recruited municipalities around the country to file nuisance lawsuits against a handful of energy companies to further increase pressure on the industry.

Activists’ Playbook

The origins of the climate litigation campaign go back more than a decade, but activists began forming a unified strategy—the #ExxonKnew campaign—during a June:{2012 conference in La Jolla, California. At the conference, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Climate Accountability Institute held a strategy session on how they could develop a legal campaign against energy companies that mirrored successful lawsuits against big tobacco companies. According to the activists, success hinged on obtaining internal company documents from ExxonMobil and using them to craft a narrative that misled the public about their knowledge of climate change in a long shot attempt to create liability for the company.}:

Attendees included top environmental campaigners, lawyers with a history of suing the oil and natural gas industry and lawyers who were involved in successful lawsuits against major tobacco companies.

The workshop attendees identified how strategic litigation could bring internal company documents into the public domain, which activists could then use to develop new narratives against the targeted companies. Their goal from the beginning was to use litigation to obtain internal company documents that could be used to discredit the industry in the eyes of the public according to a summary report that the workshop attendees published:

“One of the most important lessons to emerge from the history of tobacco litigation is the value of bringing internal industry documents to light.”

The first suggested means of obtaining internal documents was through legal avenues—including recruiting friendly state attorneys general to launch investigations under racketeering laws.

“State attorneys general can also subpoena documents, raising the possibility that a single sympathetic state attorney general might have substantial success in bringing key internal documents to light.”

Phase 1:Environmental activists begin finding their “sympathetic state attorneys general”

As documents made available through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests have shown, activists present at the La Jolla conference have been aggressively meeting with state attorneys general and encouraging them to launch a campaign against ExxonMobil, just as they said they would in 2012.

One log of correspondence shows that Lee Wasserman with the Rockefeller Family Fund contacted the NY AG frequently in early 2015 regarding the “activities of specific companies regarding climate change.” The Rockefeller Family Fund has bankrolled groups like Bill McKibben’s 350.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, andInsideClimate News, all of which have played prominent roles in attacking energy companies over climate change.

In a July 21, 2015, email to a fellow activist, Peter Frumhoff with the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote, “we think there’ll likely be a strong basis for encouraging state (e.g. AG) action forward, and in that context, opportunities for climate scientists to weigh in.”

Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica emailed the Maryland Attorney General’s office in November 2015, offering to brief him on “the potential consumer related complaints and other authorities re: ExxonMobil.”

In a July 2016 forum hosted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, climate activists including Naomi Oreskes and several representatives from the Union of Concerned Scientists admitted they had been meeting with state AGs who launched climate RICO investigations for over a year.

Phase 2: Groups publish pre-conceived “news” stories to give AGs a hook for investigations

The timing of the actions by the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists are important, because they preceded publication of major reports that suggest those actions were indeed part of a broader political campaign.

On September 16, 2015, InsideClimate News published the first article in its #ExxonKnew series, falsely alleging that ExxonMobil had reached definitive conclusions on anthropogenic climate change in the 1970s but hid their research from the public. A few weeks later, on October 9, 2015, the Los Angeles Times published another article that was nearly identical in focus and tone, written by students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Both InsideClimate News and the Columbia program received large sums of money from Rockefeller-linked foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund, who have funded nearly every aspect of the #ExxonKnew campaign.

InsideClimate News, in its cover letter for consideration for the Pulitzer Prize, described the Columbia team’s work as “completely independent” of theirs, but conceded that the Los Angeles Times’ story “corroborated our accounts.” However, two months before the Pulitzer cover letter was submitted, E&E News reported that both teams knew of each other’s pursuit of the same story.

Documents obtained in public records requests have also confirmed that InsideClimate News, far from an objective news source, was an active participant in the #ExxonKnew campaign all along. Prior to publication of one of its stories in September 2015, David Sassoon—InsideClimate News’ publisher—emailed an embargoed version to several staffers at Climate Nexus, a Rockefeller-backed PR firm. A Climate Nexus staffer then emailed a group of activists calling for government prosecution of climate skeptics, adding that the #ExxonKnew story would provide the “perfect news hook” for their effort to go after “deniers.”

The InsideClimate News and Columbia teams’ work attracted attention because these organizations had published previously unheralded documents, providing an obvious media hook, which was also a key tactic outlined during the La Jolla conference in 2012. Sassoon even told the Pulitzer committee that his team had “unearthed” the papers.

But many of the documents, reports, and memos cited in the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News reports were procured from ExxonMobil’s own public archives at the University of Texas, as well as peer-reviewed academic journals. However, the Rockefeller-backed entities had done their job: the public discussion was now on these “key internal documents,” as the La Jolla activists had envisioned it.

Within weeks of these reports’ publication, the most “sympathetic” state attorney general—Eric Schneiderman (D) of New York—announced he had opened an investigation into ExxonMobil’s statements on climate change. In the months that followed, attorneys general from Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands announced their own probes.

The same day that the NY AG issued its subpoena, InsideClimate News referenced a “person familiar” with Schneiderman’s investigation, who told the group that the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News reports made the issue “more ripe” for an investigation of ExxonMobil.

Less than a week later, in response to questions referencing the reports from InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, Schneiderman told PBS that “the public record is troubling enough” that “we decided we had to bring this investigation.”

Phase 3: With attorneys general in tow, activists seek to amplify campaign with “delegitimize” strategy

On March 29, 2016, Schneiderman, flanked by several other state attorneys general and former Vice President Al Gore, held a press conference announcing an “historic state-based effort to combat climate change.” During the press conference, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced that she would launch an investigation of ExxonMobil, basing her decision on information learned through the InsideClimate News and Los Angeles Times reports. But her comments suggested she had already determined ExxonMobil’s guilt before her investigation had even begun:

“Fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be, must be, held accountable. That’s why I too have joined in investigating the practices of ExxonMobil. We can all see today the troubling disconnect between what Exxon knew, what industry folks knew, and what the company and industry chose to share with investors and with the American public.”

The #ExxonKnew activists, however, had played a key role behind the scenes prior to that press conference.

As Reuters reported in April 2016, the AGs present at the press conference “received guidance from well-known climate scientists and environmental lawyers in March as some of them opened investigations into Exxon Mobil for allegedly misleading the public about climate change risks.” Reuters went on to describe this as a “previously unknown level of coordination with outside advisors.” Those advisors included Peter Frumhoff from the Union of Concerned Scientists and Matt Pawa, who previously “litigated against Exxon in a global warming case,” according to Reuters. Frumhoff helped organize the 2012 La Jolla conference, while Pawa had been a key presenter on possible legal tactics.

When asked about the meeting, Lee Wasserman from the Rockefeller Family Fund said the coordination should be “considered a good thing—not a conspiracy.”

But that was not the only coordination. A leaked memo from a meeting at the Rockefeller Family Fund’s offices in New York detailed a January 8, 2016, strategy session that brought together folks like Bill McKibben and Jamie Henn of 350.org, Kert Davies, Sharon Eubanks, Bradley Campbell of the Conservation Law Foundation, Carroll Muffett of the Center for International Environmental Law, Naomi Ages of Greenpeace, and—once again—Matt Pawa.

The goals listed on the agenda included establishing “in the public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution,” and to “delegitimize [ExxonMobil] as a political actor.” They would also consider which strategies would be ideal for “creating scandal.”

Phase 4: The truth comes out, but the climate litigation campaign continues

In June 2016, facing public backlash and concerns about threats to the First Amendment, the Virgin Islands’ AG withdrew his subpoena alleging that ExxonMobil knew about climate change. In October 2016, a federal judge issued a discovery order to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to determine whether “bias or prejudgment” influenced her decision to initiate a “bad faith” investigation into ExxonMobil. The judge referenced Healey’s remarks at the press conference with Al Gore, and how her comments suggested she had prejudged the outcome of her investigation. In November, the judge extended that discovery order to include Schneiderman.

Emails obtained under Freedom of Information requests have also shown that many of the state AGs invited to the March 29, 2016, press conference with Schneiderman and Al Gore actually refused to join the #ExxonKnew campaign, over concerns about its scope and intent.

David Kaiser of the Rockefeller Family Fundand Valerie Rockefeller Wayne of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund appeared on CBS This Morning in December 2016 and confirmed what InsideClimate News and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism had repeatedly denied: they funded those groups with the explicit purpose of writing the original #ExxonKnew pieces.

When asked about the Rockefellers funding the #ExxonKnew reports a few months earlier, Lee Wasserman from the Rockefeller Family Fund told Reuters that their support was more general in scope:

“We supported public interest journalism to better understand how the fossil fuel industry was dealing with the reality of climate science internally and publicly…No specific company was targetedin our push to drive better public understanding and better climate policy.”

But Kaiser and Wasserman then admitted the exact opposite, writing in the New York Review of Books in December 2016:

“With help from other public charities and foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), we paid for a team of independent reporters from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism to try to determine what Exxon and other US oil companies had really known about climate science, and when. Such an investigation seemed promising because Exxon, in particular, has been a leader in the movement to deny the facts of climate change.”

That same month, Kaiser and Wasserman finally disclosed in a separate column that they met with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and pressured him to launch an investigation:

“…the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) informed state attorneys general of our concernthat ExxonMobil seemed to have failed to disclose to investors the business risks of climate change. We were particularly encouraged by Schneiderman’s interest in this matter,because New York’s Martin Act is arguably the most powerful tool in the nation for investigating possible schemes to defraud.”

Today, the #ExxonKnew campaign continues, but the wealthy donors and environmental activists who manufactured the controversy have little to show for their years of work.

Perhaps frustrated by the lack of progress from the state attorneys general, the La Jolla activists have adjusted their strategy. They have convinced several cities and counties, mostly in California, to sue energy companies over alleged “damages” from climate change. But that new tactic may be backfiring: the municipal plaintiffs are suing for damages that they downplayed to their own investors, raising questions about possible securities fraud. Several of the plaintiffs misrepresented evidence and were called out by a federal judge. New York City is suing oil and natural gas companies for causing climate change, even as it uses oil and natural gas to mitigate climate change.

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eid has tab/category forNYAG

https://eidclimate.org/ny-attorney-general-exxonmobil/

In October 2019, the trial finally begins for the New York Attorney General’s case against ExxonMobil—nearly five years after the investigation began. This is nearly five years since the investigation began under Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and the current complaint is far from where Schneiderman’s original investigation began as a rehashing of the failed #ExxonKnew argument.

The complaint now centers on a technical matter about how the company calculates “proxy costs” versus “greenhouse gas costs,” with the New York Attorney General alleging the company did not accurately explain to investors how it uses those costs. However, it appears that the AG either misunderstands ExxonMobil’s past representations or was simply forced to lodge their best complaint after such a lengthy investigation. One month before the Attorney General filed their lawsuit, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission concluded an investigation of ExxonMobil that examined the same issues raised in the AG’s complaint and decided against taking an enforcement action against the company.

The shifting focus of the Attorney General’s drawn-out investigation, combined with public statements made at the outset and other communications made by third parties, indicate that this lawsuit is the result of a pre-determined narrative that assumed ExxonMobil’s guilt from the beginning. The Attorney General used the power of the government to engage in a fishing expedition, creating new theories of alleged wrongdoing as each prior theory failed to be borne out by the evidence.

Only after a judge ordered the Attorney General to bring a complaint or end the investigation did the Attorney General file a lawsuit based on a misunderstanding of the difference between “proxy costs” and “greenhouse gas costs.”

A Timeline of the New York Attorney General’s Lawsuit Against ExxonMobil

[no grx timeline see spencer w or ]

no lnx

Download the PDF

The Overreaching Power of the Martin Act

The Martin Act is a unique law governing securities, giving New York’s attorney general vast power over publicly-traded companies. Learn more about how this law is being abused.

ExxonMobil’s Trial Against the New York Attorney General: What You Should Know

Nearly four years after announcing its investigation into ExxonMobil, the NY AG is focusing its case on a relatively obscure allegation of how the company accounts for the costs of potential future regulations on climate change. Learn more about how the investigation has shiftedas the NY AG came up empty-handed.

:{:{Highlighted Media}:

Wall Street Journal: A Climate Show Trial

Bloomberg Government: New York’s Case That Exxon Defrauded Investors Is in Trouble

Bloomberg: New York Doesn’t Need a Smoking Gun

Boston Globe: The climate change shakedown[gotta be op ed]

New York **Post:**The incredible collapsing ‘#ExxonKnew’ climate change lie

Legal Newsline:[Coc fla record BS?]**Taxpayers fund ‘rambling’ testimony as judge looks skeptical of New York’s case against Exxon

Fox Business: A Legal Assault on Energy

Washington Examine**r: New York Attorney General’s disdain for rule of law exposed in ExxonMobil case

Times Union: State abusing law with ExxonMobil suit

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ref

OPINION| JENNIFER C. BRACERAS

The climate change shakedown

By Jennifer C. Braceras

,Updated October 28, 2019,

Climate activists protested last week on the first day of the ExxonMobil trial outside the New York State Supreme Court in New York City.]

Just as New York state kicked off a politically motivated trial against ExxonMobil, along comes Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey with a similar claim against the energy giant filed on Thursday in Suffolk Superior Court.

The New York and Massachusetts attorneys general seek damages from ExxonMobil because, well, climate change.

ExxonMobil, of course, produces oil and gas — the emissions from which contribute to a changing climate. But, much as it may peeve climate activists, the production of oil that powers our cars and heats our homes and offices is not yet illegal in the United States.

Read full article

...

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OPINION | JENNIFER C. BRACERAS

The climate change shakedown

By Jennifer C. Braceras

,Updated October 28, 2019,

Climate activists protested last week on the first day of the ExxonMobil trial outside the New York State Supreme Court in New York City.]

The New York and Massachusetts attorneys general seek damages from ExxonMobil because, well, climate change.

Read full article

So why is ExxonMobil on trial? Although a massive multiyear investigation by disgraced former New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman revealed no evidence that ExxonMobil committed corporate malfeasance, Schneiderman’s successors have latched onto a novel legal theory they hope will bring the energy giant to its knees.

Their contention is that ExxonMobil misled investors about the possible impact that future climate change regulations might have on its finances. The case is brought pursuant to an obscure New York law that does not require prosecutors to prove either ill intent or actual harm.

[Related

Attorney General Healey announces she is suing ExxonMobil over climate change]

Healey’s case is based on similar assertions that the company made materially false and misleading claims to investors in violation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.

In short, prosecutors say ExxonMobil should pay the government unspecified monetary damages because it used one set of metrics in its public disclosures and another for internal purposes. Never mind that there exists no uniform accepted method of calculating potential business costs of new climate policies. Never mind that ExxonMobil disclosed its risk assessments to investors. Never mind that theSecurities and Exchange Commissionreviewed the company’s disclosures and found no basis for legal action.

Never mind all that. The New York and Massachusetts attorneys general are moving full speed ahead, attacking ExxonMobil’s economic modeling and accounting practices in an attempt to confuse state courts into awarding damages.

Democratic politicians in Massachusetts and New York are not the only government entities seeking to punish Big Oil for the public problem of climate change. A number of cities and counties have also filed climate claims against energy companies.

The state and local suits are the by-product of a 2012 summit in La Jolla, Calif., where activists cooked up a scheme to regulate energy and generate cash windfalls through litigation. Put simply, the goal of the campaign, hatched in La Jolla, is to “establish in [the] public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution that has pushed humanity (and all creation) toward climate chaos and grave harm.”

Activists openly admit that the point of such climate lawsuits is to make the oil and gas industry “less competitive with wind, solar and other renewable energy sources and thus accelerat[e] the transition to a clean-energy economy.”

Thankfully, some judges still have some respect for the separation of powers. In 2018, a federal court in California threw out a lawsuit by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland that sought monetary damages from oil companies for the effects of climate change. Judge William Alsup acknowledged the scientific consensus that fossil fuels have “materially” accelerated climate change, but he held that the cities could not prove the companies created an unauthorized public nuisance.

“Our industrial revolution and the development of our modern world has literally been fueled by oil and coal,” Alsup wrote, and it is the job of the legislative and executive branches of government — not the courts — to “balance the social utility against the gravity of the anticipated harm” of climate change.

A federal court in Manhattan likewise dismissed nuisance claims by New York City on the grounds that federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the Clean Air Act [which FF corps rt wingers have been trying to gut?!] preempts common-law nuisance claims. In other words, Congress is the appropriate place to set climate policy. Not the courts.

Sadly, these rulings haven’t stopped politicians in Rhode Island from pursuing frivolous public nuisance claims.

Nor have they discouraged the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts from advancing intellectually dishonest new theories to legally harass and extort the energy companies.

These state cases should also fail. But that won’t stop hypocritical politicians, all of whom use gasoline to get them to their campaign fund-raisers, from continuing their coordinated campaign against the companies that power our world.

Jennifer C. Braceras is director of Independent Women’s Law Center.

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some lnx

...Democratic politicians in Massachusetts and New York are not the only government entities seeking to punish Big Oil for the public problem of climate change. A number of cities and counties have also filed climate claims against energy companies.

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https://eidclimate.org/bombshell-rockefeller-family-fund-behind-the-pay-up-climate-polluters-campaign/

BOMBSHELL: ROCKEFELLER FAMILY FUND BEHIND THE “PAY UP CLIMATE POLLUTERS” CAMPAIGN

JANUARY 15, 2020 | SPENCER WALRATH

In 2017, the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) gave the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) over $1 million to launch an aggressive climate litigation campaign against America’s top energy producers, according to a new Energy In Depth analysis of New York state tax disclosures. IGSD’s Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) is the nexus for lobbying efforts, studies, amicus briefs, events, and social media campaigns aimed at pressuring states and municipalities to sue energy companies for the costs of climate change.

Over the years, RFF has made numerous attempts to conceal their grantees; they have no public grantee database and have failed to post a complete federal tax return, including all donations, since 2013. However, our analysis of New York state tax disclosures reveals RFF’s highly coordinated effort to fund an aggressive climate litigation campaign against energy producers.

The Center for Climate Integrity’s Million Dollar Launch

Before launching CCI in August of 2017, IGSD was receiving just under $4 million in grants annually. RFF’s $1,020,000 grant marked a huge influx of funding to the organization – all earmarked for CCI or the Climate Education & Litigation Project (CCI’s original name). This grant was also RFF’s largest donation to a single organization, excluding other charitable funds, that year.

Since the launch of CCI, IGSD’s grant revenue has more than doubled to nearly $10 million. The organization does not disclose its full list of funders[wiles named 4 biggest incl RFF most controv/target to paper] , but a recent investigation by RealClear Investigations revealed that CCI received a $7 million grant from a foreign billionaire in 2018. CCI has dodged questions about its institutional funders when pressed by reporters.

While obscuring its funding, CCI has become the public face of the campaign to sue American energy producers for the costs of climate change. CCI’s aggressive public relations efforts have included billboards, a podcast, social media, events in cities like Boulder and Honolulu to promote climate litigation, and a “study” encouraging public officials to seek damages from energy companies. In addition, the organization hired a lobbyist to arrange meetings between city officials and plaintiffs’ attorneys on climate litigation and submitted an amicus brief in support of an ongoing climate case.

RFF is Directly Funding Litigation, Astroturfing, and Journalism Too

RFF’s grant to IGSD isn’t their only recent contribution to climate litigation. Since 2016, the organization has provided at least $525,0000 to three nonprofit organizations pursuing climate litigation against energy companies – the Conservation Law Foundation, EarthRights International, and the Niskanen Center. Since 2014, RFF has given at least $140,000 to Resource Media, an organization hired by plaintiffs’ firm Sher Edling to provide public affairs and media consulting services for their climate lawsuits against energy producers.

Other notable grants include:

$430,000 to InsideClimate News and the Columbia School of Journalism between 2015-2016, coinciding with the pair’s “investigative” series into ExxonMobil and launch of the “Exxon Knew” campaign
$30,000 in 2017 to 350.org, the architect of the #ExxonKnew social media campaign
$50,000 in 2016 to the Nebraska Easement Action Team “to build a public education campaign to support a state investigation on Exxon’s deception about climate change”
$10,000 in 2017 to the Sunrise Movement, an organization that distributed a forged press release maligning a Colorado energy company earlier this year.

RFF’s Obsession with Attacking American Energy Companies

RFF’s recent contributions to climate litigation provide additional evidence that the Rockefeller family manufactured and continues to wage a smear campaign against America’s energy producers. RFF and its sister organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, have been backing organizations pursuing climate litigation against energy companies for years. In 2016, the pair even hosted a strategy session at their joint New York headquarters in 2016 to “delegitimize” ExxonMobil and develop a coordinated social media and messaging campaign to damage the company’s reputation. Later that year, David Kaiser and Lee Wasserman, president and director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, released a series of articles to falsely malign the company.

