CO2 coalition

---

trifecta 4 sis: mercer, koch, scaife bradly...

see pj media

SEE FAM FDN SCAIFE SEARLE BRADLEY

note there are several morphing CO2 BS groups

see happer trump bs comm

ARLINGTON

1 22 bak

---

---

GGL 6 26

AI Overview

The ⁠CO2 Coalition is a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy organization that argues against the scientific consensus on climate change. Founded in 2015, they promote the view that additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provides significant benefits to ecosystems, agriculture, and humanity. [1, 2,, 4, 5]

Core Mission & Activities

• The Role of CO₂: The organization characterizes CO₂ as a "miracle molecule" and a vital plant nutrient rather than a pollutant.

• Advocacy: Under the direction of geologist Gregory Wrightstone, the group actively pushes back against government mandates and policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

• Membership: The coalition consists of nearly 200 members, including scientists, economists, and researchers from various disciplines. [1, 2, 3, 4,[

Location & Contact Information

The organization's historical headquarters in Arlington, VA is registered at the following address:

• Address: 1621 N Kent St, Suite 603, Arlington, VA 22209
• Phone: (571) 970-3180 [1, 2, 3]

Official Resources & Background

• Website: For a deeper look at their white papers, statements, and research, visit the CO2 Coalition home page.

• Organizational Details: You can find out more about the non-profit's background and leadership through the ⁠About Us page.

• Non-profit Profile: View their organizational profile and community standing on ⁠Idealist or read neutral perspectives on ⁠Wikipedia. [1]

:{:{---}:

---

FF BS

CO2 Coalition Intervenes in Endangerment Finding - CO2 Coalition

CO₂ Coalition Seeks to Defend Repeal of EPA Rule

CO2 Coalition Motion to Intervene

FAIRFAX, Va. – The CO₂ Coalition is requesting to join a federal D.C. Court of Appeals case to support the EPA’s repeal of a 2009 rule that classified carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles as a dangerous pollutant.

The Coalition’s March 20^th motion to intervene is a response to environmental organizations and several states that filed legal challenges to the EPA repeal, which was announced in February. The agency had concluded that it did not have authority under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide.

“The basis of the wrongheaded Endangerment Finding put ideology ahead of science,” said Gregory Wrightstone, Executive Director of the CO₂ Coalition, a nonprofit organization of more than 200 scientists and researchers. “The rule has been an impediment to economic growth, a cause of rising energy costs and a destroyer of many thousands of jobs at power plants, coal mines and manufacturing facilities.

“Since its 2009 enactment, the Endangerment Finding’s scientific underpinnings have been found to be even weaker than previously believed and contradicted by empirical data, peer-reviewed studies and research.”

Founded in 2015, the CO₂ ~Coalition is a nonprofit organization with a mission to advance the public understanding of carbon dioxide’s essential role in sustaining plant life, agriculture and the global ecosystem.

The Coalition filing includes statements of members engaged in activities like farming and forestry. They note the benefits of higher levels of atmospheric CO₂ for plants and list negative effects of the Endangerment Finding, including higher costs for equipment and of doing business in general.

“EPA’s repeal of the Endangerment Finding is a welcome action based on sound legal reasoning,” said Executive Director Wrightstone. “The CO₂ Coalition will present scientific facts and data demonstrating the fallacy underlying the rule – that carbon dioxide is a toxin. The planet is benefiting from rising CO₂ levels and will continue to do so. There is no climate crisis.”

Attorneys Andrew Grossman, Mark Delaquil and Benjamin Janacek of Baker and Hostetler law firm filed the intervention on behalf of the CO₂ Coalition.

Download here: CO~2 Coalition – Motion to Intervene with Declarations – As Filed

Contact: Gregory Wrightstone

Email:executivedirector@co2coalition.org

Phone:(703) 540-4700

Tags: Endangerment Finding, EPA

---

e nad e

Meet the ‘dead industrialists’ funding climate denialism

:{By Scott Waldman | 06/26/2020

Some of the most prolific funders of today’s climate science denial groups died decades before the general public knew climate change was transforming the planet.

Sarah Mellon Scaife and Daniel C. Searle. University of Pittsburgh/Historic Pittsburgh (Scaife); Searle Freedom Trust

Some of the most prolific funders of today’s climate science denial groups died decades before the general public knew climate change was transforming the planet.

While much of the attention on opposition to mainstream climate science has focused in recent years on funding from fossil fuel companies, there’s growing support for foes of carbon regulation from conservative foundations that are not widely known.

Foundations formed by now-dead industrialists have been instrumental in promoting rollbacks of regulations that protect the public from deadly air pollution and spreading misinformation around climate science.

Fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the foundations have supported groups that worked with the Trump White House to roll back vehicle emissions standards and to ease restrictions on power plant pollution and water protections, public tax filings show. They have quietly funded presidential advisers who worked to conduct a hostile White House review of climate science and to restrict EPA’s use of scientific research when crafting public health protections.

Among the foundations, which operate independently but bankroll many of the same groups, are the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who studies and tracks climate denial funding, said such foundations have been quietly shaping public life for decades. They offer a way, he said, for "dead industrialists" to transfer economic power into cultural and political power that can last in perpetuity. The power of such foundations lies in their ability to operate for generations without any check on their power, he said.

"These foundations are totally unaccountable to anybody," he said. "A foundation can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants regardless of the consequences. Foundations have undemocratic and plutocratic power."

None of the foundations responded to requests for comment.

The foundations fuel more than just climate policy battles. They also support media organizations that promote misleading climate information and create confusion around climate science. That includes the conservative Daily Caller News Foundation as well as the Prager University Foundation.

The Daily Caller News Foundation provides articles for the Daily Caller, the conservative website founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. A Prager University video series has featured climate deniers saying that global warming concerns are overblown and that NASA, NOAA and the world’s major science agencies are wrong.

They have pumped millions of dollars into groups that have worked closely with the Trump administration and Congress to weaken climate policy and create confusion around climate science, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), CO2 Coalition, Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, Cato Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation.

And the foundations have been a source of "baseload" funding for organizations that have battled the government for the last 40 years, said Kert Davies, director of the nonprofit Climate Investigations Center.

Even before fossil fuel companies and the Koch brothers began pumping money into organizations that oppose climate regulations, the foundations were quietly supporting such work, he said. And as the fossil fuel industry faces increasing scrutiny over its role in climate misinformation and has backed away from some public funding, the foundations have continued their support, Davies noted.

"They don’t have any material interest in fossil fuels, but they are fundamentalists about hating the government, hating regulation and trying to stop any progress on things like climate change because they see it as almost a step toward communism, it’s almost that stark," he said.

To be sure, not all foundations linked to dead industrialists oppose climate science. The fortune of John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil is now funding climate action. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund spends more than $10 million annually supporting climate causes and funding groups that promote regulation of fossil fuel.

3 big donors

One of the largest donors to anti-climate policy causes is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has spent millions of dollars annually on groups that try to sow doubt about climate change and that work to weaken climate regulations.

Public tax filings show that the Wisconsin-based foundation has assets of about $1 billion and was named for two brothers — Lynde, who died in 1942, and Harry, a member of the far-right John Birch Society, who died in 1965. The family made its fortune in electronic controls.

The foundation was expanded into a conservative powerhouse in 1985, when a sale of the family company expanded the foundation’s assets to $290 million.

In recent years, the foundation has pumped millions of dollars into groups that worked closely with the Trump White House to roll back most of the Obama administration’s climate policy; to increase the voice of industry researchers in order to diminish air pollution regulations; and to steer federal agencies such as the Interior Department, EPA and the Department of Energy toward the interests of fossil fuel companies.

Last year alone, the Bradley Foundation spent more than $2 million funding CEI, the Cato Institute, the CO2 Coalition, the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Former employees of those groups have served in senior positions at the White House, Interior, DOE and EPA, and on President Trump’s transition teams for those agencies.

Millions of dollars to the same groups has also flowed from the Searle Freedom Trust, public tax filings show. The trust was founded by Daniel C. Searle, who died in 2007 and was a fourth-generation CEO of a family pharmaceutical company that was sold to Monsanto.

In 2018 alone, tax filings show, the Searle trust gave more than $2 million to groups that worked with the Trump administration to roll back environmental regulations, including the CO2 Coalition, CEI, Cato and the Heritage Foundation.

In addition to policy support, the foundation funds public outreach for climate denialism. In 2018 alone, it spent more than $300,000 on groups that publish and promote climate misinformation, including the Daily Caller News Foundation and the Prager University Foundation, tax filings show.

The work of the Bradley Foundation and Searle trust is complemented by funding from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which is named after Sarah Mellon Scaife, an heiress to the fortune of her father, Richard Mellon, a banker and industrialist.

Scaife, who died in 1965, focused her support on funding for hospitals, disability and poverty issues, and environmental causes. Her money was even used to fund the University of Pittsburgh laboratory where the polio vaccine was developed by Dr. Jonas Salk in the early 1950s.

After Scaife’s death, her son, Richard Mellon Scaife, turned the foundation into a powerhouse for conservative issues, spending tens of millions of dollars on the Heritage Foundation alone before his death in 2014. Scaife steered the family’s fortune toward conservative causes so thoroughly that Hillary Clinton once pinpointed him as the figurehead of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

The Sarah Scaife Foundation now funnels millions to groups that oppose environmental regulations and that attack climate science. That includes more than $3 million in its most recent filing, including to Cato, CEI, the CO2 Coalition, FreedomWorks, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, according to tax filings.

---

---

gmail to newsbusters

IT'S SUMMER, NITWITS! NPR Blames ‘Climate Change’ for Texas Floods and ‘Rainstorms’

Joseph Vazquez

July 18th, 2025

the cuts to National Public Radio’s taxpayer funding have definitely been a long time coming. The leftist outlet is blaming climate change (there’s a surprise) for — wait for it — a lot of rain, in summertime!

[pix]

“Climate change is fueling brutal rainstorms. Here's how to stay safe,” read the ridiculous headline for NPR’s July 15 Consider This podcast by All Things Consideredco-host Juana Summers (ironic) and Climate Desk correspondent Michael Copley, both of whom are not scientists.

Of course, Summers exploited the Texas flood disasters as a springboard to blame rainfall and recent flooding writ large in the U.S. as being a byproduct of the left’s eternal boogeyman: climate change. “So why is climate change expected to make extreme rainstorms like the ones we've seen this month more common,” Summers teased. “To dig into that question and what people can do to prepare, I spoke with Michael Copley from NPR's climate desk.”

Copley then went for the typical climate activist drivel: blame the darn humans! “So people keep releasing a ton of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil, and that's raising global temperatures and fueling more intense rainstorms that drop more water in shorter periods of time,” he spewed. What’s telling is that he said the quiet part out loud when he prefaced his statement by admitting,“So in general, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.” No kidding, Sherlock! But he insisted that “we're going to see more extreme weather events as the Earth keeps heating up, and that's going to pose bigger threats to people and their homes and cities.”

Climate Depot Founder Marc Morano blasted NPR's eco-fanaticism in comments to MRC Business. "Listening to or reading climate 'news' from NPR was a throwback experience to the days when the U.S. actually funded such tripe. Oh, wait! We still do," Morano rebuked. "But as of July 17, it looks like the days of U.S. taxpayers footing the bill for utter climate garbage are severely numbered."

Morano then tore apart NPR's arguments to shreds:

NPR rehashes all the same old scare tactics about extreme weather and, in particular, how 'climate change is fueling brutal rainstorms.' There is just one glaring problem with NPR's reporting. Even the United Nations' climate reports don't agree with the soon-to-be defunded network. On climate timescales, flooding and flash floods are not increasing globally, nationally, or locally in Texas, contrary to NPR claims.

Further, noted Morano, "the United Nations, the US federal National Climate Assessment, and peer-reviewed studies all show that extreme weather, ranging from hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and droughts, is not increasing on climate timescales of 30, 50, or 100 years."

As CO2 Coalition Science and Research Associate Vijay Jayaraj wrote in an April 21 op-ed using monsoon-afflicted India as a case study for summer climate, “The average annual rainfall between 2000 and 2023 shows us that there is no crisis. The early 2000s experienced several significantly wet years, with 2003 recording nearly 49 inches of precipitation.” In addition, wrote Jayaraj, “From the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, there was a notable decline in rainfall, with 2009 being especially arid.”

What the data indicates is that there is “no discernible trend of increasing or decreasing precipitation throughout the period.” The overarching principle, Jayaraj concluded, was that “climate fluctuates” in summer. Did Summers or Copley consider that possibility? Probably not.

So what’s Copley’s solution to the climate problem? Ah yes, just throw an ungodly bunch of tax money at it: “[Columbia Business School climate economist Gernot] Wagner says communities need to invest billions and billions to deal with more extreme weather.”

*Listen to NPR's entire 10-minute climate propaganda below.

omg bbc link undermines

Monsoon mayhem: Why lashing rains wreak havoc annually in India's cities

...But experts say climate change has made erratic weather - such as unseasonal rains, flash floods and droughts linked to extreme heat - a more regular phenomenon, directly affecting millions of people.

This year the monsoon arrived a week early in parts of southern India, catching authorities unprepared.

"A depression developed over the eastern central Arabian Sea which was instrumental in pulling up the monsoon current," says Mahesh Palawat, vice-president of meteorology and climate change at weather forecasting company Skymet.

In Delhi, the Minto bridge has become a symbol of the city's annual monsoon chaos. Almost every year, after heavy rain, a bus or lorry gets stuck under the bridge - an image that highlights the city's struggle with urban flooding.

