CFACT 2

this started as 12/15 tag back, zombied by ati

see main for older content

no merri

SEE HEARTLAND DENIAL ZELDIN

shillenberger

hit on Cori Bush?

see offshore wind whale BS

see rucker

see paul driessen energy poverty BS ~ wind

see climate hustle morano and grass greener cornwall

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UP FOR AG? OMG AT HEARTLAND CONF 4 26 2024?

MOJO GUK

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), gave the keynote speech at a conference on Wednesday morning, one which was hosted by a prominent climate-denying think tank that previously compared those concerned about the climate crisis to the Unabomber on billboard posters in 2012.

“No longer are we going to rely on bad, flawed assumptions instead of accurate, present-day facts, without apology or regret,” Zeldin said at the Heartland Institute’s conference on climate change in Washington, DC, referring to well-established climate science.

Zeldin has been widely criticized by climate experts. Last month, more than 160 environmental and public health organizations called for him to resign or be fired, saying no EPA administrator in history “has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission.”

In his speech, Zeldin poked fun at the media for calling him “controversial” for not “following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom and gloom position of the day is from John Kerry or Al Gore or AOC”—referring to the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s controversial that we won’t sign up for the script that the world is imminently about to end,” he said.

He derided previous administrations’ heeding of climate scientists’ warnings about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and for ignoring “what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet.”

“What happened for years and decades in this country is that the elite, the ruling class, the people who would run the agencies, the people who have decided that they are in charge of the science, the politicians, the biggest grifters: there would be a cabal that would decide exactly which model is the chosen model, which methodology is the higher methodology,” he said. “And if all of you in this room, if any of you in this room dare to challenge any of that, well shame on you.”

“Carbon dioxide, which is required for life on Earth…is not a pollutant and never was.”

Ahead of Zeldin’s Wednesday-morning speech at the Heartland conference, Environmental Defense Fund Action put up posters around Hotel Washington critiquing the EPA administrator’s participation and saying climate denial does not improve Americans’ lives. “Lee Zeldin is executing on the playbook of denial written by the Heartland Institute,” Joanna Slaney, a vice-president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said.

The Heartland Institute has accepted money from big oil companies including Shell and ExxonMobil, and from the Mercers, a family of Republican mega-donors. The thinktank was a contributor to Project 2025, the far-right policy blueprint for Trump’s second administration.

The Heartland Institute rejects the scientific consensus that the climate crisis is real, human-caused and urgent. Since the early 2000s, it has been a leading promoter of climate doubt, even branding climate science as “fake news.”

Experts agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are warming the planet, resulting in dangerous increases in temperatures and in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Scientists have long warned that the world must quickly phase out fossil fuels in order to preserve a livable climate.

Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed the climate crisis as a “hoax” and dismissed environmental policies as a “scam.” And under Zeldin, the EPA has exempted polluting facilities from regulations, shuttered climate and environmental research offices, and shrunk its workforce. It has also rolled back dozens of environmental and climate protections.

“What we are doing in the last 14 months is no surprise,” Zeldin said in his speech. “It is what I pledged during my confirmation hearing, and it is what the American public voted for when they put Donald J Trump back in office. And thank God they did.”

:{:{The EPA administrator also spoke about his most controversial environmental rollback: the shredding of the legal finding underpinning virtually all US climate regulations, known as the “endangerment finding.” Scientists and other experts widely condemned the repeal, but the Heartland Institute has celebrated it.}:

“Carbon dioxide, which is required for life on Earth and happens to result from every single bit of human and animal activity on the planet, is not a pollutant and never was,” Anthony Watts, a senior fellow at the thinktank, said in a February statement praising the repeal.

References to the rollback were met with cheers at the conference in Washington on Wednesday morning, and Zeldin expressed “admiration” for the Heartland Institute’s advocacy against the endangerment finding in his speech.

Craig Rucker, the president of CFACT—a right-wing group which complains about“climate exaggeration,” introduced Zeldin at the conference as a “friend of sound science [and] climate realism, a real rock star.”

Another panel at Wednesday’s conference convened the authors of a contentious Department of Energy report that was written to back up the repeal of the endangerment finding. The publication was derided by climate scientists as making a “mockery of science,” and was not used in the justification for the final repeal of the finding. “While the world warned, a lot of things improved and got better, and continues to do so,” said Ross McKitrick, an author of the report, at the conference.

Another report author, Judith Curry—a climatologist who rails against climate “alarmism”—criticized the “monolithic consensus” on climate science that is “presented to the world.” Though the US government disbanded the group which produced the controversial report on the endangerment finding, Curry said the authors were currently reviewing comments on the report and preparing a new version to release this year.

Earlier on Wednesday morning, the Heartland Institute’s president, James Taylor, kicked off the conference with a rousing speech in which he invoked the debunked climate myth that increased carbon emissions are good for plants: “Restoring CO2 and restoring warmth to our world is…a restoration to more ideal conditions,” he said.

“The truth is clear: there is no climate crisis,” said Taylor. “The science is very clear.”

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CFACT co-sponsors 'Land and Liberty' gathering in Texas - National Today

National Today

The 'Land and Liberty Conference' held on February 13-14 in Fort Worth, Texas brought together around 150 property rights activists from across ...

CFACT co-sponsors 'Land and Liberty' gathering in Texas

Around 150 property rights leaders convened in Fort Worth to discuss strategies and listen to speakers like former Trump Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Published on Feb. 16, 2026

Got story updates?Submit your updates here. ›

The 'Land and Liberty Conference' held on February 13-14 in Fort Worth, Texas brought together around 150 property rights activists from across the country. The event, co-sponsored by CFACT, featured panels, workshops, and Texas hospitality including barbecue and a rodeo. Speakers included former Trump Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Congressman Harriett Hageman, and Texas Agriculture Secretary Sid Miller.

Why it matters

The conference highlighted the growing movement of property rights advocates who are pushing back against what they see as an overreach of environmental regulations and a 'far-Left political agenda that is decidedly anti-human and anti-freedom.' The gathering aimed to reclaim the mantle of 'wise stewardship' of natural resources.

The details

The two-day conference covered topics such as energy security, financial exploitation of natural resources, reopening federal lands, and defending landowner rights. CFACT, a prominent co-sponsor, hosted a panel featuring its president Craig Rucker and communications director Marc Morano, as well as representatives from the Heartland Institute.

The 'Land and Liberty Conference' took place on February 13-14, 2026 in Fort Worth, Texas.
This was the third time in recent years the event has been held.

The players

CFACT

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) is a nonprofit organization that promotes free market environmentalism and opposes what it sees as excessive environmental regulation.

Craig Rucker

The president of CFACT.

Marc Morano

The director of communications for CFACT.

Brooke Rollins

The former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Trump.

Harriett Hageman

A U.S. Congressman.

Sid Miller

The Texas Secretary of Agriculture.

Got photos?Submit your photos here. ›

What they’re saying

“The Green movement has undergone a transition, one that moved from wise conservation and stewardship of the land, a position held by everyone a 100 years ago, to one that now promotes a far-Left political agenda that is decidedly anti-human and anti-freedom. We need to reclaim the mantle of 'wise stewardship' and save the environmental movement from itself.”

— Craig Rucker, President, CFACT (CFACT.org)

“I can feel the momentum building since our first gathering in Lincoln, Nebraska. President Trump's influence is clearly energizing the movement. I can't wait for next year!”

— Marc Morano, Director of Communications, CFACT (CFACT.org)

What’s next

The organizers plan to host the 'Land and Liberty Conference' again next year, building on the momentum from this year's event.

The takeaway

The 'Land and Liberty Conference' highlights the growing influence of property rights advocates who are pushing back against what they view as excessive environmental regulations and a political agenda that is 'anti-human and anti-freedom.' The conference aimed to reclaim the mantle of 'wise stewardship' of natural resources.

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GMAIL

Marc Morano

Weekly update ⋅ October 3, 2025

The Climate Realist President — The Climate Realism Show #175 - The Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute

Join Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely, and special guest Marc Morano of CFACT for this live broadcast. Tune in LIVE ...

LOOK IN MIRROR: Krugman Accusing Right of Having 'Fossilized Minds' Is Pretty Hilarious

Newsbusters

But as Climate Depot founder Marc Morano told MRC Business: “Krugman needs to examine how energy is produced to understand why coal is a crucial ...

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gmail 9 25

collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) Say "No" to Michael Mann}:

News provided by

Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Sep 10, 2025, 07:27 ET

HOUSTON, Sept. 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- College students today protested the promotion of climate activist Dr. Michael Mann at a Rice University Baker Institute for Public Policy event, holding signs with slogans like "Hands off my future!," "Dr. Mann hates debate," and "Limp Stick Energy."

CFACT students protest at Rice University.

Marc Morano joins the students at Rice University to challenge Mann on

Students held signs with slogans like “Hands off my future!,” “Dr. Mann hates debate,” and “Limp Stick Energy.”

"Elevating Michael Mann at an institution of higher learning is completely counterintuitive," said Rice University undergraduate Cristobal Spielmann. "He has repeatedly demonstrated that questioning his version of consensus gets you labeled a climate denier, whom he calls 'horrible people…typically bigoted, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic' – if not sued. We reject his oppressive tactics and narrow worldview."

Mann rose to prominence as the lead author of a report that was the first to estimate climate trends using what the New York Times called a "grab bag of evidence." It included what became known as the "hockey stick" graph depicting an upward spike in temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. Leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit later showed Mann working with others to suppress climate debate even as he withheld data from analysts seeking to replicate his findings. He has filed lawsuits against people and media organizations for criticizing him.

"We've been taught that testing, challenging and modifying hypotheses, and retesting are all part of the scientific method," said CFACT Collegian activist Nicolas Walker. "Yet Dr. Mann treats questions and requests for data as attacks rather than rigorous intellectual challenges. He has bullied, sued, and tried to censor people who dare to disagree with him, both publicly and behind the scenes. Now he's touting a book that encourages everyone to act like him."

The students have a simple message: college campuses should be sponsors of debate, not celebrating people like Mann who shut it down.

"We are extremely proud of our college students for standing up to Michael Mann's demonstrated bullying tactics by refusing to accept debate being treated as dangerous and anti-science," said Nate Myers, National Collegians Director. "Where can inquiry thrive if not on campus?"

MEDIA CONTACT: Judy Kent, 703-477-7476, jkent@cfact.org

SOURCE Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

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In a coordinated effort to undermine climate science and slow environmental progress, prominent American climate change denial organizations recently teamed up with a conservative Austrian trade union known as the Union for Sovereignty and the German climate denialist European Institute for Climate and Energy to strategize on defeating climate solutions that threaten the fossil fuel industry or are otherwise deemed too radical.

The Heartland Institute, one of the leading climate denial organizations in the U.S., and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a longstanding libertarian group, hosted the 16th International Climate Change Conference (ICCC), which took place from June 13–15 in Vienna — a new stronghold of the far right. It was the first time the conference had been held in Europe in almost a decade. According to CFACT, their intention was “to make the case for ‘climate realism,’” a phrase used by right-wing organizations to delegitimize climate change and downplay the urgency of the crisis.

Over the past few years, Europe has become a prime target for climate denialists, with fossil fuel lobbyists effectively peddling climate disinformation to far-right parties that oppose climate mitigation policies.

James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, that the new political climate in Europe — where the far right has been gaining traction in recent years — presents an opportunity to strengthen a global conservative “coalition” to push back against climate-friendly policies.

Spreading Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories

At the conference, speakers shared strategies for combating both “climate alarmism” and the growth of renewable energy. Craig Rucker, president of CFACT, participating in shareholder meetings to propose anti-green initiatives, drafting model bills against renewables, and drawing more attention to whale deaths to ramp up public opposition to offshore wind farms — using what experts have called a misinformation campaign.

Many presenters, including Taylor and Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com, framed climate change as an anti-democratic, left-wing plot to consolidate global power, echoing conspiracy theories associated with recent Covid-19 measures.

Morano further claimed that sustainable farming policies would force American farmers to sell their land to tech-world billionaires such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos due to rising compliance costs. He also painted net-zero policies like restrictions on gas-powered cars as “corporate government collusion” aimed at benefiting the Chinese EV industry — a claim that echoes the rise in anti-China rhetoric used by Republican politicians and other conservatives. Morano further criticized Natural Asset Companies (NACs) — a boogeyman to conservatives for valuing ecosystems and natural resources — as a Wall Street plot to “take away available land from private citizens.”

The Supporting “Science”

The scientists who presented at the conference, including a Nobel laureate in physics and a former Trump administration scientific advisor, promoted denialist rhetoric by casting doubt on scientific evidence of global warming and the impact of greenhouse gasses. Some reiterated the fringe argument that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but rather “plant food,” while others questioned mainstream climate models such as those used by the United Nations.

Many of the scientists who presented at the conference have ties to oil industry money and have been criticized for accepting but not disclosing industry funding for their research.