Despite the Rockefellers’ best efforts, ExxonMobil and other energy companies continue to prevail in the courtroom.

In December, New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager highlighted ExxonMobil’s exemplary conduct in his verdict, ruling in favor of the company in their legal battle with the New York attorney general:

“The Office of the Attorney General offered no testimony from any investor who claims to have been misled… What the evidence at trial revealed is that ExxonMobil executives and employees were uniformly committed to rigorously discharging their duties in the most comprehensive and meticulous manner possible.”

In dismissing climate lawsuits brought by San Francisco and Oakland, Judge William Alsup explained that litigation is inappropriate for addressing climate change.

“The dangers raised in the complaints are very real. But those dangers are worldwide. Their causes are worldwide. The benefits of fossil fuels are worldwide. The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case.”

For all their talk about solving climate change, perhaps the Rockefellers should invest their millions into climate solutions, rather than politically-motivated campaigns that do nothing to further climate progress.

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ref 1 does brit count? dumb or bad fAITH?

https://eidclimate.org/revealed-foreign-billionaire-behind-the-group-pushing-american-cities-to-sue-energy-producers/

jan 2020

Foreign agents aren’t limiting their meddling to American elections – they’re also propping up the campaign to push American cities and counties to sue energy companies. Chris Hohn, a reclusive British billionaire, is fueling efforts to sue American energy producers, according to a new article by RealClear Investigations. By means of his Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Hohn has directed millions of dollars to the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), the leading group campaigning to bring litigation against fossil fuel companies for the costs of climate change.

Hohn “thus illustrates the reach of politically driven philanthropy and the potential of wealthy foreigners to sidestep U.S. lobbying laws by using complex financial arrangements,” RealClear Investigationsreports. Indeed, CCI has hired a lobbyist to arrange meetings between city officials and the plaintiffs’ attorneys leading these lawsuits while also pursuing an aggressive public relations campaign to promote litigation via billboards, a podcast, social media, events, and media outreach. But, CCI has never disclosed that it is primarily funded by a single foreign billionaire.

Foreign billionaire pours millions into U.S. climate litigation

Hohn has dedicated a least $16 million to groups advocating for climate litigation in the United States, including $7 million to CCI. As Energy In Depth previously reported, CCI was propped up in 2017 to spearhead a sophisticated public relations campaign pressuring municipalities into suing energy producers. The organization is run by Richard Wiles – a man who also heads the dark-money “news” site Climate Liability News and the #ExxonKnew social media campaign.

CCI is arguably the most active organization fueling the climate litigation campaign today. The organization purchased billboards throughout Miami to pressure the city into suing energy producers, hosted events in cities like Boulder and Honolulu to promote climate litigation against energy companies, and released a study purporting to quantify the cost of climate change in municipalities across the country. The organization has even coordinated with law firms to lobby public officials to bring a lawsuit against energy producers in Florida andsubmitted an amicus brief in support of ongoing litigation in California.

While CCI remains front and center in the climate litigation campaign, its powerful network of funders is obscured as theorganization refuses to disclose them. What we do know about their funding comes from the RealClear’sinvestigation of CIFF’s grants and a statement by Wiles to The Tampa Bay Times, which revealed that the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) PLUS 3 OTHERS] – an organization at the heart of the climate litigation campaign – helped fund CCI’s study on climate costs. RFF has failed to publicly disclose its itemized donations since 2013.

CIFF’s $7 million grant to CCI in May 2018 represents an enormous influx of money to an initiative that was created less than a year prior as a project of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD).

A review of IGSD’s Form 990 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2018, reveals that grants to IGSD have skyrocketed in recent years. The organization received just under $4 million in grants during their fiscal year ending June 30, 2016. Just two years later, their revenue from grants more than doubled to nearly $10 million. In that context, CIFF’s grant constitutes a large proportion of IGSD’s funding, potentially representing the single largest source of funding for the organization.

In everything CCI has done to promote climate litigation – its podcast, newsletter, websites, report, advertising, amicus briefs, events, and arranged lobbying meetings – the initiative and its affiliates have never disclosed that they were acting on behalf of a foreign agent.

Off the grid: Avoiding both foreign and domestic lobbying disclosures

Despite aggressive action to influence the debate over what to do about climate change in the United States, Hohn has circumvented U.S. lobbying disclosure laws. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires people and organizations “attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws” to make public disclosures about the nature of their activities and their financial contribution in support of their efforts within the United States. While Hohn is trying to influence American discourse around climate change, neither Hohn, his hedge funds and CIFF, nor Richard Wiles are currently registered under FARA.

As RealClear Investigations explains,

“Among left-leaning billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer are enjoying wide public attention [NOTE IMPLIED MOTIVE SINCE IT CAN'T BE GREED] due to their big-spending presidential campaigns. But Hohn, a foreigner unknown to most Americans, arguably exercises comparable if not more influence on U.S. energy and environmental policy through his hedge fund, [Extinction Rebellion] and other advocacy groups. Hohn’s efforts to influence U.S. laws, politics, and the economy raise deeper questions about the power of global billionaires – specifically whether his American-focused lobbying and public relations campaigns violate the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

Conclusion

Hohn and other prominent donors – both foreign and domestic – are pouring millions of dollars into a campaign being waged against America’s energy producers to sue them for the anticipated future costs of climate change.

The revelation from RealClear Investigations’ reporting is alarming. How many cities, counties and states, are considering filing lawsuits, or have already filed lawsuits, under the shadow influence of foreign billionaire? Honolulu recently announced their intention to file litigation after CCI hosted a panel calling on the state to sue. CCI has also taken their roadshow to Minnesota, urging the state to take action, to Boulder, Colorado to highlight the municipality’s pending litigation, and continues to target municipalities across Florida in search of new plaintiffs for the climate litigation crusade. In fact, anyone that has been influenced by CCI, Richard Wiles, Amy Westervelt’s Drilled podcast, or the #ExxonKnew social media campaign is unsuspectingly acting in the interests of a foreign agent, whose true motivations for pushing for litigation against American energy companies remain unknown.

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ref 2 DESANTIS?

https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2019/06/20/florida-could-face-76-billion-in-climate-change-costs-by-2040-report-says/

NO LNX

FLORIDA POLITICS

THE BUZZ

Florida could face $76 billion in climate change costs by 2040, report says

That’s billion, with a B. The study says the state would need to spend that much on sea walls to mitigate rising sea levels.

By Kirby Wilson

Published Jun. 19, 2019

Updated Jun. 21, 2019

Climate change is going to cost Florida more than any other state. It’s not even close.

That’s according to a new report from Resilient Analytics and the Center for Climate Integrity, which projects that the state could be on the hook for building $76 billion worth of sea walls by 2040 to mitigate the effects of climate change — and that’s based on a conservative sea level rise scenario.

To put that in perspective, Florida’s entire 2018 budget was about $88.7 billion.

“As a nation and as a global community, due to climate change, we are set to undertake the most dramatic economic and social transformation in human history,” said Center for Climate Integrity executive director Richard Wiles. “And yet no one has bothered to even estimate what the core components of climate adaptation will actually cost.”

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Climate change is here. Will Tampa Bay finally get ready?

The center said it tried to do just that by estimating the cost of building sea walls all around the country that could withstand the sea level rise expected by 2040 under a relatively moderate carbon emissions scenario. To do that, it consulted with the engineering firm Resilient Analytics and experts at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The study only considered the cost of building sea walls in areas with public infrastructure, including roads. Even without factoring in any extreme storm surge events, it found that Florida would have to build 9,243 miles of sea walls at a cost of $75,898,048,000.

That’s the longest stretch of sea walls of any state by more than 50 percent, and the highest total cost by a factor of about two.

Like past studies, the report also found that the Tampa Bay region is particularly susceptible to sea level rise. Pinellas County alone could be on the hook for over $3 billion in climate change related costs by 2040, the report found. The price tag in Hillsborough is $2.7 billion and $1.9 billion in Pasco.

Paul Chinowsky is the CEO of Resilient Analytics and the director of the University of Colorado Boulder’s environmental design program. As the lead scientist on the study, he acknowledged that not every community would need a sea wall to protect itself from sea level rise.

“The sea walls were just a basic, consistent measure that we could use across the country,” Chinowsky said on the call. “They’re not necessarily the best alternative in every place.”

But communities large and small will need some protection, Wiles said, and that protection will cost money.

When asked for comment on the study, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection noted “bold and historic” steps that Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken to protect Florida’s environment.

The governor has created the Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection, which will help coordinate the resiliency efforts of vulnerable communities, said the spokeswoman, Dee Ann Miller. The office offers technical and financial help to those communities as they plan for sea level rise and ecosystem changes, Miller said.

“The CFCI Report ignores this effort, and further is overly simplistic in its analysis in that it is not just seawalls that should or are being considered as part of an effective sea level rise strategy,” Miller said.

The Center for Climate Integrity is a project of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Its website says it gives “support to those who have suffered damage due to climate change and who seek to hold climate polluters accountable.”

To that end, the report recommends that the government make oil and gas companies pay for much of the infrastructure costs associated with climate change.

The burning of fossil fuels, the vast majority of climate scientists agree, has contributed to rising global temperatures in recent decades. Global warming has caused the oceans themselves to expand, and arctic ice sheets have melted. Both of these phenomenons have caused seas to rise.

Read more: A group of scientists just presented updated sea level rise projections to Tampa Bay politicians. Here’s what they say.]

In a statement,Wiles did not offer a complete list of donors for the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. However, Wiles said the MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Tortuga Fund and PatagoniaInc. were among the organizations that helped fund the Center for Climate Integrity study.

:{:{}:

Read the complete study here.

This story was updated Friday morning with comments from Dee Ann Miller, the spokeswoman from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Kirby Wilson - Tallahassee Correspondent

KIRBY WILSON

Tallahassee Correspondent

REF 4

FLA RECORD [CoC ILR?] NO LNX

ft LAUDERDALE - Efforts by environmental groups to encourage Florida cities and counties to sue fossil fuel companies appear to be foundering as one city lobbied says it has no intention of filing one.

Municipalities, counties, and even states have filed suits against oil and gas companies, including giants such as Exxon, claiming the companies knew that burning fossil fuels contributed to damaging climate change, but concealed the information.

Last October, the Fort Lauderdale City Commission heard fromEarthrights International (ERI), a Washington D.C.-based environmental advocacy group involved in a number of similar suits in various parts of the country.

Seth Platt, a lobbyist with LSN Partners.

ERI appears to have worked with other groups in pushing cities in Florida to file suits, according to emails obtained by the Florida Record. One of those groups, the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD), was represented by Miami Beach lobbyist, Seth Platt, of LSN Partners.

Representatives attempted to persuade the commission to file suit, arguing that fossil fuel companies should be liable for the cost to the municipality to combat the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels. It has not worked, yet.

"We have no intention of filing a lawsuit," Alain E. Boileau, city attorney, told the Florida Record after the city was asked for an update following last October's presentation.

Other government entities in south Florida were reported to be in contact with the environmental organizations, including Miami-Dade County

But a spokesperson for Mayor Carlos Gimenez told the Florida Record: “We’ve checked with the county attorney’s office, and there has been no discussion regarding any such lawsuits."

Another reported target was the City of Miami Beach. In a brief statement to the Florida Record, city spokesperson, Melissa Berthier, said, "Regrettably, the City of Miami Beach is disinclined to discuss this subject matter."

More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed across the country, from California, to Colorado, to New York City. Most are filed by coastal municipalities.

But, in one consequential decision, a suit filed by San Francisco and Oakland arguing under public nuisance laws was dismissed by a federal court in California.

:{:{}:

Judge William Alsup, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, found that the issue of climate change “deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case." An appeal was filed.

Some of the suits involved ERI, which promises to help organize legal action at no cost to a municipality. The group managed to secure a hearing before the Fort Lauderdale City Commission last October.

ERI program director Marco Simons, told the commissioners the suits “primarily seek reimbursement for some of the costs of adapting to climate change and its impacts - which likely requires billions of dollars for Fort Lauderdale.”

"It is that the fossil fuel industry, for years, pursued a strategy of reckless production while knowing that it would result in serious climate impacts - and both concealing and misleading the public about that knowledge,” Simons said.

Emails were sent earlier in the year to Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis and his chief of staff, Scott Wyman, referring to upcoming meetings.

One sent in June was from lobbyist Platt, who stated his client was IGSD. One of its projects, the Center for Climate Integrity, is headed by Richard Wiles, who also publishes Climate Liability News (CLN).

The Center for Climate Integrity's "central goal is to accelerate corporate and governmental policy changes that speed the energy transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources and that otherwise contribute to a safe climate," according to the IGSD. "One way to advance this goal is to require fossil fuel producers to bear the cost of the damage caused by their products."

Platt, in an email June 2018, referring to an upcoming meeting, stated his client was trying to collaborate with an organization called the Environmental Research Institute and an individual, Jorge Mursuli, whom he said was working with the City of Miami to file a lawsuit against the fossil fuel companies.

"I have invited Jorge Mursuli to the meeting," Platt wrote in the email, which also contained a run down of relevant information, including ongoing cases and a survey of Florida residents, which he wrote "overwhelmingly support making polluters pay."

The second email, from Mursuli to the mayor, with Wyman and Platt cc'd, was sent in the middle of July and also referred to an upcoming meeting. Mursuli made clear that ERI "(not Environmental Research Institute) was leading the efforts to explore the possibility of litigation."

He added that "it makes sense that our lead counsel at Earthrights comes see you and your team to best discuss potential strategy."

Platt is registered as a lobbyist in Fort Lauderdale for IGSD, but not ERI. He did not reply to several messages asking for comment.

William Large, of the Florida Justice Reform Institutesaid many want to blame a problem on a "company with deep pockets."

"An essential element of every tort case is ‘causation',” Large told the Florida Record. "There is no evidence that fossil fuel companies ‘caused’ climate change. As such, these type of lawsuits lack merit.”

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REF 3 JUN 2019

A new report by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) calculating the costs of adapting to sea level rise is little more than a poorly masked public relations endeavor, seeking to fuel the campaign pressuring cities across the United States into pursuing litigation against energy companies. While some outlets fell for the full court press, other saw past the masquerade. CCI is not a mere “environmental advocacy group;” it describes itself as a “project of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD)” that “supports litigation and advocacy to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for their fair share of the escalating costs of adapting to climate change.”

CCI launched a new website to house their report, which allows guests to investigate their local costs of adaptation. However, each city navigates to the same landing page, which touts the falsified narrative of the #ExxonKnew campaign:

“Big oil and gas companies like Exxon knew since the 1970s that burning fossil fuels would warm the planet with devastating consequences. Instead of working to curb the risk, they spent millions to create and promote climate denial and obstruct action when it mattered most. Now they want taxpayers to foot the entire bill for all the damages. Communities cannot afford the massive costs of climate adaptation on their own. These costs weren’t always inevitable. Now that they are, polluters should pay their fair share.”...

Meteorologist Ryan Maue criticized the reporting that failed to disclose CCI’s true aim with its report: Climate Costs Report is Tainted by Activist Network. Not only does this report espouse the tired talking points of the #ExxonKnew campaign, it was also funded and designed by some of its premier activist institutions. CCI does not disclose its donors, and its new report doesn’t disclose who paid for it. When pressed by reporters, Richard Wiles https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2019/06/20/florida-could-face-76-billion-in-climate-change-costs-by-2040-report-says/...admitted that major donors like the Rockefeller Family Fund and MacArthur Foundation funded the study, though he still refused to say who funds his organization. One organization, the anti-fossil fuel Rockefeller Brothers Fund, does reveal through its website that has nearly $2 million into CCI’s parent organization, IGSD, since 2004.

In addition, the report’s projections were calculated by Wiles’ old employer, Climate Central. Representatives of Climate Central cited in the climate lawsuits brought by Sher Edling. Resilient Analytics, the co-publisher of the study, also provided the data for the Boulder climate lawsuit.

CCI’s Robust Litigious Activism

This is not CCI’s inaugural appearance on the climate litigation stage. Since its inception, CCI under the leadership of Richard Wiles, has been coordinating with law firms to pressure [offered them a free briefing?] cities into pursuing litigation against fossil fuel companies. The project was launched in August 2017, just after San Mateo and Marin counties and the City of Imperial Beach launched their lawsuit.

CCI is dedicating their efforts to states and cities most vulnerable to sea-level rise – namely Florida, which allegedly faces $76 billion in costs related to sea level rise adaptation. In 2018, CCI purchased several billboards throughout Miami to pressure the city into holding “climate polluters” accountable. Later that year, IGSD hired a lobbyist to pressure Fort Lauderdale to pursue a climate lawsuit, working in coordination with EarthRights International and Sher Edling. Their efforts were unsuccessful.

In 2018, the Center also sponsored a paper published in the journal Nature by Ben Franta, which attempted to shame the American Petroleum Institute for informing its members in 1965 that scientists were studying climate change.

This year, the organization has ramped up their advocacy efforts, hosting events in cities like Boulder and Honolulu to promote climate litigation against energy companies. The University of Colorado’s panel included David Bookbinder and Marco Simons, who are leading Boulder’s lawsuit, while the University of Hawaii’s event featured Vic Sher of Sher Edling and CCI’s Alyssa Johl. CCI even co-signed an amicus brief along with Naomi Oreskes, Geoffrey Supran, and other activists in support of Sher Edling’s California climate lawsuits.

Richard Wiles – the Man Behind the Curtain

At the heart of all these efforts is Richard Wiles. Wiles not only spearheads the Center for Climate Integrity, he’s also the executive producer of the Drilledpodcast – a podcast dedicated to promoting the climate liability lawsuits.

Additionally, Richard Wiles heads Climate Liability News (CLN), a dark-money “news” site set up in 2017 to promote climate lawsuits across the world. Though CLN doesn’t disclose its funders, its founding editor is Lynn Zinser, a transplant from InsideClimate News, who worked on the original Rockefeller-funded #ExxonKnew articles. Unsurprisingly, CLN dedicates a unique page unique page to this fringe environmentalist effort.

While the Center for Climate Integrity continues to promote their new study as a data-driven look into the costs of adapting to climate change, its true motives can’t be clearer. This report is just the latest tactic of the Rockefeller-funded climate litigation campaign, fueled by awell-funded echo chamber of keep-it-in-the-ground activists.

---

ref claimed rockefellers paid for franta paper in nature: "Early oil industry knowledge of CO2 and global warming"

---

https://eidclimate.org/obscure-activist-emerges-as-key-player-in-climate-litigation-campaign/

ref

aug 2018 obscure...

In recent months, a newcontroversial climate activisthas surfaced in the media. Richard Wiles has quickly become the go-to commentator for news stories surrounding a series of copycat lawsuits seeking to hold fossil fuel companies liable for the effects of climate change. On the surface, Mr. Wiles appears to be a well-meaning climate expert. But an Energy In Depth investigation reveals his involvement in the larger coordinated scheme to attack energy companies and force the industry to pay for global warming.[WHICH IS REAL?]

Wiles is involved in all aspects of the climate litigation campaign – from running a news outlet dedicated to promoting the lawsuits and coordinating a social media effort to attack the industry, to overseeing the research utilized in many of the lawsuits and pressuring additional cities to bring cases of their own.

Richard Wiles heads Climate Liability News (CLN), a dark-money “news” site set up in 2017 to promote climate lawsuits across the country. Though CLN doesn’t disclose its funders, its founding editor is Lynn Zinser, a transplant from InsideClimate News who worked on the original #ExxonKnew articles, which were paid for by the Rockefeller Family Fund and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Rockefellers are key players behind both the #ExxonKnew and climate litigation campaigns. Coincidentally, CLN just happens to have a unique page on its website dedicated to advancing this fringe environmentalist effort.

Kert Davies and Alyssa Johl, a former attorney for theCenter for International Environmental Law (CIEL), serve alongside Wiles on the CLN board of directors. Davies and members of CIEL attended a secret meeting at the Rockefeller Family Fund in January 2016, which sought to “delegitimize” ExxonMobil and portray it as a, “corrupt institution that has pushed humanity (and all creation) toward climate chaos and grave harm.”

Behind the scenes, Wiles facilitates this “news” site through a 501(c)3 organization called Climate Communications & Law. Established in 2017, the organization has no website and no publicly available financial disclosures to the IRS (form 990s). It appears to serve as a shell organization for other powerful players to funnel undisclosed funds to CLN, which means it serves as a de facto public relations component of #ExxonKnew. CC&L is operated out of Wiles’ own home.

