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Spanish/ danish Study

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primary 6/17 poster boy (Travis fisher?)

MERRI OK

 this is a generic category for bogus studies, often by CTT think tanks, some written to order?  often funded by trade group

see CRA charles river ass ~ climate bills

see NERA, MISI (laundered by KNS alford)

green jobs/ economy, bogus CTT studies

aha 5/17 IER staffer moles ~ alt energy

counter / neutralize actual science studies:

not quite as good as punking a science jrnl, but latter gets corrected (but maybe too late)

thanks kathie! OLSEN

spanish and danish boosted (laundered?) by koch IER

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DESMOG IER:

...October 2009

IER ran a campaign on “green jobs”criticizing the development of renewable energy resources. IER commissioned three studies on renewable energies and green jobs in Denmark, Germany and Spain. [23] An IER press release confirmed that it had commissioned the Danish study. [46]

The studies were in turn promoted by the IER in the US and by other think tanks in Europe and in Ontario, Canada. Greenpeace reported (PDF)how the Spanish study was disseminated: [24]

According to SourceWatch, the studies were conducted by a number of separate think tanks and while promoted by IER in the US, they were also used in attempt to influence policy decisions in Europe and Ontario, Canada. [33]

For example, the study on Germany was translated into German and referenced by the German media without mentioning that the study was financed by IER. The German institute that wrote the study (Rheinisch-westfaelisches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung, or RWI) didn’t acknowledge the funding from IER until they were challenged by investigative journalists. [34]

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Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group

Institute for Energy Research (IER)

Read more about the Institute for Energy Research

Find more recipients of Kochfoundation money

$175,000 received from Koch foundations 2005-2011 [Total Koch foundation grants 1997-2011: $235,000]

IER supported and promoted the"Spanish" and "Danish" studiescritical of clean energy jobs, both of which have been debunked by credible sources. IER also argues that efforts to curb global warming would accomplish little at too great a cost, promotes ACCF/NAM and Heritage Foundation studies that exaggerate the costs of climate policy, and discourages U.S. leadership on the international stage.

Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive, is the CEO of IER and one of its founders.Thomas Pyle, a former Koch and oil-industry lobbyist, is the President of IER and the American Energy Alliance, the 501c4 counterpart to IER. Politico reports that IER and AEA still receive Koch money in support of a $3.6 million anti-Obama gas price advertising campaign, although Koch foundations appear to have stopped supporting IER after 2007. The most recent available Koch foundation tax filings to IRS are for the year 2010, indicating the Kochs picked IER back up in 2011 or are funneling money through other avenues.

AEA was founded by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute to fight the BTU tax proposal in 1993, and in recent years funded by ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. AEA has been active in the climate debate, from running ads repeating false claims about the costs of climate legislation to trashing clean energy at town halls around the US.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/institute-for-energy-research/

CPI? 2015? OHS BAK

...For instance, to support assertions made in a recent, 67-page policy paper, Koch-supported American Encore regularly cites and quotes Mercatus Center research and mentions the center nearly a dozen times.

Among the academic work American Encore’s paper highlights: a 2014 Mercatus Center study by Keith Hall, a senior research fellow who had previously served as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a 2014 commentary about a federal regulations tracking and measurement tool by Patrick A. McLaughlin, another senior research fellow.

“Yet another study has confirmed what we already knew — states with lower taxes do better,” read an article by the Kochs’ flagship nonprofit, Americans for Prosperity, about a study published July 7 by the Mercatus Center. “Overall, the rankings provide more evidence that economic freedom works, and bigger government means bigger trouble.”

And the 60 Plus Association, a retiree-focused nonprofit that’s benefited from tens of millions of dollars of the Koch brothers’ money over the years, for a time tapped Walter Williams, a George Mason University economics professor, syndicated columnist and Rush Limbaugh Show fill-in host, as a member of its “truth squad.” His mission: to “battle” against Democrats on Social Security and Medicare programs.

...

Congress takes notice

Congress is also paying more attention to the Mercatus Center, which from 1999 to 2008 was mentioned by name 32 times in either the Congressional Record or congressional committee reports. Since 2009, it’s been mentioned 93 times, often in reference to Mercatus Center faculty who were testifying before Congress.

2015]

This year, Congress even cited Mercatus Center research in the text of budget bills. House Concurrent Resolution 27 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 11 note that a Mercatus Center study “estimates that Obamacare will reduce employment by up to 3 percent, or about 4 million full-time equivalent workers.”

Mercatus Center Vice President Carrie Conko, while declining to address critics’ “ad hominem attacks” of Charles Koch, stressed the institution’s work is the product of hard work and high standards — not the whims of some patron puppet master.

“As a university research center, our scholarship is independent and subjected to rigorous peer review,” Conko said. “Our researchers are interested in understanding what shapes societies and economies and that covers a spectrum of research from the history of economic thought to the application of economics to questions of public policy.”

Conko also noted that the Mercatus Center abides by a strong conflict of interest and research independence policy, which she described as “stronger than those of most found with typical academic centers or departments.”

Mercatus Center officials note that the center isn’t part of George Mason University the same way as, say, its chemistry or psychology departments. Instead, it’s organized as a stand-alone nonprofit, and as such, George Mason University isn’t directly responsible for it.

The Mercatus Center doesn’t receive direct funding from George Mason University, Conko said.

But George Mason University and its students do receive millions of dollars in annual financial benefit from the Mercatus Center, according to federal tax filings.