Willie Soon, an astrophysicist formerly associated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, failed to disclose that he had accepted more than $1.2 million in research-related donations from corporate fossil fuel funders, including the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and DonorsTrust, according to reporting by the New York Times.

William Happer and John F. Clauser, both of whom kowtowed to the fossil fuel industry by downplaying the role of carbon emissions on climate change, are members of the Koch-funded CO2 Coalition, which also receives funding from the Bradley Foundation, the Mercer Family Foundation, The 85 Fund (run by right-wing legal firebrand Leonard Leo), the Scaife Foundation, and other far-right donors. Additionally, Happer received $8,000 from Peabody Energy in exchange for testimony at a 2015 Minnesota state hearing claiming that carbon dioxide makes a positive impact on society, a Greenpeace investigation revealed.

Host Groups’ Industry Ties

Heartland and CFACT also receive significant funding from the fossil fuel industry. In 2019, a coalition of 19 U.S. Senators accused these groups of creating a “web of denial” to mislead the public about climate change and stymie legislative action. Heartland has received funding from fossil fuel companies such as Murray Energy and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. Since 2014, it has also received over $15 million from Donors Capital Fund and DonorsTrust, identity-scrubbing operations that give Big Oil a way to fund climate misinformation while avoiding bad press. These donor-advised funds have increasingly supported climate denial organizations as the traceability of funding from Big Oil has decreased, a correlation documented by Greenpeace.

Donors to CFACT have included ExxonMobil as well as the Scaife and Koch family foundations, which are largely funded by fossil fuel fortunes. Despite claims by its senior policy advisor that the group stopped accepting fossil fuel money as of 2010, data collected by DeSmogshows small grants from Charles Koch’s foundation and Murray Energy between 2014 and 2018. CFACT has also received more than $8 million from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund over the past 20 years.

While these organizations claim to be “climate realists,” they play a major role in elevating and promoting arguments against net-zero initiatives and climate mitigation strategies critical to addressing the climate crisis. By reconnecting with their counterparts in Europe, they are expanding their global reach in ways that threaten serious efforts to radically reduce carbon emissions before it’s too late.

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The Biden administration's Department of Justice has officially opened a criminal investigation into Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) for allegedly misappropriating public money.

Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman tweeted the news of the investigation on Tuesday, citing "six sources familiar with the matter." He added that the DOJ had subpoenaed the House Sergeant-at-Arms for records pertaining to "misspending of federal security money." Punchbowl reporter Max Cohen attempted to ask the congresswoman for comment on the investigation, but was unable to and tweeted that he was "reprimanded" for the interaction "as she had a toothache."

Bush has not yet issued a public response to the allegations, but her Democratic primary opponent Wesley Bell — the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County in Missouri — stated that constituents "deserve a representative they can trust who will show up and get results for them."

"As a prosecutor, I understand that Rep. Bush is entitled to due process," Bell stated. "It is my hope that Rep. Bush will cooperate fully with the investigation and be transparent with the public in responding to the legitimate concerns they are likely to have."

Bush was previously the subject of a complaint lodged with the Federal Election Commission by the watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) that she had paid her husband thousands of dollars for private security, even though he didn't have a valid license to run a security-based company. California Target Book research director Rob Pyers tweeted that Bush's campaign committee spent over $750,000 on security expenses, which was "far and away the campaign's biggest expense category."

"It appears Rep. Bush's campaign may have made payments for services that were unnecessary or above fair market value because of her personal relationship with the payee," FACT executive director Kendra Arnold wrote in the complaint. “If so, these payments would qualify as either impermissible payments to a family member or an impermissible gift."

However, Bush — who was a high-profile activist in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of officer Darren Wilson — countered that high security expenses were necessary.

"I'm going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life, and I have too much work to do, there are too many people that need help right now for me to allow that," Bush said in 2021.

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gmail morano 7 23

we usually try not to cover the same issue in back-to-back posts, but while _{yesterday}_ we connected some dots between industry-backed disinformation organizations and front groups opposing offshore wind, today they're connecting them for us.

On Monday evening, the New York Post ran a story headlined "_{Fishermen, activists protest offshore wind farms near Montauk, cite recent whale deaths}_." According to the Post's Josh Christenson, "the coalition, organized by the:{ :(style="margin-top:0px"):}:_{Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow}_, sent out three boats to South Fork Wind Farm, roughly 20 miles from both Martha’s Vineyard and Montauk, NY, holding signs that read 'STOP WINDMILLS SAVE WHALES' while shouting through a bullhorn at machinery operators to halt construction."

but "coalition" is certainly being generous, as the accompanying video and _{photos}_ show a total of nine people, at least two of whom are Marc Morano and Craig Rucker of _{dark money-backed CFACT}_ (and two more who may also be CFACT staff, although it's hard to tell).

Eight of them appeared to be on a pretty luxurious powerboat, and on another small boat, one lone guy who was just barely able to unfurl his banners as the video-recording drone whizzed by. Unlike the other boat, this one at least had fishing poles.

It’s unclear who or where the "professional New Jersey fishermen" were that the NYPost described as participating in the protest against the _{South Fork Wind Farm}_ between the shores of Martha's Vineyard and Montauk, NY (100 miles north of NJ and 20 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.)

There does not appear to be footage of a professional fishing vessel participating in this embarrassing display.

Maybe we're just cynical, but it sure looks like a bunch of fossil fools booked a pleasure cruise in the ritzy-est part of Long Island, brought along a couple friends and banners calling wind turbines "windmills," and convinced the super-legitimate journalists over at Rupert Murdoch's NY Post to cover it

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/7/2127500/-WSJ-Mad-About-Anti-Climate-Disinfo-Efforts-As-CFACT-Pretends-Not-To-Be

WSJ Mad About Anti-Climate Disinfo Efforts, As CFACT Pretends Not To Be - Daily Kos

Daily Kos

We promise that next week it'll be back to bad news only here, but for the third day in a row we're going to do a bit of celebrating, because once again, deniers are losing!

Lesley Clark reported yesterday at E&E News that"Minnesota’s highest court has delivered a victory to Attorney General Keith Ellison in legal action surrounding the state’s climate liability lawsuit against the oil and gas industry."

More specifically, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided not to let tobacco-turned-fossil-fuel-backed lawyer and harasser of climate scientists and public servants Chris Horner's front group try and recreate Climategate, but this time with emails from Attorney General Keith Ellison's office concerning their litigation against fossil fuel companies.

Meanwhile, it was heartening to see that CFACT is so desperate for signs of its effectiveness that it's emailing people to brag about the "six hit pieces referencing [Marc] Morano since July."

Two of those are from MediaMatters, one where Morano is mentioned by name only once, in passing, and another where his appearance was noted in a larger piece on Tucker Carlson. The other four are from yours truly, who CFACT describes as seeming "to have a love-hate relationship" with Morano.

Which is true, in that we love how easy it is Morano makes it to write about how deniers are wrong on purpose for money by constantly saying dumb stuff, like that some 1930's New Deal book is proof of a 2022 plot for world domination through a Great Reset. The other example they linked also only mentioned Morano in passing, as one of many disinfo-spreaders proving YouTube is failing to enforce its demonetization policy. Not exactly evidence of effectiveness.

They unfortunately did not clear up the mystery of whether our memory that Marc Morano told Bill Nye that he uses Ambien to sleep at night is accurate, but the fact that even our petty sniping is enough to warrant an email blast to subscribers shows how little evidence they actually do have that they're making a real impact. People ridiculing you does not necessarily mean they're threatened by you. Sometimes it just means you're ridiculous.

Because this is, admittedly, not exactly a big news outlet with the largest readership in the world, and we're happy about that! This space is for people who have to deal with deniers, the general public shouldn't have to know about professional goobers!

Similarly, if some equally small-time, dedicated opposition outlet like the Daily Caller were to run something on anti-climate disinfo efforts, that wouldn't be worth writing home about either.

But if the paper that does have one of the largest subscriber lists, the Wall Street Journal, took the time to complain about something its opposition is doing, thatmight be something worth celebrating!

And what do you know, Thursday's print edition of the Wall Street Journal, going to some 2 million subscribers, featured an editorial complaining about "the climate-change censorship campaign."

Yes, one of the biggest papers in the country decided that a letter from green groups asking Big Tech companies to include climate disinformation when complying with the EU's Digital Services Act was worth its column inches and readers' attention.

Given that Bloomberg, Common Defense and The Hill were the only other coverage, landing news of the letter on the WSJ's pages was quite a score, if even in the shape of it calling on Elon Musk to use Twitter to "shut down the climate censors."

Sounds like the WSJ's the one that wants to censor its opponents!

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ref $

Minn. AG wins climate skirmish weeks before election

Minnesota's Supreme Court sides with Attorney General Keith Ellison and says some office material is protected by attorney-client privilege and does not have to be disclosed to critics of his climate lawsuit against the oil and gas industry.

BY:

LESLEY CLARK

| 10/06/2022

CLIMATEWIRE | Minnesota’s highest court has delivered a victory to Attorney General Keith Ellison in legal action surrounding the state’s climate liability lawsuit against the oil and gas industry in what has become a campaign issue in the Democrat’s run for reelection.

The Minnesota Supreme Court in a decision last week sided with Ellison over whether internal office deliberations about Minnesota’s climate lawsuit can be kept confidential.

The case stems from a 2019 lawsuit filed by conservative critics of Ellison and other Democratic state attorneys general who have hired outside lawyers to work on lawsuits seeking damages from oil and gas companies for climate change-related damages (Climatewire, Aug. 19, 2019).

Energy Policy Advocates, based out of Washington state, had sought documents detailing the communication between Ellison’s office and a law firm that works on climate litigation against energy companies. The group had also asked for records related to Ellison's hiring of a lawyer through a Michael Bloomberg-backed fellowship program.

...

ref 2

leftist hit pieces showcase

CFACT's effectiveness

Friend,

CFACT’s Marc Morano has been on fire lately.

Over the past few months, Morano has appeared on TV countless times to expose and debunk the radical climate agenda. Morano has been on Tucker Carlson, Newsmax TV, Fox and Friends, the Mark Steyn show, Unfiltered with Dan Bongino, One America News, and TBN. His reporting has also been referenced in the New York Sun, the Washington Times, the Epoch Times, Eagle Forum, and more.

And now, he’s published a new book titled “The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown.” You can get your copy now on the CFACT store here.

No wonder the Left can’t stand him.

In fact, the Left is so riled up by Marc’s hard-hitting reporting that they’ve ran six hit pieces referencing Morano since July.

Media Matters called Morano a “notorious climate denier” and a “proponent of the Great Reset conspiracy theory.” Then later, they list Morano as one of the “high-profile climate skeptics” using “fearmongering” on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance).

Daily Kos, another liberal outlet, seems to have a love-hate relationship with CFACT’s chief climate debunker.

They say Morano is someone who is pushing “climate lockdown conspiracies,” but Daily Kos can’t get enough of Morano, as they reference him in four articles over the last couple months.

As the Mariah Carey song goes, “Why you so obsessed with me?”

It seems that it’s not Morano that needs “conspiracy theories” to stay relevant – rather, its Daily Kos that needs Marc Morano!

For CFACT’s part, we’re proud of the incredible work Morano is doing in exposing the agendas of the radical Left.

That’s why we’ve added Marc’s new “Great Reset” book to the CFACT store. Make sure to grab your copy now before it’s sold out!

CFACT will continue to work to expose those assaulting freedom, sound science, and free markets.

As for the liberal media outlets, they can keep on hemming and hawing all they want. It just shows us we’re making an impact!

For nature and people too,

Craig Rucker

President

book

On Sale!

Buy it now at the CFACT store

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post reuters?!

neW ORLEANS — Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply “dumb.”

These are among the messages that flowed from the America First Energy Conference in New Orleans this week, hosted by some of the country’s most vocal climate change doubters — and attended by a handful of Trump administration officials.

The second annual conference, organized by the conservative think tank the Heartland Institute, pulled together speakers from JunkScience, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center For Industrial Progress, along with officials from the US Department of the Interior and the White House for panels that included “Carbon Taxes, Cap & Trade, and Other Bad Ideas,” “Fiduciary Malpractice: The Sustainable Investment Movement,” and “Why CO2 Emissions Are Not Creating A Climate Crisis.”

The day-long conference reflected the political rise of global warming skeptics in Donald Trump’s America that is occurring despite mounting scientific evidence — including from US government agencies — that burning oil, coal and natural gas is heating the planet and leading to drought, floods, wildfires and more frequent powerful storms.

A similar conference blasting the link between fossil fuels and climate change last year drew then-Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, who was appointed by Trump to reverse Obama-era climate initiatives and roll back regulations hindering drillers and miners, but who has since resigned amid a flurry of ethical controversies.

The US officials who joined included White House special assistant Brooke Rollins, Interior Department Assistant Secretary Joe Balash, and Jason Funes,an assistant in the office of external affairs at Interior. They praised the administration’s moves to clear the way for oil industry activity, and steered clear of commenting on climate change.