Wiles also directs the Center for Climate Integrity, a project that “supports meritorious climate cases aimed at holding fossil fuel companies and other climate polluters liable for the damages they have caused.” This support includes coordinated social media posts with #ExxonKnew, an initiative by 350.org, and a PR campaign that is pressuring other cities like Houston and Miami to bring lawsuits of their own. These tactics seem to stem directly from the agenda at the aforementioned Rockefeller Family Fund meeting in 2016:[doc wiget?]

Not only is Wiles leading a PR campaign in support of these lawsuits, he also oversaw the research utilized in many of the cases seeking damages from fossil fuel companies. Wiles is the founder of Climate Central, a Rockefeller-funded organization that researches and reports on the impacts of climate change. Between 2008-2017, Wiles served as the organization’s Sr. Vice President for Strategic Communications and Research, where he supervised numerous studies cited in the lawsuits represented by Sher Edling.

Climate Central has been involved in the conspiracy to delegitimize the fossil fuel industry from the very beginning: Claudia Tebaldi, a climate statistician for Climate Central, attended the now infamous La Jolla conference on behalf of the organization in 2012.

Portrayed by the media as a dispassionate expert, Richard Wiles is a deeply ingrained collaborator in the climate conspiracy against the energy industry. He is facilitating a coordinated PR campaign and running a “news” organization to further these baseless attacks, alongside some of the most well-documented #ExxonKnew conspirators. He even oversaw research conducted after the La Jolla Conference that was later used in the very lawsuits he continues to promote.

Wiles has managed to operate multiple facets of the campaign to undermine the industry, while maintaining a public perception as an outside expert. It’s unclear if Mr. Wiles has any other notable affiliations with the climate litigation campaign, but additional investigation may yet reveal more to this story.

---

API IPAA dereg wishlist granted by bernhardt [see ppt assholery] , zinke, pruitt and pendejo

both in EID

API and IPAA Comments on the U.S. FWS's and National ...https://www.ipaa.org › api-and-ipaa-comments-on-the-...

Sep 4, 2020 — This letter provides comments from the American Petroleum Institute (“API”) and the Independent Petroleum Association of America (“IPAA”) ...

API, AXPC, IPAA and DEPA Comments on EPA Development ...https://www.ipaa.org › api-axpc-ipaa-and-depa-comme...

We support EPA working with various stakeholders, including the oil and gas sector, to better understand the current regulatory framework as ...

API Archives | Independent Petroleum Association of Americahttps://www.ipaa.org › tag › api

One of IPAA's primary purposes is to advocate for its members' interests in continued and responsible oil and gas development before Congress and federal ...

API, IPAA, AOPL and AXPC Comments on Proposed Rule to ...https://www.ipaa.org › api-ipaa-aopl-and-axpc-commen...

Apr 15, 2019 — “This letter provides comments from the American Petroleum Institute (“API”), the Independent Petroleum Association of America (“IPAA”), ...

API-IPAA comments for USFS oil and gas regulations ANPRM https://www.api.org › letters-or-comments › 2018/10/12

Oct 12, 2018 — API-IPAA comments for USFS oil and gas regulations ANPRM. The American Petroleum Institute (“API”) and the Independent Petroleum Association ...

API-IPAA-Alliance and PAW Comments Submitted to USFS re ...https://www.api.org › letters-or-comments › 2019/01/03

Jan 3, 2019 — API-IPAA-Alliance and PAW submitted the accompanying comment letter and exhibits to the US Forest Service in response to the agency's ...

IPAA Joins API, Other Oil & Gas Trade Associations in Lawsuit ...https://www.energyindepth.org › ipaa-joins-api-other-oi...

IPAA Joins API, Other Oil & Gas Trade Associations in Lawsuit Over Illegal Federal Leasing Ban. BY William Allison Aug. 16, 2021 1.

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http://fracktoids.blogspot.com/2012/07/energy-in-depth-eid-gasroots.html

July 18, 2012

Energy-in-Depth (EID): The “GAS”roots

Energy-in-Depth (EID): The “GAS”roots

Marcellus Shale Players

On January 6, 2012 a Fracking and Nuisance Litigation meeting took place in Montrose, Pennsylvania.

Energy-In-Depth’s (EID) - Northeast Marcellus Initiative Field Directors Bill desRosiersand Nicole Jacobs, along with Helen Humphries, Senior Corporate Communications Specialists for the Williams Company, attempted to attend the meeting. They were asked to leave, as the purpose of the meeting was to meet with people wishing to seek litigation against the Natural Gas industry and share information on this matter.

The following day, “Bill” desRosiers published a blog entry on the EID-Northeast Marcellus Initiative website entitled“You’re Not Welcome Here” – This Is Transparency?”.

Approximately, 2 weeks later, an article appeared on We Are Powershift website, entitled “From Township Planning Consultant to Fracker: Tom Shepstone” by Alexander Lotorto. EID-Northeast Marcellus Initiative followed up immediately with “Who Is Alex Lotorto, Well Street Occupier?” by Giles Howard, a Guest Blogger.

I would not be surprised to find an EID blog entry entitled “Who is Dory Hippauf?”, to appear within hours of publication. Who is Dory Hippauf? I’m a 56yr old woman, I moved to a small town in the Back Mountain area of Northeast Pennsylvania about 14 years ago from Massachusetts. I am the Research Committee Chair for the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition of Luzerne County. I hold no degrees in economics, the corporate world, or politics. I have an AA in Graphic Design, and an AS in CAD drafting. I am currently employed as a CAD Drafter. I have a great deal of curiosity in how corporations have influenced our government and our lives, and this led me to start “Connecting the Dots”. All the information I have and will present is easily found on the internet using Google, and I do cite my sources.

In the interest of transparency, Part 3 of the Connecting the Dots series will be asking “Who Is EID”.

According to SourceWatch "Energy in Depth (EID) is a pro-oil-and-gas drilling industry front group formed by the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and dozens of additional industry organizations for the purpose of denouncing legislation proposed by Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette to regulate underground hydraulic fracturing fluids."

In 2009, EID mounted a fierce “rebuttal” campaign against the documentary film, GASLAND, by Josh Fox. EID sent a letter to Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciencesstating Gasland should be ineligible for nomination because it was based on inaccuracies. EID also published several blog entries “debunking” the film.

The funding sources for EID include: Anadarko, BP, Chevron, El Paso Corporation, EnCana, Halliburton, Marathon, Occidental Petroleum, Schlumberger, Shell API, Talisman and XTO Energy.

EID has two satellite branches: EID-Northeast Marcellus Initiative which covers Pennsylvania and New York area, and EID- The Ohio Project which focuses on gas/oil drilling in Ohio. If you have clicked on these links, you will see nice profile pictures, each person’s EID Title, and a “hometown”. The purpose of this is to may you feel more connected to EID, especially if you recognize the hometown, as in “Gee, these are nice people, they are from my home town.” This is a time honored public relations tactic, used by many ad agencies to sell you products, and politicians to make them seem more “likeable”. Public Relation firms know you will be more apt to believe someone who appears to have a connection to you, as opposed to someone you don’t know.

The “grassroots” initiative was launched around May 2011 by EID. According to the website Marcellus Drilling News: “EID has also launched a major new grassroots initiative now spreading from county to county in the region.”

Marcellus Drilling News further states “The program, known as EID’s “Northeast Marcellus Initiative,” calls for the hiring of several full-time organizers charged with engaging and educating the region’s many supporters of the Mighty Marcellus, and providing them with the tools they need to act. Led on the ground by campaign manager and well-known local natural gas advocate Tom Shepstone, the initiative is already up-and-running in several counties across the region, with field organizers now in place in Luzerne, Lycoming and Wayne Counties, Pa. – all with reach into New York State.”

EID is not grassroots. EID’s “GAS”roots extend from the front groups, Corporations, Public Relations, to the halls of Congress.

The Messengers:

The registrant information for the EID website is listed as FD Dittus Communications.Dittus Communications went through various incarnation. FD in Dittus Communications stands for Financial Dynamics. Dittus Communications became known as FD Americas Public Affairs, and later FD Americas was rebranded as FTI Consulting.

FD Americas: A unit of UK-based strategic and financial communications consultancy FD, FD Americas Public Affairs (formerly Dittus Communications) offers public relations, marketing communications, and issue advocacy services. The firm provides the usual corporate services (media relations, corporate communications, and crisis management) plus public affairs services (issues management, legislative strategy, grassroots organizing and coalition building) as well as marketing, creative, and design services. Clients have included Kraft Foods, Dell, the US Department of Energy, and International Paper. The firm was founded in 1993.

FTI Consulting: global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations protect and enhance their enterprise value, today announced that Financial Dynamics (FD), the Strategic Communications practice of FTI Consulting, has adopted the FTI Consulting brand globally. FD now will be known as the Strategic Communications practice of FTI Consulting.

The original founder and CEO of Dittus Communications is Gloria Dittus, and became CEO and President of FD Dittus-Strategic Communications.

Ms Dittus is now the founder of Story Partners. Per Story Partners website: a public affairs firm focused on helping trade associations, corporations and coalitions amplify their story through carefully aligned online and offline campaigns designed to drive public policy debates. (emphasis added)

EID Players:

Lee Fuller is the Executive Director of EID, he is also the Vice President of Government Relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America. According to Open Secrets, the top industry represented by Mr. Fuller was Oil & Gas.

Regarding Gasland, "The filmmaker alternates between misstating and outright ignoring basic and verifiable facts related to the impact of these activities on the health and welfare of humans, wildlife and the environment," said Lee Fuller, executive director of Energy in Depth (EID), in a letter (pdf) today to the academy.

Jeffery “Jeff” Eschelman is listed as Executive Vice President at EID. In addition to his position at EID he is the Vice President of Public Affairs & Communication at the Independent Petroleum Association of America and former employee of Dittus Communications.

:{:{}:

Julia Bell: Researcher at EID, and Public Affairs & Communications Coordinator for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Chris Tucker: EID Team Lead, Spokesperson, and Advisor for – you guessed it – the Independent Petroleum Association of America. Mr. Tucker is more closely associated with the EID-Marcellus Initiative branch as Team Leader and Blogger.

Senior Vice President Oil & Gas: FTI Consulting
Advisor to the Marcellus Shale Coalition
Former Press Secretary/Communications Director for Rep John E Peterson R-PA (Retired at the end of 110^{th Congress)}Rep. **Peterson’s Campaign Donorsfor the 2006 campaign:

$10,300:Devonian Resource**s (Energy Conservation and Management Consultants) Top Single Contributor

$35,500: Oil & Gas Top Industry Sector Contributor

Former Communications Advisor for House Minority Whip Rep Roy Blunt R-MO,(elected as Senator in 2008).

2008 Senate Campaign:

$23,300: Chevron, 2nd highest individual contributor

$128,250: Oil & Gas, 3rd highest industry sector contributor

2010 Senate Campaign:

$32,173: Murray Energy, 15th highest individual contributor

$29,200: Koch Industries, 16th highest individual contributor

$28,800: Exxon Mobil,17th highest individual contributor

$342,050: Oil & Gas, 7th highest industry sector contributor

Dana Bohan: EID Staff Geologist

Junior Associate - Strategic Communications - Energy Sector: FTI Consulting

Steven “Steve” Everly: EID Spokesperson

Assistant Vice President: FTI Consulting Financial Dynamics

The strategic communication division of FTI Consulting, Financial Dynamics helps ensure that its clients’ brand, reputation and market valuation reflect the true worth of their businesses.

Columnist: Townhall.com

Steve Everley is Manager of Policy Research at American Solutions and a contributing author to To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular- Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich. Prior to joining AmericanSolutions, Everley worked as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Kansas and attended graduate school at the University of Southern California. (emphasis added)

Nicole Jacobs: EID- Northeast Marcellus Initiative Field Organizer.

Independent Consultant - Shalenet

Shalenet operates through a grant from Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration to provide the gas industry with a local workforce. Key partners include 15 Workforce Investment areas (not named), focusing on Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York, PA Independent Oil an Gas Association, Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) the Veterans Administration, Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Broome Community College, Eastern Gateway Community College, Pennsylvania College of Technology, West Virginia Northern Community College and Westmoreland County Community College.

ShaleNet operates out of Pennsylvania College of Technology which is affiliated with Penn State.

Brian Kennedy Per: NATURAL GAS: BP, others push against federal regulation of fracturing, Brian Kennedy is cited as a spokesman for Energy In Depth. Although, Mr. Kennedy is cited as spokesman in this and others articles, there is no sign of him the the Energy In Depth websites.

"This language seems to be a restatement and endorsement of policies and procedures the industry has been following for decades, as mandated by federal, state and local laws," said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Energy In Depth. "To the extent the language helps clarify the existing framework and highlight its overwhelming success to date, it could be a valuable educational tool moving forward." (emphasis added)

Senior Managing Director Strategic Communications: FTI Consulting
Former Senior Managing Director: FD Americas-Public Affairs
Former Communications Director: former Rep. Richard Pombo R-CA

Rep. Richard Pombo lost his re-election bid in 2006 to Jerry McNerney.

"Rep. Richard Pombo's loss represents the most significant electoral victory the environmental movement has seen in decades," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. "It should now be clear to all that we have the political strength to take on and defeat extreme anti-environmental politicians."

Environmentalists opposed Pombo for efforts to rewrite species protections and increase oil drilling in Alaska and off-shore while fundraising from industry groups. He also faced questions about ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in a congressional influence peddling scandal.

2006 Campaign:

$34,800: Chevron, 2nd highest individual contributor

$197,648: Oil & Gas, 4th highest industry sector contributor

Former Aide - House Committee on Natural Resources
Staff Member – Rep. John Boehner R-OH

Rep. John Boehner R-OH was Minority Leader in 2008. He became House Speaker in 2010.

Campaign 2010:

$58,100: Murray Energy, 2nd highest individual contributor

$47,800: FirstEnergy Corp, 3rd highest individual contributor

$369,772: Electric Utilities, 4th highest industry sector contributor

$185,650: Oil & Gas, 14th highest industry sector contributor

Co-Founder – Institute for Energy Research, DC office

Rhonda Reda: EID – The Ohio Project, Executive Director

Executive Director: Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP)

Ms. Reda currently serves on the Public Outreach Committee of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC)and the Colonial Drake Well Historical “Oil150” Steering Committee. She is an active member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the Ohio Geological Society. Recently, Ms. Reda served on the White House Task Force on Energy Education, and has received numerous state and national awards for OOGEEP’s efforts including: AAPG Eastern Section’s Presidential Award for Public Outreach, Friend of Science Award from the Science Council of Ohio, EPA’s Ohio Environmental Education Award for Outstanding Program, World Oil Runner Up for Best Public Outreach Program, Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Minerals Education Award, and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission’s Public Outreach Stewardship Award. Ms. Reda is a graduate of both Ohio University and Edison State College.

Executive Director – Ohio Oil and Gas Foundation

Thomas Stewart: EID – The Ohio Project, Executive Vice President

Member: Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission
Executive Vice President and Board of Trustees: Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA)

Travis Windle : EID Presenter. Although Travis Windle’s name does not appear on any of the EID websites, he was cited as a presenter on a powerpoint presentation: THE MARCELLUS SHALE: Powering America’s Future,Thanks to Hydraulic Fracturing, dated October 14, 2010, and the email cited is for Mr. Windle at EID.

More recently, Mr. Windle has been cited as Spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coaltion:

“Likewise, Marcellus Shale Coalition Spokesman Travis Windle said the closure of any one well will have little to no impact on those using it for waste disposal.”

Vice President – FTI Consulting
Press Secretary, House Republican Conference - US House of Representatives
Communications Director, House Financial Services Committee - US House of Representatives
Press Secretary – former Rep John E Peterson R-PA (see Chris Tucker for Campaign Contribution Info)
Staff Assistant – former Rep. Melissa Hart R-PA, she was defeated in the 2006 General Election.

2006 Campaign: $17,938: K&L Gates, 4th Highes Individual Contributor.

K&L Gates represents leading global corporations, and growth middle-market companies, capital markets participants and entrepreneurs in every major industry group as well as public sector entities, educational institutions, philanthropic organizations and individuals.

Press Secretary - Rep. Tom Petri R-WI Up for re-election 2012

Committee Assignments:

Education and LaborTransportation and Infrastructure

Leadership PAC: Badger Fund

Every “play” has it’s supporting cast of character, some more supportive than others. The supporting players may operate on the periphery acting both independently and in concert with the main players. Supporting players may be just that – supporting as a choir or echo chamber.

Supporting Players:

Robert P Murphy is also a columnist at Townhall.com

Senior Fellow: Institute for Energy Research

Robert P. Murphy is an economist with IER specializing in climate change. His research focuses on the proper discount rate to be used in cost-benefit analyses and the implications of structural uncertainty for policy solutions.

Board of Scholars: Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Per SOURCEWATCH: The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a state-level conservative policy think tank in Michigan. Founded in 1987, it is the largest state-level think tank in the nation. It was established by the state's leading conservative activists to promote free market, pro-business policies. The Center voices its policy positions though publications and has moved beyond Michigan by helping the leaders of similar conservative institutions to improve their operations in many other states and countries around the world.

The Institute for Energy Research (IER)

Per SOURCEWATCH: founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organisation, advocates positions on environmental issues including deregulation of utilities, climate change denial, and claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless. It is a member of the Sustainable Development Network.

Robert L. Bradley Jr: Chief Executive Officer and President.

Currently a member of the International Association for Energy Economics, the American Economic Association, Southern Economic Association, and the American Historical Association. Former Director of Public Relations Policy at Enron.

Campaigns

In 2009 IER ran a campaign on "green jobs" attacking the expansion of renewables energies. IER commissioned three studies on renewable energies and green jobs in Denmark, Germany and Spain. These studies by different think tanks were than promoted by IER and other free market think tanks in the US but also used in Europe.

American Energy Alliance is a "partner" of Institute for Energy Relations and the same people work for both.

The American Energy Alliance (AEA) was founded in 2008 by Thomas Pyle, who previously lobbied on behalf of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association and Koch Industries and who previously worked for Congressman Tom Delay (R-TX), when Delay served as Whip and before Delay, as House Majority Leader, stepped down from the U.S. House of Representatives under an ethical cloud. (emphasis added

[several large flow/org charts]

occupy ~ stratfor

...

The playbook in action for Nestle

Speaking at the April 1982 Public Affairs Council conference to his colleagues in the PR industry, Pagan revealed the skeleton of the playbook that would last all the way through the Stratfor days.

Pagan International arose out of the ashes of a controversial Nestle public relations campaign named, in Orwellian fashion, the “Nestle Coordination Center for Nutrition.” It was co-run by Pagan and Jack Mongoven.

Mongoven was once a reporter for The Chicago Tribune and served as an executive editor of Pioneer Newspapers before becoming a spokesman for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and then the Republican National Committee.

Nestle’s Coordination Center for Nutrition began in 1980 as a major public relations effort designed to fend off complaints and an eventual international boycott. Criticism of Nestle was spearheaded by the British group War on Want, which tracked the company’s marketing of powdered baby milk in the developing world in a 1974 investigation called “The Baby Killer.”

Nestle had decided the developing world would be a good place to sell its baby formula, despite the fact that the formula interrupted women’s lactation process and prevented their breasts from producing enough milk.

“Women who were induced to use [the] formula in place of breast milk often had no choice but to dilute the formula with contaminated water, leading to diarrhea, dehydration and death among … infants,” explain John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in their book, “Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry.”

This behavior by Nestle created a global uproar and eventually planted the seeds of a boycott by more than 700 churches and activist groups.

Mongoven and Pagan — under the auspices of the Coordination Center for Nutrition, which shared office space with The Tobacco Institute,according to Legacy Tobacco Archive Library documents — decided the best response to the burgeoning social movement was to divide and conquer it.

One of their first strategies was to peel off some of strongest supporters of the anti-Nestle campaign — educators.

“Some of the boycott’s strongest support came from teachers, represented by the National Teachers Association, so NCCN courted support from American Federation of Teachers, a smaller, more conservative rival union,” wrote Stauber and Rampton.

Nestle also won over an ally from the inside of another institutional opponent: churches.

“To counter the churches involved in the boycott, they needed to find a strong church that would take their side,” Stauber and Rampton further explained. “The United Methodists were supporting the boycott, but through negotiations and piecemeal concessions, Nestle gradually succeeded in winning them over.”