This year, Delhi recorded its wettest May since 1901, with more than 185mm of rainfall, according to the Indian weather department.

...

ref 2 watts up

Commentary

Summertime Reality Twisted Into Climate Exasperation

3 months ago

Guest Blogger

By Vijay Jayaraj

Growing up in the sun-scorched plains of Southern India, where summer temperatures often flirt with 104 degrees Fahrenheit, I learned early that extreme heat is not an anomaly but a seasonal reality to be expected. Yet, all of us confront the metaphorical heat of relentless rhetoric from climate alarmists who insist our planet is overheating beyond the point of salvaging.

In Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), the city I now call home, climate narratives often echo global hysteria. Headlines scream of “record-breaking heat” and “unlivable cities,” yet the data – raw, unfiltered and grounded in reality – tell a different story, one that challenges the hyperbole regularly sweeping over the public.

On average, a Bengaluru March experiences 17 days where temperatures reach or exceed 93 degrees. This year has been no different. We recorded exactly 17 days of 93 degrees or above in March – right on par with the 15-year average. Far from the apocalyptic predictions of endless heatwaves, this summer has been, in a word, normal.

Over the past 15 years, from 2010 to 2024, temperature records for the months of February through May show us that there is no summer crisis. The entire summer of 2018, for instance, had only 23 days above 93 degrees, whereas 2023 had 30 days. In contrast, 2016 had 76 days. Does this indicate an existential crisis? Or does it simply affirm that climate fluctuates? It is the latter.

Climate Alarmism: A Manufactured Crisis?

It is not just temperatures. The broader climate narrative is laced with outlandish predictions that fail to materialize. The “end of snow” prophecy, the vanishing of Arctic ice by 2013, and the frequent claims of “hottest year ever” – all have proven misleading at best, deceptive at worst.

Consider rainfall patterns in India, which have a major influence on the livelihood of 1.3 billion people. There is a significant year-to-year variability in precipitation, which is typical of India because of the unpredictable nature of monsoons.

The average annual rainfall between 2000 and 2023 shows us that there is no crisis. The early 2000s experienced several significantly wet years, with 2003 recording nearly 49 inches of precipitation. From the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, there was a notable decline in rainfall, with 2009 being especially arid. The latter segment of the dataset, spanning from 2019 to 2022, indicates a duration of consistently elevated rainfall levels.

There is no discernible linear trend of increasing or decreasing precipitation throughout the period. The data reveal fluctuations between wetter and drier years. This variability underscores the intricate nature of India’s monsoon system and its susceptibility to diverse climatic factors.

Now, imagine asking the city’s 14 million residents to relinquish their ambitions for an uninterrupted power supply based on coal as a fuel in favor of unreliable “green” technologies such as wind turbines to address a fabricated climate crisis.

Sadly, such requests are made by activists and media outlets that peddle worst-case scenarios as inevitabilities, ignoring historical weather records and honest science. The result? A public psyche primed to view every warm day as a portent of apocalypse.

Individuals are not only subjected to feelings of guilt regarding the supposed degradation of the Earth’s climate, but they are also deceived into thinking that erratic wind and daytime solar energy can supply baseload electricity required by their urban and industrial centers.

The truth is summers are hot, particularly in the middle latitudes of my city. And there is nothing the climate industrial complex can, or should, do about it.

This commentary was first published at California Globe on April 21, 2025.

*Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at theCO~2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. Heholds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.

---

---}:

11 24 cmd

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.

---

1 24

Exclusive: Circuit Court Ruling on Biden DOE's Appliance Regulation 'a Win' for Americans

PJ Media

Climate Depot's Marc Morano called the DOE's revoked regulations “a complete bypassing of democracy through the unelected regulatory state” and ...

Exclusive: Circuit Court Ruling on Biden DOE’s Appliance Regulation ‘a Win’ for Americans

CATHERINE SALGADO | 6:52 PM ON JANUARY 09, 2024

The Biden Department of Energy (DOE) just lost a case on its heavy and damaging regulation of laundry and dishwashing machines, and a consumer advocate is celebrating the move as “a win” for Americans’ “consumer choice.”

Fifth Circuit Court judges Clement, Wilson, and Oldham ruled on Jan. 8: “In 2022, the Department of Energy tightened the regulatory regime surrounding America’s dishwashers and laundry machines. Petitioners sued. The Department’s actions were arbitrary and capricious. So we grant the petition and remand to the Department.”

The Biden administration has been attempting to wage a war on appliances on multiple occasions and fronts, partly due to its radical and unscientific climate alarmist agenda.

Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild is one expert who sees the court ruling as a victory. Consumers’ Research is a consumer advocacy organization that says it is “focused on educating consumers on the policies, products, and services of concern to them and to promote the freedom to act on that knowledge and understanding.”

This new ruling against the DOE appears to be pro-freedom and pro-consumer. “This is a fantastic ruling for American consumers,” Hild said in exclusive comments to PJ Media.

Hild explained that the DOE appliance regulations came out of the Biden administration’s Environmental, Social, and Governance goals (ESG, or woke standards poisoning our government and businesses). “These regulations were part of Biden’s ESG agenda, that was more about pushing a radical environmentalist agenda than protecting and serving consumers, and today is a win for consumer choice and our standard of living,” Hild said.

*For Our VIPs:I’m So Glad I Have a Gas Stove Right Now

ref co2 coalition BS “unscientific”

Nobel laureate Dr. John Clauser, a CO₂ ~Coalition Board of Directors member, delivered a keynote lecture at Quantum Korea 2023 Seoul on June 26, 2023.

Regarding climate, Dr. Clauser stated “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis” in his keynote address. The speech was reported by several Korean news media.

From *Seoul Economic Daily

“In the era of AI, scientists should play the role of discerning truth from falsehood.”

“The world we live in today is filled with misinformation. It is up to each of you to serve as judges, distinguishing truth from falsehood based on accurate observations of phenomena.”

Renowned quantum physics scholar Dr. John Clauser (81), who received the Nobel Prize in Physics last year for his research in quantum mechanics, emphasized at the opening ceremony of the “Quantum Korea 2023” event, held by the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning with the theme of “Korea’s Quantum Leap,” at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) on the 26th. He stated, “Misinformation is being spread by those with political and opportunistic motives.” Furthermore, he remarked, “Even chatbots like ChatGPT can be better at lying than humans,” emphasizing that “distinguishing truth from falsehood is a challenging task for both humans and computers.”

During his keynote speech aimed at young Korean scientists and engineering students, Dr. Clauser urged scientists to fulfill their social role by verifying facts and informing the public, particularly in light of the potential drawbacks of interactive artificial intelligence (AI) systems that generate and provide unverified information to users. He emphasized the importance of scientists in society and called upon them to engage in fact-checking and dissemination of information.

He delved into the controversial subject of quantum mechanics and used his past research experience to illustrate his point, stating, “True truth can be found through the observation of natural phenomena.” He continued, “Scientists have obtained information through careful observation and experimentation, and they have prevented the spread of misinformation through papers and peer reviews.” He added, “In an era of rapid advancement in AI technology, the role of scientists as judges is necessary.”

Dr. Clauser, known for his stance against climate change, diagnosed the current situation as not being a climate crisis and criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for spreading misinformation. He stated, “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis” and expressed his belief that “key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times.” Dr. Clauser, who is recognized as a climate change skeptic, also became a member of the board of directors of the CO2 Coalition last month, an organization that argues that carbon dioxide emissions are beneficial to life on Earth.

Dr. Clauser received the Nobel Prize in Physics for experimentally elucidating the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, which forms the theoretical basis for quantum cryptography. He majored in physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and worked as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley campus. As a keynote speaker at Quantum Korea 2023, he delivered a keynote lecture on the topic of quantum entanglement and also personally awarded prizes to students who won quantum-related competitions, expressing his enthusiasm.

*Photo credit Yonhap News. Dr. John Clauser, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics last year, delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of “Quantum Korea 2023,” the largest international event on quantum technology held in Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul’s Jung-gu district on the 26th.

Note: Special thanks to Seok Soon Park for providing the *Seoul Economic Daily article (https://www.sedaily.com), as well as the English translation.

---

you'd hope/think these geezers on last legs, but Gen Z!

morano boost 1123 jesse watters fox?

Climate change denial}:

In May 2023, Clauser joined the board of the CO2 Coalition, a climate change denial organization.^[11]

In November 2023, Clauser called himself a "climate denier" at an event organized by the Deposit of Faith Coalition, a group of Catholic organizations. He believes that Earth's temperature is primarily determined by cloud cover instead of, as stated by the scientific consensus on climate change,^[12] carbon dioxide emissions. He has concluded that clouds have a net cooling effect on the planet, and stated "there is no climate crisis."^[13] Low-altitude, thick clouds do have a net cooling effect, in contrast with high-altitude, thin ones,^[14] but there is observational evidence that the current cloud feedback is positive, not negative.^[15]

BS see mma

Gregory Wrightstone – Executive Director

MS in Geology

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist (BS Waynesburg College and MS West Virginia Univ.), bestselling author (Inconvenient Facts), and an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR6).

Mr. Wrightstone has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers, publications and commentaries concerning climate change and energy. He is a popular guest for media outlets on television, radio and podcasts, having done nearly 300 interviews in 2022 alone.

He had a 35-year career in the energy industry, focused primarily on the Appalachian Basin of the eastern United States, culminating in his role as a founding partner and VP of Exploration for Mountaineer Keystone.

• Four-time President of the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists
• President of the Eastern Section AAPG
• Founder and President of the Pennsylvania Coalition for Responsible Government, a state-wide free market advocacy group.
• Co-founder of Pennsylvanians Against Common Core

Executive Director Wrightstone is a strong proponent of the scientific process and often refers to a basic tenet of English law: Audiatur et altera pars or “Let both sides be fairly heard.”

wapo

?itid=lk_inline_manual_53

Climate deniers ejected from teachers conference for pro-carbon comic

At a meeting of science teachers, the CO2 Coalition handed out comic books depicting carbon as good for the planet. They got kicked out.

By Maxine Joselow

:{Updated April 11, 2023

Students measure a tree at Farragut State Park in Idaho to learn about the effects that trees have on the environment north of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on May 18, 2017. (Rajah Bose/For The Washington Post)

To science teachers attending a recent convention, the comic books titled “Simon the Solar-Powered Cat” seemed unremarkable at first. Their story began with Simon, an orange-and-white cat, begging for more food in typical feline fashion.

Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter and get advice for life on our changing planet, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

But on Page 5, the story took an unusual turn: A “friendly scientist” explained that Simon subsisted not on kibble, but on carbon dioxide. The scientist concluded that CO2 was a “miracle molecule” that fueled all life on Earth by helping plants turn sunlight into food.

That message and the comic book were the brainchild of the CO2 Coalition, a group that rejects the scientific consensus that carbon emissions are causing catastrophic climate change. The group claims that it distributed about 700 comic books to teachers at the National Science Teaching Association’s convention in Atlanta last month before being kicked out of the event.

“We were overwhelmed by the positive response from the teachers at the convention,” Gregory Wrightstone, executive director of the CO2 Coalition, said in an interview. “In fact, by the second day, we had handed out all of the comic books we had brought.”

The episode, details of which have not previously been reported, raised concerns among scientists and education experts that the teachers could spread climate misinformation to their students. It comes as states take divergent approaches to climate instruction in public schools, with New Jersey requiring students to learn about climate change in nearly every class and the Texas Board of Education calling for science textbooks to emphasize the “positive” effects of fossil fuels.

A large majority of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming by emitting massive amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Humanity must rapidly reduce these emissions, scientists say, or face catastrophic consequences such as dramatic sea level rise over the next few decades.

A page from a comic book from the CO2 Coalition, titled “Simon the Solar-Powered Cat.” (CO2 Coalition)

“By focusing 100 percent on this idea that plants need CO2, they’re intentionally misleading people by avoiding the real problems of CO2, which they didn’t talk about at all,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “It’s kind of like if you’re talking about cigarettes, and all you talk about is how cool they make you look.”

The influence of climate denial groups has waned over the past several decades, as the science has become clearer and the impacts of global warming have become starker. But the Virginia-based CO2 Coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has persisted in spreading its message.

Members of the coalition, which has received money from far-right organizations and donors with ties to the fossil fuel industry, ran a booth at the National Science Teaching Association’s convention. They spent the first day distributing three comic books and accompanying lesson plans to some of the roughly 6,500 attendees.

All of the comics featured three young sisters named Sophia, Ariana and Elyssa — the owners of Simon the cat — and their neighbor, a scientist named Mr. Gordon. In a book titled “Once upon a time: A true story about the miracle molecule — carbon dioxide,” Gordon tells the sisters that CO2 has net benefits for the planet.

“Everything green in our very green world owes its existence to carbon dioxide,” Gordon says to them. “And every person and every animal … are built from the carbon in CO2, which we get from eating vegetables and meat.”

A character named Mr. Gordon touts the benefits of carbon dioxide in a comic book titled “Once upon a time: A true story about the miracle molecule — carbon dioxide.” (CO2 Coalition)

While it is true that CO2 helps plants grow, its accumulation in the atmosphere will have net negative effects for plants and people alike, Dessler said. Telling kids they need CO2 to survive, he said, “is like telling a drowning person they need water to survive. It’s not helpful.”

On the second day of the convention, an official with the National Science Teaching Association asked members of the CO2 Coalition to stop distributing their materials or leave, according to a uploaded by the coalition.

Global carbon dioxide emissions hit new highs last year, says IEA report

“You can take down your literature or you can go home — it’s your choice,” NSTA chief operating officer Ryan Foley says in the video. When Wrightstone refuses to comply, Foley responds, “All right, then you’re being kicked out. You should pack up and get out.”