But their presence gave climate change doubters at the conference a boost: “It’s a step in the right direction,” said self-described climate change doubter Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, referring to the US officials in attendance.

In an email, Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift said department officials “speak at thousands of conferences every year and share ideas with a diverse group of individuals.” A White House spokesperson did not immediately comment.

Tim Huelskamp, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, said the views presented at the conference — once on the fringes of US politics — would be proven right.

“The leftist claims about sea level rise are overblown, overstated or frankly just wrong,” he said in an interview. Regarding the United Nations’ findings on climate change, he said it was “fake science” motivated by a desire for “power and control.”

“Coming Soon!”

Evidence of sea level rise, however, is strewn across the state that hosted the conference.

New Orleans has been ravaged repeatedly by hurricanes that scientists say will become stronger and more frequent due to climate change. And the rest of Louisiana is losing coastline at one of the fastest rates on the planet due to sea level rise and encroaching industry, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It’s a nice world they live in,” said Steve Cochran, campaign director of Restore the Mississippi River Delta, an environmental consortium involved in coastal restoration programs, referring to the attendees at the America First Energy Conference. “It’s not the world we live in.”

The Governor’s Office of Louisiana, a state that has earmarked tens of billions of dollars to fend off coastal erosion and relocate a Native American tribe from a sinking offshore island, did not respond to requests for comment about the conference.

In the conference exhibit hall, the words “Coming Soon!” in big orange letters framed a Heartland Institute advertisement for the fifth volume in its “Climate Change Reconsidered” book series. Attendees also passed around a book titled “Dumb Energy: A Rant Against Wind and Solar Energy.”

The more than 40 speakers praised Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, a global agreement to fight climate change mainly by cutting carbon emissions; and for rolling back regulations to allow oil companies to lead the biggest energy surge in the nation’s history.

But they warned that proponents of the US oil and gas boom are still locked in an epic struggle with climate activists in academia and within federal agencies.

“The deep state is real,” said Congressman Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, addressing the conference. “They’re certainly anti-fossil fuel.”

Higgins joked about renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, saying there is probably a conference somewhere in the United States where people are talking about “how the future of the world’s engine will be provided by rainbow dust and unicorn milk.”

David Legates,professor of climatology at the University of Delaware, argued that increased carbon dioxide emissions will not only leave the planet unharmed, but benefit plant life by allowing it to consume water more efficiently.

“So, you would expect, therefore, that this will be a greener planet,” Legates said.

Funes of the Interior Department spoke on a panel called “The Future of Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas,” alongside Joe Leimkuhler, vice president of drilling at LLOG Exploration Co., and Fred Palmer, who joined Heartland in 2016 after retiring from coal company Peabody Energy.

“Oil production under President Trump has increased 2 million barrels per day since the beginning of his administration,” Funes said. “The US is exporting four times as much oil as it exported a decade ago.”

On the sidelines of the conference, Funes said he only attended the conference to speak about the nation’s surging oil production, and he refused to comment about the views of other speakers.

Efforts to reach Balash and Rollins were unsuccessful.

But in the dinner keynote address, Balash embraced the most obvious mutual terrain between the conference organizers and the Trump administration — the US deregulation push.

“Last year, this administration rolled back 22 regulations for every one that it proposed,” Balash said. “Unfortunately, I think we need about a decade of that to get back to a reasonable place.”

ref 1

in April, we noticed fisherman Jerry Leeman was _{impressively adept at anti-offshore wind media relations work}_, and wondered if he was receiving assistance from professional disinformation operatives. Then last month, _{we spotted a tell}_ suggesting Leeman was working with none other than _{Steve Milloy}_, the template for tobacco shills turned climate deniers, to _{launch his new fishing lobby group}_. Now, we’ve spotted another clue that Leeman's career change from the high seas to lobbying for the fishing industry has some big fish on the line.

Yesterday, The Daily Signal, the Heritage Foundation's disinformation website posing as media, _{announced}_ that "A conservative nonprofit launched by former Vice President Mike Pence is representing 11 conservative groups in supporting fishermen challenging the extensive power of the federal bureaucracy."

the 11 groups filing an amicus curiae brief to tell SCOTUS to _{deconstruct the administrative state}_ are basically a handy list of the current crop of Koch-world front groups, including "_{Project 21}_ _{Black Leadership Network,}_" the "_{Young America Foundation}_" that _{trains right-wing propagandists}_, and "Students for Life of America", whose_{board includes}_ the _{billion-dollar donation}_recipient Leonard Leo. (And of course Pence's political career _{was revived by Koch cash}_:{ and :(style="margin-top:0px"):}:the Heritage Foundation has been _{funded by Koch et al}_.)

So what do the Koch fronts say to one another? Well, they’re scheming to try to convince the Supreme Court (which _{Leonard Leo packed}_) to overturn the _{Chevron Deference}_, a long standing judicial precedent giving federal agencies like the EPA and FDA the necessary latitude to enforce the statutes Congress writes. Last year, before the Supreme Court _{turned "major questions"}_ from right-wing industry dreams into a reality, _{we and many others explained}_ that SCOTUS may narrow or eliminate the Chevron deference, and severely constrain the federal government's ability to regulate.

SCOTUS didn't _{go that far with "major questions" last year}_, but this term, they've taken a case calling for the Chevron ruling to be overturned: _{Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo}_. At issue? The federal government's regulation of the fishing industry.

And who should turn up in not one but two stories last May (in _{Fox}_ and _{the National Review}_, a _{Koch-backed}_ _{disinfo outlet}_) as the working-class fisherman who's also able to give quotes about Loper Bright and the regulations being challenged? And who was the podcast guest in :{another:(style="margin-top:0px"):}: Daily Signal piece in June about regulations harming the fishing industry?

That's right — none other than Jerry Leeman! Seems even as he was _{writing op-eds about how}_ he's "a trawler" who "cannot run a net off the back of my boat with wind turbines obstructing the water column," he was also trawling the murky waters of disinfo media.

Yet _{a month later, he}_ reportedly "stepped away" from fishing, and it would seem that's because he landed the most lucrative of all catches: a position in the Koch disinfo machine.

===}}

https://www.desmog.com/committee-constructive-tomorrow/

desmog 3 23 p 1 of 4

Donor

Grand Total

1991

...

2021

DonorsTrust

$7,855,387

495,500

$874,194

$1,280,753

$1,189,730

$3,694,210

$305,000

$6,000

$10,000

Sarah Scaife Foundation

$1,975,000

$25,000

$75,000

$100,000

100,000

$60,000

$160,000

$180,000

$160,000

$240,000

$160,000

160,000

$160,000

160,000

$160,000

The Carthage Foundation

$1,565,000

$25,000

$50,000

$35,000

$50,000

$25,000

$50,000

$200,000

$150,000

$80,000

160,000

$180,000

$100,000

100,000

$100,000

$160,000

:{Exxon Mobil

$582,000}:

$5,000

$110,000

$35,000

$72,000

$125,000

90,000

$70,000

$40,000

:{Donors Capital Fund

$395,000}:

5000

$60,000

210,000

$35,000

$15,000

$20,000

$50,000

Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund

$302,482

58,990

$141,510

$101,982

Lowe II Foundation

$135,000

45,000

$45,000

Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking

$107,000

$10,000

$62,000

$25,000

Schwab Charitable Fund

$100,850

500

$5,550

29,900

$10,375

7850

$14,845

$31,830

Rothschild Art Foundation

$75,000

$25,000

Chase Foundation of Virginia

$67,000

1000

$2,000

$10,000

10,000

$10,000

Henderson Foundation C/O Roberta Henderson

$30,000

8000

$7,000

7000

$8,000

Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation

$27,752

$5,376

$13,876

8500

Dodge Jones Foundation

$27,500

$12,500

$5,000

John P and Kathryn G Evans Foundation

$25,800

3000

$3,000

$6,600

6600

$6,600

Armstrong Foundation

$20,000

$5,000

Energy Policy Network

$20,000

$10,000

10,000

The Robertson-Finley Foundation

$18,000

4000

$2,000

$4,500

$2,500

Ken W Davis Foundation

$15,000

Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust

$12,500

2500

$10,000

Zwick Foundation

$12,500

$1,500

$2,000

$1,000

5000

$1,000

$2,000

Weiss Foundation

$12,000

$2,000

$10,000

Ayco Charitable Foundation

$11,250

Caridad Corporation

$11,250

1000

$1,000

$250

$1,000

$5,000

1000

2000

Bailey Family Foundation

$10,600

$100

$350

$650

$1,500

$4,000

750

$750

1000

$1,000

$500

Charles Koch Institute

$10,500

McNeill Charitable Foundation

$10,300

3100

$3,100

4100

The Challenge Foundation

$10,000

Charles F de Ganahl Family Foundation

$10,000

$5,000

Deramus Foundation

$10,000,,,

david rothbard

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521462893

1987?

EIN

52-1462893

2020 file:///C:/Users/patmc/Downloads/521462893_201912_990_2021060318257680.pdf

2.4mil$ 150K rucker (wife cfo) 200k morano

400K dir mail $ meredith morgan

:{clearworld 1.5mil$ they kept 50K$?

cornwall all 150K pgm service [BS docu?]

michael goetz spose of dir 60K$

250K consulting

200K progrmmng services

:{nothing on corp or fdn $

charity rating looks bogus: req to file irs transparency?

https://www.guidestar.org/profile/52-1462893

// aha 90% of rw punditry is just take legit crit of rt and flip it eg:

rubber inverse bizarro: remember when the libs made us feel bad for killing whales, well it turns out that...

via rww

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/offshore-wind-moratorium-whale-deaths_n_642599d9e4b02a8d518d12f0

no pix lnx twt

federal officials have repeatedly stressed that there is no evidence linking offshore wind development along the East Coast to a recent string of whale deaths.

Regardless, GOP lawmakers are citing those deaths in an effort to ban offshore wind — the latest in a growing, misinformation-rich campaign to stymie a ballooning renewable energy sector that stands to compete with America’s powerful oil and gas industry.

:{“The current system in place has allowed offshore wind to move forward too quickly & too recklessly in an attempt to solidify the legacies of green new deal advocates,”Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) wrote in a Twitter thread last week. “They hurt the environment, raise energy prices, & will destroy existing industry.”

Van Drew is part of a group of Republicans who introduced a resolution this month that calls for an immediate federal moratorium on offshore wind leasing and construction activity pending the outcome of an investigation to “determine the true impacts” of this development.}:

The resolution specifically notes that 23 dead whales have washed up along the East Coast since December and accuses regulatory agencies of having “an unclear process for determining all contributing causes of death of whales through necropsies.”

Along with Van Drew, the measure currently has five other GOP co-sponsors: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (Ga.), Andy Harris (Md.), Chris Smith (N.J.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.).

[ pix Offshore wind energy opponents gather during a "Save the Whales" rally on Feb. 19 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.]

To be clear, there are a lot of unknowns about how offshore wind will impact wildlife and marine ecosystems in the short and long term. Like all other offshore industries, wind development has the potential to disrupt and harm whales and otherwise negatively impact the ocean environment.

But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and independent scientists have for months been pushing back against sweeping claims that offshore wind activities, including sonar surveys, are to blame for recent whale deaths. Such misinformation has featured prominently on Fox News and other conservative media in recent months.

“When you think about this obsession with green energy — the argument is always like ‘oil and gas is so bad for the environment,’” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on her show March 10. “How ironic that what they are doing is almost certainly killing large swaths of the whale population.”

Greene, one of Congress’ proudest conspiracy theorists, has peddled similar nonsense. In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity in February, she claimed — again, without evidence — that whales are washing up because of “wind farms that are being placed all over the ocean.”

“People are calling the alarms over how [wind farms] are not only killing unknown thousands of bird species but also causing whales to beach themselves at record numbers,” Greene said.

There are only two small wind farms in operation in U.S waters, one off the coast of Rhode Island and another off Virginia. Together, they have just seven turbines and a capacity of 42 megawatts.

More than a dozen other large-scale projects are in various stages of permitting and development, but none are currently under construction — a reality that makes the conservative narrative particularly deceitful.

As part of a broader climate agenda, the Biden administration set a goal of securing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes for a year and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. So far, it has granted final approval to two major offshore wind projects: the long-stalled Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, and South Fork Wind project off Rhode Island.

The recent whale strandings are part of what federal authorities have classified as an “unusual mortality event” that dates back to 2016.

“At this point, there is no evidence that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys,” reads an FAQ on the NOAA’s website.

Rather, officials have pointed to vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear— the two biggest human threats to whales, including humpbacks and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.At least 190 humpback whales have died along the East Coast since 2016. Forty percent of the animals that underwent necropsies showed signs of being struck by a boat or an entanglement.

“Since December 1, 2022, injuries consistent with vessel strike were identified in many of the animals necropsied,” Lauren Gaches, spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries, told Inside Climate News this month.