To make amends, Nestle worked with the Infant Formula Audit Commission to ensure its global marketing practices were in line with World Health Organization rules. It was chaired by Edmund Muskie, a former U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter.

The problem: Nestle created the commission, funded it and called all the shots. Few equipped with this knowledge were surprised when the commission concluded “the company has not been improperly ‘dumping’ baby formula on Third World hospitals,” as explained in The Los Angeles Times.

Muskie’s audit commission — or, better put, Nestle’s — is now seen as a “model” for corporations seeking to defuse sticky communication crises, as documented in a 1986 article in the Journal for Business Strategy.

For his successful efforts running what he would later describe as “a responsive, accurate corporate issue and trends warning system [with] analysis capability,” Pagan received the Public Relations Society of America’s prestigious Silver Anvil Award. Other industries have followed similar strategies, such as the shale gas industry’s “Energy in Depth” and corporate education reform’s “Stand for Children.”...

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2x?

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11921/%E2%80%9Cenergy-depth%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-reporters%E2%80%99-guide-its-founding-funding-and-flacks

no lnx grafix

"Energy In Depth" – A Reporters' Guide to Its Founding, Funding, and Flacks

Submitted by Lisa Graves onDecember 28, 2012

What is Energy In Depth, really? EID describes itself as "a research, education and public outreach campaign focused on getting the facts out" about hydraulic fracturing, widely known as "fracking." It's a website created by a trade group for the gas industry -- the "Independent Petroleum Association of America" (IPAA) -- and a public relations firm.

Exponentially Increasing Natural Gas Exports

In short, IPAA/EID is a PR operation for the industry's multi-billion dollar financial interests in "unconventional" drilling for what is popularly known as "natural gas." Although this expanded drilling is often described as essential to our "national security," the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch has shown that the industry is increasingly exporting gas to be sold in other countries. IPAA/EID's PR efforts pay special attention to the "Marcellus shale" gas that lies deep beneath the surface in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and neighboring states, which constitutes a lucrative market for multi-national firms and their domestic counter-parts to exploit.

IPAA/EID's "about" page says its "supporting members" are state associations of gas producers. It displays their logos, instead of the global corporations that launched it.

What the logos cloak -- in classic PR sleight of hand -- are the larger interests behind the IPAA/EID operation.

It has been described by some in the press as merely a "pro-drilling group" (in contrast with "anti-drilling" groups or citizens), but here's how IPAA described EID in a leaked internal memo from 2009, obtained by DeSmogBlog last year. IPAA privately told its allies that EID was its new "online resource center to combat new environmental regulations," created with funding fromShell, BP, Chevron,and more.

In other words, IPAA/EID is more accurately described as a front group launched by global gas companies in order to fight a public relations battle against new environmental protections on fracking.

Behind IPAA/EID: Some of the Biggest Corporations in the World

The leaked IPAA memo reveals that the EID campaign was created through the "financial commitments" of some of the biggest companies (with some of the worst environmental records) on the planet. To wit:

Shell, which is the second largest company in the worldin terms of revenue, with income of almost a half a trillion dollars in 2011: $470 billion, just behind Exxon. Royal Dutch Shell is a Dutch company registered in London. In 2010, Shell bought "East Resources," which had gas holdings in Pennsylvania and nearby, for $4.7 billion. Shell's environmental record includes the largest fresh water spill of oil in the world (in 1999 in Argentina), a major oil spill near Alaska in 1988, and numerous spills in the Niger delta in Africa. (East Resources' founder, Terry Pegula, and his wife gave at least $300,000 to Tom Corbett's campaign for governor of Pennsylvania.)

BP, which is the sixth largest company in the world in terms of revenue, with revenue of $375 billion in 2011. BP is a British oil and gas company, which took over two US companies, Amoco and ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) about a decade ago. Last month, BP and three of its employees were indicted on criminal charges, including manslaughter and obstruction of Congress, in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and it also agreed to pay a $4 billion fine related to the disaster. (And, although many are unaware of it, BP's decisions also made the Exxon Valdez disaster worse.)

Chevron, which is a U.S. company that is the tenth largest in the world in terms of revenue,with income of $253 billion in 2011. Last year, Chevron obtained gas leases for over a million acres, plus hundreds of thousands of acres of development rights, from smaller companies like Chief Oil & Gas. Chevron and other companies have been sued for damaging our environment through the use of the MTBE gasoline additive that has contaminated water and soil. (Chief's CEO, Trevor Rees-Jones, has been active in politics, giving at least two million dollars to Karl Rove's Crossroads operations.)

The Corporations that Helped Launch EID

Another corporation whose funding helped launch IPAA/EID isXTO Energy, which became a subsidiary of ExxonMobil in 2010. XTO was a billion-dollar Fortune 500 company that became the largest producer of natural gas in the US after it acquired Hunt Petroleum for $4.2 billion in 2008. ExxonMobil is the largest company in the world, with revenue of $486 billion in 2011. (Exxon's environmental record includes the notorious Exxon Valdez disaster, and it has spent millions of dollars over the years funding groups that front industry propaganda, as documented by Greenpeace.)

Other corporations whose funding helped launch IPAA/EID include two Canadian gas companies, EnCana and Talisman, plus Occidental Petroleum (California's largest gas producer) and Marathon (now Marathon Oil Corporation, which also has major interests in gas).

Other IPAA/EID funders include Schlumberger, the world's largest petroleum field services company, which began long ago as a French firm but has been headquartered in Texas for many years. The IPAA memo also lists Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil field services companies, which helped pioneer "proprietary" fracking fluids and whose Energy Services Group is involved in supporting fracking activities. (Halliburton recently settled a criminal corruption case alleging bribery by its then-CEO, Dick Cheney, and a former subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), in connection with its natural gas operations in Nigeria.)

IPAA/EID was also launched with the financial support of the American Petroleum Institute (API), a non-profit trade group that represents many of these same interests. API had revenue of over $181 million in 2010 from "membership dues" from corporations and other sources, and it spent one-third of its income on the Edelman PR firm. According to its IRS Form "990," API gave nearly $200,000 to IPAA for "energy education" between 2008 and 2010.

Another IPAA/EID funder mentioned in the IPAA memo is Anadarko Petroleum Company, which has gas wells in Pennsylvania and Texas. Anadarko owned a 25% stake in the Deepwater Horizon, with BP, Halliburton, and others.

Military Counter-Insurgency Manual]

Anadarko made the news on fracking last year after its Public Affairs Manager, Matt Carmichael, promoted the use of military "psyops" in Pennsylvania communities to combat "an insurgency" of citizens concerned about fracking (as recorded by Sharon Wilson of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project). IPAA/EID's Chris Tucker tried to spin those comments by claiming they were meant as a joke, despite all evidence to the contrary. Carmichael is a former senior communications guy for KBR, which was a subsidiary of war contractor Halliburton.

None of these major for-profit companies or API -- the financial underwriters that launched IPAA/EID -- are listed on the campaign's website or in its description of its supporters.

IPAA/EID Targets the Park FoundationWhile Keeping Its Corporate Funders Secret

IPAA/EID has been on the attack against critics of the fracking that is so lucrative for its secretive financial backers.

Here's a recent example of its disinformation: the Capital Research Center (CRC) -- itself part of the CEO-fueled echo chamber -- quoted EID's flack Tom Shepstone this month implying that the Park Foundation spent more than $17 million helping to oppose fracking in just one year. Wrote CRC: "In 2009, the Park Foundation had net assets of $246 million and spent $23 million, which included $17.6 million in grants and contributions to green groups opposed to fracking, according to Shepstone," a Pennsylvanian whose official title is "Campaign Director" for EID's "Northeast Marcellus Initiative."

But, as reported earlier this year, the Park Foundation's public filings show that only a fraction of that amount was spent on grants for projects to educate the public about fracking. The total for 2009 was approximately $700,000, which is 1/25th of what Shepstone claimed. In contrast, the industry's biggest trade group, API, spends over a $180 million a year on its entire budget, including tens of millions of dollars on PR.

This is not the first time Shepstone has had trouble with numbers. In 2000, a court approved his federal bankruptcy after he and his wife racked up more than $725,000 in debt as compared with their assets -- described as a house on five acres (valued at $125,000), a new car loan for a Chevy S-10 Blazer, and $200 worth of clothes, although he attested that they made almost $90,000 annually a few years earlier -- with some personal debt including some debt related to his businesses, described as "Shepstone Management Corp." in Honesdale and "North Country Farm and Gardens Corp.," at 160 Roosevelt Highway in Waymart. They were also subject to an IRS tax lien for more than $20,000 in unpaid taxes attributed to "Tom Shepstake" and his wife in 1996, a claim that was later settled. Americans do, of course, have the right to declare bankruptcy when their financial calculations go awry and get a second chance, like Shepstone.

CRC used Shepstone's recent math on Park to buttress the absurd thesis that "Environmentalists often depict themselves as scrappy underdogs fighting the power of entrenched special interests. But the case of the Marcellus Shale -- and the untold energy resources that could be recovered safely by new drilling technology such as fracking -- pits 'the little guy' against powerful 'green' forces such as the Park Foundation and the Natural Resources Defense Council."

Park Foundation grants]

Like IPAA/EID,CRC keeps many of its big funders secret, although foundation filings show that its funders have included the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the family foundation of the CEO of the multi-billion dollar Koch Industries -- which in turn is led by Charles and his brother David Koch and is one of the richest privately held gas, oil, and chemical companies in the world. Koch Industries has reaped undisclosed profits from ventures benefiting from expanded fracking, such as from the lower cost of the natural gas used as a feeder to make its fertilizer by Koch Nitrogen, one of the Koch companies.

Only in the distorted worldview of CRC does an industry made up of some of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world -- ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Koch Industries, Halliburton, and more -- get portrayed as "the little guy" fighting for fracking against a putative Goliath in the form of the Park Foundation.

In contrast to Shepstone's dramatically inflated figures, "[s]ince 2008, the foundation has given at least $2.8 million to groups and publications fighting shale drilling," according to EnergyWire. That cumulative spending is less than a quarter of what Shepstone claimed the Park Foundation spent in one year alone.

But such efforts to discredit the growing grassroots movement of citizens concerned about fracking -- such as by insinuating that it's all about "buckets of money" from Park, according to Shepstone -- are particularly deceptive when made by operations like CRC and IPAA/EID, which don't disclose the identities of their major funders such as the for-profit businesses that paved the way for EID's campaign.

Uncloaking the Revenue Stream of IPAA's PR Machine

Because EID was created as an operation within the IPAA, it does not file its own IRS Form 990 tax form, and so its true revenues and expenses are hidden from public view.

What is known is that, in 2010, IPAA had revenue of more than $8 million ($8,714,606) and spent almost the same. This revenue and expense rate is relatively consistent with the two preceding years.

IPAA is described as a trade association organized under 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code. It shares space and staff with its "IPAA Educational Foundation" (IPAAEF), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, which means that in general contributions to the latter can be counted as a charitable tax deduction by its donors. IPAAEF has annual revenue of almost a half million dollars a year, and it reports paying a "management fee" to IPAA of a little more than $200,000 a year. IPAAEF describes its activities as including grants to fund students "as interns at petroleum companies." According to its Form 990, one of IPAAEF's main activities each year appears to be its "Wildcatters Ball," which cost $227,270 in 2010.IPAA also hosts an annual golf tournament that costs almost $200,000.

IPAA has assets worth over $8 million, as of the end of 2010. It invested about $6.5 million of this in publicly traded securities. It did not disclose the identities of these stocks or bonds and whether any of its investments are related to the gas industry. In 2010, it reported investment income of about $215,000.

IPAA at NASDAQIPAA was also listed in a publicly filed licensing agreement in 2002 between the FBR Family of Funds and the "IPAA Energy Index." According to that agreement, "the FBR/IPAA Energy Index Fund is a series of a registered open-end management investment company whose objective is to track the price and yield performance of publicly-traded common stocks of companies represented by the IPAA Energy Index. The Fund is a no-load mutual fund, and its assets are invested by FBR Fund Advisers, Inc." There is little public information about what happened under that agreement or whether or not IPAA has other relationships with investment funds or groups speculating on fracking. It has showcased presentations on capital investment in fracking featuring information from investment bankers like Goldman Sachs.

As a non-profit organization, IPAA's tax benefits under the federal tax code are predicated on it not being "organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which [can] inure[] to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual." There is no public information indicating whether or not any of its employees invested in the FBR Fund or other energy funds, stocks or other investment vehicles, or whether it has any policy barring its employees from such investments or land speculation in fracking regions. It has no published conflict-of-interest policy on this issue, but there is no legal requirement that it adopt one (other than for conflicts involving payments from the non-profit entity to people related to principals in the organization).

In 2010, IPAA received $3.8 million from membership dues and most of the remainder of its $8 million budget from program fees for nearly two dozen conferences a year. IPAA's annual dues for gas companies are calculated on a sliding scale based on the "Barrel of Oil Equivalents" (BOE) and range from $4,000 to $60,000 per year depending on whether a company's BOE is under 750,000 or more than 50 million BOE. By reference, Anadarko Petroleum, a funder of IPAA/EID that is described as one of the world's largest oil and gas exploration firms, "had production of 206 million BOE" as of 2008.

Companies that pay these dues can deduct 65% of them as business expenses; 35% of the dues are considered lobbying expenses. In 2010, IPAA reports that it spent $1.3 million on lobbying and political expenditures. IPAA also has a related "527"-type organization involved in political campaigns, called the "IPAA Wildcatters Fund," which had $542,639 in receipts in the run up to the 2012 elections. IPAA also told the IRS in 2010 that it had "joined forces with the Business Industry Political Action Committee," whose slogan used to be "Electing Business to Congress" and is now "Powering Business Political Success."

Who Leads IPAA/EID and for How Much?

The portion of IPAA's annual revenues or expenses that fund its EID campaign is not disclosed.

What is known is that in 2010, IPAA paid its president, Barrett (Barry) Russell, more than one-half million dollars in total compensation ($511,000 and a promise of health insurance for him and his wife for life). Russell was elected president of the IPAA in 2000. He also has seat on the board of the Business Industry Political Action Committee and the National Energy Education Development Project. He's been IPAA's "chief legal and financial officer since 1988 and an officer of IPAA's educational foundation since its inception." He previously worked for the EPA, and he also worked for consulting firms, such as Booz, Allen and Hamilton, specializing in mergers and acquisitions.

IPAA paid another nearly one million dollars in total compensation for its next five highest paid employees combined (who each earn over $200,000 a year). This list includes Lee Fuller and Jeff Eshelman, who are specifically listed on the EID website as part of the EID team.

Fuller, a chemical engineer, is IPAA's Vice President of Government Relations, and he is listed on the website as EID's "Executive Director." He began working for IPAA in 1998 after working as a lobbyist for the gas industry for 12 years following an eight-year job staffing the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, where he handled rules on drilling fluids, wells, and Superfund sites. Eshelman is also a Vice President for IPAA and has served as its spokesman for a number of years.

Big Raises

In 2010, these and other IPAA executives got big raises, including a raise of more than $60,000 for the president. The salary increases for other IPAA executives that year ranged from $21,000 per year to $53,000 per year.

There is no information in IPAA's 2010 public tax filings about what the 13 other staffers listed on its EID campaign website are paid per year because only the top highest paid staffers are required to be disclosed (and also some of the EID team are recent hires). There also appears to be no publicly posted conflict-of-interest rule in this field that would require the disclosure of any fracking-related stock or real property holdings that would benefit from limiting restrictions on fracking by any IPAA/EID team member.

Shining a Spotlight on the IPAA/EID Marcellus Team

According to the leaked memo from IPAA, EID's reason for being is to serve as a "major initiative to respond to . . . attacks" on fracking and amplify "coordinated messages." Although IPAA/EID's reach is nationwide, one area where it appears to be particularly aggressive is Pennsylvania, through the blogging and outreach of Tom Shepstone.

Shepstone is described as the Campaign Leader of the EID Marcellus team. Before joining IPAA/EID, Shepstone worked primarily as a consultant writing reports for towns about land planning, at taxpayer expense. Even before he became the gas industry's campaigner in the region, he was apparently recommending industry-friendly land use rules, such as including a so-called "right to mine" in recommendations, expressly urging towns not to interfere with the development of natural gas, and not including recommendations for extra setback distances from property lines for industrial activities versus other structures. Shepstone was previously an IACP certified planner, which has conflict-of-interest rules, but he has said that he stopped paying dues and was not dropped by the American Planning Association.

In the period between his bankruptcy and his public association with IPAA/EID last year, Shepstone was often quoted in the press with the description "local businessman." He also wrote online comments praising right-wing diatribes. For example, he gave the highest review to the book, "The Red Decade: the Classic Work on Communism in America During the Thirties," which he said provided "[g]reat insights for those who recognize we are reliving the 1930s," and showed how those with a "liberal/leftist" mindset are prone to be "manipulated by totalitarian thugs."

Right-Wing Screed Endorsed by Shepstone

In another public review, Shepstone gave the highest marks to "The Liberal Mind: the Psychological Causes of Political Madness," which he said would help readers "completely understand how Obama thinks" and explains the president as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton "in their totality." He also claimed that reading this and Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" -- a favorite boogeyman of right-wing talk show hosts -- would help "predict" President Obama's actions. The "Liberal Mind" book endorsed by Shepstone actually claims repeatedly that embracing progressive values is a mental disorder that is "the product of psychopathology," which undermines "the ability of families to raise children to be self-reliant" and "threatens to destroy the West's greatest achievement: the American dream of civilized liberty."

Given Shepstone's warm embrace of such fringe views, it is not entirely surprising that the IPAA/EID Marcellus website for the campaign he leads takes pains to try to score right-wing points in claiming that "the shale 'revolution' in the United States is impacting our 'friends' in Russia and Iran." It is also unsurprising that some of Shepstone's writings for IPAA/EID refer derisively to his fellow citizens exercising their fundamental First Amendment rights. To take a few recent examples of the tenor of his remarks, he put down an advocate asking serious and legitimate questions about the consequences of fracking in the community as an "aging activist seeking relevance in a modern world" and he also derided a community protest of 150 citizens as "a pathetic failure."

But, beyond his apparent animosity toward progressives and other concerned Americans, it is Shepstone's claims that are particularly astonishing. Here's a sampling of his disinformation sound bites:

"Hydrofracking Improves Water Quality!" – When Shepstone made this claim at a public meeting, he was met with a spontaneous burst of laughter in disbelief, but he claimed it was true because more wells will be tested due to fracking than are currently monitored. In claiming fracking improves water quality, Shepstone conveniently ignores the millions of gallons of fresh water contaminated in the process of fracking each well, resulting in waste water whose "brine" is not even recommended for use on roads because of the risk of ground water contamination. He also ignores concerns that the water may become contaminated with dissolved radium due to the radioactive uranium rock in the region, requiring additional treatment, among other concerns that have been raised across the country about the potential for contamination of America's precious aquifers and the spoiling of Americans' wells.

"Natural gas produces water rather than depleting it" – Shepstone made this claim apparently based on the fact that burning methane gas or heating wet gas releases water vapor, and water is a heavier molecule than methane, but his claim ignores the fact that millions of gallons of fresh water are being pumped from aquifers and rivers to be spoiled with each fracking well, and the industry is banking on drilling thousands and thousands of such wells in the region.

"There is no evidence the development of this resource will damage the environment . . . but plenty of evidence the farm and the woods can be saved with it" – This Shepstone claim is predicated on the notion that rural land can require money for property taxes to maintain, which he says gas leasing revenue will aid, but his claim ignores the effect of industrialization on farms, parks, and rivers, which has been documented by Oscar-nominee Josh Fox and others. Shepstone's claim also ignores other documented environmental hazards from fracking, including the venting of unprocessed methane gas and other carcinogens associated with fracking (as documented in the video at the link).

"Hydraulic Fracturing Is An Open Book" – Shepstone pushed the idea that fracking fluid "is an open book" because some of the chemicals in it have been revealed, even as he sought to minimize concerns about what secret chemicals are in dozens of pounds of ingredients used in each well that companies keep secret under the claim that they are "proprietary," chemicals he says are basically harmless jellies. Because the blend of secret chemicals is proprietary and varies by manufacturer he cannot actually prove his assertion, but that's no deterrent. He also fails to mention that IPAA has lobbied to keep such chemicals secret by opposing the closing of the "Halliburton loophole," -- legislation that was mentioned in the IPAA's leaked memo discussing the need for its EID campaign. (Similarly, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has also pushed for so-called state "disclosure" rules sought by Exxon to keep certain chemicals used in fracking secret from the public, as reported by the New York Times.)