Jakob Namson and Sarah Morris, with their class from Lake City High School, measure a tree at Farragut State Park in Idaho to learn about the effects that trees have on the environment north of Coeur d'Alene in 2017. (Rajah Bose for The Washington Post)

When coalition members requested a booth at the convention, they signed a contract certifying that their materials were consistent with the association’s position statement on the teaching of climate science, NSTA Executive Director Erika Shugart said in an email. But then they violated the contract, she said.

In addition to the comic books, she said, coalition members circulated a pamphlet that criticized the position statement, which recognizes the “overwhelming scientific consensus” that the “Earth’s climate is changing, largely due to human-induced increases in the concentrations of heat-absorbing gases” such as CO2.

Debating the science

The CO2 Coalition does not disclose its source of funding, and it declined to do so for this story. But in 2017, the coalition received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute, according to tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, a watchdog group.

The Mercer Family Foundation — financed by New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and directed by his daughter Rebekah — has also helped finance the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that has denounced climate science as rigged. Heartland in 2017 mailed some 200,000 teachers books titled “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming.”

Sign up for The Climate 202, a daily newsletter about climate change policy and politics

It remains unclear whether the Mercers have continued to fund the coalition. Wrightstone said in an email that although “we cannot release details on our funding sources,” the “vast majority” of donors are individuals making small contributions. While the CO2 Coalition paid an artist to create the comic books, the members of the group’s Education Committee are unpaid volunteers, he said.

These volunteers include William Happer, a physicist at Princeton University who has challenged the idea that carbon dioxide could damage the planet. Under President Donald Trump, Happer served as a senior director on the National Security Council, where he oversaw a controversial initiative to reassess the federal government’s analysis of climate science.

Physicist William Happer in 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Sharon Camp, a retired high school science teacher, designed the lesson plans accompanying the comic books. One lesson encourages teachers to use beads, Legos or Styrofoam balls to help students visualize CO2 molecules.

Camp, who taught Advanced Placement environmental science at Walton High School in Marietta, Ga., for 15 years, said students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions about climate science. “This is the only branch of science where you are not allowed to debate, you are not allowed to question,” she said in an interview. “Science is not supposed to work that way.”

Climate in the classroom

The coalition’s efforts come as some states have failed to update their standards for teaching climate change in public schools, leaving students at risk of learning incorrect ideas.

How teachers are getting it wrong on climate change

In a 2020 report, the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund graded all 50 states on their standards for teaching climate change. The groups examined whether the standards helped students understand that climate change is real, caused by humans, and already affecting nature and society, among other criteria.

Twenty-seven states scored a B+ or better. Of the rest, 20 scored a C+ or lower. In the coal state of West Virginia, the standards require students to debate climate change in their science classrooms, despite little debate among scientists. Those standards received a D. And in Alabama, which received an F, the standards suggest that human activity “may have caused” a rise in global temperatures, similarly downplaying the scientific consensus.

In March, the Republican-dominated Texas State Board of Education altered its internal guidance to say science textbooks should emphasize the “positive” aspects of fossil fuels, a leading cause of global warming. As a result, the state would probably still score an F if the report were conducted today, said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education.

Some Democratic-led states have moved in the opposite direction. New Jersey in 2020 became the first state to adopt learning standards obligating teachers to instruct kids about climate change across grade levels and subjects.

In one state, every class teaches climate change — even P.E.

Shannon Falkner, an English teacher at Chatham High School in Chatham, N.J., said her freshman English students have written climate fiction, or “cli-fi.” Some students have penned dystopian tales about flooded cities, while others have offered more hopeful stories about the nation’s transition to renewable energy. Falkner said the reaction from students has been largely positive, and no parents have complained about the assignment.

There is evidence that climate instruction is popular. About 77 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “schools should teach about global warming” in a 2021 poll by Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication; about 22 percent disagreed.

“It’s actually one of the most supported policies we have measured,” said Tony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale program. Both the CO2 Coalition and conservative policymakers, he said, “are standing in front of the tide of public opinion and trying to hold it back with a piece of cardboard.”

---

g alert 12 22

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/12/06/the_false_assumptions_behind_climate_regulations_in_pennsylvania_868702.html

the False Assumptions Behind Climate Regulations in Pennsylvania

By Kevin Mooney

December 06, 2022

While they were in the majority, Pennsylvania House Republicans spent their political capital to advance American energy independence, free speech rights, and scientific integrity.

Unlike too many their counterparts in Washington D.C., they were not cowed by hostile press coverage or well-funded pressure groups that have a stake in undermining sound science. Most recently, for instance, the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a hearing this fall exploring the benefits of fossil fuels and pitfalls of “emergency declarations” advanced in the name of climate change.

Since Gov. Tom Wolf, the state’s outgoing Democratic governor, first announced back in October 2019 that he was taking executive action to combat climate change, Republican leaders have held a series of hearings calling attention to scientific data that debunks climate alarmism. They have also worked in partnership with Pennsylvania Democrats representing the energy sector to prevent Wolf from circumventing the state legislature along the way toward imposing carbon taxes.

In April, the Pennsylvania Senate fell just one vote shy of the requisite two-thirds majority needed to override Wolf’s veto of a concurrent resolution from the full General Assembly that would prevent the commonwealth from joining the multi-state climate change compact. Three Senate Democrats joined with Republicans in the override attempt. At issue, is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, commonly known as RGGI, a “cap and trade” regulatoryscheme operating under the guise of climate change that is designed to curtail carbon dioxide emissions throughout the 11 participating New England and Mid-Atlantic states.  Government regulators in the RGGI states require electric power plants with a capacity of at least 25 megawatts to purchase carbon allowances at quarterly auctions whenever utilities surpass the greenhouse gas initiative’s predetermined cap on Co2 emissions. Speculators have latitude to resell allowances at higher prices. The auction process, which has been in motion since 2009, is where carbon taxes enter the equation. State Rep. Jim Struzzi, a Republican in Indiana County,explains why.

“RGGI is a tax,” Struzzi said in an interview. “It taxes the carbon dioxide emissions that come from plants anytime they are generating electricity and so basically it punishes these companies for being successful by creating the electricity we need for reliable energy in those cold winter months and hot summer months. If these companies are going to stay in business someone is going to have to pay these costs; and it’s going to be the factories, it’s going to be the consumers, and it’s going to affect everyone.”

Struzzi is the lead sponsor of legislation that would prohibit the governor from joining RGGI and imposing carbon taxes without legislative approval. Wolf vetoed an earlier version of the bill, which seven of his own Democrats co-sponsored on the House side. Wolf is not exactly an outlier among climate change activists in government who are actively working to circumvent the democratic process.

In his testimony before the Pennsylvania House, Marc Morano, the editor and publisher of the Climate Depot website, told lawmakers that he sees a certain parallel between climate change initiatives the COVID-19 lockdowns at all levels of government impacting businesses and schools across the country.

“The Biden administration believes that when democracy fails to achieve its climate goals, it's time to bypass democracy and Congress and follow the COVID model. Climate activists havelusted after the COVID lockdowns as the model for climate lockdowns,” Morano said. “The plan is to declare a 'climate emergency,' toss out elected representatives and follow China's one-party rule model by implementing energy restrictions through the bureaucracy. They don't need no stinkin' democracy. Throughout history, emergency declarations have been used and abused to crush freedom. For those who loved howunelected officials ruled our lives under COVID lockdowns, prepare for the attempts to make climate and energy lockdowns permanent.”

During the same hearing, Kevin Dayaratna, a statistician and data scientist with The Heritage Foundation, presented testimony focusing attention on the “Social Cost of Carbon,” or SCC, which federal regulators define as “economic damages per metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions.” The Biden administration is using the SCC in various climate models to determine the long-term impact of CO2, Dayaratna said. However, these models are based on assumptions that may not square with reality, the Heritage analyst warned. These assumptions tend, for example, to overlook the environmental benefits of Co2 emissions such as the “greening of the planet” that occurred between 1982 and 2009, Dayaratna said. At the same time, the models omit the deleterious effect of regulations that restrict Co2 emissions, he observed.Dayaratna cited figures from the Heritage Foundation that point to a severe economic fallout to U.S. that could result from rejoining the U.N.’s Paris Climate Agreement. By 2040, the U.S. could experience an average employment shortfall of more than 1.2 million lost jobs, loss of income of more than $87,000 for a family of four, and up to a 30% increase in household electricity expenditure, with an aggregate $7 trillion loss in GDP, Dayaratna said.

In Pennsylvania, the state-level outlook is every bit as bleak. The Commonwealth Foundation, a free-market group based in Harrisburg, has just published an analysis  that finds RGGI’s “carbon tax regime” could lead to a 114% hike in electricity bills. Although Wolf had Pennsylvania join RGGI this year, the state has not participated in the most recent auctions since Wolf’s executive actions are the subject of legal challenges. Industry and labor groups have filed suit challenging the governor’s ability to act unilaterally on climate change policy as have state senators who have raised questions about the separation of powers. As a solution, the Commonwealth Foundation has proposed passing a constitutional amendment to allow the General Assembly “to disapprove regulations as a check on an agency’s power to restrict energy development in the state.”

Josh Shapiro, the incoming Democratic governor, expressed misgivings about Wolf’s approach toward RGGI while on the campaign trail. Since being elected, he hasn’t made any firm commitments about the state’s future participation. A constitutional amendment offers him a way out.

With his party poised to take a slim majority in the House next year, Shapiro will still need to contend with labor constituents and House Democrats residing in energy producing regions who are opposed to RGGI. Meanwhile, the scientific and economic rationale for the climate change initiative continues to unravel. Gregory Wrightstone, a geologist, and executive director of the Co2 Coalition, has repeatedly informed Pennsylvania House members thatCo2 is a “miracle molecule” that greatly benefits humanity and deserves greater appreciation.

“Critics of fossil fuels routinely exaggerate, and sometimes outright fabricate, their negative effects while ignoring altogether their enormous benefits,” Wrightstone said during his latest testimony before the Pennsylvania House.

“Coal and oil fueled the Industrial Revolution, which gave us unprecedented prosperity and health. Together with natural gas, they promise to raise billions of people in developing countries from poverty and deprivation. Modern economies cannot long survive without fossil fuels. In short, we love CO2 and so should you.”

In a victory forfree speech, climate skeptics have found expression before the Pennsylvania legislature like they have in few other public venues. In a potential victory for American energy, these same skeptics have also exposed the faulty assumptions underpinning costly regulations while alsocalling attention to unconstitutional executive actions.

Kevin Mooney is an investigative reporter with both the Commonwealth Foundation and the Heritage Foundation.

see below

https://www.desmog.com/co2-coalition/

2017 update

...According to the CO2 Coalition’s website, under a section titled “:{CO2:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Fundamentals,” they declare: [6]

“The debate about global warming and climate change has shifted from genuine scientific exploration to a campaign demonizing CO2. The use of energy, the primary source of human CO2 emissions, have played an essential role in the economic progress and improved standard of living that has been experienced in many nations since the Industrial Revolution. ” [6]

The CO2 Coalition outlines its mission as to “demonstrate with science based facts” the following: [6]

“CO2 is a nutrient that is essential to life. CO2 at current levels and higher enables plants, trees, and crops to grow faster and more efficiently. It is essential for life.

“Just as we require oxygen for life, our economy requires energy, often described as the oxygen or lifeblood of the economy. Energy must be abundant, reliable, and reasonably priced for an economy to achieve robust and sustained growth.” [6]

The CO2 Coalition also makes the claim that “Current CO2 levels of 400 ppm are still much less than optimum for most plant growth.” With regards to planetary warming due to greenhouse gases, they contend that increasing CO2 would be “beneficial.” [6]

“Increasing levels of the greenhouse gas CO2 from fuel combustion will slightly increase the surface temperature of the earth. Observations indicate that every doubling of the CO2 concentration will increase the earth’s surface temperature by 1 to 2 C, and perhaps less. The warming is so small that the resulting longer growing seasons and increased plant productivity from additional CO2 will of great benefit to life on earth.” [6]

According to Norman Rogers, Senior Policy Advisor to theHeartland Institute and member of the CO2 Coalition’s Board of Advisors, “Global warming is an example of junk science where there is a kernel of scientific truth that has been abused and beaten into a junk science edifice supporting huge money flows. ” [7]

Funding

The following is based on data collected from publicly available 990 forms. View the attached spreadsheet for additional information on the :{:{CO2:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Coalition’s funding by year (.xlsx):(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:600"):}:....

2

017 Donors List

First mentioned at *The Washington Post*, tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center revealed a number of previously unknown donorsin the :{CO2:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Coalition’s 2017 990 form. Below is a listing of donors and amounts for 2017:[43],[44]

==

cmd 720

Facebook is “aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation,” said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University. “They have become the vehicle for climate misinformation, and thus should be held partially responsible for a lack of action on climate change.”

Brulle was reacting to Facebook’s recent decision, made at the request of climate science deniers, to create a giant loophole in its fact-checking program. Last year, Facebook partnered with an organization, Science Feedback, that would bring in teams of Ph.D. climate scientists to evaluate the accuracy of viral content. It was an important expansion of the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

But now Facebook has reportedly decided to allow its staffers to overrule the climate scientists and make any climate disinformation ineligible for fact-checking by deeming it “opinion.”

The organization that requested the change, the CO2 Coalition, is celebrating, E&E news reported on Monday. The group, which has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, says its views on climate change are increasingly ignored by the mainstream media. Now it plans to use Facebook to aggressively push climate misinformation on the public—without having to worry about fact checks from climate scientists.