Conservative lawmakers and media outlets are following the lead of fossil fuel-allied groups in exploiting whales to fight offshore wind. As HuffPost reported in November, anti-offshore wind groups, including some of the nation’s most hard-line climate change denial outfits, have branded themselves guardians of the endangered right whale as they threaten legal action against newly approved offshore wind projects.

Meanwhile, these same groups have advocated for increased offshore drilling while remaining silent about the documented threats to whales posed by oil and gas development.}: The NOAA estimates that 22% of the population of the endangered Rice’s whale in the Gulf of Mexico was lost as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

[The Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island is the first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States.

Those groups include the Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, better known as CFACT, both of which have long histories of peddling climate change disinformation and cheerleading for the fossil fuel industry. In one of the more ironic and laughable moves of this anti-wind crusade, Peter Murphy, a senior fellow at CFACT, labeled the Biden administration “deniers” on par with the tobacco industry.

motherfucker: “As with the tabacco [sic] companies of yesteryear that disputed their product caused cancer,the Biden NOAA and climate-change cohorts are deniers, claiming there is ‘no evidence’ off-shore wind sites are harming whales,” Murphy wrote in a March 18 post to CFACT’s website, without presenting evidence to the contrary. “Rather, the agency attributes some of whale fatalities to ‘pre-mortem vessel strike,’ while conceding ‘more research is needed.’”

It is no secret that the tobacco and fossil fuel industries have a shared playbook for downplaying and dismissing the harm they have caused. In fact, a trove of documents compiled in 2016 by the Washington-based Center for International Environmental Law, or CIEL, showed that tobacco and oil giants have worked collaboratively for over half a century, sharing marketing and advertising strategies, research institutes, PR firms and even scientists.

CFACT is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of conservative charities and nonprofits “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming,” according to its website. Between 1997 and 2007, CFACT received nearly $600,000 from oil giant ExxonMobil.}:

Few if any oil companies have done more to sow doubt about human-caused climate change than ExxonMobil.

In this July 31, 2010, file photo, a dolphin swims through an oil sheen from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off East Grand Terre Island, where the Gulf of Mexico meets Barataria Bay, on the Louisiana coast.

In his post, Murphy concluded that “at the very least, there needs to be amoratorium on construction of off-shore wind turbines, which from a climate perspective alone are ineffective and a colossal waste, and now hazardous to the largest mammals on the planet.”

Three days later, Republicans introduced their resolution for an offshore wind moratorium.}:

Among other things, the resolution declares that “Atlantic coast offshore wind leases represent a transformative industrialization of vital environmental and maritime resources of the United States.”

There is no question wind farms will industrialize large swaths of U.S. waters. But one of the biggest threats to global ocean health is the burning of planet-warming fossil fuels. Oceans have absorbed an estimated 93% of the excess heat from human-caused climate change. This ocean warming has come with devastating impacts, from mass bleaching of coral reefs to the collapse of fisheries.

The NOAA notes on its website that whales, including the endangered right whale, are particularly vulnerable to climate change, as warming ocean temperatures impact the availability of zooplankton and other prey.

Without a herculean global effort to shift away from fossil fuels and halt planetary warming, scientists warn the impacts to the ocean and marine life will continue to mount.

“The percentage of animal species exposed to potentially dangerous conditions increases significantly the faster the world warms,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe tweeted this month, summarizing a finding of the latest United Nations climate report. “In general, ocean species like coral and tropical species are most at risk.”

Offshore wind could ultimately help rein in fossil fuel emissions and combat the global crisis — if disinformation doesn’t get in the way.

Media Matters, a media watchdog group, published a report last week that found that of the 288 Facebook posts from right-wing media in January and February that mentioned wind energy, a whopping 84% included unsubstantiated claims that offshore wind farms impact whale populations. The most popular post was a clip from Fox News’ Jesse Watterstitled “Wind Surveying is KILLING our Whales.”

Republican Party

renewable energy

Whales

wind power

Climate Deniers Exploit Endangered Whales In Bid To Kill Offshore Wind

cfact BS

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-19/fact-check-checkmate-scotland-trees-windfarms-14-million/101345798

CheckMate is a weekly newsletter from RMIT FactLab which recaps the latest in the world of fact checking and misinformation, drawing on the work of FactLab and its sister organisation, RMIT ABC Fact Check.

You can read the latest edition below, and subscribe to have the next newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

CheckMate August 19, 2022

This week, we "fell" misleading claims about millions of trees being cleared in Scotland to make way for renewable energy projects.

We also take aim at incorrect suggestions that Denmark has "banned" COVID-19 vaccines for children, and provide important context for a claim that Asia has just 31 seconds worth of energy stored in batteries.

Did Scotland axe 14 million trees to make way for wind farms?

A US news website with ties to the oil and gas industry has selectively plucked information from a years-old news article about Scotland's efforts to tackle climate change, driving a fresh wave of misinformation about renewable energy.

In recent days, hundreds of social media posts have alleged that 14 million trees were chopped down in Scotland to make way for wind farms.

"Environmental madness", one widely shared tweet reads. "Scotland launched a number of wind turbine projects in an obsessive quest to cash in on renewables.

:{"The real tragedy is the destruction of 14 million trees, the mind-numbing hypocrisy of climate zealots, a hoax created by the UN."

Other posts, meanwhile, suggest the 14 million trees had been cut down "since 2020".}:

But that's not the full story.

Wind turbine

Scotland axed 14 million trees to make way for wind farms - but also planted 272 million others in the same period.(ABC News: Philippa McDonald)

According to the government agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), 14 million trees were cut down to make way for wind farms in Scotland, but this had occurred over 20 years.

Meanwhile, over the same period (from 2000), 272 million trees were planted across the country.

That crucial fact is missing from an article published this week by the website Energy News Beat, which appears to have driven the recent surge in social media activity.

Notably, the omission comes despite the article drawing heavily on a two-year-old story published by Scottish news site The Herald, in which an FLS spokesman was quoted as saying: "That figure for felled trees should also be contrasted with that for the number of trees planted in Scotland over the years 2000 - 2019, a total of 272,000,000, and renewable energy developments fit well with this."

He added: "The amount of woodland removed across Scotland's national forests and land, managed by FLS, for wind farm development is not even 1 per cent of the total woodland area", while the 14 million trees were a commercial crop that would ultimately have been felled for timber.

In an email to CheckMate, an FLS spokesman also explained that the 272 million trees planted did not include restock planting on commercial sites. In addition, the Scottish government requires that developers that fell trees to make way for wind farms must carry out compensatory planting elsewhere.

"On average, FLS will plant 25 million trees every year as restock planting of commercial crops," he said.

Notably, the Energy News Beat story was copied verbatim from the website CFACT.org, which belongs to the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, a US-based organisation that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.

The executive publisher of Energy News Beat, Stuart Turley, is also the president and CEO of Sandstone Group, which describes itself as an energy data and finance consultancy "working with companies all throughout the energy value chain".

According to LinkedIn, both he and the company's former managing director (who co-hosts Energy News Beat's podcast) work for the King Operating Corporation, a "privately held Texas oil and gas company".

yahoo mail 11 22

shortly after he took office, President Biden announced a goal of building 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030, enough clean energy to power 10 million homes. For the administration, the offshore wind target was a part of a larger strategy of reducing carbon pollution and putting the country on track for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But, like many clean energy plans, this one was met with immediate resistance.

In August 2021, CBS News reported that Nantucket Residents Against Turbines — or ACK Rats — launched a lawsuit against the administration's offshore wind plans. The Massachusetts-based resident group argued that offshore wind development “poses a threat to the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.”

A few months later, a resident group in New Jersey launched another lawsuit against the Biden administration. Bob Stern, president of Save Long Beach Island, told Reuters that he and his fellow residents worried that the wind turbines would destroy their local tourism economy.

Within a year of announcing the goal, the Biden administration faced lawsuits from resident groups in every coastal state from Maine to North Carolina. Some groups sued over endangered whales. Others argued that the turbines would hurt their property values or the local fishing industry.

If you only read the news stories about these lawsuits, you might think this was yet another example of wealthy residents blocking clean energy development. Or you might see a familiar story of environmentalists getting in the way of environmental progress. But you’d be missing the most important part of the story. Nearly every story neglects to mention these groups are being funded by a far-right think tank that receives funding from fossil fuel companies and billionaires.

Who’s behind the offshore wind lawsuits?

According to their website, Protect Our Coast NJ — one of the groups opposing Biden’s offshore wind plans — is a group of “residents, homeowners, business owners, fishermen and visitors of the New Jersey coastal communities.” Media reports accept this description at face value.

In May 2022, Ashbury Park Press — the third largest newspaper in New Jersey — ran a story about Protect Our Coast NJ with the headline, “Could offshore wind turbines blow away Long Beach Island tourism?” The story positions Protect Our Coast NJ as a group of residents and features many of the talking points and studies on the nonprofit’s website:

Ric Bertsch, an Ocean City resident and member of the group Protect Our Coast NJ, which opposes the wind projects as they are currently designed, said he worries about the impacts to communities like his own.

He said the county will suffer the consequences of New Jersey's new experiment with offshore wind turbines, which will harm the tourist experience and block large swaths of ocean from commercial fishing

"The only brand (in Ocean City) that we have to offer the world is our old-fashioned values, our quiet, our peaceful place to be," said Suzanne Hornick, also of Ocean City and leading member of Protect Our Coast NJ. "This (wind turbine project) really screws with our brand."

As of this writing, the “Donate” button on the Protect Our Coast NJ website redirects to a PayPal link that reads “Donate to Caesar Rodney Institute.”

[grift gfx]

Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI)is one of more than 50 think tanks in the State Policy Network (SPN). As The Intercept’s Lee Fang reported, CRI receives funding from fossil fuel trade groups like the American Fuel & Petrochemical Association. The think tank also receives funding from Donors Trust, the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement.”

In September 2021, CRI’s David Stevenson — a former member of President Trump’s EPA transition team — held a press conference in front of the Massachusetts State House where he announced a legal fund for groups fighting Biden’s offshore wind plans. By that point, Stevenson had raised $75,000 from his network of donors, and said he hoped to raise $500,000 for the effort.

When asked by E&E’s Ben Storrow who was funding the campaign, Stevenson said, “So far there is no Koch money, not that we wouldn’t take it.”

CRI’s efforts quickly attracted the attention of much larger conservative groups like theHeartland Institute and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). In September 2022, one year after the press conference, both organizations announced a partnership with CRI to sue an offshore wind project in Virginia.

According to the Union for Concerned Scientists, the Heartland Institute and CFACT have both received about $500,000 in funding from ExxonMobil. The Heartland Institute has been called “a leading force in climate change denial.” Media Matters for America named CFACT Founder Marc Morano its climate denier of the year in 2012. Marano, who began his career working for Rush Limbaugh, has said climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged.”

In a press release, CFACT President Craig Rucker said, “We are not only very concerned about the future of the right whale, which extensively uses the ocean waters affected by the wind-power project, but also concerned as to how [the federal government] will address the fact that this project, despite its alleged benefits regarding carbon dioxide and climate change, will actually cause the release of more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it will consume.” This, like most of CFACT’s statements about climate change, is false.

Reporters consistently tell a misleading story

None of these connections to the country’s infamous climate denial network are mentioned in the Ashbury Park Press news story about Protect Our Coast NJ. And the local New Jersey newspaper isn’t alone. According to a Popular Information analysis, 11 media outlets have covered Protect Our Coast NJ. None of them mention CRI, its donors, or the legal fund.

Popular Information found that reporters routinely failed to mention connections to CRI when writing about Save Our Beach View, Save Long Beach Island, and Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, three of the other resident groups in the coalition. Instead, these articles spread many of the resident groups’ misleading claims about clean energy.

In January, Reuters wrote a story about Save Long Beach Island’s lawsuit against the federal government. The article did not mention the group's ties to CRI.

Bob Stern, president of Save Long Beach Island, told Reuters that they are concerned by the aesthetic impacts of the turbines, and potential lost tourism due to their interference with Long Beach Island's current unobstructed seascape. The group says tourism is the community's "economic lifeblood."

In 2019, researchers at the University of Rhode Island published a paper analyzing the impacts of offshore wind farms on tourism. They used empirical data based on the United States’ only offshore wind farm off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island. The researchers concluded that the wind farm resulted in more tourism, not less. This study isn’t mentioned in the Reuters story.

Another frequent concern mentioned by resident groups is the risk to endangered species. CBS covered this last year when they wrote:

The "ACK Residents Against Turbines" who filed the lawsuit said the proposed Vineyard Wind project poses a threat to the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

Jessica Redfern, a senior scientist at Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, told Cape Cod Times that the greatest threat to the North Atlantic Right Whale’s continued existence “comes from collision with vessels and entanglement in fishing gear, particularly lobster pot buoy lines.” She added, “Another big factor is climate change and one of the ways we can minimize that is adopting clean energy (policies) and offshore wind is a great source of that.” She said she had never heard of Save Long Beach Island.