These are just some of Shepstone's many claims on behalf of IPAA/EID. Curiously, but on a much more minor note, he has also written online comments pushing pro-fracking claims sometimes citing as his location towns other than where he actually resides in Pennsylvania.

Shepstone is not the only writer/speaker for IPAA/EID in Pennsylvania; he's just its most visible one. And, his trade group's pro-fracking campaign has many components in its efforts to persuade the public and discredit critics of fracking. For example, IPAA/EID has disseminated attacks on Fox's Oscar-nominated documentary, "Gasland," and his latest film, "The Sky Is Pink." IPAA/EID is also currently promoting its "Truthland" video, complete with a stand-alone website that lists both the EID and IPAA logos as if they were separate entities.

The IPAA/EID Glass House

Still, there is no doubt that Shepstone and IPAA/EID seem obsessed with both Fox and the Park Foundation. Well before Shepstone's most recent spinning of the foundation's grant numbers in a way that inflates the amount of grants for projects on fracking by combining it with the amounts in support of environmental organizations and other groups,Shepstone was attacking Park and its directors in others ways.

At one point, he even made the baseless claim that the foundation was wrongly engaged in "significant political activity," which he defined as "funding opponents of hydro-fracking." Although both his math and his analysis of federal tax law are way out of whack, one of the flaws is his contention that supporting research and public education about the risks of fracking is somehow impermissibly "political," while he ignores the manifold activities by pro-fracking non-profit entities on his side attempting to prevent new laws -- which is one of the very objectives mentioned in the leaked IPAA memo. In his attacks on Park and its grantees (which operate under 501(c)(3) rules allowing for a small percentage of lobbying or which may have separate 501(c)(4) arms to allow for more lobbying and different rules for prospective donors), Shepstone is simply not a credible source for reporters or others on U.S. tax and lobbying laws.

Example of an academic close ties to industry

Moreover, in a feat of astounding hypocrisy, Shepstone attempts to discredit research he claims is supported by an organization that has no financial stake in the outcome of such research, while regularly echoing industry-friendly research and claims shaped by the very interests that have the most to gain from distorting information, the industry he really serves. Meanwhile, investigators have uncovered yet more instances of purportedly independent studies by academics connected to the for-profit fracking industry, as with reports that a University of Texas professor, Robert Chase -- whose studies claimed that "fracking was safe for groundwater" -- had allegedly "pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Texas natural gas developer."

Shepstone has even attempted to defend his own bias by asserting that he held the same views about fracking before he started working on behalf of the industry. Such views are not created in a vacuum, however, and were likely shaped by the natural gas industry's PR machine for which he now works.

In his effort to smear Park and those concerned with fracking, Shepstone sidesteps the proliferation of non-profit groups that peddle pro-fracking claims, as exposed by Dory Hippauf. Beyond IPAA/EID, these include API (which has launched front groups called "Energy Citizens" and "EnergyNation"), the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the Ohio Shale Coalition, America's Natural Gas Alliance, the Center for Liquified Natural Gas, energy Tomorrow, EnergyfromShale.org, energyNow!, EnergyAnswered, LNGfacts.org, SecureOurFuels.org, Oilindependents.org, the Consumer Energy Alliance, Vote4Energy.org, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), the Institute for Energy Research (IER), and others.

Back of the AEA and AFP Bus

Some of these groups work together on campaigns. AEA, for example, joined in a bus tour with David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) to influence voters about fracking under the jobs frame frequently spouted by Shepstone.Due to inadequate public disclosure requirements, however, it is difficult to know who helped fund that tour besides Koch through his financial support for AFP, which he helped found and helps lead. This is just one of many ways pro-fracking groups coordinate and amplify common messages. They have even had overlapping public relations staff, as with IPAA/EID's Chris Tucker, a former GOP congressional staffer who has been described as a Senior Vice President at Financial Dynamics, as the "managing director of FTI Consulting and as team lead for Energy In Depth." For a time, Tucker was publicly listed as handling communications for both IPAA/EID and IER, "using the same phone number for both," according to DeSmogBlog's research.

Of course, according to the leaked IPAA memo, one of the goals for EID was "coordinated messages."

But, Shepstone is relatively silent on such matters and on how his public messages help facilitate that goal.

Because entities like IPAA/EID, AEA, API, and AFP are not required to disclose their expenditures with the kind of detail that a grant-making foundation is, it is simply not possible to calculate the true amount of money these various non-profit groups are spending advancing the positions of the gas industry. Although their cumulative budgets amount to well over two hundred million dollars a year, the portion funded to support fracking or attack those concerned about fracking is unknown.

But it is clear that the Park Foundation is not a for-profit corporation that would benefit financially from the success of efforts to raise awareness about the risks of expanded fracking. Conversely, the multi-billion dollar corporations and/or some of the wealthy CEOs whose foundations fund organizations like IPAA/IED, CRC, and AFP do have a financial stake in advancing fracking with the least amount of regulation possible, regardless of what may be in the best interests of the public in protecting American families' health and their access to safe drinking water and clean air in the decades ahead.

After all, fracking is big business, as IPAA/EID's Shepstone regularly stresses.

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eid off bs https://eidclimate.org/what-experts-say/

cLIMATE LITIGATION: WHAT EXPERTS SAY

Sarah E. Hunt, Co-founder and CEO of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy:

“But how much taxpayer money has New York wasted over the past three years on this case? Is it in the millions, or perhaps more? One wonders what could they have accomplished for the advancement of climate solutions in that time and with that money?” (1/16/20)

Horace Cooper, Senior Fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research:

“Mayors who are suing our energy producers in hopes of winning billions to balance their books need to look somewhere else for a bailout. These cases rightly should be tossed out of court, and those attempting to file future litigation should be called out as the hustle artists they truly are.” (4/10/19)

Barney Bishop, Former Executive Director of the Florida Democratic Party:

“Lawsuits such as these offer no real benefit and only serve to threaten American companies and American jobs. They also fail to acknowledge our own roles in contributing to climate change and the benefits we have all received from the products provided to us by the companies being sued.” (3/28/19)

Dominic Calabro, President and CEO of Florida TaxWatch:

“Standing on already-shaky legal ground, three of the lawsuits have been dismissed by federal judges who correctly ruled that the worldwide problem of climate change is not an issue that belongs in the judicial arena but rather needs to be addressed by the legislative and executive branches.” (3/20/19)

Victor Schwartz, Partner with Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP:

“There is no merit to these lawsuits. Climate change has been widely studied since the 1960s, and as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained when she wrote the opinion of a unanimous Court in AEP v. Connecticut, deciding if and how to address climate change is an issue “within national legislative power” and not appropriate for the judiciary.” (2/27/19)

Craig Richardson, President of Energy & Environment Legal Institute:

“Skeptical judges across the country have mostly dismissed these lawsuits for what they are – shameless efforts to shakedown energy companies and for using the wrong venue to try to address a complex issue such as global climate change.” (2/13/19)

Horace Cooper, Senior Fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research:

“If these baseless lawsuits by greedy plaintiff lawyers remain unchecked, it won’t be just oil and gas producers that get hurt. Consumers, taxpayers and families would also suffer the fallout. Ultimately, elected officials must be held accountable for reining in this manipulation of the courts for profit.” (1/18/19)

Lana Sonnier Venable, Executive Director of Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch:

“Throughout the state, a multitude of trial lawyer billboards promise jackpot justice, speaking to the proliferation of lawsuits and serving as glaring warning signs to companies potentially interested in doing business in Louisiana.” (12/25/18)

Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner Columnist:

“Lawsuits should seek redress for misbehavior, not retroactively punish entities for actions the authorities openly invited and endorsed.” (12/13/18)

New York Daily News: Climate-change lawsuit falls flat on its face:

“It was a preposterous notion from the start: that the city of New York, which burns loads of oil and gas itself, would take the likes of Chevron and Exxon to court, demanding billions of dollars in damages for causing climate change and putting our coastal city through the ravages of Superstorm Sandy. In a rigorously reasoned ruling, Manhattan Federal Judge John Keenan just bounced the suit, blowing the de Blasio administration’s legal logic out of the water.” (Editorial, 7/20/18)

Mike Hunter, Attorney General of Oklahoma:

“Do not be mistaken, these suits by New York, San Francisco, Oakland and others are not about the law,they are wanton attempts at jackpot justicein order to fix local deficit problems and set national energy policy. In one breath, they seek to blame American manufacturers for the entirety of global climate change by suing them to pay for local infrastructure projects. In another breath, the California cities assert on their bond filings that climate change did not deteriorate their sea wall based on research they claim won’t show harm until after the year 2100. ” (7/20/18)

Theodore Boutrous, Partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher:

“Judge Keenan got it exactly right. Trying to resolve a complex, global policy issue like climate change through litigation is ‘illogical,’ and would intrude on the powers of Congress and the executive branch to address these issues as part of the democratic process.” (7/19/18)

Judge John Keenan, Federal Judge for the Southern District of New York:

“Climate change is a fact of life, as is not contested by Defendants. But the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions there to must be addressed by the two other branches of government. … Congress has expressly delegated to the EPA the determination as to what constitutes a reasonable amount of greenhouse gas emission under the Clean Air Act. To litigate such an action for injuries from foreign greenhouse gas emissions in federal court would severely infringe upon the foreign-policy decisions that are squarely within the purview of the political branches of the U.S. Government.” (7/19/18)

Gale Norton, Former Secretary of the Interior and Former Attorney General of Colorado:

“In the climate change litigation, you have traded environmental plaintiffs attorneys, who were primarily focused on public policy, for an increasing number interested in financial gain. Those (contingency fee) attorneys are looking out for their pocketbooksmore than the long-term best interest of the communities.” (7/16/18)

Jay Timmons, President and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers:

“Other municipalities around the country who have filed similar lawsuits should take note, as those complaints are likely to end the same way. New York City, [Boulder, Colorado], and the other California municipalities should withdraw their complaints and follow the lead of others that are focused on meaningful solutions.” (7/6/18)

Daniel Kochan, Environmental, Natural Resources and Administrative Law Professor at Chapman University:

“The federal courts are not meant to provide a remedy for every ill of the world, including climate change. In such matters, we need to rely on the political branches to take charge. … A belief in the proper institutional roles is not a disbelief in the science, or a denial of the urgency of the problem. Instead, this ruling says that federal common law should not be expanded by judicial decree simply to satiate a desire for blame or for a deep pocket. Asking judges to stay neutral and refrain from policymaking from the bench protects the interests of individuals of every political disposition. … Constitutional institutions matter. We should guard them from being corrupted and demeaned. Alsup’s order is a refreshing example against the erosion of the courts into political debating societies.” (Op-ed, 7/6/18)

Richard Greene, Former Mayor of Arlington, Texas, and Former Regional Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency:

“[Judge Alsup] who has a liberal reputation in a federal court friendly to progressive public policy, has based his ruling on two very sound and common sense principles in dismissing the lawsuits brought by San Francisco and Oakland, California. The second big thing the judge illuminated is that the use of fossil fuels has resulted from public demand now spanning more than a century as the nation’s economy became the strongest in the world. We all want to drive the vehicles of our choice and to heat and cool our homes and offices for whatever comfort we desire. We reap the benefits from the engines of industry that provide jobs leading to unprecedented prosperity for the nation.” (7/6/18)

Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell PLC:

“It’s sort of bizarre that the users of our products say: ‘Well actually we didn’t want your product. So why did you force it on us?’ I don’t think also that in the end it will solve anything other than mayberedistributing wealth to a certain class of the economy.” (7/5/18)

The Oklahoman: Demise of anti-energy lawsuit is welcome news:

“In suing major oil companies, two California cities claimed fossil fuel production contributes to global warming and is therefore a “public nuisance” that should require those companies to pay billions for mitigation efforts. A federal judge has dismissed this claim, and his reasoning should cheer anyone concerned about serious policymaking. … While stating he agreed the climate is warming and fossil fuels contribute, Alsup noted a “balancing of policy concerns” is required. While fossil fuel use may harm the environment, it has also been a boon to humanity.” (Editorial, 7/5/18)

Judge John Keenan, Federal Judge for the Southern District of New York:

“This is an emissions case. Aren’t you trying to dress up a wolf in sheep’s clothing?” (7/3/18)

Lindsey de la Torre, Executive Director of the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project:

“It’s time for politicians and trial lawyers to put an end to this frivolous litigation. Taxpayer resources should not be used for baseless lawsuits that are designed to enrich trial lawyers and grab headlines for politicians. This abuse of our legal system does nothing to advance meaningful solutions, which manufacturers are focused on every day.” (7/2/18)

Adam Morey, Public Affairs Manager at the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York:

“[R]egulation by litigation is the wrong way to fix anything. Real policy decisions should be thought through carefully by government officials who are accountable to the people, not by unelected lawyers and mayors hungry for their moment in the national spotlight. … It’s incumbent on courts around the country to follow Judge Alsup’s example and consistently reject this attempt by unelected, private lawyers to usurp the power of legislative bodies and cash in on a matter as crucial and complex as climate change. And de Blasio, who benefits tremendously from the use of fossil fuels while cynically demonizing them to advance his career, should take a hint and let this one go.” (Op-ed, 7/1/18)

New York Post: Only a matter of time before de Blasio’s lawsuit gets tossed:

“Mayor de Blasio just got a blaring wake-up call from the West Coast about his lawsuit against Big Oil: Get set to be laughed straight out of court, Mr. Mayor. … De Blasio must know his suit is a long shot at best. No matter: His main goal has been to score political points with progressives and burnish his national bona fides as an anti-fossil-fuel crusader. And, hey — if he does win some cash for the city in the process, all the better. … New Yorkers can scratch their heads over these moves and bemoan the waste of (their) money being spent on them. When his efforts fail, though, de Blasio’s self-promotion may backfire. And taxpayers can have the last laugh.” (Editorial, 6/30/18)

Bob Tippee, Oil & Gas Journal Editor:

“Common sense triumphed in a June 25 decision on climate change in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Judge William Alsup forced context into hysterically myopic climate politics when he granted a motion by five major oil companies to dismiss a lawsuit calling their production of oil and natural gas a public nuisance. BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell could have been held liable for inestimable damages if Alsup had let the case proceed.” (6/29/18)

Wall Street Journal: Climate shakedown flops:

“[T]he cities tried to circumvent the ruling by arguing that the mere production and sale of oil is a public nuisance. Judge Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, rightly refrained from trying to regulate global carbon emissions from the bench. The problem of climate change ‘deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case. While it remains true that our federal courts have authority to fashion common law remedies for claims based on global warming, courts must also respect and defer to the other co-equal branches of government,’ he wrote. The judge also ridiculed the notion that fossil fuels are a public nuisance and even suggested that they have been a boon for humanity. ‘Our industrial revolution and the development of our modern world has literally been fueled by oil and coal. Without those fuels, virtually all of our monumental progress would have been impossible,’ he noted. Fetch the smelling salts for Tom Steyer.” (Editorial, 6/29/18)

Tiger Joyce, President of the American Tort Reform Association:

“Courts are appropriate for settling legal disputes. They should not be setting environmental policy that has a profound impact on countless aspects of our daily lives and the continuing prospects for a strong and vibrant economy. This type of litigation has a profound and significant negative economic impact and should be called out for the sham that it is. If allowed to continue unchecked, the costs will not be restricted to the companies so arbitrarily pursued. Rather, taxpayers will foot the bill and the trial bar will move on to the next target to line its pockets.” (Op-ed, 7/28/18)

Judge William Alsup, Federal Judge for the Northern District of California:

“The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case. Our industrial revolution and the development of our modern world has literally been fueled by oil and coal. Without those fuels, virtually all of our monumental progress would have been impossible. Would it really be fair to now ignore our own responsibility in the use of fossil fuels and place the blame for global warming on those who supplied what we demanded? Is it really fair, in light of those benefits, to say that the sale of fossil fuels was unreasonable?” (6/25/18)

Dorothy Rothrock, President of the California Manufacturers & Technology Association:

“A big payday for the trial attorneys, not a solution to global climate change, is the main motivation for these suits. The attorneys and municipalities don’t care that their lawsuits hurt California’s ambitious climate change policies. The eight municipalities making claims against oil companies are making allegations that don’t match declarations they have made in recent bond offerings. Will taxpayers be on the hook for litigation related to these discrepancies? For example, San Francisco, which has told the court that it faces an ‘imminent risk’ of flooding from sea-level rise, told investors last year that the city ‘is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change’ will occur.” (3/21/18)

Theodore Boutrous, Partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher:

“Chevron accepts the consensus in the scientific communities on climate change. There’s no debate about climate science. The IPCC does not say it’s the extraction and production of oil that is driving these emissions. It’s economic activity that creates the demand for energy, and that leads to emissions.” (3/21/18)

Philip Hamburger, Columbia University Law Professor:

“The threat to scientific inquiry and political speech is obvious…. But with the usurped subpoena power, he [Schneiderman] can engage in a roving investigation, unlimited by any formal accusation, and then can use the results to bring criminal charges. This is adangerous amalgam of grand-jury and prosecutorial power in one person…. And as shown by Mr. Schneiderman, when attorneys general can issue such subpoenas, a valuable judicial power becomes a prosecutorial threat to liberty and due process.” (5/11/16)

Dennis Vacco, Former Attorney General of New York:

“I was proud to play a major role in holding tobacco companies responsible for the damage they caused and in setting America on a healthier path. We had a clear, convincing legal case and a noble cause. The same cannot be said for attorneys general involved in the current crusade…. The tobacco companies were deceivers. ExxonMobil has been open. But that doesn’t seem to matter to the politicized attorneys general pursuing the company. A chilling impact on public debate is not in our collective interest.” (7/14/16)

Harvey Silverglate, Civil Liberties Attorney and ACLU Member:

The Exxon investigation is “pure harassment…. It is outrageous for any law enforcement official to be seeking to win this battle for minds by flexing law enforcement muscle and trying to shut up the other side.” (6/16/16)

Tristan Brown, Attorney and State University of New York Assistant Professor:

“[T]he Democratic coalition is pursuing adangerous means of achieving its goalof reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Its unprecedented definition of fraudthreatens to impose anundue and possibly unachievable regulatory burden on energy firms and their investors.” (6/21/16)

Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal Columnist:

“What these liberal prosecutors really want is toshut down a universe of their most-hated ideological opponents… The goal of the Exxon probe isn’t to protect consumers or help the environment. It’s a message: Oppose us, and we will marshal our terrifying government powers to intimidate and threaten you, to force you to spend millions defending yourself, to eat up the time you’d otherwise use speaking out.” (6/16/16)

C. Boyden Gray, Former U.S. Ambassador to the EU and Former White House Counsel:

“The decision to single out Exxon is especially ill conceived, because when it comes to actual proposals for real legislative action on climate change, Exxon’s advocacy has been indistinguishable from some of the leading environmental organizations. The Sierra Club’s former chief climate counsel has recounted how he and ExxonMobil’s climate policy manager “found common ground when we realized that we actually agreed on the best approach to climate policy”—namely a revenue neutral carbon tax—hardly the strategy one would expect from a company dedicated to covering up climate science.” (2/11/16)

Financial Times: Flimsy Legal Basis for #ExxonKnew, Alarming Free Speech Implications:

“The investigations launched by the attorney-generals of some US states and the Virgin Islands set a troubling precedent for other policy debates, and threaten to undermine the cause that they aim to support…The legal basis for these actions seems flimsy…Beyond that, the implications of the investigations for free speech on public policy issues are alarming. Everyone ought to be able to take part in policy debates without worrying that their opponents will be able to use the law to go on fishing expeditions through their private communications, looking for embarrassing tit-bits that can be used against them…. The actions by the attorney-generals can only degrade the quality of that debate.” (Editorial, 4/24/16)

Wall Street Journal: #ExxonKnew an ‘Attempt to Stamp Out All Disagreement on Global-Warming’ Policy:

“This marks a dangerous new escalation of the left’s attempt to stamp out all disagreement on global-warming science and policy…. Even with the fearsome power of the Martin Act, this investigation appears built for media consumption more than courtroom success.” (Editorial, 11/8/15)

Bloomberg View: Investigation is ‘Dangerous Arrogation of Power’:

“Engaging in scientific research and public advocacy shouldn’t be crimes in a free country. Using the criminal law to shame and encumber companies that do so is a dangerous arrogation of power.” (Editorial, 11/10/15)

Washington Post: Exxon ‘Didn’t Commit a Crime,’ Science Depends on Allowing Criticism:

“[T]here’s also a risk whenever law enforcement holds the prospect of criminal penalties over those involved in a scientific debate. Legitimate scientific inquiry depends on allowing strong, even unfair, criticism of the claims that scientists make. As the Exxon investigations show, respecting that principle will not lead to positive outcomes in all cases. But it nevertheless demands that the government leave a sizable buffer zone between irresponsible claims and claims it believes may be criminally fraudulent.” (Editorial, 11/14/15)

New York Post: It’s the State AGs Who Should Be Investigated:

“New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and other state AGs are probing ExxonMobil — but maybe they’re the ones who should be investigated…the anti-Exxon campaign is starting to look like a conspiracy in its own right – pursuing a purely political vendetta in a blatant abuse of office.” (Editorial, 4/19/16)

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recall exxon busted (UK?) and promised to stop funding denial so shift to buffer/front/trade:

https://climateinvestigations.org/exxon-and-friends-still-funding-climate-denial-and-obstruction-through-ipaa-fti-energy-in-depth

many docs grafs

Internal documents and conversations from the fracking lobby, revealed this week in HuffPost, shine new light on a ten year old public relations campaign front group called Energy In Depth. Documents show this front group is designed explicitly to exist without the fingerprints of its fossil fuel funders, giving the oil industry the “ability to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”

This reporting reveals how climate denial remains a key oil industry strategy in spite of their efforts to clean up their image. These shrouded attacks on climate science and solutions, attacks on lawmakers, scientists, lawyers and advocates stand in stark contrast to the seemingly desperate efforts of Exxon and their brethren to retain ‘social license’, gain credibility on climate change and distance themselves from their legacy of climate science denial.