How it all started

A column published in the Washington Examiner in August 2019 claimed that “climate models” were a “failure” that predicted exponentially more warming of the earth than has occurred. The piece, co-authored by notorious climate science denier Pat Michaels, was quickly shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook.

There was just one issue: It wasn’t true.

This is exactly the kind of mess that Facebook’s network of independent fact-checkers is supposed to solve. In May 2019, Facebook partnered with Science Feedback, a site dedicated to explaining “why information is or is not consistent with the science.” Science Feedback’s process is extremely rigorous. Each piece has multiple reviewers, and each reviewer “holds a Ph.D. and has recently published articles in top-tier peer-reviewed science journals.”

Five scientists reviewed the Washington Examiner article for Science Feedback. The scientists identified a number of problems with the piece: “false factual assertions, cherry-picking datasets that support their point, failing to account for uncertainties in those datasets, and failing to assess the performance of climate models in an objective and rigorous manner.” The article was rated “false” by Science Feedback and logged in Facebook’s system.

That should have been the end of the story. The Washington Examiner article should have had a warning overlaid each time it was shared on Facebook, and its distribution on Facebook should have been dramatically reduced.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, an organization affiliated with Michaels, the CO2 Coalition, wrote Zuckerberg and complained about Science Feedback’s rating. Among other things, the coalition claims that Science Feedback’s analysis amounted to “simple differences of opinion.” The coalition asked Zuckerberg to “remove Facebook’s censorship, labeling, and restrictions on this article.”

Amazingly, it worked. In September, Facebook removed the false rating, overruling the judgment of Science Feedback. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook found that the misinformation about climate models was an “opinion” and, therefore, not eligible for fact-checking.

Now, the CO2 Coalition has announced its intention to exploit this loophole to spread climate misinformation on Facebook.

How Facebook’s fact-checking program is supposed to work

The rules for Facebook’s fact-checking program are clear. Facebook does not conduct the fact-checks itself. Instead, it has outsourced the process to third parties that are certified by Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network.

If a publisher has a dispute about a rating it receives on Facebook, it should “reach out directly to the third-party fact-checking organizations.” The rating can only be removed by the organization that issued the fact check — either because the fact checker is convinced by the publisher’s dispute or the publisher corrected the false information. There is no mechanism to appeal a fact-check directly to Facebook.

According to Facebook’s rules, all “public, newsworthy Facebook and Instagram posts, including ads, with articles, photos, or videos,” are eligible for fact-checking. The only type of content that is listed as exempt is original content posted by politicians or political candidates.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, after receiving the complaint from the CO2 coalition, Facebook planned to create a new rule exempting “opinion pieces” from fact-checking. But Facebook did not “respond to requests for comment” on the new rule. No such rule has been publicly acknowledged by Facebook in the months that followed.

In response to a request for comment, Facebook did little to clarify the situation, reiterating the company’s official fact-checking policies but not addressing its decision to overrule Science Feedback. “The focus of Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program is combating viral misinformation,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said. “There’s an appeals process in place for publishers to appeal directly to fact-checkers to dispute ratings.”

How climate science deniers plan to exploit Facebook’s loophole

Creating an unwritten exemption for “opinion” content, which is enforced by Facebook and not its fact-checking partners, creates a giant loophole for misinformation. The CO2 coalition told E&E News that they plan to exploit it.

After the quiet decision by Facebook, the coalition says it and other groups that attack consensus climate science can share content that climate scientists have labeled as misleading because Facebook will consider it “opinion” and therefore immune to fact-checking.

The CO2 Coalition is increasingly focused on using Facebook to reach more people with its message that climate change fears are overblown and that burning more fossil fuels would help humanity, Executive Director Caleb Rossiter told E&E News this week. He sees the battle over its climate-related posts as part of a larger proxy war over how to reach an audience outside of conservative media.

Rossiter said Facebook was increasingly important because “the mainstream media” is no longer willing to amplify the group’s opinions. But the reason the “mainstream media” is not willing to amplify the group’s opinions is because they’re not opinions at all. They’re falsehoods.

Climate facts are not climate opinions

Andrew Dessler is one of the five climate scientists who originally fact-checked the CO2 Coalition’s op-ed by Pat Michaels. It was “complete bullshit,” he said. “We gave it a bad review, which it 100 percent deserved.”

The article claimed computer models used by climate scientists to predict warming have proved overblown, and thus shouldn’t be trusted. To prove it, Michaels compared “actual temperatures since 1979 with what the 32 families of climate models used in the latest U.N. report on climate science predicted they would be.”

The comparison was flawed. Michaels compared the earth’s present temperature with past climate models that predicted more carbon pollution than actually occurred. If we had polluted as much as the models predicted, the world would have warmed as much as the models predicted.

We know this because actual climate scientists have published research assessing the accuracy of climate models. That research, which went through the rigorous peer-review process, says computer climate models have been largely accurate for the last 40 years. Michaels’ analysis, on the other hand, didn’t go through any peer-review process, nor is Michaels climate scientist himself. What Michaels did was amateur Google sleuthing. What the scientists did was science.

Dessler thinks Michaels should be able to state his opinions about climate change without getting fact-checked. “Things like, ‘we should [implement] a carbon tax,’ or ‘subsidize nuclear energy, or even ‘we shouldn’t do anything about climate change,'” he said. “Those aren’t facts; they’re policy choices.”

But statements about the physical condition of the planet; the effect of carbon on the atmosphere; the historical accuracy of climate models—those are scientific in nature. “Those are not opinions,” Dessler said. “They’re either true or false.”

“The earth is warming. Climate models have done a good job,” he added. “That should be covered by fact-checking.”

The dire consequences of not fact-checking climate denial

The CO2 Coalition told E&E News that it is getting assistance from a “‘conservative’ Facebook employee.” Facebook says that claim is not true, but did not specify who at Facebook reversed Science Feedback’s ruling.

American political conservatives have a long, well-documented history of perpetuating climate disinformation in order to delay climate action. Disinformation—that is, the intentional spread of misinformation—has been a key strategy of the fossil fuel industry and its political allies for decades. The less people understand about climate science, the strategy goes, the less likely they will be to support aggressive climate policies, which threaten the fossil fuel industry’s immense profitability.

The CO2 Coalition’s use of Facebook’s op-ed loophole “fits right back into that strategy of trying to promulgate misinformation to the public in order to keep alive the lack of public concern over climate change, to stop meaningful action to address it,” Brulle said. And by having the loophole, Brulle said, “Facebook is becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution, to climate change.”

Naomi Oreskes, an acclaimed Harvard University professor who co-wrote “Merchants of Doubt,” agreed that Facebook’s op-ed loophole is “potentially very damaging.”

“We know that many people, particularly young people, are getting their information heavily, or even primarily, from social media,” she said. “For social media to propagate disinformation, without any attempt at screening, is for them to become, in effect, part of the disinformation machine

==

ref

https://www.wired.com/story/google-and-facebook-backed-an-event-denying-climate-change/

google, Facebook, and Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial to young libertarians.

All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took place in Washington, DC. Google was a platinum sponsor, ponying up $25,000, and Facebook and Microsoft each contributed $10,000 as gold sponsors. The donations put the tech companies in the top tier of the event’s backers. But the donations also put the firms in company with some of the event’s other sponsors, which included three groups known for their work attacking climate change science and trying to undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

The WIRED Guide to Climate Change

Among the most notable was the CO2 Coalition,a group founded in 2015 to spread the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.

In the LibertyCon exhibit hall, the CO2 Coalition handed out brochures that said its goal is to “explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.” One brochure claimed that “more carbon dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow faster.

In a Saturday presentation, Caleb Rossiter, a retired statistics professor and a member of the coalition, gave a presentation titled “Let’s Talk About Not Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing Climate Catastrophe?” In his presentation, Rossiter told the assembled students that the impact of climate change on weather patterns has been vastly exaggerated. “There has been no increase in storms, in intensity or frequency,” he said. “The data don’t show a worrisome trend.”

He insisted that when he hears the news that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, “I’m cheering!” That’s because, he said, carbon dioxide “is a fertilizer” that has made Africa greener and increased food production there, reducing human misery.

Rossiter also claimed that carbon dioxide emissions correlate with wealth and that the greenhouse gas “improves life expectancy” because poor countries that start burning fossil fuels have a more consistent power supply and can then clean up their water. “I’m happy when carbon dioxide is up, because it means poverty is down,” he declared.

“I come not to bury your carbon but to praise it,” he concluded.

Rossiter’s presentation puts him on the far fringes of the climate denial world. Not even Exxon is trying to make such arguments anymore. And it’s a long way from what Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have said about the dangers of carbon dioxide; all three companies have committed to reducing their own carbon footprints. Microsoft has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030. Google claims to be committed to a “zero carbon” future and is aggressively pursuing renewable energy sources for its operations to reduce its carbon footprint and help combat climate change. And Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized President Donald Trump after he announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, writing, “Stopping climate change is something we can only do as a global community, and we have to act together before it’s too late.”

The presence of the tech sponsors at a libertarian conference is not itself unusual, as governments around the globe move to try to regulate social media and online privacy. Tech companies see libertarians as natural allies in the fight against regulation. Indeed, Google sponsored two different sessions at the conference, one on why “permissionless innovation” needs to be defended and another on whether the government will “continue to let the Internet be awesome.” But the companies’ underwriting of a conference with a climate denier on the schedule shows the hazards of trying to advance a policy agenda through interest groups without also supporting their fringe elements.

The CO2 Coalition wasn’t the only group sponsoring LibertyCon that is known for its work undermining efforts to combat climate change. Along with Facebook and Microsoft, the Heartland Institute was also a gold sponsor of the event. Heartland is a longtime player in industry-funded efforts to undermine climate science and fend off efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed the Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and has long featured experts who argue that global warming is a myth, was also a sponsor.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment. A Facebook spokesman responded to questions about its sponsorship of LibertyCon by sending a link to its political engagement page, which says, “Sometimes we support events that highlight Internet and social media issues” and features a long list of third-party groups it has worked with in the past. He noted that LibertyCon met its criteria for support and cited the number of sessions unrelated to climate change.

A spokesperson from Google defended the company’s LibertyCon sponsorship, saying, “Every year, we sponsor organizations from across the political spectrum to promote strong technology laws.As we make clear in our public policy transparency report, Google’s sponsorship or collaboration with a third party organization doesn’t mean that we endorse the organization’s entire agenda or agree with other speakers or sponsors."

==

==

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/03/12/trump-taps-climate-denier-to-lead-a-secret-white-house-climate-panel

david a

Emeritus Professor of Physics at Princeton University and well-known climate science denier William Happer will lead the Presidential Committee on Climate Security, the *Washington Post* has reported. Happer, a National Security Council senior director since last September, and his panel will “assess whether climate change poses a national security threat,” according to documents obtained by the Washington Post.

Happer is a well-regarded researcher in the field of atomic physics and adaptive optics, but has no formal training in climate science. Happer’s name is notorious among climate scientists and environmentalists for his staunch denial of climate change and the science supporting it.

Last Thursday, the leaders of four U.S. House Committees sent a letter to Trump protesting the move, saying:

We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the National Security Council (NSC) is planning to assemble a secret panel, led by a discredited climate change denier, to undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus on the nature and threats of climate change, including to the national security of the United States.

The panel will not operate under the standard rules for Federal Advisory Committees, which require open meetings, transparency and public involvement. If the panel meets in secret, its conclusions will not be open to peer review or criticism, hallmarks of science.

Trump, who has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord, rolled back the Clean Power Plan, revived plans for Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and deregulated the fossil fuel industry, has yet to respond to the congressional letter.

Happer’s “CO2 Coalition” Well-Funded by the Far Right

Before joining Trump, Happer served as president of a group called the CO2 Coalition.

After a few years of flatlining, global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels jumped to an all time high in 2018, but that is not a problem for the CO2 Coalition.

CO2 Coalition describes its mission as “educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.” In a section on its website dubbed, “CO2 Fundamentals,” CO2 Coalition says, “The debate about global warming and climate change has shifted from genuine scientific exploration to a campaign demonizing CO2.”

CO2 Coalition has received $100,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2016 and 2017, according to IRS filings examined by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). In an internal Bradley Foundation grant proposal record for CO2 Coalition dated 6/14/2016, Bradley staff writes, “Through strategic public discourse techniques, it will use science to counter the campaign demonizing the use of fossil fuels — a campaign that has effectively replaced scientific inquiry in the climate change debate.”

Bradley internal documents show that it is a major funder of the web of climate change denying organizations and that it “has made significant grants to support energy policy think tanks, attack-dog groups that target environmentalists, and efforts to discredit climate science,” CMD found.

An internal spreadsheet from Bradley shows a matching grant of $130,000 ($132,000 on its 2016 IRS Form) from Scaife Foundation for CO2 Coalition. The Scaife Foundation funds many organizations that dispute the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change including: Heartland Institute, Hoover Institution, Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Scaife Foundation gave another $135,000 to CO2 Coalition in 2017, its IRS filing shows.

The Mercer Family Foundation led by Trump supporter Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, is the top supporter of CO2 Coalition with $320,000 in donations in 2016 and 2017 IRS filings show. A *Huffington Post* reportlate last year detailed more than $4 million from the foundation in grants to climate skeptics in 2017.

Charles Koch, billionaire owner of one of America’s biggest polluters Koch Industries, has also given to CO2 Coalition but an examination of IRS filings raises some questions. Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) details $32,409 to CO2 Coalition in 2016 and 2017 and Charles Koch Institute (CKI) $10,000 in 2017 on their individual IRS filings, but CO2 Coalition’s detail no contributions from CKF and $46,409 from CKI in 2016 and 2017.