In addition to misleading readers, this poor coverage creates more opposition to offshore wind projects and funnels local residents to the nonprofits’ websites and Facebook pages, which routinely share misinformation about clean energy.

Decarbonizing America’s electric grid and economy will require support from people in every community in the country. But, letting fossil fuel companies and climate deniers control the narrative is a sure way to turn communities of supporters into groups of passionate opponents.

random grab 3 23

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BlackRock’s Larry Fink and the new post-ESG realism

by Rupert Darwall

Swept along by climate-change fervor, an investment manager “can’t make such commitments without reneging on its fiduciary duties."...

BlackRock’s Larry Fink and the new post-ESG realism

COP 26: With Biden’s help the COP goes wild

By David Wojick

Radical alarmists are running COP 26 and Biden is right there with them.

:{COP 26: CFACT In Search of “Loch Ness Monster”

By Peter Murphy}:

The beat goes on with the catastrophic climate narrative, as does the Loch Ness myth.

cOP 26: CFACT In Search of “Loch Ness Monster”

By Peter Murphy|November 11th, 2021|Comments Off on COP 26: CFACT In Search of “Loch Ness Monster”

Drumnadrochit, Scotland U.K. [pix with morano in tourist cosplay w/ monsters]

The business of the 26^th United Nations Climate Summit took a lull in the action, which allowed for some light-hearted business mixed with sight-seeing by the CFACT crew.

We decided to go in search of the legendary, cryptic “Loch Ness Monster,” which took us to the northern Scotland village of Drumadrochit, a three-hour drive from Glasgow through the Scottish countryside in a fossil-fueled vehicle.

And we found it!!

From the 16^th century ruins of the Urquhart Castle on the west bank of Loch Ness Lake, CFACT leadership, dressed in Scottish kilt, hit pay dirt. They not only located the Loch Ness monster, but befriended this beast and its new friend, the visiting Sasquatch!!

The story of the Loch Ness monster, affectionally known as “Nessie,” dates back to 1933 when s/he was supposedly sighted, with a famous photograph taken the following year. There also are stories of encounters with a mysterious animal in the area that date further back to the 1800s and to Scottish folklore from the sixth century.

The search for this Loch Ness creature has eluded pursuers ever since, right through September, even with deployment of sonars and drones. Nearly 90 years after that dubious photo, a mini-industry of search parties has continued for this elusive being or, presumably, Nessie’s offspring.

The climate change issue is the Loch Ness legend on a far grander scale. We are now in at least the fourth decade since politicians and hucksters alike sounded the alarm about inexorable global warming, which followed a generation of know-it-alls who predicted an upcoming ice age, planetary starvation from overpopulation, and related calamities. In many respects, there is about as much reason to believe a disastrous, imminent global warming apocalypse as there is a Nessie and Big Foot roaming about Earth.

Global doomsday remains 10 or 30 or 80 years away, depending on who is talking. We need “Climate Action Now!,” we’re told, including imposing full socialism to control society. That certainly was the message of the thousands of protesters on the streets of Glasgow over the weekend, which continues that tradition around UN climate conferences.

Climate is changing, but in a natural and historically consistent way with mankind’s influence tangential at best and insignificant regardless.

But the beat goes on with the catastrophic climate narrative, as does the Loch Ness myth. The latter story has playfully become a tourist attraction; the former is soon getting to the point of parody.

Author

Peter Murphy Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association, and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter: @PeterMurphy26 Website: https://www.petermurphylgs.com/

odd no byline? pollute = sci

CFACT|November 9th, 2021|Comments Off on Not about the science: Watch climate protesters at COP26 in Glasgow call for socialist takeover

Marchers at the climate protests near the United Nations’ 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland called for socialist takeovers of the world’s economic and political systems.

While some claim that the climate change movement is only about the science and improving the environment, participants interviewed by CFACT didn’t make any mention of science. The protesters only talked about the supposed problems with capitalism and the need for socialism. Marchers chanted “no more pollution, we need a revolution!”

One called for socialist “control” of resources while another said “drastic action by governments” was needed because “it can’t be down to people to do their own thing.”

COP 26: Planet saved, now what?

By David Wojick

Where are the green marches of celebration instead of protest?

An Armistice Day Address

By CFACT Ed

By General Omar Bradley: "To ignore the danger of aggression is simply to invite it. It must never again be said of the American people: Once more we won a war; once more we lost a peace. If we do we shall doom our children to a struggle that may take their lives."

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Pursue the wild (ft. Kristy Titus)

By Gabriella Hoffman|May 4th, 2021

"My roots are deep-seated with conservation...It's really incredible to to see the landscape of conservation changed so much in the country—even in the last 20 years." — Kristy Titus, "Pursue the Wild" host and conservationist In Episode 173 of District of Conservation, Gabriella introduces her listeners to "Pursue the Wild" host Kristy Titus. In this episode, Kristy chronicles her journey in the outdoor industry, why digital TV programming is the future, legislation that concerns her, [...]

Exploring the Mukono Village piggery project

By Adam Houser|May 4th, 2021

For several years, CFACT has been supporting entrepreneurs in developing countries start businesses that help steward the Earth and give back to their communities.

Bald Eagle numbers soar to high levels, FWS report finds

ByCraig Rucker|May 3rd, 2021

Bald eagle's low point came in 1963 [DDT] when there were only 417 known pairs. Efforts to protect the eagles have seen their numbers claw back to healthy levels. Bald eagles were delisted as an “endangered” species in 2007 under President George W. Bush.

Biden EPA moves to restrict emissions from air conditioners, refrigerators

By Adam Houser|May 3rd, 2021

The EPA has announced new rules phasing out HFCs, the coolants used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Industry is poised to make big bucks from the move.

:{Was Bill Nye’s death wish for climate realists a veiled call to violence?

By Joe Bastardi| May 3rd, 2021}:

Bill Nye: "There's an old saying-- 'science proceeds one funeral at a time,' but it's not happening fast enough."

Biden closing the door on U.S. mining

By Duggan Flanakin |May 2nd, 2021

Native Americans are anti-mining’s front line

MORE NEWS

videos

American Solutions “Card Check” Effort

Newt Gingrich asked Coast to Coast Strategies to put together a national grassroots ef-fort to oppose card check legislation know as EFCA. C2C spearheaded an effort to or-ganize an online campaign in 11 targeted states and develop a national effort to oppose EFCA.

The “Freedom not Fear” campaign generated hundreds of thousands of emails and online posts to raise public opinion about his effort. It targeted specific Senators and their state’s constituencies in opposition to EFCA.

We developed the strategic plan, organized the online effort, coordinated fundraising, implemented an earned media strategy and helped build a coalition against EFCA.

http://www.americansolutions.com/efca/

Microsoft’s Campaign Ready

Coast to Coast Strategies was brought on to help launch Microsoft’s Campaign Ready effort. We helped develop a strategic plan and implement that plan nationally. We work with Microsoft’s outside consultants in all 50 states to help them introduce their latest software and “cloud” solutions for government and political organizations.

Campaign Cloud powered by Microsoft was launched in partnership with Election Mall to provide a complete suite of tools for political campaigns. We work with their team to introduce Campaign Cloud to political parties nationwide as well as internationally.http://www.electionmall.com/Microsoft/

Microsoft’s Town Hall was launched with a national online “town hall” meeting organized by the U.S. House of Representatives. This effort was used to reach out to American citizens and encourage their active participation is setting the House’s agenda for the upcoming legislative session.

We helped develop the various product launch, advertising campaign, sales effort and continuing outreach to the public sector/campaign markets.

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/CampaignReady/default.aspx

National Popular Vote Effort

Coast to Coast Strategies was retained to help put together a plan to reach out to the “center-right” constituencies nationwide. We helped develop a strategic plan, speaker/supporters training, constituency outreach, online effort, media relations and expert witness preparation and implementation to state legislative efforts.

We assisted in building their national team of consultants. We regularly interface with their state lobbyist in over 40 states and provide strategic and politic advise on implementation of various grasstops and grassroots efforts nationally.

We helped developed and implement their overall strategy to enact enabling legislation in various state legislatures around the country. We provide strategic support and supervision of lobbyist and consultant who are tasked with the enactment of a “state compact” is various states. This include the introduction and in some cases education of political, legislative and opinion leaders in states across the country.

http://nationalpopularvote.com/

omg flag w/ trees "prosperity, liberty, nature) picked up 1 bag litter?!

lame action, girl on phone and capt sweatpants

The University of Connecticut CFACT chapter took to the campus quad on Monday, looking to recruit new students wanting to get involved with the fight for an economically sustainable solution to the growing energy crisis. Equipped with koozies, clipboards, and a sandwich placard, CFACT members met opposition as the campus’ PIRG chapter was out recruiting and spreading misperception on these same issues.

Many students were glad to sign up to get involved with CFACT and the base continued to grow for students wanting to promote a better future. In addition to recruiting students around campus, CFACT members posted REAL Energy literature on bulletin boards, calling on students to visit the website and get involved.

REAL energy is American energy.

https://www.cfactcampus.org/uconn-faces-off-against-pirg/

7/16

The secrecy enveloping the CRR is typical of the efforts to block regulation of greenhouse gases, according to Greenpeace, which has spent years tracking the behind-the-scenes efforts by oil companies such as Exxon and Koch Industries to deny the science of climate change.

Also among the EPA's opponents this time around is the Alliance for Natural Climate Change Science. That organisation appears to exist only as a Fort Worth post office box on the original court filings, which list Alexis Hathaway and William Orr as contacts.

Orr, a Colorado businessman, was convicted in 2008 on several counts of defrauding public funds and private investors for a project purporting to produce an alternative fuel that received a $3.6 million grant from Congress.

However, subsequent filings link the legal challenge to Bonner Cohen, a fellow of the Committe for Constructive Tomorrow, a well-known climate sceptic group. "[Orr] is no longer affiliated with the organisation," Cohen said.

Oxfam's Kert Davies said the link between the CRR and Solvay could be an indicator that the opposition to climate change regulation is spreading to new sectors of the economy. "The industrial bloc is powerfully organised and rich. They have all the tools and all the lawyers and they are going to do all they can to stop carbon regulation," he said."It is going to take a generation to really regulate greenhouse gas emissions in this country, just as it has taken a generation to get action on other pollutants."

morano main guy

terror attack? march cancelled by gov

===

whoohoo tipping pt:

(PARIS) Funding for climate change denial is drying up. The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a US climate change denial group that espouses the "free-market," has lost more than two thirds of its funding in the past two years, according to tax filings reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

In the most recently available CFACT tax filing for the 2014 financial year—filed in late 2015—the group reported receiving grant revenue of $1.5m, down from roughly $2m it had received a year earlier, but representing a massive drop off from the $5.5m in revenue it reported for 2012.

CFACT Grant Funding

2009: $3.07m
2010: $2.85m
2011: $2.98m
2012: $5.5m
2013: $1.97m
2014: $1.5m

CFACT co-organized a failed climate-denial conference along with the coal-funded Heartland Institute this week in Paris, coinciding with the UN COP21 climate summit negotiations taking place on the other side of the city. As CMD reported previously, only about 30 people turned up to the event, leaving large numbers of empty seats in the modestly sized room.

Both Heartland Institute and CFACT have received funding from fossil fuel interests for many years, including significant funds from ExxonMobil. That funding has now apparently ceased.

ExxonMobil now faces the prospect of civil lawsuits and possible criminal penalties, for allegedly suppressing its internal awareness about the serious risk to the environment as well as to shareholder value, from climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, has begun an ExxonMobil investigation, issuing the corporation with subpoenas which are still pending.

According to recent parallel investigations published by InsideClimate Newsand by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism/LA Times, ExxonMobil executives were informed by their own scientistsof the serious threat of climate change as far back as the nineteen seventies, with ExxonMobil using this data to inform its own long term planning. Despite this apparent knowledge, ExxonMobil provided significant funding to groups such as Heartland and CFACT which denied the science.

CMD recently provided the New York Attorney General with detailed information about ExxonMobil's funding of another climate change denial group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Both CFACT and Heartland participate in ALEC, and have provided state legislators with climate denial briefings at recent ALEC conferences.

ALEC is another climate denial group facing dwindling support. As CMD recently reported, the giant utility American Electric Powerthis week became the 107th corporation to abandon ALEC since CMD launched the ALEC Exposed project in 2011, joining BP, Shell, Google and others in ceasing financial support.

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/12/12997/market-has-spoken-funders-flee-free-market-climate-denial-group#sthash.RlgfAslt.dpuf

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/12/12997/market-has-spoken-funders-flee-free-market-climate-denial-group

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/08/climate-denialists-paris-claim-they-are-being-shut-out-while-shutting-out-journalists

Professional climate science deniers and delayers have been busy playing the victim card here at the Paris climate change talks.

As we head into the guts of week two, negotiators at the vast Le Bourget venue are heading into the business end of agreeing a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

In The Australian, environment editor Graham Lloyd wrote under the headline “Greens want muzzle on ‘climate deniers’” how environment groups wanted “alternative views on climate science silenced in Paris.”