Let’s define “climate denial” up front, as we did years ago in a Guardian interview for a story aboutEdelman PR: “Our definition of denial is anyone who is obstructing, delaying or trying to derail policy steps that are in line with the scientific consensus that says we need to take rapid steps to decarbonize the economy.” Simple enough. It goes beyond just denying that global warming exists.

HuffPost’s reporting shows that Exxon is a member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), an oil and gas industry trade association whose online assets include “news” sites like Energy In Depth (EID) that spew climate denial and attacks on scientists, journalists, advocates, and lawyers. IPAA acts as a pass through, bundling corporate members’ cash that’s funneled to the firm FTI Consulting, which created and manages sites like EID. An ExxonMobil spokesperson, responding to questions from the HuffPost reporter, tried valiantly to keep the veil in place, saying, “Your questions are better addressed to EID or IPAA.”

IPAA’s long history of denial

The IPAA has a long history of funding and proliferating misinformation on climate change, a legacy that continues to the this day. IPAA was named as a potential funder of the infamous multi-million dollar “uncertainty” campaign detailed in the 1998 Global Climate Science Communications Plan, an effort organized by API, Exxon, Chevron, Southern Company and assorted libertarian extremists. You can find that file and others in our ClimateFiles collection.

POTENTIAL FUNDING FOR GLOBAL CLIMATE SCIENCE COMMUNICATIONS (p. 8)

Potential funding sources were identified as American Petroleum Institute (API) and its members; Business Round Table (BRT) and its members, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and its members; Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and its members; and the National Mining Association (NMA) and its members. - Potential fund allocators were identified as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom and the Marshall Institute.

[View entire document on DocumentCloud]

The IPAA fact sheet on Climate Change released that same year has some pretty alarming climate denial claims — some even more extreme than the Global Climate Coalition was pushing at the time, and includes references to Fred Singer’s Leipzig Declaration and theImperial Oil DRI/McGraw Hill study on carbon taxes. IPAA also blame termites and volcanoes — basically everything but fossil fuels — for altering the atmosphere more than fossil fuels:

“Consider this: the largest source of greenhouse gas may be termites, whose digestive activities are responsible for 10 times more production of CO2 than burning fossil fuels.”

“So, since human-related CO2 is only a small portion of total atmospheric CO2, measures taken to limit it will have little or no measurable effect on overall emissions into the atmosphere. More importantly, there is still no evidence that CO2 emissions are warming the earth’s atmosphere. And we have no proof that man’s impact makes a difference at all.”

By 2008, the IPAA had a more nuanced fact sheet on climate change, but still emphasized uncertainty and denial,

“…no climate change policy action should discard the question of science. Too often, recent arguments for action discard the uncertainties of today’s understanding of global climate science. Global climate science is an emerging field, one that changes as the tools to model it improve.”

They know better…

The Washington Post revealed that in a June, 2019 presentation at an IPAA meeting, influential energy lawyer Mark Barron said the “ship has sailed” on using climate science denial as the first line of defense. Instead, Barron advocated lobbying Congress for climate legislation that benefits the oil and gas industry. He drew a sharp contrast between the industry’s former attacks on climate science and a more recent nuanced approach. He told the oil and gas executives and lobbyists gathered at the meeting sponsored by fracking giants Halliburton, Schlumberger and Oxy that they should be ready to talk about global warming, as long as they position fossil fuels as the solution. Despite this, HuffPost reporting shows that Barron’s audience, the IPAA and its members, are still deploying on climate denial and attacks on scientists through projects like EID and other web organs.

Funding Front Groups – FTI and Energy In Depth

IPAA describes Energy in Depth as the industry’s lead “rapid response platform” for the fracking industry. IPAA created Energy in Depth (EID) shortly after the environmental impacts from the fracking boom began to make national headlines. IPAA member Exxon/XTO was one of EID’s first funders.

Internal IPAA Board documents, published by HuffPost, describe the purpose of the project:

“The main focus of EID has evolved into addressing the “Keep It In The Ground” movement.” (Keep it In The Ground refers to activists and scientists working to keep new fossil fuels from being extracted and burned, commensurate with the conclusion by international scientists that we simply cannot burn even a percentage of known and potential fossil fuel reserves if we want to keep global temperatures from rising to dangerous levels.)

...

Funding for EID comes directly from unnamed oil and gas corporations like Exxon, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Oxy, Marathon Oil, and is funneled through IPAA, which funds the Energy in Depth project on an annual basis.

According IPAA budget documents, the EID campaign costs more than $2 million dollars per year, representing about one fifth of IPAA’s total budget, second only to “Salaries and Benefits” in scale.

BIG QUESTION: What puzzles us is how IPAA is classifying this expense to the IRS.This $2M plus annual payment to FTI does not appear, as required by law, on the IRS 990 form filed by IPAA under “Independent Contractors” “that received more than $100,000 in compensation from the organization.” (see Part VII Section B on page 8 of 2017 990). Perhaps IPAA can provide an explanation.

IPAA 2017 990 Independent Contractors Page 8

The real story of Energy In Depth

Colleagues at DeSmog have been watching Energy in Depth from the beginning, when it was launched to blunt attention to the rapid spread of fracking ten years ago and concerns from community members, lawmakers, journalists and activists.

IPAA’s Jeff Eshelman, described the genesis and purpose of the group in a 2017 IPAA retreat:

The IPAA funding of over $2M a year to FTI/Energy in Depth is spent on five sub-campaigns, meant to undermine the public’s understanding and support of climate and environmental protections:

EID Climate exists “to counteract the “Keep it in the Ground” movement’s newsiest strategy to use climate change as a weapon to silence dissent and shut down American energy production”. The website pushes back on litigation against oil and gas companies.

EID Health is a “rapid response program” to counter studies linking oil and gas drilling and production to health impacts.

Endangered Species Watch is meant to blunt the Federal Endangered Species Actand is described as “disseminating news, regulations and issue alerts to member companies, affiliated industries and policy makers.”

Energy Tax Facts defends tax subsidies for the fossil fuel industry

Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign advocates against movements asking Universities and pension funds to divest from fossil fuels.

FTIhas carved out a specialty in aggressive attacks on foes of the oil and gas industry, doing the dirty work that oil corporations would not want their brands tied to in public. An FTI “Techical Paper” report presented at a 2014 Brazilian oil industry conference describes Energy in Depth’s purpose pretty bluntly, stating that the web asset provides the “ability to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.” (emphasis added)

The actual work of running EID is contracted out by IPAA to FTI Consulting, a massive global PR and consulting firm. Here are a few individuals we know are connected to the Energy In Depth project and have written themselves into the wrong side of history:

Matt Dempsey, a Managing Director at FTI, manages Energy in Depth and lists himself as an editorial editor WesternWire, another front group run for Western Energy Alliance, another oil trade association like IPAA. Dempsey and a colleague were recently recorded by a lawyer for EarthRights International who called them out for being agents of Exxon, and pretending to be journalists. Exxon is a defendant in the Boulder Colorado lawsuit that EID and WesternWire have tried hard to malign. Dempsey used to work for Senator James Inhofe.

Steve Everley, is an FTI Managing Director of Strategic Communications and a senior advisor on the Energy In Depth project. Inside Climate News ran a lengthy rebuttal to the work Everley did to trash their actual journalism on fracking in 2014.

Spencer Walrath, who is actually an FTI employee (Director, Energy & Natural Resources at FTI Consulting Inc) but pretends to be an journalist on Energy In Depth. He graduated University of Northern Iowa in 2012. Spencer’s FTI job was announced in his college newsletter.

Katie Brown, PhD, who now works for FTI out of Belgium was a major part of Energy in Depth while working for FTI in Washington DC until a couple years ago. This archived 45 slide Powerpoint presentation from 2014 by Brown lays out the IPAA-FTI-EID connection and details all their work to undermine regulations on ozone, groundwater protection, methane emissions and more. (Brown’s PhD is in English, btw and she is or was working on a book on James Joyce…congratulations, but how does that PhD apply to an energy front group website besides using good grammar?)

More EID denial

FTI’s Energy in Depth Climate front group spends most of its pixels trying to trash climate lawsuits, promoting natural gas as a climate solution, and attacking science implicating methane’s role in climate change. Methane, a super greenhouse gas and the main component of “natural gas”, leaks from fracking fields in vast quantities making the current natural gas supply much dirtier fuel than it used to be before fracking became a thing. This point was recently illustrated nicely with FLIR images by the New York Times, and news of this Exxon gas well leak which released more methane in a few weeks than many countries emit in a year.

Each of the EID sub-campaigns employ tactics common to climate deniers, like attacking climate models, denying the impact of methane from fracking, repeating debunked myths about a global pause in warming, and claiming that “one in six climate and earth scientists” think human’s impact on climate change is “little or none.”

Most recently, Spencer Walrath wrote a piece in EID going after a peer reviewed scientific study on ocean acidification and the companies connected to the carbon dioxide that has acidified the ocean, the science of which is even harder to deny than climate change.

And this post by Katie Brown, PhD at EID uses sham science and Wikipedia links to attack calls for accountability for companies like Exxon.

EID “Experts”

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On the EID Climate website, the list of experts includes people like Craig Richardson, president of the coal-funded, climate-denying Energy and Environment Legal Institute. Richardson has called climate change a communist plot.

Other experts include Horace Cooper, who is listed as a senior fellow the National Center for Public Policy Research an organization that has received $445,000 in grants from Exxon over the past two decades including several grants earmarked for climate work.

NCPPR CLIMATE GRANT (p. 44)

View entire document on DocumentCloud]

Cooper is also a Fellow with the preeminent climate science denial group the Heartland Institute. Heartland has held a number of gatherings dedicated to outright climate science denial. Heartland was also heavily funded by Exxon until they dropped them after 2006. The Mercer Family stepped in in 2008 and has given Heartland upwards of $6.7M from 2008-2017. In 2018, this grant appears to have been moved through Donors Trust.

FTI work for other industries with legal and political problems

In 2019, court documents revealed FTI was running opportunities for Monsanto on RoundUp and GMO fights, alternately posing as journalists and attacking journalists, complete with an FTI campaign spreadsheet of steps taken to undermine and intimidate journalist Carey Gillam.

Most recently, FTI produced a report on health care for a front group attacking “Medicare for All” proposals by politicians.

IPAA Lobbying With Climate Denial Under Trump

IPAA is a significant lobbying arm of the oil industry, spending 1.4 million on lobbying in 2018. Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed emails from IPAA lobbyists to key political appointees in the Department of Interior, showing an ignorance of basic climate change information and a willingness to disregard climate science when it gets in the way of oil and gas production.

In one set of emails,IPAA lobbyist Samantha McDonald asked DOI appointees to reduce protections on an endangered species of beetle. A key reason IPAA protested the beetle’s protected status? – because its projected decline was based in part on climate change science. McDonald directly questioned the viability of climate change models, but not before admitting she is “not too familiar” with the 30 year old UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As proof that the preeminent scientific body studying climate change in the world could not be trusted, she cited a Google search and a random Forbes article. MacDonald wrote to DOI appointee Vincent DeVito in 2017:

“All modeling is done using the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While I am not too familiar with this organization or their work, I did some searching and found this Forbes article discrediting the IPCC, citing irresponsible science practices (intentionally manipulating data, suppressing legitimate opposing arguments, etc.). This may be something to look into and push back on, since most of the climate changes threat analysis in the SSA is based on this work.”

IPAA ON IPCC (p. 214)

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In spite of her lack of science background, IPAA’s McDonald would go on to testify on endangered species law, and the beetle would eventually be “downlisted” by the Trump administration as reported by the Washington Post.

In sum, the Energy In Depth project is entirely consistent with the 30 year campaign (or back to the 1940s…see CIEL’s Smoke and Fumes) by the oil industry to avoid being regulated for environmental harm caused by their products – climate change, air and water pollution. This covert effort contradicts oil industry leaders’ anxious attempts to portray a greener, climate friendly business model in recent years.

We can see right through it, but the aim is clear. Between Barron, the lawyer’s comments and IPAA’s front group Energy In Depth, the fossil fuel industry clearly is trying to play it both ways – opposing climate action while pushing natural gas as a solution and trying to benefit from whatever climate policies do come to pass and keep drilling away unchecked. All the while refusing to treat the global climate crisis like the real and present danger that it is. While IPAA lobbyists may try to play good cop in meetings on the Hill, they are actually leaning on old fashioned attacks on science to delay and distort any serious attempt to address climate change.

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heated 320

it took Maine Governor Janet Mills 12 days since the first case of novel coronavirus hit to implement the type of restrictive social distancing policies scientists overwhelmingly recommend to halt disease spread, including the closure of nonessential businesses.

It took her only five days, however, to delay the state’s ban on single-use plastic bags, using a scientifically questionable theory that reusable bags pose an outsized risk of spreading COVID-19.

Since Mills’ March 17 order, reusable grocery bags in Maine have become taboo. City officials are now discouraging shopping from bringing them to the store, claiming they will threaten grocery story workers. “According to current research and understanding, COVID-19 can survive on various surfaces for hours and in some cases days,” Portland City Manager Jon Jennings said in a news release last week.

And though Mills was the first state governor in America to give credence to this theory, she hasn’t been the last. Over the weekend, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu outright prohibited shoppers from bringing reusable bags to stores. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker did the same on Wednesday. “From now on, reusable bags are prohibited and all regulations on plastic bag bans are lifted,” he said.

This, however, is likely just the beginning of the plastic industry’s war on reusable bags. Because as the pandemic has picked up steam in America, so too has the industry’s push for policy and culture shifts to encourage single-use plastics, and ban reusable alternatives. Their allies in the news media, oil and gas industry, and conservative think tank world are all quickly lining up behind them—and together, they’re putting pressure on the public and the federal government get on board.

Last week, the Plastics Industry Association asked the Department of Health and Human Services to make a national pronouncement supporting single-use plastics and advocating against reusable grocery bags, claiming they will worsen the pandemic. “Study after study after study have shown that reusable bags can carry viruses and bacteria, spread them throughout a grocery store, and live on surfaces for up to three days,” they claimed.

But those three studies don’t actually say what the industry claims. Taken together, they do not provide sufficient evidence that reusable grocery bags pose a greater threat to consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic than single-use plastic grocery bags.

Let’s go through them one by one.

1) The 10-year-old American Chemistry Council-funded study that looked at 84 reusable bags in two states and found no disease-causing bacteria

The first piece of research that the plastic industry says strongly suggests a correlation between reusable grocery bags and coronavirus spread was this 2010 study funded by the American Chemistry Council, an industry group which represents plastics interests. Conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona, it was published in the journal Food Protection Trends in 2011.

Analyzing just 84 reusable bags collected in California and Arizona, the studies authors concluded that “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half.” They did not, however, find any pathogenic bacteria or strains of E. Coli that actually make you sick. As Consumer Reports noted at the time, “They only found bacteria that don’t normally cause disease, but do cause disease in people with weakened immune systems.”

“A person eating an average bag of salad greens gets more exposure to these bacteria than if they had licked the insides of the dirtiest bag from this study,” Michael Hansen, a senior staff scientist at Consumers Union, said in the article. “These bacteria can be found lots of places, so no need to go overboard.”

The reason there was bacteria on the bags was because people didn’t wash them. If people washed the bags, the study said, 99.9 percent of all bacteria was destroyed.

2) The study that looked at 30 reusable bags and said essentially the same thing

The second study, published in the international journal Food Control in 2019, found microbes capable of causing food-borne illness on the bags. This time, half the bags tested had coliform bacteria on them and some even had E. coli.

This makes sense, again, because the bags had a bunch of food in them, and were not washed or sanitized. As Johns Hopkins University infectious disease specialist told Bustle at the time, “Reusable shopping bags, like anything, can accumulate micoorganisms from the environment. Unless the bag is visibly soiled, most of the risk is not worth worrying about.”

Of course, this means coronavirus could be on your bag, because coronavirus can live on plastic surfaces for up to 3 days. But neither of these studies indicate that it has any greater risk of being on your reusable bag than, say, your money, your phone, or your hands, which also get a lot of use at the grocery story. Nor do they indicate that reusable bags made of plastic have a greater risk of holding the virus than single-use plastic bags, which could be infected with pathogens during transportation, manufacturing, or handling.

Cameron Wolfe, an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University, told the Wall Street Journal something similar, when talking about how companies like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts have stopped filling customers’ reusable cups out of fear of coronavirus. “It’s drawing a pretty long bow to believe this will be meaningfully impactful,” he said. “It’s an incredibly low likelihood that the cup would be the primary vehicle for transmission to occur.”

The article added: “Coronavirus can survive for a period outside the body and is transmitted through droplets like those generated by a cough or a sneeze. If a cup is infected, its owner probably is too, said Mr. Wolfe, making handing over cash and touching door handles potentially just as risky.

“You’d have a better impact if you told customers with active coughs not to come in, or to use hand sanitizer before approaching the coffee stand,” he said.”

3) The study that looked at one reusable bag that someone had literally vomited next to in a bathroom and then gave to a group of children.

Yeah, honestly, like I can’t even go there with this one. You can read about that study here.

Also, coronavirus is not a norovirus. It is literally not the same thing.

No evidence, no problem

There is certainly a chance that coronavirus could live on our reusable grocery bags if those bags come in contact with an infected person—particularly if those bags are made of plastic. A study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the novel coronavirus is most stable on plasticsurfaces.

But that also includes single-use plastic surfaces, said Aaron Bernstein, the director of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment. “This suggests that relying on plastic bags may be the best way to ensure the virus persists in the environment and facilitates spread of the disease.”

Clearly, there is still a debate to be had over the efficacy of plastic bag policies for coronavirus—especially since plastic bag bans in themselves are attempts to address climate change and ocean pollution, two other pressing global crises. It would be foolish to prematurely stop an attempt to address two global crises without a baseline sort of consensus that it would even remotely help the other.

The right and its allies, however, appear to have made up their minds. Energy in Depth, a pro-oil-and-gas drilling industry front group formed by the American Petroleum Institute, wrote an article claiming coronavirus will spread without more single-use plastic bags. The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal have written editorials in support of reversing bag bans. Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative anti-climate group, is taking out ads on Facebook claiming that plastic bag bans help spread the coronavirus infectio.

[graf twt]

it makes sense why so many right-leaning interest groups would come together on this issue. Before coronavirus, single-use plastic products were falling out of favor, as studies showed they were exacerbating climate change and destroying the ocean. Now, the industry is hoping COVID-19 will make everyone forget all that.

“As the coronavirus spreads across the country, single-use plastics will only become more vital,” Plastics Industry Association President Tony Radoszewski said in a statement last week. “We live longer, healthier, and better because of single-use plastics.”