Other major contributors to Happer’s climate science denial outfit include many of the major right-wing funders:

• $125,000 from Searle Freedom Trust (2016-2017)
• $125,000 from Thomas W. Smith Foundation (2016-2017)
• $50,000 from Achelis and Bodman Foundations (2016)
• $40,000 from the Randolph Foundation (2017)

==

==

ref mma

A professor who was caught agreeing to hide the oil funding behind a climate denial research paper named Breitbart News as a media outlet that could "likely help" publicize the research, according to emails unearthed as part of an undercover investigation by Greenpeace. Indeed, Breitbart News has frequently cited Princeton Emeritus Professor William Happer to promote the supposed "benefits" of climate-warming carbon pollution and argue against a "war on CO2" --  including just days before the Greenpeace investigation was released. And now that Greenpeace has exposed Happer's ethically dubious actions, Breitbart News is defending Happer's behavior as "morally and scientifically unimpeachable."

On December 8, Greenpeace released the results of its investigation, in which Greenpeace UK reporters claiming to represent oil and coal companies asked two university professors to write industry-friendly research papers, and the professors agreed to do so without disclosing the fossil fuel funding behind them. According to Greenpeace, the investigation details "how fossil fuel companies can secretly pay academics at leading American universities to write research that sows doubt about climate science and promotes the companies' commercial interests." 

As part of its report about the investigation, titled "Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding," Greenpeace released a series of emails between its undercover staffers and the two academics, William Happer and Penn State Emeritus Professor Frank Clemente. In an email exchange in early November, a Greenpeace employee who was posing as an oil company consultant based in Beirut asked Happer if he could write a briefing paper "examin[ing] the benefits of fossil fuels to developing economies," and if there were any "US outlets or contacts you may have" that could help "get this research out far and wide." The Greenpeace employee also mentioned a London Timescolumn praising carbon emissions by Matt Ridley, who Happer said was in "close touch" with a pro-carbon group called the CO2 Coalition that Happer helped organize. The Greenpeace employee then asked Happer if Ridley -- a Timescolumnist who also frequently writes op-eds published by The Wall Street Journal-- "would help to disseminate our research." Happer replied: "I am sure Matt Ridley will be interested in whatever you produce. The Breitbart news organization would also likely help, as would various blogs, syndicated columnists, etc."

Given Breitbart News' past coverage of Happer, it should come as no surprise that he mentioned Breitbart when asked to name media outlets that would promote his industry-funded, climate-denying research. For instance:

• A June 3, 2015 Breitbart article touted a letter from Happer and two other physicists attacking the American Physical Society (APS) for a statement recognizing the reality of man-made climate change.
• A January 22, 2015 Breitbart article purporting to list off "Ten reasons why the war on CO2 has done far more harm than good" approvingly quoted Happer referring to "the jihad against atmospheric carbon dioxide."
• An October 24, 2014 Breitbart article quoted "climate expert" Happer as saying: "No chemical compound in the atmosphere has a worse reputation than CO2, thanks to the single-minded demonisation of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control and energy production. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science."
• A September 2, 2011 Breitbart article quoted Happer as follows: "Disagreeing with [the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is like going to Saudi Arabia and criticizing Muhammad."

On December 4, several weeks after Happer mentioned Breitbart News in his email to Greenpeace (and just days before Greenpeace released the results of its investigation), Breitbart News published yet another article touting Happer, this one titled "Carbon Dioxide Is Not Our Enemy." In it, Breitbart's John Hayward wrote a highly sympathetic profile of Happer's climate science denial, asserting that a white paper Happer co-authored was "meant to be a conversation-starter" and took "a non-confrontational approach with copious footnotes and supporting sources, inviting readers to perform their own research and gain a fuller understanding of CO2 and its benefits." Hayward also stated that Happer "lamented the vicious treatment given to scientists who showed even modest skepticism toward the link between CO2 and climate change."

After Greenpeace released its investigation, Breitbart News' James Delingpole rushed to Happer's defense with a December 8 article,in which he wrote: "What's clear is that [at] every stage Happer's behaviour was morally and scientifically unimpeachable." Delingpole alleged that Happer was not at fault because he made clear he "would only say in his paper what he believed anyway" and indicated that he did not "wish to benefit personally from the fee, but preferred that the money should go to a tax-exempt educational charity, which pays only his travel expenses."

It's true that Happer has a long track record of advocating for the purported "benefits" of carbon pollution, and it's also true that he requested in his emails to the undercover Greenpeace employee that "whatever fee would have come to me would go directly to the CO2 Coalition" -- the group Happer helped organized earlier this year. But Delingpole tellingly did not provide Happer's answer to two other questions Delingpole noted that Greenpeace had raised:  "Would the CO2 Coalition be happy to take a direct donation on condition the donor remained anonymous?" and  "Might Happer be able to get his paper peer-reviewed by sympathetic authors?"

This is where Happer's conduct is far from "unimpeachable," as Breitbart News claimed.

The Greenpeace staffer posing as a representative of the Middle Eastern oil company told Happer over email that "we are happy to make a direct donation to the CO2 Coalition, providing it is anonymous," and asked Happer whether "the CO2 Coalition voluntarily discloses its funders." Happer replied that he believed the CO2 Coalition isn't "required to make public any donors, although it is required to disclose them to the Internal Revenue Service." He also forwarded the question to William O'Keefe, another member of the Board of Directors of the CO2 Coalition and former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the American Petroleum Institute. O'Keefe replied by suggesting that the oil company funnel the funds through the Donors Trust, which has been dubbed the "dark-money ATM" of the conservative movement:

We are under no obligation to identify donors, except to the IRS but I think that is just organizations. When people ask the IRS or a firms 990 [sic], the donor list is redacted. If the person participates in the Donors Trust, he/she can make the donation through that and have complete confidentiality.

Happer then forwarded O'Keefe's response to the undercover Greenpeace employee. As Greenpeace noted, in his emails "Happer also disclosed that [coal giant] Peabody Energy paid $8,000 in return for his testimony in a crucial Minnesota state hearing on the impacts of carbon dioxide. This fee was also paid to the CO2 Coalition."

The exchange between Happer and the undercover Greenpeace staffer exemplifies how the fossil fuel industry's funding of shoddy science can be hidden from public view, and how this strategy can apply not just to the research papers themselves but also to op-eds and other media coverage about them. Indeed, the other university professor that Greenpeace approached, Penn State's Frank Clemente, listed over email a series of op-eds he had written that had been published in newspapers across the United States, and then observed: "Note that in none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar."

The other serious issue raised in Happer's emails relates to peer review, the process by which scholarly work is checked by a group of experts in the same field prior to publication. As Greenpeace documented, in his emails Happer "laid out details of anunofficial peer review process run by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK climate sceptic think tank, and said he could ask to put an oil-funded report through a similar review process, after admitting that it would struggle to be published in an academic journal." Specifically, Happer wrote that if he submitted the research paper to a peer-reviewed journal, it might "no longer make the case that CO2 is a benefit, not a pollutant, as strongly as I would like, and presumably as strongly your client would also like." Instead, Happer proposed a review process that would not be anonymous and would be conducted by the climate-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, writing that although "purists might object that the process did not qualify as a peer review ... I think it would be fine to call it a peer review."

The Global Warming Policy Foundation recently conducted a similar review of another pro-carbon pollution paper, with Ridley -- who used to be a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal -- deceptively alleging in the London*Times* that the paper had been "thoroughly peer reviewed."

==

ref3

https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/feb/21/trumps-potential-science-adviser-william-happer-hanging-around-with-conspiracy-theorists

no lnx many vids

Trump's potential science adviser William Happer: hanging around with conspiracy theorists

Graham Readfearn

The Princeton atomic physicist is no climate scientist – and he’s pushing the same old denier myths

@readfearn

Mon 20 Feb 201723.14 EST Last modified on Thu 5 Jul 2018 16.52 EDT

William Happer: who is Trump’s likely science adviser? – video report

William Happer is a physicist at Princeton University – one of those US academic institutions with brand recognition for academic excellence that travels the globe.

Happer is well known for his contrarian views (that’s the polite term) on human-caused climate change.

So when it emerged last week that the professor might seriously be in the running to be President Donald Trump’s science adviser, that Princeton tag no doubt added an air of authority to his opinions.

:{

}:

In short, Happer thinks more CO2 will only be good for the planet – putting him at odds with science academies around the world.

:{

}:

Trump's likely science adviser calls climate scientists 'glassy-eyed cult'

 Read more

:{

}:

“There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,” Happer told the Guardian. “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.”

:{

}:

Happer has also compared the “demonisation” of carbon dioxide to the “demonisation of poor Jews under Hitler” – because a Nazi reference will always get you noticed.

But here’s the thing — the first of many to note about Happer. First, he is not, by any stretch, an expert on climate change science.

Happer’s record of getting scientific papers published in leading journals on climate change science is at, or very close to, zero. Simply, he knows a lot about some stuff, but he is not a climate scientist.

While he has a distinguished career as an atomic physicist, previously serving the administration of George HW Bush as a science director,the 77-year-old’s views on climate science are outnumbered by all the credible evidence, all the credible science agencies and are also being laughed at by the Earth’s thermometers and its melting ice sheets and glaciers.

Prof Michael Oppenheimer has scores of articles on climate science in leading journals going back to the mid-1990s. He’s a climate scientist … at Princeton.

So what does Oppenheimer think of his colleague?

“With respect to climate science and scientists,” Oppenheimer told me by email, “[Happer] is not only unknowledgeable but appears to have become unmoored.”

Ouch. But then, maybe Oppenheimer has glassy eyes?

Happer has laid out his thoughts on climate change in some detail in an ongoing Focused Civil Dialogue (my irony meter just exploded) with the Australian climate scientist Prof David Karoly.

While Happer’s contribution seems technical, it’s the same parade of zombie talking points that actual climate scientists have been dealing with for years.

Happer says CO2 levels and temperatures have been much higher in the past and that life “flourished” under these conditions many millions of years ago.

He doesn’t mention that during those times sea levels were probably several metres – sometimes well over 10 metres – higher than they are today. If that’s the world you want to advocate, then it’s time to call the removal guys for most of the world’s major coastal cities.

The climate scientist Dr Nerilie Abram, of Australian National University, specialises in the climate of the ancient past. She told me:

Warm periods in Earth’s past tell us a lot about how our climate works and what we can expect if we don’t act to halt current climate change. The last time that temperatures were similar to now, this caused parts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to slowly melt and sea level globally ended up six to nine metres higher than now. If we go back 3 million years – the last time carbon dioxide levels were at today’s level – sea level was probably around 10 to 40 metres higher. Life on Earth might not be fazed by those numbers or even higher ones, but for human civilisations they would be catastrophic.

Happer also rolls out that mouldy old chestnut that CO2 is just food for plants, but ignores the research on the impacts that higher concentrations of CO2 will have on our global food supply.

Research into some staple crops such as rice, wheat and sorghum, for example, finds that they end up with less protein when CO2 is at higher concentrations. That’s before you worry about how food crops will cope with droughts and heatwaves.

At a conference in December Happer said his “main concern” was that climate change was “likely to damage public perceptions of science”.

If Happer is concerned about the reputation of science, then he’s picking some very odd places to hang around – that conference being one of them.

The Arizona gathering was organised by Freedom Force International – a group led by the famed conspiracy theorist G Edward Griffin. He fits right in with the booming culture of conspiracy that’s growing big audiences online.

Among many other things, Griffin has said there is “no such thing” as HIV and that human-caused climate change is a hoax.

Griffin also promotes conspiracies around “chemtrails”. Just punch that word into your favourite search engine for hours of family fun (don’t actually do that).

To summarise, there’s a plan to spray the atmosphere with chemicals added to planes to poison everyone and “they” are using weather modification as a weapon.

Griffin has said “somebody is spending a lot of money and effort to spray the planet” and that this is probably some international effort.

Also appearing at the conference was the British hereditary peer and climate science denier Lord Christopher Monckton, who likes to say he was appointed as a reviewer of the last big UN intergovernmental panel on climate change report without mentioning that, literally, you need no qualifications and can “appoint” yourself.

Happer’s speech to the conference isn’t yet online but an interview he gave at the venue after is.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest]

William Happer gives an interview on the sidelines of aFreedom Force International conference in Arizona in December]

He goes over the same ground. CO2 is really awesome and life would be much better if there was a lot more of it.

“I don’t think there are any cons to CO2 … we are really in a CO2 famine,” he says. “My main concern is that it’s likely to damage public perceptions of science. I am hoping that I and other scientists can persuade the public that we are not all for sale.”

I’m struggling to understand how someone concerned with the reputation of science would want to lend his name, and the name of Princeton University, to a conference organised by conspiracy theorists.

Greenpeace exposes sceptics hired to cast doubt on climate science

Read more

This is also the bit when we mention that Happer was caught in a sting by Greenpeace activists in 2015, when he offered to write a report on the benefits of carbon dioxide for a fake fossil fuel client while avoiding any need to disclose the funding’s source.

Happer asked that rather than pay him, the fake lobbyists should instead pay the CO2 Coalition – a climate science denial group based in the US. Tax documents list Happer as a director and president.

:{

}:

He has also given evidence in a court case on behalf of the coal company Peabody Energy where he similarly asked that his fee go to the CO2 Coalition. He laid these facts out in emails released by Greenpeace, stating that the coalition did not pay him any fees or salary.