That’s an interesting choice of phrase - alternative view. Try, wrong. There are some people in the world with an “alternative view” on the age and the shape of the planet, or the theory of evolution and the safety of vaccines.

But you wouldn’t expect them to be taken seriously at a major medical conference or the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Reuters also had a story where Heartland Institute communications director Jim Lakely complained that they had to “make their own space and time” to be heard in Paris. Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow's Marc Morano complained to Politico that the UN saw the denialists as the “turd in the punch bowl”.

The Heartland Institute, which received $736,000 from Exxon between 1998 and 2006, is ever keen to promote climate science denial, holding annual conferences in the US and abroad, launching “alternative” climate reports and comparing anyone who accepts climate science to tyrants and murderers.

So are climate science denialists and “sceptics” really excluded from the United Nations climate process?

The Committee for Constructive Tomorrow has been granted official press conference time and space at previous climate talks in Lima, Warsaw, Durban, Doha and Bonn.

CFACT communications director Marc Morano, who launched his Climate Hustle denialist documentary in Paris on Tuesday evening, told me they have a press conference planned within the Paris talks, in an official room, for later this week. CFACT has also had an official booth at the Paris talks.

The United Nations has also granted official delegate status to representatives from CFACT and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, another US conservative think tank that refuses to accept the evidence of the severe implications of fossil fuel emissions.

Yet while the likes of CFACT and Heartland cry wolf over their victim status, there’s an apparent hypocrisy in their claims.

When CFACT joined other groups in a room at the aptly-titled Hotel California (as the Eagles sang, ‘what a nice surprise, bring your alibis’) for a day of denialist speeches, the event was initially advertised as being public.

But when journalists from DeSmog turned up, the event suddenly became private and the journalists were excluded.

I had initially been granted a seat for the premiere of the Climate Hustle documentary, but was later declined. At the screening event last night (more information about that quite bizarre experience to come), I asked again to be allowed in, but was told it was full.

Dr John Cook, a climate communication fellow at the University of Queensland and founder of the SkepticalScience website, was also told he wouldn’t be allowed to actually watch the film, after initially expecting to be allowed in.

The ideologically-motivated climate science denial that Heartland and CFACT promotes cuts no ice here inside the Paris talks. But that’s not to say it has no impact.

Writing in the New Republic, Jonathan Katz points out how the Republican party’s denial of the science in the US could impact on the negotiations. Negotiators, Katz argues, “know better than anyone that the Republican Congress will not approve any climate change deal President Barack Obama puts in front of them.”

my writeup from hacksinger:

CFACT not in darkside:

Desmog: [“The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) was founded in 1985 to pursue a free-market approach to environmental issues. They describe their role as "relentlessly infusing the environmental debate with a balanced perspective on environmental stewardship."

According to Media Matters, CFACT's main focus is promoting what it describes as "destructive environmental policies," and it has "waged a decades-long war on environmental activism." [1]

CFACT is darkside/crypto on the offensive because it is trying to destroy PIRGs (Public Interest Research Groups, named specifically as a problem in the Powell Memo, as was its inspiration Ralph Nader (aside from Marxist Marcuse the only enemy to be called by name?). Nader of course was dangerous because he was successfully challenging the nonsense that seat belts and windshields that didn't breaking into bayonet would bankrupt the automobile industry. Such a threat was the car companies paid private investigators to follow him and prostitutes to try to blackmail him; when he won several hundred thousand dollars in damages for this behavior, he promptly used the money to fund the PIRGs, which of course leveraged it to get even more information about corporate malfeasance. So successful and valuable were these, that universities and colleges all over the country started their own, some even getting funding from the student body. Even worse, students were getting the inspiration and skills to move into politics and activism (e.g., U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, and Randy Hayes of the Rainforest Action Network). The right's reaction was to crank up the incubator, often taking the form of funding rightwing newspapers, but also trying to choke off funding the PIRGs as political (as if the Federalist Society was not). [Cautionary ironic tale: CFACT have an award to Helen P. Chenoweth-Hage, who managed to get elected to Congress from Idaho in the 1994 Gingrich takeover by beating up on her opponent for raising the top tax rate from 34 to 36%, (which led to the first balanced budget in decades and the longest economic expansion in US history); LCV in single digits. She attacked Clinton for his affair, despite the fact she had had her own for six years, but she was a lobbyist, and God had forgiven her.

wiki: “During her tenure, she was referred to by her most outspoken critics as a "poster-child for the militias," and in February 1995 she voiced the suspicion that armed federal agents were landing black helicopters on Idaho ranchers' property to enforce the Endangered Species Act, in line with a longstanding conspiracy theory. "I have never seen them," Chenoweth said in an interview in The New York Times. "But enough people in my district have become concerned that I can't just ignore it. We do have some proof."[6] The Los Angeles Times editorialized that during the campaign she gained national attention by "holding 'endangered salmon bakes' during fundraisers, serving canned salmon to ridicule the listing of Idaho salmon as an endangered species." She was quoted as saying in response, "It's the white, Anglo-Saxon male that's endangered today."[7] “ She did honor her promise not to run for a third term, but after retiring she rented a car and drove 300 miles rather than undergo a secondary airport search. Sadly (ironic part:) she died in an SUV when she was thrown out; those in seatbelts had only minor injuries]

In 2009, CFACT hired Marc Morano, a former spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe, to run ClimateDepot.com. According to Morano, the site was designed to offer research and environmental news that questions the theory of man-made global warming.”end ] Koch, Exxon, Scaife funders. Morano: Hansen will inspire eco-terrorism (equals torching SUV's). CFACT sponsors Climate Depot.

morano site

6/15 uk guardian (beware malish ware)

The secretive funders behind America’s conservative movement directed around $125m (£82m) over three years to groups spreading disinformation about climate science and committed to wrecking Barack Obama’s climate change plan, according to an analysis of tax records.

The amount is close to half of the anonymous funding disbursed to rightwing groups, underlining the importance of the climate issue to US conservatives

The anonymous cash flow came from two secretive organisations – the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund – that have been called the “Dark Money ATM” of the conservative movement.

The funds, which when channelled through the two organisations cannot be traced to individual donors, helped build a network of thinktanks and activist groups. These worked to defeat climate bills in Congress and are mobilising against Environmental Protection Agency rules to reduce carbon pollution from power plants which are due to be finalised this summer. In many cases, the anonymous cash makes up the vast majority of funding received by beneficiaries – more than comes openly from the fossil fuel industry.

“The conservative thinktanks are really the spearhead of the conservative assault on climate change,” said Riley Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University who studies environmental politics. “They write books, put out briefings and open editorials, bring in contrarian scientists ... They are an immense megaphone that amplifies very, very minority voices.”

Organisations funded through the secretive donors operations are also working to roll back measures promoting wind and solar power and block planning for future sea-level rise in state capitals.

To trace how the money was spent, the Guardian obtained annual tax filings made to the US Internal Revenue Service by the Donor’s Trust and Donor’s Capital Fund and cross-checked grantees with organisations associated with the climate change counter-movement.

In 2011, 42% of funding, or $35.7m, went to groups promoting climate denial and opposed to environmental regulations, according to the tax filings.

In the last presidential elections in 2012, when Obama fended off a challenge from Mitt Romney, that figure jumped to 51% of the funds directed through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund – a total of just over $49m.

...?

2013, the last year for which tax records are available, 46% of anonymous funding to conservative groups through the two Donors channels, or just over $41 million was spent that way.

Robert Brulle, a professor at Drexel University who first exposed the conservative network of think tanks and activist groups of the climate change counter-movement, said those funds helped hone opposition to regulations.

“It is a well-oiled, complicated, cultural and political machine of the right wing of the conservative movement,” he said.

In 2013, the two organisations took in just over $152m, distributing $90m to a constellation of groups. However, the ultimate sources of those funds were untraceable, an important consideration for companies or individuals wanting to avoid bad publicity for rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change.

“All these corporations that were getting bad press realised they can still fund conservative thinktanks,” Dunlap said. “Exxon or BP can still fund one of these things while doing all these great things on climate change to reduce emissions etc.”

Whitney Ball, the chief executive of Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, said the funds were set up to “promote liberty and help like-minded donors preserve their charitable intent”. She said that grants were made at the request of account holders, not the Donors Trust or Donors Capital Fund. “Our role is to ensure that recommended grants are to IRS-approved public charities, and we require that the charities do not rely on significant amounts of revenue from government sources,” she said.

Almost all of the thinktanks and activist groups on the Donors rolls work on a broad range of topics – and in most cases there was no way of tracking what portion of funding went to climate change related work.

But all of the groups have a record of rejecting climate science and fighting environmental regulations.

“You don’t have to be an outright science denier to try to prevent action on climate change,” Brulle said.

“You’ve got gradation – it’s not real; it’s real but we are not sure how much humans are contributing to it; I am not a scientist. There are all sorts of strategies.”

Funds sent through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund were allocated to 92 organisations that deny climate change or oppose environmental regulations – but only 24 organisations got donations of $1m or more over the past three years.

By far, the biggest overall beneficiary was the Franklin Centre for Government and Public Integrity, which received $22m over the three years. According to its website, the centre “trains and supports journalists working to detect and expose corruption and incompetence in government at the state and local levels”. It runs a network of online conservative websites in state capitals which are generally hostile to clean energy and pro-coal.

In 2011, the anonymous funding through Donors Trust amounted to 95% of Franklin’s budget, according to an investigation by the Centre for Public integrity.

Erik Telford, the president, denied that there was a conflict between the Franklin Centre’s watchdog mission, and its failure to disclose the ultimate source of its funds.

“As is the case with almost any news outlet in America, we have an editorial perspective, with a mission to expose government misdeeds, advance liberty, and look out for the taxpayers’ interest,” he said. “We welcome the support of citizens who believe in our mission, and afford them the right to privacy as established in the supreme court’s 1958 NAACP v Alabama decision.”

The Federalist Society, a networking group for conservative lawyers and justices which calls on states to reject the EPA authority to regulate carbon pollution, received $8.7m over the past three years.

pix: A member of the Boilermakers local 154 Pittsburgh holds a sign at a rally to support American energy and jobs in the coal and related industries at Highmark Stadium in downtown Pittsburgh, Wednesday, July 30, 2014. The rally is being held the day before the Environmental Protection Agency conducts public hearings on its new emissions regulations for existing coal fired power plants. Facebook Twitter Pinterest]

Another top recipient, the State Policy Network, a network of ultra-conservative thinktanks, received a total of $8.2m over the last three years.

Thinktanks allied with the State Policy Network have worked with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a pro-business lobby, which has sought legislation to penalise homeowners who install solar panels.

The Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank whose climate expert opposes cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, took in $7.9m over three years. The Heartland Institute, which sent a delegation to Rome in April to try to upstage meetings between the Pope and the United Nations chief Ban Ki Moon on climate change, received $3.8m.

Another big beneficiary of the anonymous funds, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received $4.3m over three years, claims on its website that climate change is its biggest programme.

“CEI questions global warming alarmism,” the website reads. Last year, CEI sued the White House over a video linking the chill Arctic blasts of the polar vortex to climate change. The CEI has also tried – unsuccessfully – to sue climate scientists.

The thinktank would not respond to requests for comment.

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow,whose communications director is Marc Morano, took $3.7m from donors in 2012 – its most ever. A year later, however, the organisation received $325,000.

aug 2011

Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT Campus, the student wing of Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, wrapped up its student climate and energy conference, the Truth 2 Power Conference. The Cable, Wisconsin conference was a direct response to the “dangerous agenda” of PowerShift2011. Apparently, finding solutions to effectively fight climate change and ensure a clean energy future are too much for CFACT’s big polluter interests and they had to fight back.

Truth 2 Power sought to teach participants about “the lies associated with the “Global Warming” agenda” and about “innovative and realistic solutions for tomorrows environmental challenges”.

The conference really represents a grab to ensure dirty energy industries stay entrenched.

incubated:

Coordinator, Client Strategy

Targeted Victory

June 2014 – Present (1 year 3 months)Washington D.C. Metro Area

National Field Coordinator

Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow

June 2013 – June 2014 (1 year 1 month)Washington D.C. Metro Area

Direct nationwide collegiate field programs
Identify potential regional areas for growth and foster relationships with colleges and universities
Designed, authored, and launched a national issue campaign, "REAL Energy, Not Green Energy"
Updated organization's website, manage social media platforms and blog

Associate

Charles Koch Institute

June 2013 – May 2014 (1 year)Arlington, VA

Engaged in weekly professional development and economic seminars focusing on non-profit management and fundraising, developing leadership skills, and exploring free-market philosophical understanding
Debated market and other policy implications through Socratic methods in a small group setting
Developed and presented a proposed plan for the creation of a facility to foster networking and collaboration among Charles Koch Institute alumni as a member of an eight-person team

First Vice-Chairman

Miami University College Republicans

April 2012 – April 2013 (1 year 1 month)Oxford, OH

Responsible for directing and coordinating events, including establishing infrastructure for new fundraising golf tournament
Assisted with daily club activities, including management of social media platforms.
Speaker on behalf of the club at various on-campus events

Chairman - Miami University

Young Americans for Romney

July 2012 – November 2012 (5 months)

Served as liason between state and national campaign offices and Miami University student body
Created and directed several events, on campus, throughout campaign, including watch parties.
Coordinated volunteer opportunities for Miami students with Ohio Victory - Republican National Committee campus field managers

Executive Council Member

Kappa Alpha Order - Epsilon Lambda Chapter

November 2011 – November 2012 (1 year 1 month)

Served as Parliamentarian, Council of Honor Commander, and Phase II Commander

Intern

Congressman Denny Rehberg

June 2012 – July 2012 (2 months)Washington D.C.