Bernstein, however, is hoping that we remember something else. “In a crisis, we need science to guide us,” he said. “And that means science done by credible investigators who are supported by organizations without a vested financial interest in a specific outcome of their research.”

wash exam bedad quotes dhs rept but does not link to it (i can find nowhere online) also cited by EID (nope, eid links to WT)

https://www.energyindepth.org/department-of-homeland-security-warns-of-eco-terrorism-threats-on-pipeline/

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WARNS OF ECO-TERRORISM THREATS ON PIPELINE

BY NICOLE JACOBS APR. 19, 2017 1

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a new report warning that the $900 million Diamond Pipeline — which will carry crude oil from Cushing, Okla., to a refinery in Memphis, Tenn. — could be the target of eco-terrorism attacks similar to those against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The DHS report explains,

“DHS and the authoring fusion centers assess the most likely potential domestic terrorist threat to the Diamond Pipeline construction project or associated entities is from environmental rights extremists motivated by resentment over perceived environmental destruction.” (emphasis added)

The report also states,

“While most opposition activity related to pipeline construction remains nonviolent and lawful protest activity, some violent extremists may take advantage of lawful gatherings to attempt to threaten, incite, or commit violent acts against public safety officers or facility staff.”

As EID recently explained, #NoDAPL-style protest camps have been set up in multiple states to oppose pipeline and oil and natural gas infrastructure projects. Many of the same #NoDAPL protesters who left behind big environmental messes and added to already burdened municipal budgets that taxpayers are forced to pay for in North Dakota are now traveling to these copycat camps.

A #NoDAPL camp in North Dakota. Source: NPR

DHS acknowledged in the report that the agency “is concerned negative perceptions about enforcement against DAPL opponents could inspire likeminded individuals to seek out reprisal violence against similar targets” and that these attacks would “likely be simple and designed to damage physical infrastructure or equipment by sabotage or arson” targeting “law enforcement, private contract security guards, or construction personnel,” as was the case in previous attacks against pipelines.

The DHS report explains that “environmental rights extremists have a long history of using arson attacks to inflict economic damage and disrupt projects or infrastructure they believe present a danger to the environment.” The multiple arson attacks against DAPL detailed in the report are listed below.

“On 1 August 2016, unknown individual(s) set fires in Iowa’s Jasper County targeting heavy machinery at three construction sites associated with DAPL, resulting in over $1 million in damages to equipment, including a bulldozer and a track hoe, according to media reporting. According to media reports citing local law enforcement, the fires damaged the vehicles’ engine and cab compartments, likely resulting in a total loss of the equipment. There have been no arrests or claims of responsibility for the attacks, which were the first local criminal incidents related to the project.”

“On 15 October 2016, unknown individual(s) committed a fourth arson against DAPL construction equipment in Jasper County, according to local news reports. According to media reporting citing local law enforcement, there have been no arrests. The attack occurred in the same area as one of the August arsons and involved similar tactics, possibly suggesting it was related to the earlier arsons. The arson resulted in over $2 million worth of damage. In both the August and October attacks, the targets’ proximity and relationship with DAPL, and the tactics, techniques, and procedures used suggest this incident was plausibly carried out by environmental right extremists. “ (emphasis added)

The report explains that although other methods such as homemade bombs or improvised explosive devices (IED) are not frequently used in attacks against pipelines, these types of weapons were recovered from #NoDAPL camps. From North Dakota’s Valley News:

“Law enforcement say they are investigating the use of homemade explosives at a Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protest. They have recovered weapons and are investigating whether or not they are related to injuries a female protester suffered.”

…

“Law Enforcement received information that protesters were using one-pound propane cylinders as explosives and the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation with support from Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms recovered three of these propane canisters from the site of the explosion.

Investigators also collected rocks and glass jars consistent with the design of Molotov cocktails that were used as weapons against law enforcement.” (emphasis added)

https://www.valleynewslive.com/content/news/Propane-cylinders-recovered-at-explosion-site-of-DAPL-protest-402544435.html

Homemade explosive device recovered from #NoDAPL camp. Source: Valley News

While this report focuses specifically on one pipeline, its cautionary message can be applied to any of the projects currently facing opposition from extremists involved in the Keep It In The Ground movement (KIITG), who have a goal to stop all fossil fuel development by any means necessary. Whether or not these copycat camps leave a path of environmental destruction like they did in North Dakota or are successful in harming local contractors’ equipment with their well-documented tactics remains to be seen.

There are some certainties in the wake of what occurred in North Dakota, however: there will be extremists among the peaceful protesters and the local communities in their path will carry the financial burden of all of the protesters’ actions.

TAGS: Department of Homeland Security, Diamond Pipeline, eco-terrorism, Energy In Depth, nodapl, pipelines

ref

https://www.valleynewslive.com/content/news/Propane-cylinders-recovered-at-explosion-site-of-DAPL-protest-402544435.html

Propane cylinders recovered at explosion site of DAPL protest

Posted: Tue 6:10 PM, Nov 22, 2016 | Updated: Tue 6:13 PM, Nov 22, 2016

odd no byline?]

MORTON COUNTY, N.D. (Valley News Live) – Law enforcement say they are investigating the use of homemade explosives at a Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protest. They have recovered weapons and are investigating whether or not they are related to injuries a female protester suffered.

Law enforcement say around 3:00 a.m. November 21, protester activity had de-escalated near the Backwater Bridge, but they noticed two males and a female using a barricade to hide their activity.

Officials say they gave repeated orders for the three people to come out from behind the barricade and they attempted to force them out with “less than lethal” bean bags and sponge rounds. It was then the officers noticed the protesters approach and roll multiple metallic cylinder objects.

“The subjects were given opportunities to retreat back, but it became obvious that they were tampering with the vehicle or planting a device,” said Highway Patrol Lieutenant Tom Iverson. “Their strange mannerisms led law enforcement to believe they were there for a purpose with a calculated effort to either cause harm or breach the line.”

Lt. Iverson says after the cylinders were rolled, law enforcement witnessed an explosion. Several protesters ran to the area, pulled a female from under the vehicle, and fled the scene.

Law Enforcement received information that protesters were using one-pound propane cylinders as explosives and the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation with support from Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms recovered three of these propane canisters from the site of the explosion.

Investigators also collected rocks and glass jars consistent with the design of Molotov cocktails that were used as weapons against law enforcement.

Meantime, a news conference and vigil were held in Minneapolis on Tuesday. In a news release from the American Indian Movement (AIM), they say Sophia Wilansky, 21, of New York, was hit in the arm with a concussion grenade and she was airlifted to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.

Wilansky underwent surgery Monday, and is currently in recovery.

"This latest escalation in excessive police force and violence against peaceful water protectors just shows what the state is willing to do to protect the interests of oil companies. A young woman almost lost her arm today so that Energy Transfer Partners can build their dangerous pipeline on Indigenous lands," said Alex Lundberg, of Minneapolis, and a friend of Wilansky.

Lt. Iverson says they are investigating whether or not the explosives mentioned above are linked to a woman who claims to have suffered injuries at a protest.

“We are aware of the information about the woman on social media who has claimed she sustained injuries to her arm due to law enforcement tactics. The injuries sustained are inconsistent with any resources utilized by law enforcement and are not a direct result of any tools or weapons used by law enforcement,” said Iverson. “This incident remains under investigation by the North Dakota BCI and ATF. Additional details will be released as the investigation progresses.”

Law enforcement also address the use of water on protesters, saying the fire department trucks were initially brought in to put out several fire set by protesters. They made the following statement about the use of water:

“Law enforcement used CS gas to control the protestors but wind conditions caused it to be ineffective. Law Enforcement commanders had to assess the violent acts of protestors and determine how to maintain the safety of officers. Those commanders made the decision to use water and warned the protestors repeatedly that water would be used and gave them opportunity to disperse.

Instead of dispersing, agitators yelled at law enforcement, “Hit me! Hit me!” and many were running directly toward the water. The water was used once protesters attempted to tow away the remaining burned truck and comments being yelled by protesters included, “We are willing to die for this,” and “We get paid for this.” The protesters were also taunting officers saying, “You are outnumbered.” This led law enforcement to believe the protesters were preparing to overrun the barricade [made of? put there when/ why?]

on the north side of the bridge. Because of this threat and that other law enforcement tactics were not effective, water was the chosen less-than-lethal tool to use to hold back protesters.”

Follow www.valleynewslive.com for updates to this developing situation.

---

note forbes suggests legit?!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/legalnewsline/2018/04/27/judge-ca-cities-alleging-doom-in-climate-change-lawsuits-sold-investors-a-different-story/#54681cea10e1

California officials who are suing large energy companies are telling two contradictory stories while taking part in a targeted effort featuring state attorneys general, private lawyers and Rockefeller money, a Texas judge has found.

On April 24, Tarrant County District Judge R.H. Wallace, Jr. signed off on proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, changing little from what Exxon is claiming – that lawsuits from California cities and counties are the product of an alleged conspiracy and assert that near-certain, climate change-caused doom is coming, even though previous bond offerings made to potential investors say such catastrophes can’t be predicted.

The judge’s filing was obtained by Energy In Depth, a research program of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

“While the California municipalities alleged in their complaints against the energy companies that the impacts of climate change were knowable, quantifiable and certain, they told their investors the exact opposite,” Wallace's filing says.

“These contradictions raise the question of whether the California municipalities brought these lawsuits for an improper purpose.”

The California counties of Marin, Santa Cruz and San Mateo and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Richmond and Imperial Beach have filed suit against several energy companies - including Exxon, Chevron and BP - over climate change. The company is also being targeted by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

Exxon took the fight to Texas in January by asking that it be allowed to depose the officials who filed these cases, as well as Hagens Berman lawyer Matt Pawa. The firm is representing some of the plaintiffs on a contingency fee.

The depositions could lead to a lawsuit alleging the California cases were brought in bad faith.

Statements made to potential investors contradict allegations made by the municipalities when they sued the energy industry, Exxon argued. For example:

San Mateo County’s complaint says it is “particularly vulnerable to sea level rise” and that there is a 93% chance the county experiences a “devastating” flood before 2050. However, bond offerings in 2014 and 2016 noted that the county “is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur."

At a recent American Enterprise Institute event, an attorney representing Colorado governments in climate change cases noted that the bond offerings came with a statement regarding a final paper from the California Climate Change Center that said property in San Francisco Bay is vulnerable to impacts associated with sea-level rise.

But the cities did not present an opinion on the accuracy of those claims, which was noted by Competitive Enterprise Institute attorney who attended the event.

The California cases came five years after a “playbook” was discussed at a 2012 conference in La Jolla, CA. It is being carried out by Pawa, the AGs of New York and Massachusetts and the California local governments, Exxon said.

The judge’s findings of fact agree.

“During the conference, participants discussed strategies to ‘[w]in [a]cess to [i]nternal [d]ocuments’ of energy companies, like ExxonMobil, that could be used to obtain leverage over these companies,” the filing says.

“The conference participants concluded that using law enforcement powers and civil litigation to ‘maintain[] pressure on the industry that could eventually lead to its support for legislative and regulatory responses to global warming.’ One commentator observed, ‘Even if your ultimate goal might be to shut down a company, you still might be wise to start out by asking for compensation for injured parties.’"

In 2016, Pawa met with members of the philanthropic Rockefeller Family Fund. The draft agenda said the goals of his campaign included convincing the public that Exxon is a corrupt institution that “has pushed humanity (and all creation) toward climate chaos and grave harm,” as well as forcing public officials to distance themselves from the company by refusing campaign donations and rejecting requests for meetings.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund recently awarded a $200,000 grant to the Niskanen Center, which is representing the City of Boulder in its lawsuit against Exxon and another company.

“The draft agenda notes that participants planned to use ‘AGs’ and ‘Tort()’ suits to ‘get() discovery’ and ‘creat(e) scandal,’” the judge’s filing says.

Those AGs attempted to hide their coordination with Pawa, the judge says.

"At the press conference, Attorney General Schneiderman discussed the need to regulate the energy industry's speech on climate change, just as Potential Defendant Pawa had urged at La Jolla and at the Rockefeller meeting," the filing says.

The judge also found that this effort was done to chill Texas-based free speech (Exxon’s statements public statements about climate change), so jurisdiction is proper in his court.

---

http://www.alternet.org/environment/rex-tillerson-has-been-misleading-public-about-dangers-fracking-years

...

. It worked. With help from sympathetic (and largely conservative) media outlets and a barrage of propaganda from industry front groups like “Energy in Depth,” the industry was able to brand the victims as liars and charlatans. “Their water was always like that” became a meme—a “sciencey” explanation that let the industry off the hook and blamed the victims. Each new case got the same treatment, and with oil industry PR money behind it, much of the nation believed it.

Central to the oil industry’s branding of fracking as a clean source of energy is the claim that “there’s never been one case of water pollution from fracking.” Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exon (and now Secretary of State) looked straight into the camera and proclaimed in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2013 that after “a million data points,” there had “never been a verifiable case of fracking polluting drinking water.” The claim was patently false. At that point we knew aquifers had been polluted in Dimock Pa, Pavilion Wyoming and Parker Country Texas. Texas, Colorado, Wyoming resulting in dozens of water wells being polluted. Testing in all three cases pointed to gas extraction.

In fact, there are documented cases of fracking contaminating drinking water as early as the 1980s. An EPA report from 1987 showed that “fracturing the Kaiser gas well on Mr. James Parson’s property, fractures were created allowing migration of fracture fluid from the gas well to Mr. Parson’s water well.” Industry itself admitted that fracking polluted the well. During the 1990s when modern fracking technologies were being pioneered in Texas, widespread instances of pollution were acknowledged by Texas regulators.

But with enough people in positions of power and influence repeating it, the claim that there had never been a single case of fracking polluting drinking water became a “fact.” Media figures, oil industry officials, politicians, state regulators and gas and oil PR teams repeated the same story line: Fracking has been around for seventy years and there’s never been one documented case of pollution.

There were numerous problems with this story. First, modern slick-water fracking combined with horizontal drilling is a relatively new technology. Comparing the “stimulation” of old vertical wells to modern fracks with pressures up to 15,000 PSI and hundreds of chemicals is like comparing a 1960s rotary phone to today's iPhone.

Also left out of the not-one-case story is a clever sleight of hand with the definition of fracking. The oil industry defines “fracking” as only what happens in the horizontal section of pipe thousands of feet underground. According to this reasoning, the only way fracking can pollute drinking water is by migrating through thousands of feet of solid rock. Pollution from the vertical part of the well—where most leaks occur—or surface activity is not in this technical definition pollution from fracking.

Of course, most people understand fracking as the whole process of transporting equipment and chemicals to the site, drilling the well, extracting the gas and transporting it to market. Oil industry PR people are perfectly willing to use this confusion to their advantage. They can cite scientific papers claiming that “there has never been a case of fracking polluting drinking water,” and let the public believe they are referring to the common-sense definition of fracking as the entire industrial process.

Industry leaders like Tillerson know all this, of course. But they just keep repeating the same misleading claim. If enough “experts,” authority figures and media personalities keep repeating it, the big lie becomes a fact in people’s minds. And once it’s embedded, these everyone-knows-it facts are very difficult to dislodge.

An important part of the oil industry drive to control perceptions of fracking is demonizing its critics. Victims are portrayed as greedy fraudsters. Environmentalists are portrayed as hysterical, hypocritical busy bodies inventing scandals about a clean energy technology they should be celebrating. Filmmakers like Josh Fox, whose film “Gasland” shined a spotlight on cases of pollution associated with fracking, were subjected to withering character assassination campaigns.

The IPAA, the oldest petroleum industry association in the nation, funded a film a film to discredit “Gasland” called “Truthland.” It was a shiny spin piece that painted any case of water contamination as naturally occurring. The best known of these fracking-denial films is “FrackNation” by Phelim McAleer. McAleer has made a career out of making films depicting environments as hypocritical elitists and pollution victims as frauds and liars. A darling of conservative news outlets, McAleer has been one of the most effective proponents of fracking-has-never-contaminated-drinking-water meme. Other media figures like Alex Epstein and Ezra Levant have cashed in by writing Ann Coulter-style books popularizing oil industry talking points. Levant is famous in Canada for his shouting-head attacks on oil industry critics.

IPAA also fired up their own PR “news” outlet, Energy In Depth. In a memo announcing the new media group, IPAA stated the group’s goal; “EnergyInDepth.org: a state of the art online resource center to combat new environmental regulations,”. The venture was funded by major gas and oil interests including; BP, Anadarko, Marathon, EnCana, Chevron, Talisman, Shell, Halliburton and Schlumberger and Energy in Depth remains one of the main purveyors of the gas industry’s talking points regarding water, fracking and pollution.

When a reporter or member of the public asks if fracking pollutes drinking water, they’re likely asking if any part of the entire process contaminates drinking water. That’s logical since the entire process will be used as the nation moves forward with the planned fracked gas revolution. When the question is answered with a resounding, seemingly convincing ‘NO’, the reporter or citizen thinks no water has ever been contaminated by any part of the fracking process.

While industry has gotten away with this ruse for a decade, hundreds of cases of water contamination have become known. After a long fight, The Scranton Times got Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection to count the number of letters it sent to residents confirming incidence of water contamination during their fracked gas boom. That number was 243. The Associated Press found at least four states had recorded water contamination also. One troubling fact keeps us from knowing how many cases have actually occurred. When a homeowner settles their case with the operator, they are required to sign a silence agreement that disallows them from sharing any facts about their case. Not only do we know hundreds of cases of water contamination related to the fracking boom have occurred, as it is today, we can never know how many cases there really have been.

---

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final report on the drinking water impacts of hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) has provoked howls from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which blasted EPA analysts as “science deniers” pushing “fake news.” But the editorial’s deeply flawed reasoning is the latest evidence that the Journal is in denial when it comes to scientific findings that conflict with its pro-fossil fuel agenda, whether they relate to fracking or climate change.

In the December 18 editorial, the Journal misrepresented the changes the EPA made to its draft version of the report, which was released in June 2015:

After being barraged by plaintiff attorneys and Hollywood celebrities, the EPA in its final report substituted its determination of no “widespread, systemic impact” with the hypothetical that fracking “can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances” and that “impacts can range in frequency and severity” depending on the circumstances.

[...]

The EPA now asserts that “significant data gaps and uncertainties” prevent it from “calculating or estimating the national frequency of impacts.”

In reality, all of the findings the Journal pointed to in the final version of the report were also present in the draft version. The draft version stated that “there are above and below ground mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources,” identified “factors affecting the frequency or severity” of those impacts, and acknowledged that "data limitations" prevent the agency from having "any certainty" of how often fracking has actually impacted drinking water.

The one change the Journal correctly identified was that in the final version of the report, the EPA rescinded its draft conclusion that there was no evidence fracking has “led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources.” But contrary to the Journal’s claim that the EPA disavowed that finding because the agency had been “barraged by plaintiff attorneys and Hollywood celebrities,” it was actually changed after the EPA’s scientific advisory board, which evaluates the agency’s “use of science,” pointed out that the draft conclusion wasn’t supported elsewhere in the report:

The [Science Advisory Board] has concerns regarding the clarity and adequacy of support for several major findings presented within the draft Assessment Report that seek to draw national-level conclusions regarding the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources.

[...]

Of particular concern in this regard is the high level conclusion statement on page ES-6 that “We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.” The SAB finds that the EPA did not support quantitatively its conclusion about lack of evidence for widespread, systemic impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources, and did not clearly describe the system(s) of interest (e.g., groundwater, surface water), the scale of impacts (i.e., local or regional), nor the definitions of “systemic” and “widespread.” The SAB observes that the statement has been interpreted by readers and members of the public in many different ways. The SAB concludes that if the EPA retains this conclusion, the EPA should provide quantitative analysis that supports its conclusion that hydraulic fracturing has not led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources.

EPA Deputy Administrator Tom Burke recently confirmed that the EPA chose to remove the “no widespread, systematic impacts” language after receiving feedback from the science advisory board, and “Burke said the EPA opted to remove the phrase because it ‘could not be quantitatively supported’ and it ‘showed that sentence did not clearly communicate the findings of the report,’" as American Public Media reported.

The Journal further claimed that “the EPA’s faulty construction of a monitoring well caused contamination” in Pavillion, WY, citing that situation as an example of how “any technology has the potential to inflict some damage” if mismanaged. However, that claim – which has been pushed by a fossil fuel industry front group – has been debunked by experts at Stanford University, as the Casper Star-Tribune reported: EID

Industry critics once argued samples from the EPA’s groundwater monitoring wells should be discounted because of faulty construction. But the compounds found in those monitoring wells are more commonly associated with fracking—not the cements used to encase a well, [Stanford researchers Dominic DiGiulio and Robert Jackson] say.