Remembering Happer’s dislike of science being “for sale”, it’s noteworthy that his CO2 Coalition colleague Patrick Moore was paid last year by a major European coal lobby organisation to give a presentation in Strasbourg telling the audience we should “celebrate CO2”.

No doubt Happer would argue that money does not influence the views of people like Moore, though he does say that it influences actual climate scientists who get research grants from universities and governments. Go figure.

Whether or not Happer gets the gig as Trump’s science adviser remains to be seen. But given the climate science deniers and fossil fuel advocates who Trump has already employed, it seems Happer will fit right in.

==

In addition to providing the start-up funding for Big Green Radicals, Bradley gave $85,000 to the Capital Research Center (CRC), a group led by former Berman and Company employee Scott Walter. The grant was designated for “general operations,” but it may have been used to support the publication Green Watch. A background document on CRC states that, “Green Watch tracks the money flow to environmental nonprofits and critiques their positions, and those of their allies, including their policymaking ones.” (Capital Research Center GPR, August 19, 2014)

Since 2014, the Bradley Foundation has distributed numerous grants to discredit the vast amount of scientific research demonstrating the harmful effects of climate change. In 2014, it gave $65,000 to the George C. Marshall Institute (GMI), a right-wing front group largely funded by oil and gas interests. Newsweek called GMI “a central cog in the denial machine” in 2007.

GMI folded in late 2015, so Bradley recommended $50,000 in “seed funding” the following year for its “successor organization,” the CO2 Coalition. The coalition is led by a Dr. William Happer, a well-known climate change denier. “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all,” Happer said at a Heritage Foundation event on energy and climate.

Another $10,000 Bradley grant in 2014 for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC) went to support its Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI). A staff recommendation notes that SPPI “has helped demonstrate that no real-world data confirms that floods, draughts [sic], or hurricanes are becoming more frequent or severe, as global-warming alarmists allege. Neither is there any real-world data that sea levels are about to rise precipitously, inundating the world’s coasted [sic] lowlands, as is also often alleged.” (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change GPR, June 17, 2014)

==

Here’s how the Mercer family’s climate denial funding influenced Trump

Nearly a quarter of the Mercers' 2016 donations went to groups which deny the science on climate change.

KYLA MANDEL

JAN 26, 2018, 

Robert and Rebekah Mercer attend the 12th International Conference on Climate Change hosted by The Heartland Institute on March 23, 2017 in Washington, D.C.

CREDIT: Oliver Contreras/Getty Images

ROBERT AND REBEKAH MERCER ATTEND THE 12TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE HOSTED BY THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE ON MARCH 23, 2017 IN WASHINGTON, D.C. CREDIT: OLIVER CONTRERAS/GETTY IMAGES

Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, powerful conservative donors with close ties to the Trump administration, donated millions of dollars to climate science denial groups, newly released 2016 tax filing details show.

According to the tax filings published by Buzzfeed and obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, nearly a quarter (23 percent) of the total $19 million donated to nonprofits by the Mercer Family Foundation in 2016 went to groups working, at least partially, on spreading misinformation around climate change and pushing to repeal environmental protections. Many of the groups that received donations have promoted carbon dioxide as nonpolluting, called for the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, and, over the past year, funneled officials into the Trump administration.

The Mercers have quickly become known as some of the most powerful and secretive donors behind President Donald Trump. The family has given millions of dollars to conservative causes through its foundation, prompting Bloomberg News to describe Robert as “the man who out-Koched the Kochs”.

As the filings show, the Mercers gave $125,000 to the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a nonprofit based in Arizona which also goes by the name CO2 Science. Another $150,000 was donated to the CO2 Coalition, a small Virginia-based nonprofit with the tagline, “Carbon dioxide, a nutrient vital for life.” This contribution makes the Mercers the CO2 Coalition’s largest donor. Both organizations work exclusively on activities that promote a false uncertainty regarding the link between carbon emissions and their impact on global temperatures.

A series of other donations also went to groups that work in part to promote climate science denial, including: $2 million to the Media Research Center, $800,000 to the Heartland Institute, $500,000 to the Heritage Foundation, $300,000 to the Cato Institute, $200,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and $200,000 to the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine.

Many of the organizations that received money from the Mercers have been consistently working to bring their anti-environmental agenda to the White House — from stacking the new administration with friendly faces to promoting fossil fuels and undermining the Paris climate agreement.

After the November 2016 election, Trump began assembling his transition team. One of the most influential forces in shaping its members was the Heritage Foundation, according to Politico. Rebekah Mercer, who sits on the board of the Heritage Foundation, was part of the transition team’s executive committee and, according to Politico, she worked with Heritage to recruit appointees to the transition team.

The Heritage Foundation and its affiliate, Heritage Action for America, were both signatories to an official January 2017 letter of support for Scott Pruitt, calling on the Senate to “swiftly approve his nomination” as administrator to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Heartland Institute also signed this letter. Pruitt’s nomination was approved one month later.

Kathleen Hartnett-White is also currently in the running for a top environment position as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). During her Senate confirmation hearing last November, Hartnett-White said she did not have “any kind of expertise or even much layman study” of climate change issues. On carbon dioxide she said, “CO2 in the atmosphere has none of the characteristics of a pollutant that contaminates and fouls and all of that that can have direct impact on human health. As an atmospheric gas, it is a plant nutrient.”

This last sentence echoes the CO2 Coalition’s main message on carbon emissions. Hartnett-White sits on the advisory board of the CO2 Coalition and last February spoke at a CO2 Coalition sponsored discussion panel at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference.

The idea that carbon dioxide should not be considered a pollutant is also being promoted by the Fueling Freedom project directed by Hartnett-White at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. This project seeks to “explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels” while “building a multi-state coalition to push back against the EPA’s unconstitutional efforts to take over the electric power sector by regulating CO2 via the Clean Power Plan.” In June 2016, Hartnett-White was hosted at a Heartland Institute event on “Fueling Freedom.” While her nomination has been met with resistance in the Senate, if approved, Hartnett-White will likely be another Trump administration voice calling for the repeal of key environmental regulations.

Another potential member of Trump’s team connected to the CO2 Coalition is William Happer, the group’s founder, who has long been rumored to be a front-runner for the position of Trump’s science adviser. Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Happer was reported to have met with both Trump and former adviser Steve Bannon. The Mercers funded Bannon’s Breitbart News but recently cut ties with the former White House adviser after his fallout with the Trump administration.

A spokesperson for the Mercer family did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment. Neither did any of the eight nonprofit climate denial groups that received donations from the family.

The Heartland Institute has perhaps made one of the most concerted efforts to influence the government agenda on climate change, and not just under the current administration. In a February 2017 report, however, the group’s president Joe Bast wrote that its “primary goal over the next four years is to win the global warming war.”

Both Rebekah and Robert Mercer attended the Heartland Institute’s climate denial conference last year where the government’s regulatory rollback was celebrated. And last September, the EPA reportedly reached out to Heartland to help it identify a list of researchers who reject mainstream scientific consensus on climate change for Pruitt’s “red team” exercise, aimed at poking holes in mainstream climate science. Emails and notes obtained by E&E News revealing the closed door meetings helped to give a “broad look at skeptics’ playbook under the Trump administration.”

Then-Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt gestures as he answers a question during a news conference in 2013. CREDIT: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki

EPA is asking a climate denier think tank for help recruiting its ‘red team’

Finally, Trump’s campaign promise to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement could not be forgotten. On May 8, 2017 an open letter was sent to Trump urging him to “withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs.” Signatories to this letter include the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the CO2 Coalition, and CO2 Science.

On June 1, Trump announced he was pulling the U.S. out of the landmark agreement (although the United States doesn’t officially exit the accord until November of 2020, and could re-enter under a new administration).

Present in the Rose Garden for Trump’s announcement was Heartland President Joe Bast, who later described this as a “sign that our efforts for the past 20 years on the climate change issue have not gone unnoticed.”

==

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/18/climate-denial-co2-coalition-trump-morner-funding-sea-level-research-dodgy-journals

A climate science denial group with links to President Trump’s administration has been funding work to sow doubt that low-lying islands in the Pacific are at risk from rising sea levels.

The two researchers being funded — one of which is a well-known climate science denier — have targeted little known “open access” journals with dubious quality controls to get their work published, DeSmog has found.

The CO2 Coalition funded the work and in March 2017 sent well-known climate science denier Nils-Axel Mörner to Fiji with Pamela Matlack-Klein, who has described herselfas having a degree from the “Oceanographic Center of Nova Southeastern University, Dania, Florida, in 1983” and writes a weekly newspaper column.

Trump Admin Links to the CO2 Coalition

Among the CO2 Coalition’s members is Kathleen Hartnett White — an energy and environment fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation who is Trump’s nominee to chair the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House group that helps coordinate environmental policy across the administration.

Trump has renominated Hartnett White, who also rejects any risk of human-caused climate change, after Senate hearings failed to confirm her for the post. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has said she is “wildly unqualified” for the role because she “outright rejects basic science.”

Retired Princeton physics professor William Happer, a director of the CO2 Coalition, was touted as a possible chief science advisor to the Trump White House. Happer also denies that increased levels of CO2 will be a problem for the planet. The CO2Coalition was caught in a sting by Greenpeace, in which Happer offered to route money from work for a ficticious fossil fuel company through the organization.

Telling Fiji Not to Worry

Mörner has produced at least six journal articles on the back of the Fiji trip, several co-written with Virginia-based researcher Matlack-Klein, and acknowledged the funding of the CO2 Coalition on several occasions. Matlack-Klein’s affiliation is given as the “Portuguese Sea Level Project, Appomattox, Virginia” but DeSmog could find no public record of the project. Klein did not respond to emails.

Mörner used his research to claim that concerns that Fijians had about rising sea levels were misplaced, and used the then-approaching United Nations climate talks hosted by Fiji (but held in Germany) last fall  to publicize his work, writing an open letter to the country’s Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama.

DeSmog sent emails to Mörner, Klein, and Happer, who signs the CO2 Coalition’s tax forms, with questions about the research, but received no responses.

One leading Australian scientist, the geophysicist Professor Kurt Lambeck, reviewed several of the papers and said in his view, none would have been accepted to a recognized scientific journal with solid peer-review procedures.

Little Academic Standing

Mörner has been targeting fringe journals with official-sounding names but highly questionable quality controls, in order to publish the papers.

All the journals are “open access,” which means the scientists pay for their work to be published and the results are available to the public for free.

In October 2017, Mörner presented his findings alongside Matlack-Klein, at a climate meeting in Rome which, as DeSmog revealed, was hijacked by Mörner, who was on the organizing committee, and who listed several climate science deniers as speakers.

Kurt Lambeck, Professor of Geophysics at the Australian National University, said all of the papers had appeared in journals “of little academic standing” and that “none would have passed the reviewing process for more reputable journals.”

He said that two papers which appeared in journals published by a company called “Scientific Research Publishing” were “trivial” and added “no insight into either the evidence for sea-level change nor on coastal erosion processes” beyond what was already well known.

He said: “It is well understood that human influences are one of the most important contributors to changes in coastal erosion and does not need restatement in a scientific paper.”

A third paper was published in a little-known online journal with the title International Journal of Earth & Environmental Sciences. Lambeck said this paper should have been “rejected out of hand” because Mörner had presented no evidence to back up his claim.

In the paper Mörner argued that ocean levels were being driven by changes in solar winds that changed the rotation of the earth, causing ocean masses to shift towards or away from the poles depending on conditions on the sun. This, Mörner claimed, was the likely explanation for ocean levels around Fiji for 500 years.

Lambeck says he first heard Mörner make this general argument in 1979 during a symposium presentation where it was pointed out to him that the impacts of his proposed mechanisms were “improbable” but, even if they were present, were “orders of magnitude too small” to be effective on sea levels.

Lambeck says that significantly, in order for Mörner to make his arguments about changing sea levels, he had ignored other well-known research in respected journals. In particular, Mörner overlooks the findings that major changes in sea level had historically been driven by melting ice sheets and glaciers and also, in more recent times, by thermal expansion of the oceans.

:{

Academic Paper or Angry Email?

}:

A fourth paper reads more like an angry email to a colleague than a scientific journal article. It starts with a reference to a story in “The Mail” that Mörner claimed had shown that global temperature records held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were being manipulated to show global temperatures were rising.

Mörner is referring to claims supposedly made by a former NOAA employee, John Bates, and reported in the Daily Mail. Mörner does not refer to the many scientists who dismissed the claims of fraud — including Bates himself. He also ignores how the Independent Press Standards Organization ruled that the Daily Mail had “failed to take care over the accuracy of the article” and “had then failed to correct these significantly misleading statements,” a ruling which resulted in a 659-word correction to the article.

In this paper Mörner goes on to claim that sea level records derived from satellite measurement are also being nefariously and unethically manipulated, but offers no evidence.

Lambeck says that in this paper, Mörner quotes mainly from his own writings and ignores other multiple technical analyses that have carefully considered how issues with satellite and tide gauge measurements have been identified and checked. He also ignores the specific rebuttals by recognized experts in the field, refuting the very conclusions he had made.

“To simply compare the globaly average trend with a few short tide gauge records is something that no reasonable person would consider,” Lambeck said.

Lambeck concluded that Mörner was “not handicapped by knowledge of physical processes, not interested in testing his hypotheses even by simple order of magnitude calculations, nor in trying to understand what others may have written.”

'Predatory' Publishers?

So-called “open access” publishing brands have boomed in recent years, with hundreds of new titles appearing.

Many journals are based in either China or India and have names that resemble other, more legitimate journals.

Some people have characterized these journals as “predatory” due to the fees involved, in return for copy-editing services that are of questionable quality and, judging from the quality of some of the work which appears, a peer-review system that exists in name only.