Handled day-to-day office activities involving visitors and constituents
Assisted Communications and Legislative teams on various projects, including policy research

Employee

Custom Aerosol Packaging

May 2011 – July 2011 (3 months)Piqua, OH

•Packaging aerosol products on assembly line

•Various tasks involving the labeling of aerosol cans and boxes

•Maintained factory cleanliness and safety through various janitorial jobs

Counselor

Nike Tennis Camp

June 2008 – July 2011 (3 years 2 months)Athens, OH

•Provided tennis instruction to students ranging in age from 10-18

•Ensured the safety and well-being of students both on and off court

•Assisted camp directors in managing off-court activities

bs nuke

Kelvin Kemmalso became involved in the development of training programmes, and he regularly lectures at a variety of institutions ranging from schools to the Defence College. He is also a part-time lecturer in the Management of Technology at the UNISA School of Business Leadership.

Dr Kemm believes that a healthy economy needs a wide appreciation of the role of technology. As a result of this belief, he became interested in the public awareness of technology and has written over 1000 popular interest articles in journals, magazines and newspapers, internationally.

He has also appeared in radio and TV programmes in South Africa and overseas and is a regular speaker at public events. Dr Kemm has been involved in many video and film productions in the role of creator, designer, scriptwriter and presenter. TV series that he created include: Curiosity Feeds the Cat; Halley's Comet; The Environment and Packaging; and Impact

bs bios

Craig Rucker, Executive Director, Co-Founder

A native of Buffalo, New York, who received his Masters of Public Administration from the State University of New York at Albany, Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its executive director. For over 20 years, Craig has provided expertise to a wide range of government, academic, media, and industry forums. He serves as co-host of CFACT’s daily national radio commentary called “Just the Facts” that has been airing on some 125 radio stations from coast to coast since 1993. Rucker has written extensively on numerous environmental policy issues, and his work has been featured in such media outlets as CNN, the BBC, USA Today, the Des Moines Register, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Rucker has had primary responsibility for helping build CFACT’sCollegians program on more than 40 campuses across the country, and has attended or brought student delegations to major United Nations conferences in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Cancun, and Montreal. Rucker has a wife and four sons, and currently resides in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Marc Morano, Director of Communications

From 1992 to 1996, Morano served as the television reporter/producer for the nationally syndicated “Rush Limbaugh, the Television Show.” He next served as an investigative reporter for Cybercast News Service and as a reporter and producer for the nationally syndicated television newsmagazine “American Investigator.” In 2000, his investigative television documentary “Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths” created an international firestorm. During his tenure as senior advisor, speechwriter, and climate researcher for U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), he managed the communication operations of the GOP side of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. His Senate website won the coveted 2007 Gold Mouse Award for being the “Best of the Best.” Morano was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in McLean, VA. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at George Mason University.

Duggan Flanakin, Director of Policy Research

Duggan Flanakin is CFACT’s Director of Policy Research as well as a journalist who has served as a policy analyst for CFACT since 1997; he is responsible for many of the articles found on the CFACT website. Mr. Flanakin began his professional career as a science editor with the now-defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines, and from 1989 through 2005 he served as editor of a high-level, Texas-based newsletter that focused on federal and state environmental regulation and policy. Mr. Flanakin has also served as a Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Arkansas Public Policy Foundation. He has written extensively on environmental education issues, the intersection of environmental policy and human rights, the divide between sound science and junk science, and many other topics. In Texas, he is widely respected for major reports that critiqued that state’s consolidated environmental regulatory agency and that laid the framework for a new Texas Environmental Education Partnership that brought diverse interests together to improve the quality of the science in the classroom. Mr. Flanakin holds a B.A. in History from Louisiana State University and an M. A. in Public Policy from Regent University.

Christina Wilson Norman, Development Officer

Christina Wilson currently serves as Development Officer for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. Previously, she served as the Collegians Upper Midwest Regional Director based in Madison, WI, overseeing chapters in the upper Midwest. Christina graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2008 where she obtained her B.A. in Political Science. She was born in South Korea, adopted as an infant and has lived all over the U.S. and Latin America since. During her time abroad she gained a broad cultural viewpoint and true appreciation for America. At UMD, Christina chaired the College Republicans, founded and ran a Pro Life group, founded and ran a conservative newspaper, and chaired her CFACT chapter for 4 years. As the current Development Officer, she’s excited to be able to help CFACT support its efforts fighting radical environmentalism.

scrape:

A. Alan Moghissi

Job Titles:

President, Institute for Regulatory Science

Alex Avery

Job Titles:

Director of Research and Education, Center for Global Food Issues / Hudson

Ben Bolch

Job Titles:

Emeritus Professor of Economics

Bryan Leyland

Job Titles:

Electrical and Mechanical Engineer

Christina Wilson Norman

Job Titles:

Development Officer

Christina Wilson currently serves as Development Officer for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. Previously, she served as the Collegians Upper Midwest Regional Director based in Madison, WI, overseeing chapters in the upper Midwest. Christina graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2008 where she obtained her B.A. in Political Science. She was born in South Korea, adopted as an infant and has lived all over the U.S. and Latin America since. During her time abroad she gained a broad cultural viewpoint and true appreciation for America. At UMD, Christina chaired the College Republicans, founded and ran a Pro Life group, founded and ran a conservative newspaper, and chaired her CFACT chapter for 4 years. As the current Development Officer, she's excited to be able to help CFACT support its efforts fighting radical environmentalism.

Craig Rucker, Founder, Treasurer

Job Titles:

Co - Founder

Executive Director

Member of the CFACT Board of Directors

Secretary

Treasurer

A native of Buffalo, New York, who received his Masters of Public Administration from the State University of New York at Albany, Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its executive director. For over 20 years, Craig has provided expertise to a wide range of government, academic, media, and industry forums. He serves as co-host of CFACT's daily national radio commentary called "Just the Facts" that has been airing on some 125 radio stations from coast to coast since 1993. Rucker has written extensively on numerous environmental policy issues, and his work has been featured in such media outlets as CNN, the BBC, USA Today, the Des Moines Register, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Rucker has had primary responsibility for helping build CFACT's Collegians program on more than 40 campuses across the country, and has attended or brought student delegations to major United Nations conferences in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Cancun, and Montreal. Rucker has a wife and four sons, and currently resides in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Craig T. Idso

Job Titles:

Chairman, Board of Directors, Center for the Study

Cyril Boynes

Job Titles:

Director of International Affairs

Darren Gibbs

Job Titles:

Member of the CFACT Board of Directors

Independent Voting Member

David Evans

Job Titles:

Principal, Science Speaks ( Australia )

David Rothbard, Founder, President

Job Titles:

Co - Founder

President

President of the CFACT Board of Directors

David Rothbard co-founded the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) in 1985, and has served as chairman and president of the organization since its inception. He has provided vision, guidance, and oversight to help build CFACT into a global presence, with activities on three continents and the support of more than 50 internationally-recognized scientists and experts. Rothbard has testified before Congress and various state legislatures; is a regular speaker on college campuses and at policy gatherings in the U.S. and around the world; and has led delegations to numerous UN environmental summits including those in Durban, Cancun, Copenhagen, Cairo, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, the Hague, Johannesburg, and Nairobi. He is a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows, and his work has been printed or critiqued in such publications as Newsweek, the Houston Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Washington Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Rothbard is also now spearheading the creation of model demonstration projects in impoverished villages in Latin America and Africa. He is a graduate of Fairfield University in Connecticut, with a degree in political science. He and his wife, Kelly, are the proud parents of three daughters in suburban Maryland.

Dennis T. Avery

Job Titles:

Director, Center for Global Food Issues / Hudson

Donald Waite

Job Titles:

Emeritus Professor of Family Medicine

Doug Dupler

Job Titles:

Editor

Dr. Terrence Flower

Job Titles:

Emeritus Professor of Physicsand Astronomy

Duggan Flanakin

Job Titles:

Director of Policy Research

Duggan Flanakin is CFACT's Director of Policy Research as well as a journalist who has served as a policy analyst for CFACT since 1997; he is responsible for many of the articles found on the CFACT website. Mr. Flanakin began his professional career as a science editor with the now-defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines, and from 1989 through 2005 he served as editor of a high-level, Texas-based newsletter that focused on federal and state environmental regulation and policy. Mr. Flanakin has also served as a Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Arkansas Public Policy Foundation. He has written extensively on environmental education issues, the intersection of environmental policy and human rights, the divide between sound science and junk science, and many other topics. In Texas, he is widely respected for major reports that critiqued that state's consolidated environmental regulatory agency and that laid the framework for a new Texas Environmental Education Partnership that brought diverse interests together to improve the quality of the science in the classroom. Mr. Flanakin holds a B.A. in History from Louisiana State University and an M. A. in Public Policy from Regent University.

E. Calvin Beisner

Job Titles:

National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for Environmental Stewardship

Fr. Robert A. Sirico

Job Titles:

President, Acton Institute

Gerd-Rainer Weber

Job Titles:

Energy and Environmental Policy Expert ( Germany )

H. Sterling Burnett

Job Titles:

Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News / Heartland Institute

Hardy Bouillon

Job Titles:

Professor of Philosophy

Harry Priem

Job Titles:

Emeritus Professor of Isotope and Planetary Geology

Howard Hayden

Job Titles:

Emeritus Professor of Physics

James Bovard

Job Titles:

Author and Lecturer

James M. Beers

Job Titles:

IWMC World Conservation Trust

Jay Richards

Job Titles:

Senior Fellow / Discovery Institute

Jefferson Edgens

Job Titles:

Professor of Political Science, Director of EGSC / East Georgia State College - Augusta

Jeri Goetz

Job Titles:

Member of the CFACT Board of Directors

Independent Voting Member

Jo Kwong

Job Titles:

Director of Economic Opportunity Programs

John Meredith

Job Titles:

Founder, Meredith Advocacy Group / Member, Agenda 21

Joseph D. DeLuca

Job Titles:

Associate Director, Keck Biotechnology Genomics Services / Yale University

Kate Xiao Zhou

Job Titles:

Associate Professor of Political Science

Kelvin Kemm

Job Titles:

Nuclear Engineer / CEO, Nuclear Africa / South Africa

Leon Louw

Job Titles:

Executive Director, Free Market Foundation of South Africa

Lord Christopher Monckton

Job Titles:

Chief

Policy Advisor

Marc Morano

Job Titles:

Communications Director

Director of Communications

Marc Morano currently serves as Communications Director for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and executive editor and chief correspondent for the award-winning ClimateDepot.com, a global warming and eco-news center founded in 2009. Morano spearheaded the 2007 groundbreaking report of 400-plus dissenting scientists and the follow-up 2008 report of 650-plus scientists dissenting from man-made global warming fears; by 2010, a new 321-page "Climate Depot Special Report" listed over 1,000 international scientists who had turned against the UN IPCC. Morano released his "A-Z Climate Reality Check" report at the UN COP17 conference in South Africa in December 2011. From 1992 to 1996, Morano served as the television reporter/producer for the nationally syndicated "Rush Limbaugh, the Television Show." He next served as an investigative reporter for Cybercast News Service and as a reporter and producer for the nationally syndicated television newsmagazine "American Investigator." In 2000, his investigative television documentary "Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths" created an international firestorm. During his tenure as senior advisor, speechwriter, and climate researcher for U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), he managed the communication operations of the GOP side of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. His Senate website won the coveted 2007 Gold Mouse Award for being the "Best of the Best." Morano was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in McLean, VA. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at George Mason University.

Michael Sanera

Job Titles:

Director of Research and Local Government Studies / John Locke Foundation

Nick Nichols

Job Titles:

Principal, CounterPoint Strategies, Inc.