The Journal concluded its editorial by asserting that it is “ironic” that liberals who “denounce anyone who cites uncertainties about carbon’s climate impact as ‘deniers’” are now “justifying their opposition to fracking based on scientific uncertainties.” As quite possibly the most frequent purveyor of climate science misinformation in the entire media landscape, the Journal has rightly received substantial criticism for its climate denial. The difference, of course, is that there is near-universal scientific consensus that carbon pollution is warming the planet, whereas both the draft and final versions of the EPA report show that no such consensus yet exists about the impacts fracking has had on drinking water resources.

Such false equivalency only goes to show that the Journal editorial board is in denial about both climate change and fracking.

=-==

ref see below

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11921/%E2%80%9Cenergy-depth%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-reporters%E2%80%99-guide-its-founding-funding-and-flacks

ref

https://www.desmogblog.com/%E2%80%98energy-depth%E2%80%99-was-created-major-oil-and-gas-companies-according-industry-memo

CF Correction: epa blew frack call b/c bound by superfund regs? nb desmog role

Back in 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a startling announcement, shaking up the battle over fracking in one of the nation’s highest-profile cases where drillers were suspected to have caused water contamination.

Water testing results were in for homeowners along Carter Road in Dimock, Pennsylvania, where for years, homeowners reported their water had turned brown, became flammable or started clogging their well with “black greasy feeling sediment” after Cabot Oil and Gas began drilling in the area. The EPA seemed to conclude the water wasn’t so bad after all.

“The sampling and an evaluation of the particular circumstances at each home did not indicate levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take further action,” EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin said in a press release.

The drilling industry crowed. “The data released today once again confirms the EPA’s and DEP’s [Department of Environmental Protection] findings that levels of contaminants found do not possess a threat to human health and the environment,” Cabot said in a statement.

“It’s obviously very good news for the folks who actually live there and pretty squarely in line with what we’ve known up there for a while now,”Energy in Depth told POLITICOPro. “It’s not very good news for the out-of-state folks who have sought to use Dimock as a talking point in their efforts to prevent development elsewhere, but I’m sure they’ll be working hard over the weekend to spin it differently, notwithstanding the pretty clear statement made by EPA today.”

Now, a newly published report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry(ATSDR), part of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), puts EPA’s testing results into an entirely new light.

The water was not safe to drink after all, the ATSDR concluded, after a lengthy review of the same water testing results that EPA used back in 2012.

“ATSDR found some of the chemicals in the private water wells at this site at levels high enough to affect health (27 private water wells), pose a physical hazard (17 private water wells) or affect general water quality so that it may be unsuitable for drinking,” the ATSDR’s health consultation—launched in 2011 and published May 24—concludes.

The new report lists 10 contaminants, including arsenic, lithium and 4-chlorophenyl phenyl ether, that are “chemicals of health concern,” at the levels found in Carter Road wells, found that five homes were at “immediate risk of fire or explosion” because of methane in their water and another dozen showed lower, but still worrisome, levels of methane and found that the water was laced with elevated levels of metals, salts and total dissolved solids.

The underlying data isn’t new to the residents of Carter Road. The EPA provided it to them individually back in 2012, which is why the EPA’s announcement that the water was safe was so baffling at the time.

“I’m sitting here looking at the values I have on my sheet—I’m over the thresholds—and yet they are telling me my water is drinkable,” Nolan Scott Ely, one of the Carter Road homeowners, told ProPublica when EPA made its announcement. “I’m confused about the whole thing … I’m flabbergasted.”

Opposite Conclusions?

So how could two different agencies look at the exact same data and come to opposite conclusions?

“Although the same data set was used, the EPA as a regulatory agency specifically looked at whether or not it was required to take action under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, more commonly known as Superfund, which governs responses to environmental emergencies,” StateImpact, a National Public Radio project, explained. “The ‘health consultation’ looked at the entire data set from a public health standpoint, assessing whether or not it was safe to drink the water.”

In other words, EPA’s findings, which seemed to show that the water was “safe” and which were promoted by drillers as proof that nothing was wrong in Dimock, instead represented a very carefully parsed legal finding that the water did not reach Superfund levels of contamination for the specific substances EPA focused on.

And the EPA’s 2012 findings had left out some of the very contaminants that had caused locals the most concern—including the natural gas or methane, itself. “EPA’s investigation does not include an evaluation of the risk posed by elevated levels of methane—which continue to exist in some homes in Dimock—and which, at extreme levels and if unaddressed, can lead to explosions,” Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Attorney Kate Sinding wrote in a blog post at the time.

The EPA’s strained official interpretation of the data perhaps shows why EPA staff remained concerned even after the agency dropped its Dimock investigation in July 2012, just months after its testing results had been announced in March and April.

In 2013, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that EPA’s own staff had disagreed with the agency’s public statements that the water shouldn’t be considered hazardous. An internal EPA Powerpoint presentation, later obtained and published by DeSmog, showed that agency scientists had concluded that the drilling and fracking process “apparently cause significant damage to the water quality.”

The ATSDR’s new report very specifically notes that it does not look at whether the water hazards stem from drilling or pre-date Cabot’s arrival in the area. In part, that’s because of a lack of pre-drilling testing for gas and other common fracking-related chemicals in the water. “It is important to note that methane was not assessed in residential water wells prior to the initiation of natural gas drilling activities in the Dimock area,” the ATSDR wrote.

Cabot Oil and Gas emphasized their belief that methane in the water was “naturally occurring” and pre-dated their arrival in a statement provided to StateImpact. “This data is consistent with thousands of pages of water data collected by both Cabot and the Pennsylvania DEP and does not indicate that those contaminants detected have any relationship to oil and gas development in Dimock,” Cabot said.

The ATSDR report does often note when substances discovered in the Carter Road water are known to be associated with hydraulic fracturing or drilling industry activities, but does not reach any conclusions about whether the chemicals came from Cabot’s operations.

“It’s not their job to look at who caused whatever contamination there is,” Bryce Payne, a Pennsylvania environmental scientist, told E&E News. “It’s their job to see if there are health implications. They did that and concluded there are health implications.”

The new report is also limited to data from four years ago—and conditions have changed, the ATSDR noted, in part because a state moratorium on fracking along Carter Road was briefly lifted after the EPA dropped its investigation and locals quickly reported more changes to their water, including higher levels of methane.

Cabot Oil Settles

In August 2012—right around the time that EPA abandoned its investigation—Cabot Oil and Gas announced it had settled the vast majority of lawsuits against it by Carter Road residents for an undisclosed amount of money and under terms that barred the plaintiffs from speaking negatively about their experiences with the company.

This March, a federal jury handed down a $4.24 million verdict to the remaining two Carter Road families, concluding that the water was in fact contaminated because of the negligence of the drilling company. Cabot has begun the process of appealing that verdict.

But while the legal filings and agency reports continue to stack up, the problem on Carter Road remains the same as it has for many years now.

While those who settled with Cabot had water treatment systems installed by the company, locals familiar with those systems say that even the treated water seems too contaminated to drink and the water treatment systems break down frequently.

The ATSDR’s report provides recommendations that water should have been treated to address dangerous contamination levels—but those recommendations are not binding and the agency noted that while the state government collected samples more recently, the ATSDR did not have access to the newer data.

Community organizers are still calling for the federal government to resume an active role, arguing that the groundwater remains undrinkable.

“We’re demanding that they reopen the investigation,” Craig Stevens, a local organizer, toldDeSmog after the March verdict was announced, “and also get water to these people.”

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/03/dimock-water-unsafe-fracking/

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http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/marcellus/2012/07/Endocrine-Disrupters-and-All-That.pdf

ENDOCRINE DISRUPTERS, PLASTICS, DIOXIN AND DEATH —

WHAT’S THAT ALL ABOUT?

Fear Profiteers, 45

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Katie Brown, Ph.D.

Director at FTI Consulting Strategic Communications

Washington D.C. Metro Area

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FTI Consulting Strategic Communications

Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, University of Notre Dame

Education

Trinity College, Dublin

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Summary

Communications professional working in the oil and gas industry with extensive on-the-record experience, including print, TV, and radio. Accomplished speechwriter/ghostwriter.

Experience

FTI Consulting Strategic Communications

Senior Director, Energy and Natural Resources

FTI Consulting Strategic Communications

April 2013 – Present (3 years 2 months)Washington D.C. Metro Area

At FTI Consulting I serve as the Team Lead and spokesperson for Energy In Depth, a research and education program of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. http://energyindepth.org/

Press Secretary/Speechwriter

Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

September 2010 – January 2013 (2 years 5 months)Washington D.C. Metro Area

University of Notre Dame

National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Research Fellow

University of Notre Dame

August 2008 – May 2009 (10 months)

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Ph.D., English

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Southeast White House Mentoring Program

September 2013 – Present (2 years 9 months)Children

Causes Katie cares about:

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"The Tone of Defiance": Music, Memory, and Irish Nationalism

Memory Ireland.

Authors:

Katie Brown, Ph.D.

How fracking has helped the US lead on climate

The Hill

December 2015

Authors:

Katie Brown, Ph.D.

As GHGs Plummet Thanks to Natural Gas, Ban-Fracking Groups and Elected Officials Peddle Misinformation about Methane

Energy In Depth

January 2016

Authors:

Katie Brown, Ph.D.

EPA Advisors Contradict Themselves on Landmark Fracking Study

Energy In Depth

January 2016

Authors:

Katie Brown, Ph.D.

VIDEO: Drill Our Way to Lower Gasoline Prices, Mr. President? Yes We Can.

Energy In Depth

January 2016

Authors:

Katie Brown, Ph.D.

Report: Earthquakes Linked to Less than One Percent of All U.S. Injection Wells

Energy In Depth

November 2015

Authors:

Katie Brown, Ph.D.

EPA’s crumbling case for new regs on fracking

The Hill

Authors:

Katie Brown, Ph.D.

scrape

Halie Bishop

Michael Morrison

Director of Digital Media at Institute for Energy Research

Roy Brown

George Nishikawa

MPA/MSES Candidate at Indiana University SPEA

Matthew Dempsey

Managing Director at FTI Consulting

Christian Moran

Steve Everley

Managing Director at FTI Consulting

Michelle Williams

Counsel at Clifford Chance LLP

Kelly Lungren

Chief of Staff at United States House of Rep

Most of the PR push-back on Gasland appears to be coming from an oil and gas lobby group calling itself "Energy In-Depth"whose anonymous website lists other oil and gas lobby groups, like American Exploration and Production Council, the Indiana Oil and Gas Association and the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, as their members.

While the members of Energy in Depth might be listed, who is actually running the day-to-day operations and mounting the attack on Gasland is a bit of mystery.

No contact information, phone number, mailing address or anything else telling us who is organizing the group can be found on the website.

A little digging, finds that the website is registered to a Washington, DC public relations firm called FD Americas Public Affairs (formerly FD Dittus Communications).

FD's clients include other oil and gas lobby groups with one in particular that stands out, the American Energy Alliance, run by former Republican staffers Eric Creighton, Kevin Kennedy and Laura Henderson. The Energy Alliance ran an "Energy Town Hall" bus tour last summer attacking the Obama administration's Clean Energy and Security legislation.

As FD explains on their website:

We have managed successful public affairs campaigns for clients on complex energy policy issues such as climate change, increased energy exploration and production, carbon capture and storage, electricity deregulation, natural gas prices, renewable energy development, and business and consumer energy efficiency.

An email that was forwarded to me gives a little further information on who's behind the PR push.

The email was sent by the Senior Public Affairs Representative for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation - one of the world's largest independent oil and gas companies - saying that the company is "actively engaged with groups like America's Natural Gas Alliance, Energy In Depth and the American Petroleum Institute to educate the public, government officials and other stakeholders about the errors in the film, and the truth about natural gas."

In public relations, it is always a bit of a tricky decision about when to begin countering your opponents' message. If you hit back too early, you may give the story "oxygen" and inflame a controversy that may have gone away if ignored. But if you wait too long to counter your opponent you risk jumping in too late and losing the war of words. The trick is to watch for the tipping point.

Looks like the tipping point for Gasland's opponents was last night's HBO screening, so watch out because we're all about to subjected to more spin than the teacup ride at Disneyland.

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Halliburton goes after fracking critics; hires tobacco-linked PR firm

24 Feb., 2011

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- Last week, Desmogblog outed Halliburton and other oil/gas companies, who together set up "Energy in Depth", an industry front group that claims to represent "small and independent" operators.

EID's web site was registered by a PR firm experienced in working for companies engaged in scientific deception (e.g. Big Tobacco). EID was set up to fight back after investigative journalists began to expose problems with hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") -- notably ProPublica, as well as the producers of the Oscar-nominated documentary,"Gasland," Also: read how the industry has blocked federal regulations.

http://energyindepth.org/

Registrant Contact Information:

Name: Dittus Communications, Inc.

Organization: Dittus Communications, Inc.

Address 1: ATTN insert domain name here

Address 2: care of Network Solutions

City: Herndon

State: VA

Zip: 20172

Country: US

Phone: +1.5707088780

Email: Email Masking Image

Registrant Contact Information:

Name: Chris Tucker

Organization: FD Dittus Communications

Address 1: 2320 Wisconsin Ave NW

Address 2: APT 305

City: Washington

State: DC

Zip: 20007

Country: US

Phone: +1.2023468825

Email: Email Masking Image@fd.com

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http://www.prwatch.org/node/11943

before Gus Van Sant's latest film Promised Land even premiered, the energy industry was up in arms, gearing up to counter the film's apparent anti-fracking stance with a barrage of "community" responses (read: thinly veiled corporate PR). James Schamus, chief executive of Focus Features the distributor of the film, expressed shock about the attacks on Promised Land: "We've been surprised at the emergence of what looks like a concerted campaign targeting the film even before anyone's seen it." With blogs, astroturf websites, Facebook pages, internet ads, and theater ad buys in advance of the movie, the industry is working hard to spin the conversation in a more fracking-friendly direction.

The film chronicles the story of a gas industry salesman, played by Matt Damon, and his attempt to convince the residents of a rural Pennsylvania town to agree to fracking development. The questions raised by actors in the film mirror the debates taking place in communities across the country. What type of chemicals are used in fracking? What is the effect of fracking on air and water? While the industry may make a few struggling families rich, what is the cost for the community as a whole?

Conveniently, the fracking industry has launched a number of websites to answer these questions for you.

Energy in Depth Launches "Real Promised Land" Site

The fracking industry was caught unprepared by the brilliant, 2010 documentary Gaslands by Josh Fox, whose indelible images of tap water bursting into flames introduced fracking to the American public. Having learned their lesson, the industry was not eager to repeat its mistakes.

Before it was even released, Energy in Depth (EID) took issue with the new movie, which is not a hard-hitting documentary like Gaslands and has more romantic content than factual content. Through a new website titled RealPromisedLand.org, EID rolled out "real stories" from "real Americans" about their positive experiences with fracking. Videos from Ohio, Colorado, Texas, and Pennsylvania highlight seemingly ordinary citizens who have benefited from fracking development in their area. On their glossy Facebook page you can learn that: "the natural gas industry takes all the safety measures possible in order to protect the earth and water from any contamination" and other tall tales.

The website does not disclose that EID was launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of Americato serve as the PR mouthpiece for the gas industry. As CMD has documented, EID is funded by the likes of Shell, BP, Chevron, and XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. EID has also privately described itself, in a memo, as the "online resource center to combat new environmental regulations."

Industry Buys Ads for PA Movie Theaters

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srcwatch:

Energy in Depth (EID) is a pro-oil-and-gas drilling industry front group formed by the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and dozens of additional industry organizations for the purpose of criticizing the documentary "Gaslands", their latest attempt being a documentary produced by a political attack ad agency for EID, the ironically titled "Truthland" [5] which was exposed as a gas industry infomercial as soon as it was released. The domain for the website promoting the film —Truthlandmovie.com — is owned by gas driller Chesapeake Energy.[6]

EID attacks grassroots opposition to fracking as part of a conspiracy, and denounce specific legislation, such as legislation proposed by Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette to regulate underground hydraulic fracturing fluids.

Hydraulic fracturing of underground geological formations, commonly called "fracking," was invented by the Halliburton Company. It is done to increase the amounts of oil and gas that can be extracted from existing wells. The companies that specialize in shale gas development have been the target of various investigations for tending to overstate the extent of their resserves.[1] Accordingly, EID was formed to counter critics of the industry's financial and environmental practices. [2]

Energy in Depth (or EID) attempts to paint grassroots opposition to shale gas fracking as being part of a conspiracy of NGOs. How such a conspiracy applies to grassroots opposition in Quebec, Bulgaria, France and the UK is not clear - since the conspiracy theory of opposition exists primarily in Energy In Depth's Power Point presentation.[3]

Energy in Depth hires locals as bloggers and PR types with varying degrees of crediblity and effectiveness, such as Tom Shepstone, formerly an accredited land planner, now "political organizer" for EID in New York. [4] MIRROR

Energy in Depth tends to wrap its arguments in the flag, having denounced DeGette's proposed fracking legislation as an “unnecessary financial burden on a single small-business industry, American oil and natural gas producers.” In June, 2009, Energy in Depth started a multimillion dollar lobbying and public relations campaign aimed at derailing public health legislation that would require the disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking fluids. In addition to a Web site, EID's campaign includes a Twitter feed, a Facebook group, a YouTube channel and an aggressive advertising campaign.

Energy in Depth trumpets the economic benefits of shale gas industrialization - which have been grossly overstated, most recently in New York.[5] When, in New York, dry gas from shale is not currently economic. [6]

Energy in Depth is, in a sense, one of the most conspicuous manifestations of the gas industry's avowed "counter-insurgency" to attempt to discredit grass roots environmental activists; even to the extent of employing ex-military "psy-ops" specialists. Industry Use Psy-Ops On Critics. The simplest tactic of which is to make ad hominem attacks on grassroots activists.

Energy in Depth have been featured speakers at gas industry conferences explaining how to counteract grass roots opposition with what it describes as fracking "Counter Insurgents" In this regard, Energy In Depth is part of a subculture of gas industry consultants that specialize in dealing with local opposition to fracking, via paid $hils

Contents

1 Funders

2 Website domain

3 Background on health and safety hazards

4 Personnel

5 Contact information

6 Articles and resources

6.1 Related SourceWatch articles

6.2 References

6.3 External resources

6.4 External articles

Funders

Energy in Depth is funded by the El Paso Corporation, XTO Energy, Occidental Petroleum, BP, Anadarko, Marathon, EnCana, Chevron, Talisman, Shell, API, the Independent Petroleum Association of America,Halliburton,Schlumberger and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.[7]

Website domain

The website for Energy in Depth was registered on February 23, 2009 by the PR firm Dittus Communications.[8] Dittus, which is now known as FD Americas Public Affairs, boasts on its website that "energy clients have formed the backbone of FD Americas Public Affairs’ clientele for more than a decade." Clients have included Alabama Power, American Energy Alliance, Center for Clean Air Policy, Consumer Energy Alliance, FutureGen, Georgia Power, Independent Petroleum Association of America, Institute for Energy Research, Salt River Project and U.S. Department of Energy.[9]

Background on health and safety hazards

The chemicals companies use in their fracking fluids are considered trade secrets and have traditionally been undisclosed.

Under the Bush administration, fracking was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.[10]

Fracking has resulted in the documented contamination of groundwater wells and other environmental and public health hazards. In December, 2008, the Web site "OMB Watch" reported that

Among the reports of damage to environmental and public health resulting from hydraulic fracturing are more than 1,000 cases of documented water contamination in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In addition to contamination from the below-ground drilling, leaks and spills from trucks and waste pits are also causing problems. Tracking the contamination is especially difficult because drillers refuse to disclose the chemicals being used. Despite the secrecy, some information on the chemical mixture has been pieced together. Among the identified chemicals are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, and xylene.

OMB Watch further reported that a Colorado nurse suffered multi-organ failure after being exposed to a gas worker who had been brought into the hospital soaked with fracking fluid:

The health risks from fracking chemicals was made clear in the summer of 2008 when a Colorado nurse almost died from exposure while treating a gas field worker whose clothing had been doused with the chemicals. Despite the nurse suffering from heart, lung, and liver failure, plus kidney damage and blurred vision, the drilling company refused to reveal to her doctors the "proprietary" chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. While the nurse eventually recovered, she was never told to what she had been exposed.[11]

Personnel

On its website, Energy in Depth lists[12] its press contacts as being:

Jeff Eshelman

Nicole Daigle

Brendan Bradley

Chris Tucker

It also lists its "policy contacts" as being:

Lee Fuller

Brian Kennedy

Contact information

Energy in Depth

Web site: http://www.energyindepth.org/

(No physical address is given on its Web site)

General phone number: (202) 346-8825 (NOTE: This is the same phone number as the Institute for Energy Research)

Articles and resources