Academics submitting research to these journals have to pay a fee for them to appear, creating a potential conflict where the publisher earns more cash when they encourage more researchers to publish.

This has seen journals spamming researchers around the world, encouraging them to submit articles, join editorial boards, or speak and attend conferences.

To avoid academics being caught out, many organizations have issued guidelines to members, such as the Council of Science Editors, The Royal Society of New Zealand, the World Association of Medical Editors, and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

In addition, academics have reported being named on editorial boards without their knowledge. One major publisher, OMICS International, based in Hyderabad, India, claims to run more than 700 peer-reviewed journals.

Open Access Publishers Caught in Stings

Mörner targeted five publishers for his work on the “Fiji New Sea Level Project,” which he wrote was “supported by a kind grant from the CO2 Coalition.”

The International Journal of Engineering Science and Invention offers to publish papers for just $75. The journal has no contact address, but is published by “Invention Journals” and has a Gmail address as a contact. The journal’s website and the publisher’s website were registered by a “Chetan Sharma” in Uttar Pradesh, India.

One Mörner paper, repeating identical arguments and observations from other papers, appeared in the Journal of Aquaculture & Marine Biology, published by MedCrave Group.

MedCrave Group’s published mailing address in Edmond, Oklahoma, matches that of a parcel service.

One MedCrave journal — Urology & Nephrology Open Access Journal — was exposed in a sting operation in April 2017, when an editor wrote a fake case report based on an episode of Seinfeld using the name of a character that appeared in the TV show. The paper was accepted and published by the journal, but was later removed.

Scientific Research Publishing, where two of Mörner’s articles appeared, was one of five publishers reviewed by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall, whose blog used to document and list suspected predatory journals until it was taken down in 2017. Scientific Research Publishing now discloses its origins as being in China.

Juniper Publishing Group, which published another of Mörner’s Fiji papers, lists a residential property in Simi Valley, California, as its contact address. The website was registered using a privacy service, concealing the name of the website creator. Beall has described Juniper as “rotten to the core” and a publisher “to be avoided by all researchers.”

Juniper was caught in another hoax, this time from Australian public health professor Mike Daube who created a fake academic profile based on the credentials of his pet dog and an affiliation with a fake veterinary school. Juniper’s “Global Journal of Addiction and Rehabilitation Medicine” was one journal to accept “Dr. Olivia Doll” as a member of its editorial board.

Daube provided a picture of “Dr. Doll” to the journals — an image of Australian pop star Kylie Minogue. On its website, Juniper says the publisher “have been established with the aim of spreading quality scientific information to the research community throughout the universe.”

Another journal targeted by Mörner was the International Journal of Earth & Environmental Sciences, published by Graphy Publications, which gives an address in Bangalore, India, as a contact.

A barely legible webpage describing the journal’s aims says: “We encourage authors, who always have shown more interest to publish his work in the prestigious journals, and avail them the freely to the scientific community.”

Both Mörner and Matlack-Klein gave presentations to a conference for climate science deniers held in London in 2016 which was organized by the so-called Independent Committee on Geoethics (a group apparently set up to investigate climate scientists for fraud).

Mörner was a founder of that group, which includes as members two other Australia-based climate science deniers who reject the evidence of rising sea levels and have similarly targeted obscure journals with their work.

===

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/18/climate-denial-co2-coalition-trump-morner-funding-sea-level-research-dodgy-journals

A climate science denial group with links to President Trump’s administration has been funding work to sow doubt that low-lying islands in the Pacific are at risk from rising sea levels.

The two researchers being funded — one of which is a well-known climate science denier — have targeted little known “open access” journals with dubious quality controls to get their work published, DeSmog has found.

The CO2 Coalition funded the work and in March 2017 sent well-known climate science denier Nils-Axel Mörner to Fiji with Pamela Matlack-Klein, who has described herselfas having a degree from the “Oceanographic Center of Nova Southeastern University, Dania, Florida, in 1983” and writes a weekly newspaper column.

Trump Admin Links to the CO2 Coalition

Among the CO2 Coalition’s members is Kathleen Hartnett White — an energy and environment fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation who is Trump’s nominee to chair the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House group that helps coordinate environmental policy across the administration.

Trump has renominated Hartnett White, who also rejects any risk of human-caused climate change, after Senate hearings failed to confirm her for the post. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has said she is “wildly unqualified” for the role because she “outright rejects basic science.”

Retired Princeton physics professor William Happer, a director of the CO2 Coalition, was touted as a possible chief science advisor to the Trump White House. Happer also denies that increased levels of CO2 will be a problem for the planet. The CO2Coalition was caught in a sting by Greenpeace, in which Happer offered to route money from work for a ficticious fossil fuel company through the organization.

Telling Fiji Not to Worry

Mörner has produced at least six journal articles on the back of the Fiji trip, several co-written with Virginia-based researcher Matlack-Klein, and acknowledged the funding of the CO2 Coalition on several occasions. Matlack-Klein’s affiliation is given as the “Portuguese Sea Level Project, Appomattox, Virginia” but DeSmog could find no public record of the project. Klein did not respond to emails.

Mörner used his research to claim that concerns that Fijians had about rising sea levels were misplaced, and used the then-approaching United Nations climate talks hosted by Fiji (but held in Germany) last fall  to publicize his work, writing an open letter to the country’s Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama.

DeSmog sent emails to Mörner, Klein, and Happer, who signs the CO2 Coalition’s tax forms, with questions about the research, but received no responses.

One leading Australian scientist, the geophysicist Professor Kurt Lambeck, reviewed several of the papers and said in his view, none would have been accepted to a recognized scientific journal with solid peer-review procedures.

Little Academic Standing

Mörner has been targeting fringe journals with official-sounding names but highly questionable quality controls, in order to publish the papers.

All the journals are “open access,” which means the scientists pay for their work to be published and the results are available to the public for free.

In October 2017, Mörner presented his findings alongside Matlack-Klein, at a climate meeting in Rome which, as DeSmog revealed, was hijacked by Mörner, who was on the organizing committee, and who listed several climate science deniers as speakers.

Kurt Lambeck, Professor of Geophysics at the Australian National University, said all of the papers had appeared in journals “of little academic standing” and that “none would have passed the reviewing process for more reputable journals.”

He said that two papers which appeared in journals published by a company called “Scientific Research Publishing” were “trivial” and added “no insight into either the evidence for sea-level change nor on coastal erosion processes” beyond what was already well known.

He said: “It is well understood that human influences are one of the most important contributors to changes in coastal erosion and does not need restatement in a scientific paper.”

A third paper was published in a little-known online journal with the title International Journal of Earth & Environmental Sciences. Lambeck said this paper should have been “rejected out of hand” because Mörner had presented no evidence to back up his claim.

In the paper Mörner argued that ocean levels were being driven by changes in solar winds that changed the rotation of the earth, causing ocean masses to shift towards or away from the poles depending on conditions on the sun. This, Mörner claimed, was the likely explanation for ocean levels around Fiji for 500 years.

Lambeck says he first heard Mörner make this general argument in 1979 during a symposium presentation where it was pointed out to him that the impacts of his proposed mechanisms were “improbable” but, even if they were present, were “orders of magnitude too small” to be effective on sea levels.

Lambeck says that significantly, in order for Mörner to make his arguments about changing sea levels, he had ignored other well-known research in respected journals. In particular, Mörner overlooks the findings that major changes in sea level had historically been driven by melting ice sheets and glaciers and also, in more recent times, by thermal expansion of the oceans.

Academic Paper or Angry Email?

A fourth paper reads more like an angry email to a colleague than a scientific journal article. It starts with a reference to a story in “The Mail” that Mörner claimed had shown that global temperature records held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were being manipulated to show global temperatures were rising. 

Mörner is referring to claims supposedly made by a former NOAA employee, John Bates, and reported in the Daily Mail. Mörner does not refer to the many scientists who dismissed the claims of fraud — including Bates himself. He also ignores how the Independent Press Standards Organization ruled that the Daily Mail had “failed to take care over the accuracy of the article” and “had then failed to correct these significantly misleading statements,” a ruling which resulted in a 659-word correction to the article.

In this paper Mörner goes on to claim that sea level records derived from satellite measurement are also being nefariously and unethically manipulated, but offers no evidence.

Lambeck says that in this paper, Mörner quotes mainly from his own writings and ignores other multiple technical analyses that have carefully considered how issues with satellite and tide gauge measurements have been identified and checked. He also ignores the specific rebuttals by recognized experts in the field, refuting the very conclusions he had made.

“To simply compare the globaly average trend with a few short tide gauge records is something that no reasonable person would consider,” Lambeck said.

Lambeck concluded that Mörner was “not handicapped by knowledge of physical processes, not interested in testing his hypotheses even by simple order of magnitude calculations, nor in trying to understand what others may have written.”

'Predatory' Publishers?

So-called “open access” publishing brands have boomed in recent years, with hundreds of new titles appearing.

Many journals are based in either China or India and have names that resemble other, more legitimate journals. 

Some people have characterized these journals as “predatory” due to the fees involved, in return for copy-editing services that are of questionable quality and, judging from the quality of some of the work which appears, a peer-review system that exists in name only.

Academics submitting research to these journals have to pay a fee for them to appear, creating a potential conflict where the publisher earns more cash when they encourage more researchers to publish.

This has seen journals spamming researchers around the world, encouraging them to submit articles, join editorial boards, or speak and attend conferences.

To avoid academics being caught out, many organizations have issued guidelines to members, such as the Council of Science Editors, The Royal Society of New Zealand, the World Association of Medical Editors, and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

In addition, academics have reported being named on editorial boards without their knowledge. One major publisher, OMICS International, based in Hyderabad, India, claims to run more than 700 peer-reviewed journals.

Open Access Publishers Caught in Stings

Mörner targeted five publishers for his work on the “Fiji New Sea Level Project,” which he wrote was “supported by a kind grant from the CO2 Coalition.”

The International Journal of Engineering Science and Invention offers to publish papers for just $75. The journal has no contact address, but is published by “Invention Journals” and has a Gmail address as a contact. The journal’s website and the publisher’s website were registered by a “Chetan Sharma” in Uttar Pradesh, India.

One Mörner paper, repeating identical arguments and observations from other papers, appeared in the Journal of Aquaculture & Marine Biology, published by MedCrave Group.

MedCrave Group’s published mailing address in Edmond, Oklahoma, matches that of a parcel service.

One MedCrave journal — Urology & Nephrology Open Access Journal — was exposed in a sting operation in April 2017, when an editor wrote a fake case report based on an episode of Seinfeld using the name of a character that appeared in the TV show. The paper was accepted and published by the journal, but was later removed.

Scientific Research Publishing, where two of Mörner’s articles appeared, was one of five publishers reviewed by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall, whose blog used to document and list suspected predatory journals until it was taken down in 2017. Scientific Research Publishing now discloses its origins as being in China.

Juniper Publishing Group, which published another of Mörner’s Fiji papers, lists a residential property in Simi Valley, California, as its contact address. The website was registered using a privacy service, concealing the name of the website creator. Beall has described Juniper as “rotten to the core” and a publisher “to be avoided by all researchers.”

Juniper was caught in another hoax, this time from Australian public health professor Mike Daube who created a fake academic profile based on the credentials of his pet dog and an affiliation with a fake veterinary school. Juniper’s “Global Journal of Addiction and Rehabilitation Medicine” was one journal to accept “Dr. Olivia Doll” as a member of its editorial board. 

Daube provided a picture of “Dr. Doll” to the journals — an image of Australian pop star Kylie Minogue. On its website, Juniper says the publisher “have been established with the aim of spreading quality scientific information to the research community throughout the universe.”

Another journal targeted by Mörner was the International Journal of Earth & Environmental Sciences, published by Graphy Publications, which gives an address in Bangalore, India, as a contact.

A barely legible webpage describing the journal’s aims says: “We encourage authors, who always have shown more interest to publish his work in the prestigious journals, and avail them the freely to the scientific community.”

Both Mörner and Matlack-Klein gave presentations to a conference for climate science deniers held in London in 2016 which was organized by the so-called Independent Committee on Geoethics (a group apparently set up to investigate climate scientists for fraud).

Mörner was a founder of that group, which includes as members two other Australia-based climate science deniers who reject the evidence of rising sea levels and have similarly targeted obscure journals with their work.