Patrick J. Michaels

Job Titles:

Senior Fellow, Cato Institute

Paul Driessen

Job Titles:

Senior Policy Advisor

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, Congress of Racial Equality and other nonprofit public policy think tanks. He writes and speaks frequently on energy, the environment, economic development, malaria eradication, human rights, global warming and corporate social responsibility. His articles have appeared in news-papers and magazines and on news and opinion websites in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Peru, Venezuela, South Africa, Uganda, Bangladesh and other countries. Driessen's studies and analyses have also appeared in Conserving the Environment (Doug Dupler, editor), 2006, part of the Thomson-Gale "Opposing Viewpoints" Series; Redefining Sovereignty: Will liberal democracies continue to determine their own laws and public policies, or yield these rights to transnational entities in search of universal order and justice? (Orin Judd, editor), 2005, Smith and Kraus Global Publishers; and other publications. He is also the author of the book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, and the report Responsible Progress in the Andes. Paul received his BA in geology and field ecology from Lawrence University and a law degree from the University of Denver College of Law, before embarking on a career that also included tenures with the United States Senate, U.S. Department of the Interior and an energy trade association. He is active in the Public Relations Society of America's Social Responsibility Section; and is a frequent guest on radio talk shows and college campuses, and at business and public policy forums.

Pauline Mwinzi

Job Titles:

Principal Scientist / Kenya Medical Research Institute

Peter Holle

Job Titles:

Founding President

Richard S. Courtney

Job Titles:

Independent Energy Consultant ( U.K. )

Robert C. Balling

Job Titles:

Professor, Dept. of Geographical Sciences

Robert Novak

Job Titles:

Professor, Dept. of Global Health

Roger Bate

Job Titles:

Director

Roger Meiners

Job Titles:

Professor of Economics and Law

Ronald Reagan

Job Titles:

Ronald Reagan Distinguished Visiting Professor / Pepperdine University

Sherwood B. Idso

Job Titles:

President / Center for the Study

Shmuel (Sam) Vaknin

Job Titles:

Editor in Chief

Steven F. Hayward

Job Titles:

Ronald Reagan Distinguished Visiting Professor / Pepperdine University

Syrulwa Somah

Job Titles:

Executive Director, Lihede, Inc. Associate Professor, North Carolina a & T University

Teresa Ash

Job Titles:

Member of the CFACT Board of Directors

Independent Voting Member

Thomas DiLorenzo

Job Titles:

Department of Economics

Tung-Ching Lee

Job Titles:

Department of Food Sciences

Vincent Gray, Founder

Job Titles:

Founder

Wendell Cox

Job Titles:

Transportation Consultant

William Gray

Job Titles:

Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science

:{cfact 8 pp ggl doc

8/19/15

Also legal foundations

See hacksinger

CFACT seems to punch above weight (RS rates #12 disinfo); well-funded, large network (board), climate, DDT, GMO, Agenda 21; show up to counter-protest every COP? (nice junket, more than their share of PR for balance, and students do stunts. And when they are scorned, laughed at or excluded, that turns into a PR victory for the scrappy rebels who stand up to the Powers That Be. (e.g., press conf cut short for Kerry).

Crypto: Powell said build up mirror functions, but but some people/organisations go on the offensive, to the darkside and try to destroy the entity they copy; a fake pirg trying to kill the real ones!

Irking because portray themselves, especially Rucker, but to a lesser degree Driessen) as humanitarians, though no evidence that "collegians" are doing much work in developing countries (vs UN conf junkets) ; they cite two project in 2014 in Uganda [Innis pal of Idi Amin; kill the gays law C-Street], doubling the number of PC’s in an internet cafe (solar later), and a brickmaker (they do not say how he was assisted, or what fuels source he will use to fire them (wood?). Also cite at least two trips to Cancun to assist schools (one description implied the students helped paint, another says that the recycled laptops somehow empowered the locals to do it; The solar panels look pretty rudimentary and small, and the kids are pictured with two laptops, adorned with CFACT bumper stickers (which somewhat inexplicably feature a tree, perhaps homage to the libertarian paradise of Stanford). Generosity should in no way be disparaged, but many small town Habitat for Humanity not to mention church youth groups’ output put CFACT to shame, especially when considering its multi-million dollar annual budget.

all collegian blog post by two male students? bloviating the party line (including the baffling anti-wind vitriol).

----

Established 1985, 1989 asked chemical industry to money to attack PIRGs.

Craig Rucker, Executive Director, Co-Founder MPA, forty colleges; field trips to UN (and says that his two development programs are UN sanctioned (only one seems to exist), but these mostly seem to be protests of UN IPCC. Heartland 2012

“CFACT is committed to educating the public and exposing global warming for what it truly is — a massive redistribution scheme. This scheme is not designed to strengthen the U.S. economy, but to throttle it down.”

Morano: CFACT funds ClimateDepot (Press conf Durban with Inhofe) 12/11

COP15 Singer

Helen Chenoweth- Hage (R-ID) the new "Friend of American Freedom Award 2000 RIP

David Rothbard (seems to be no relation to Murray, founding but cranky libertarian, wrote a play satirizing Ayn Rand, fired by Charles/ Koch), founder, testimony; ALEC workshop on climate; radio (TV? doc Climate Hustle)

SMOKING GUN:

In 1998 (four months after BP’s Lord Brown praised Kyoto)The “Global Climate Science Communications Team” was led by the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry lobby group bankrolled by Exxon and increasingly used as a political cover for their activities, devised the

"Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan" to cast doubt on the science in order to stall climate action, right out of the tobacco playbook (in fact some were veterans). As much as 8 million dollars budgeted.

GCSCT members who contributed to the development of the plan are A. John Adams, John Adams Associates; Candace Crandall[Mrs Fred Singer], Science and Environmental Policy Project; David Rothbard, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow; Jeffrey Salmon, The Marshall Institute; Lee Garrigan, environmental issues Council; Lynn Bouchey and Myron Ebell, Frontiers of Freedom; Peter Cleary, Americans for Tax Reform; Randy Randol, Exxon Corp.; Robert Gehri, The Southern Company; Sharon Kneiss, Chevron Corp; Steve Milloy, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition; and Joseph Walker, American Petroleum Institute.

Dreissen (Renta-tom, CORE, Ag 21, Green is New Red) Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death; EPA is danger, not AGW: Heartland, Swindle; Cornwall

“Global average temperatures peaked in 1998 and since have cooled slightly, despite steadily rising CO2 levels. Except in its Western Peninsula, Antarctica is gaining ice, and Antarctic sea ice reached an all-time high in 2007. Arctic ice is seasonably normal, and in 2008 the Northern Hemisphere was covered by more snow than ever before recorded.”

Aligned with Wise Use wackos like Ron Arnold, and hacks Willie Soon and Fred Singer; but also with evil sellout CORE. Wise Use was in some ways Tea Party 1.0, cowboy division, fuelled by extractive resource corporations who want to get natural resources for free then not clean up the mess. What is new /evil is the co-opting of environmental justice: that is, the people who have birth defects in Cancer Alley LA or Kettleman City CA because of hazardous waste being trucked in, whose water is contaminated by landfills and fracking, etc etc. For a while there was a legitimate complaint that the environmental movement became too White and suburban, worried about beautiful alpine forests the way the first wave conservationists had been, or polar bears and pandas. These rifts are being healed, but the right takes its old notion of statistical murder, mixes it with the anti-Carson pro-DDT nonsense, then adds a dollop of anti-Commie Agenda 21 lunacy so Driessen ally Roy Innis claims the green movement is “killing black babies.” (murder by denying DDT). Roy tends to stay out of the spotlight since his ruse is easily and has been repeatedly exposed over the years which hurts his credibility thus usefulness thus profits. He runs a telemarketing boiler-room operation which basically uses threat of exposing an organization as racists (again, a spinoff/niche protection racket): His son Niger is more attracted to the limelight and has largely inherited the franchise, and openly uses the terms “Eco-imperialism”, parroted from Driessen, and even “eco-slaughter” ( ).

K Kemm nuke

Very large board, usual suspects: Whelan ACSH, Roger Bate (UK)

Co-sponsored Heartland conf 2012

In December 2013 CFACT served as amicus curiae for the Southeastern Legal Foundation in the review of the Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency case.

Funding: 3.7m$ 2012 Donor's Trust (Koch), Scaife, Chevron, car makers, ExxonMobil

According to Media Matters, CFACT's main focus is promoting what it describes as "destructive environmental policies," and it has "waged a decades-long war on environmental activism." [1]

CFACT is darkside/crypto on the offensive because it is trying to destroy PIRGs (Public Interest Research Groups, named specifically as a problem in the Powell Memo, as was its inspiration Ralph Nader (aside from marxist marcuse the only enemy to be called by name?). Nader of course was dangerous because he was successfully challenging the nonsense that seat belts and windshields that didn't break into bayonets would bankrupt the automobile industry. Such a threat he was deemed that the car companies paid private investigators to follow him and prostitutes to try to blackmail him; when he won several hundred thousand dollars in damages for this behavior, he promptly used the money to establish the PIRGs, which of course leveraged it to get even more information about corporate malfeasance. So successful and valuable were these, that universities and colleges all over the country started their own, some even getting funding from the student body.

Even worse, students were getting the inspiration and skills to move into politics and activism (e.g., U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, and Randy Hayes of the Rainforest Action Network). The right's reaction was to crank up the incubator, often taking the form of funding rightwing newspapers, but also trying to choke off funding the PIRGs as political (as if the Federalist Society was not). [Cautionary ironic tale: CFACT gave an award to Helen P. Chenoweth-Hage, who managed to get elected to Congress from Idaho in the 1994 Gingrich takeover by beating up on her opponent for raising the top tax rate from 34 to 36%, (which led to the first balanced budget in decades and the longest economic expansion in US history); her LCV score in single digits. She attacked Clinton for his affair, despite the fact she had had her own for six years, but she was [merely] a lobbyist, and God had forgiven her.

wiki: “During her tenure, she was referred to by her most outspoken critics as a "poster-child for the militias," and in February 1995 she voiced the suspicion that armed federal agents were landing black helicopters on Idaho ranchers' property to enforce the Endangered Species Act, in line with a longstanding conspiracy theory. "I have never seen them," Chenoweth said in an interview in The New York Times. "But enough people in my district have become concerned that I can't just ignore it. We do have some proof."[6] The Los Angeles Times editorialized that during the campaign she gained national attention by "holding 'endangered salmon bakes' during fundraisers, serving canned salmon to ridicule the listing of Idaho salmon as an endangered species." She was quoted as saying in response, "It's the white, Anglo-Saxon male that's endangered today."[7]“ She did honor her promise not to run for a third term [(she later regretted this)], but after retiring she rented a car and drove 300 miles rather than undergo a secondary airport search. Sadly (ironic part:) she died in an SUV when she was thrown out; those in seatbelts had only minor injuries]

my commentary lost? SUV roll-over, seat belts Nader; [Mich GOP official killed herself while adjusting bra holster]

In 2009, CFACT hired Marc Morano, a former spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe, to run ClimateDepot.com. According to Morano, the site was designed to offer research and environmental news that questions the theory of man-made global warming.”end ] Morano: Hansen will inspire eco-terrorism (equals torching SUV's).

Koch (Donor’s Trust, Dunn, Bradley) , Exxon, Scaife funders.

Cornwall: one of three founders is Cfact, advised by Dreissen; Sirico

[“ In late 2005, evangelical leaders like Rick Warren joined a drive to back a major initiative to fight global warming, saying “millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors." To counter this historic shift in the evangelical community, a group called the “Interfaith Stewardship Alliance” (ISA) was launched to oppose action on carbon emissions and to deny the existence of climate change. One of the men guiding this group was Paul Driessen, a consultant for ExxonMobil, the mining industry, and for CFACT.”]

Analysis: Rove learning how to shepherd the evangelicals was crucial to getting W elected in Texas and then as president. Moreover, we have seen Christianity as one of the four dove-tailing ideologies that keep the right in power. So the Christian stewardship movement is a threat in several respects. God promised not to destroy the word again after The Flood, so clearly AGW is not a threat (puny man does not have the power to alter His creation).

Moreover, the center of Jesus’ teaching was to care for the poor, who are impacted first and worst by chemical contamination and climate change, thus evangelicals must demonize those who are their allies.

The stewards, on the other hand, say the way to glorify God is to preserve his creation (an interesting bridge also built regarding mercury: it harms the unborn). Thus the Cornwall Alliance to kill stewardship matters. Green Dragon (serpent is satan and/or China ;). This also overlaps/dovetails nicely with Agenda 21, as the UN is both green and red.

Hard to assess effectiveness (aside from RS ranking), hard also to see the value to corporate donors on specific issues/legislation (well, except Morano is a sort of cottage industry unto himself, broadcast even more widely by Watt aggregator blog). Perhaps most newsworthy is the stunts at COPs, which rather echoes the early day of New Right young turks getting generous funding from octogenarian commie fighters by providing street action (small number, brief actions that give the illusion of larger movement?).

http://www.desmogblog.com/committee-constructive-tomorrow

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) was founded in 1985 to pursue a free-market approach to environmental issues. They describe their role as "relentlessly infusing the environmental debate with a balanced perspective on environmental stewardship."

According to Media Matters, CFACT's main focus is promoting what it describes as "destructive environmental policies," and it has "waged a decades-long war on environmental activism." [1]

end ggl doc