===

http://www.desmogblog.com/co2-coalition

CO2 Coalition

Background

The CO2 Coalition was established in 2015 from the remains of the now-defunct George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) and registered as a 501(c)(3) organisation for the purpose of “educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide and fossil fuels to our lives and the economy.” [1]

The GMI shut down in September/October of 2015. A GMI press release noted the group's national security research would be transferred to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), while it is apparent that the CO2 Coalition would take over Marshall's “work on energy and climate change.”  [13], [15]

The CO2 Coalition's tag line is “Carbon dioxide, a nutrient vital for life,” and it appears to share many of the views put forward by Craig Idso's Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change(Co2science.org). Craig Idso is notably listed on the CO2 Coalition's Board of Directors. [1]

“The CO2 Coalition seeks to engage thought leaders, policy makers, and the public in an informed and dispassionate discussion about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide and fossil fuels. We seek to shift the debate from the unjustified criticism of CO2 and fossil fuels to one based on a solid scientific foundation. Any discussion of climate change needs to address the extent of our knowledge of the climate system, well-established uncertainties, the limitations of climate models, and the consequences of mandated reductions in CO2 emissions,”the CO2 Coalition homepage states. [1]

In December of 2015, coalition director William Happer was implicated in a Greenpeace investigation where activists posed as consultants for a Middle Eastern energy company and asked Happer and Frank Clemente, an emeritus sociology professor at Pennsylvania State University, to author reports on the benefits of coal and carbon dioxide emissions. [14]

Location

According to publicly available tax records accessed at the Economic Research Institute, the address for the CO2 Coalition (EIN 473722575) is: [2]

CO2 COALITION INC

C/O: WILLIAM F OKEEFE

1601 N KENT ST STE 802

ARLINGTON,  VA  22209-2105

William F. O'Keefe was Chief Executive Officer (CEO)of the George C. Marshall Institute, former Treasurer/Secretary of theCompetitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and COO of the American Petroleum Institute (API). [3]

The above address for the CO2 Coalition is identical to that of the George C. Marshall Institute. [4] The CO2 Coalition also registered with the Virginia SCC as a Corporation on May 6, 2015 with the ID 07899891.[5]

Stance on Climate Change

According to the CO2 Coalition, the “debate about global warming and climate change has shifted from genuine scientific exploration to a campaign demonizing CO2 and fossil fuels. The use of fossil fuels, the primary source of human CO2 emissions, have played an essential role in the economic progress and improved standard of living that has been experienced in many nations since the Industrial Revolution.” [1]

Its missionis to “demonstrate with science based facts” that: [1]

• “CO2 is a nutrient that is essential to life. CO2 at current levels and higher enables plants, trees, and crops to grow faster and more efficiently. It is essential for life.”
• “Just as we require oxygen for life, our economy requires energy, often described as the oxygen or lifeblood of the economy. Energy must be abundant, reliable, and reasonably priced for an economy to achieve robust and sustained growth.”
• “Fossil fuels are likely to remain the world’s dominant sources of energy for decades to come because they are abundant, have a high energy density, and are superior to alternatives in terms of reliability and cost-effectiveness.”

2016

According to Norman Rogers, Senior Policy Advisor to the Heartland Institute and member of the CO2 Coalition's Board of Advisors, “Global warming is an example of junk science where there is a kernel of scientific truth that has been abused and beaten into a junk science edifice supporting huge money flows. ” [17]

Funding

According to the CO2 Coalition's Nonprofit Exemption application (See documents list below), the Coalition will receive at a total of $1,500,000 in gifts, grants, and contributions between April 2015 and the future date of December, 2017.  For the same time period, it records expenses of $1,059,500.

IRS Documents

link]

:{:{:{

Board of Directors

Advisory Committee

Actions

March 29, 2016

The CO2 Coalition and The New Criterion held a joint conference in New York City titled “The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 is Good for the Earth.” [23]

The conference “challenged the supposedly 'settled science' on climate change and purported detrimental effects of increasing levels of carbon dioxide,” according to the event description. [23]

It added that “Members of the CO2 Coalition and many other experts argue that carbon dioxide enrichment of the atmosphere provides manifold benefits for humanity. And observed surface warmings are much smaller than predicted by climate models.  Economic models that fail to include the benefits  of CO2 and the serious exaggerations of climate models  and are being used to advocate “cures” that are much worse than the non-existent disease.” [23]

Featured speakers included the following: [23]

• Will Happer
• Craig Idso
• Patrick Moore
• Ross McKitrick
• Richard Lindzen
• Mark Steyn
• Roger Kimball

Videos below from *The New Criterion* YouTube page:[limg]

:{February 15, 2016

William Happer and Rodney Nichols of the CO2 Coalition published an Op-Ed in the New York Post titled “The Supreme Court sided with science against Obama.” [18]

*EcoWatch* reported on Happer/Nichols's Op-Ed, saying “The piece itself touts a few classic denier myths, from CO2 being good, to the existence of a global warming pause, to the letter penned by '300 experts' accusing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of cooking the books on climate change.” [19]

EcoWatchalso poses the question, given the Greenpeace exposure ofHapper's willingness to accept funding from fossil fuel companies: “Did someone pay Happer for this particular piece of pro-CO2 propaganda published in the Post?” [19]

December, 2015}:

In an undercover investigation by Greenpeace, the CO2 Coalition's Will Happer described how he uses the CO2 Coalition to secretively funnel money paid for research on behalf of fossil fuel interests. [11]

When undercover Greenpeace reporters approached Happer to write a report promoting carbon dioxide for a fictional oil company in the Middle East, Happer told reporters that he would be willing to do the research for $250 per hour. He asked that the funds be paid to the CO2 Coalition, instead of him directly. [11]

When asked to ensure that the commissioning of the report could not be traced back to the Middle East oil and gas company, Professor Happer contacted fellow CO2 Coalition board member, Bill O’Keefe, explaining: “I am trying get [sic] another mysterious client to donate funds to the CO2 Coalition instead of compensating me for my writing something for them.” [11]

To further conceal the funds, O'Keefe recommended channeling them through DonorsTrust, a group that has been described as the “Dark Money ATM” of the conservative movement in the U.S. [12]

:{October 19, 2015

The CO2 Coalition released a white paper titled“Carbon Dioxide Benefits the World: See for Yourself” (PDF) where they summarize the views of their fledgling organization. According to the Coalition, “Claims that '97 percent of scientists' agree that a climate catastrophe is looming because of the emission of CO2 should be greeted with skepticism. ” [20],[21]}:

“As CO2 levels continue to rise, the Earth will grow greener and agricultural yields will continue to increase, with additional contributions from better varieties, improved cropping practices, more efficient use of fertilizer, and other factors,” the paper predicts. [20]

*Breitbart News* interviewed the paper's author, William Happer, who provided an explanation for the lack of footnotes: [22]

“Carbon Dioxide Benefits the World: See for Yourself is meant to be a conversation-starter. Happer and Nichols stressed that they wanted to take a non-confrontational approach with copious footnotes and supporting sources, inviting readers to perform their own research and gain a fuller understanding of CO2 and its benefits.”

September 3, 2015

Patrick Moore, listing himself as a director of the CO2 Coalition in his signature, wrote an article in the Opinion Pages of Wall Street Journaltitled “Obama’s Half-Baked Alaska” where he suggests that there is no need to be worried about glacial ice receding because it has happened in the past.[8]

“All of this happened long before human emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, could have had any impact,” Moore writes. “There is no reason to believe that those factors have suddenly disappeared and now humans are the all-powerful shapers of global climate destiny. Yet this entirely unproven hypothesis of catastrophe is compelling to those who would control our beliefs.” [8]

He continues, stating that “carbon dioxide is essential for all life on Earth, that plants could use a lot more of it, and that the real threat is a cooling of the climate, not the slight warming that has occurred over the past 300 years.” [8]

According to SkepticalScience, the argument that Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle is a climate myth, just as is the idea that CO2 is “plant food.”

July 28, 2015

The CO2 Coalition's first blog post, titled “:{Clean Power Plant Regulation::(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Check the Facts,” criticizes stricter power plant regulations put forth by President Obama to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. [6]

The Coalition disputes the EPA's claims that the tighter regulations would offer health benefits, including a reduction in premature deaths and the incidence of asthma attacks. 

According to the Coalition statement, “there has been growing evidence that the increase in CO2 has resulted in a greening of planet.  This is clearly shown in satellite photos.  Higher levels of atmospheric CO2 stimulate plant and crop growth and allow them to use water more efficiently.  Today’s level of 400 ppm is not unusually high in geologic history where it is estimated to have been as high as 7500 ppm.”

They conclude, “A realistic and hardheaded look at the facts leads to the conclusion that the Clean Power Plant rule will do nothing to affect the climate but will impose large and unnecessary costs on the economy and consumers.”

The above statements reiterate a number of common arguments put forward by climate change skeptics, all of which have been listed and described in detail at SkepticalScience.com. Those arguments include that “CO2 is not a pollutant,” that “CO2 is Plant food,” and that “CO2 was higher in the past.”

May 11, 2015

According to publicly available tax records accessed at the Economic Research Institute, the CO2 Coalition,  EIN 473722575, registered with the IRS in May of 2015.  [2]

}:}:}:

...

he above WHOIS lookup for Co2Coalition.org lists that the domain was registered on May 11, 2015 and hosted on the IPAddress  23.229.171.137. The registrant is Domains By Proxy — a service that conceals the identity of the actual registrant.[7]

March 25, 2015

According to a post from Patrick Moore's Twitter Account (see below), the CO2 Coalition is behind an Open Letter to Museums of Science and Natural History that was promoted at the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CO2 Science). [9]

> >

:{:(style="position:relative;top:1px;display:inline-block"):}:

Follow

:{ > :(style="position:absolute;display:inline-block;top:0px;left:0px;width:36px;height:36px;overflow:hidden;background-color:transparent;border-radius:4px"):}:Patrick Moore @EcoSenseNow

Letter from the #CO2 Coalition to US #Museums to counter warmists call to refuse donations from fossil fuel interests:{http://:(style="position:absolute !important;overflow:hidden !important;width:1px !important;height:1px !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px) !important"):}:goo.gl/o5Z70e:{ :(style="position:absolute !important;overflow:hidden !important;width:1px !important;height:1px !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px) !important"):}:

9:15 AM - 16 Apr 2015

• 8 Retweets
• :{3 likes:(style="position:absolute !important;overflow:hidden !important;width:1px !important;height:1px !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px) !important"):}:

The Coalition's letter claims that abandoning fossil fuels “would not help the environment but would likely harm it.”[9]

“The idea that the world can or should abandon fossil fuels is deeply wrong-headed, not just from a scientific perspective, but also from a humanitarian perspective,” The CO2 Coalition's letter responds. [9]

The letter responds to another recent public letter, titled “To the Museums of Science and Natural History,”which urges museums to cut their ties to the fossil fuel industry. [10]

Related Organizations

• George C. Marshall Institute (Defunct) — According to E&E News/*ClimateWire*, the Marshall Institute “morphed into a nonprofit called the CO2 Coalition in August.” [13]

Other Organizations

The CO2 Coalition's “Studies and Resources” and “Economic Impacts” pages link to a range of studies from similar think-tanks including:

• Institute for Energy Research (IER)
• Fraser Institute
• Institute for Humane Studies (IHS)
• Heritage Foundation

Resources

1. “About,” Co2Coalition. Archived September 4, 2015.
2. “CO2 COALITION INC,” Economic Research Institute. Accessed September 5, 2015.
3. “Board Members,” George C. Marshall Institute. Archived September 6, 2015.
4. “About the George C. Marshall Institute,” George C. Marshall Institute. Archived September 6, 2015.
5. “CO2 Coalition, Inc.” Commonwealth of Virginia State Corporation Commission. Archived September 6, 2015.
6. “Clean Power Plant Regulation: Check the Facts,” CO2 Coalition, July 28, 2015. Archived September 6, 2015.
7. “Whois Record for Co2Coalition.org,” DomainTools.com. Accessed September 5, 2015.
8. Patrick Moore. “Obama’s Half-Baked Alaska,” Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2015. Archived September 9, 2015.
9. “TO THE MUSEUMS OF SCIENCE AND NATURAL HISTORY” – AN OPEN RESPONSE,” CO2 Science, April 16, 2015. Archived September 9, 2015.
10. “An Open Letter to Museums from Members of the Scientific Community,” The Natural History Museum, March 24, 2015. Archived September 9, 2015.
11. Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan. “Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding,” GreenPeace EnergyDesk, December 8, 2015. WebCiteURL: http://www.webcitation.org/6deZxlWnq
12. Andy Kroll. “Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement,” Mother Jones, February 5, 2013. Archived July 24, 2015.
13. Gayathri Vaidyanathan. “ADVOCACY:Think tank that cast doubt on climate change science morphs into smaller one,” ClimateWire, December 10, 2015. Accessed at E&E Publishing. Archived February 26, 2016. WebCiteURL: http://www.webcitation.org/6faqJBtXR
14. Lawrence Carter and Maeve McClenaghan. “Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding,” EnergyDesk, December 8, 2015. Archived February 26, 2016. WebCite  URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6faqhtHrx
15. (Press Release). “CSIS Announces Marshall Program on Science and National Security,” George C. Marshall Institute, October 28, 2015. Archived February 26, 2016. WebCite  URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6farF9fOC
16. “About,” Co2Coalition. Archived April 14, 2016.
17. Norman Rogers. “Fighting Junk Science,” American Thinker, April 8, 2016. Archived April 13, 2016. WebCiteURL: http://www.webcitation.org/6gkHMPQFJ
18. Will Happer and Rod Nichols. “The Supreme Court sided with science against Obama,” New York Post, February 15, 2016. Archived April 13, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6gkHu8EzD
19. “Why Would the New York Post Plug Climate Denier Profiteers?” EcoWatch, February 19, 2016. Archived April 13, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6gkIJ5Xkm
20. “Carbon Dioxide Benefits the World:See for Yourself” (PDF), Co2 Coalition, October 2015. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.
21. “Carbon Dioxide Benefits the World: See for Yourself,” Co2Coalition.org. Archived April 13, 2016. WebCiteURL: http://www.webcitation.org/6gkIfYJbH
22. “Carbon Dioxide Is not our Enemy,” Breitbart, December 4, 2015. Archived April 13, 2016. WebCiteURL: http://www.webcitation.org/6gkJ7Cuph
23. “The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 is Good for the Earth,” CO2 Coalition, April 25, 2016. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmogBlog.

Related Posts

• Will Happer Rebrands George C. Marshall Institute As CO2 Coalition
• Climate Denying GWPF Wants ‘Objective Media Reporting’, Rejects UK Journalist From Annual Conference

TAGS:

CO2 Coalition

C02 Coalition

denierorgs

Marshall Institute

George C. Marshall Institute

==