That alone is a major incentive for a public university in Virginia, where state funding of higher education is dwindling, to host a privately funded operation on its campus — today, a fairly common practice among public schools.

The Mercatus Center spent $3.64 million during that time to “support graduate students at George Mason University” by “training future scholars and decision-makers to advance and apply a research agenda for understanding institutions and change,” according to a tax filing.

The Mercatus Center helped fund $1.82 million worth of communication efforts that included promoting its research and ideas “to the media and opinion shapers.”

And it made a $10,000 grant to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which operates a “global network of more than 400 free market organizations.” They include several Koch-backed nonprofit groups such as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Tax Reform.

McAuliffe mum?

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sw

In 2009 IER run a campaign on "green jobs" attacking the expansion of renewables energies. IER commissioned three studies on renewable energies and green jobs in Denmark, Germany and Spain.[4] These studies by different think tanks were than promoted by IER and other free market think tanks in the US but also used in Europe[5] and Ontario, Canada.[6] The study on Germany e.g. was translated into German and taken up by German media - without mentioning that the study was financed by IER with its close business links. The German institute that wrote the study (called Rheinisch-westfaelisches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung, RWI) didn't acknowledge the funding from IER until they were challenged by investigative journalists.[7]

A report by the European NGO Corporate Europe Observatory tried to get more information on the funding of the libertarian Instituto Juan de Mariana responsible for the Spanish study and the Danish think tank CEPOS doing the study on wind energy in Denmark. The report states: "In their reply to CEO, Instituto Juan de Mariana affirmed that it finances all its activities through the individual donation of his over 250 individual members and that they did not receive corporate funding with the exception of a small Spanish insurance company. When contacted again to check whether the Institute for Energy Research (IER) support for the above study was financial, the Institute stopped responding."[8]

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OMFG MULT BOGUS

EPI LEGIT

‘Man who killed offshore wind’ now pushing fossil fuels and nuclear for Koch-funded Mackinac Center in Michigan - Energy and Policy Institute

David Stevenson, who led a national campaign against offshore wind power for the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute, is now fighting land-based solar and wind farms and promoting fossil fuels and nuclear power with the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a group funded by the donor network of petrochemical billionaires Charles and Chase Koch.

The Caesar Rodney Institute (CRI) and Mackinac Center are both affiliated with the State Policy Network (SPN), which serves as the central hub of a 50-state network of right-leaning think tanks. SPN has long sought to derail state clean energy and climate change policies, and is funded by right-wing and corporate donors that include fossil fuel interests.

“The free-market policy approach employed by affiliated state think tanks helps to identify policies that are focused on helping all people to flourish,” SPN states in the FAQ section of its website.

SPN’s approach to energy policy contradicts its claim to promote policies based on free market principles. In 2024, SPN identified preventing states from adopting wind and solar power as one of the network’s legislative priorities. SPN further encourages politicians to pick winners and losers in the electricity sector by favoring coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.

Last year, SPN credited years of work by CRI and SPN’s Offshore Wind Working Group with laying the groundwork for the Trump administration’s efforts to halt the nation’s offshore wind boom.

Stevenson has said he resigned from his position at CRI in October over a salary dispute, after spending 14 years as Director of CRI’s Center for Energy & Environmental Policy. Stevenson landed his new job as the Mackinac Center’s Director of Energy and Environmental Policy by December. He replaced Jason Hayes, who left the Mackinac Center for the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.

During his first few months in Michigan, Stevenson has supported the Mackinac Center’s efforts to derail Michigan’s Healthy Climate Plan and 100% by 2040 clean energy standard, and enable fossil fuels and nuclear power to supplant renewable energy sources like wind and solar power as the Great Lakes State’s primary power sources for the future.

At the Mackinac Center, Stevenson will have at his disposal the resources of an SPN group with significantly more funding than CRI and that, unlike CRI, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in publicly reported funding annually from Koch-led groups in recent years.

CRI reported revenue of $463,000 for 2024 in its most recent annual report to the IRS. The Mackinac Center reported revenue of over $11 million for 2024, and its lobbying arm, Mackinac Center Action, reported nearly $1.5 million in revenue.

The Kochs’ Stand Together Trust and Stand Together Fellowship organizations reported contributing close to $1.7 million to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy between 2020 and 2024.* The Koch group Americans for Prosperity contributed $550,000 to Mackinac Center Action in 2023 and 2024.

Stevenson and the Mackinac Center use their opposition to wind and solar power as leverage to push for propping up uneconomic coal plants and increasing gas and nuclear power

“Two news outlets, including Bloomberg News, declared him [Stevenson] to be the man who killed offshore wind,” Jarrett Skorup, the Mackinac Center’s Vice President for Marketing and Communications, said in an article earlier this year announcing Stevenson’s hiring.

The Bloomberg story Skorup referenced was the first to report on a policy proposal prepared by Stevenson that showed how CRI’s anti-offshore wind campaign fit into a broader policy agenda that included using the promise of emerging small modular reactor technology (SMR) as leverage for delaying the planned closure of the coal-fired Indian River power plant in Delaware.

In early January of last year, Stevenson emailedcopies of a “SMR Nuclear proposal” he’d prepared for Delaware’s Governor Matt Meyer to Natalie Magdeburger, the mayor of Fenwick Island, along with a copy of a draft anti-offshore wind executive order intended for then president-elect Donald Trump. The Energy and Policy Institute obtained a copy of Stevenson’s email and the attachments through a records request to the Town of Fenwick Island.

[MANY DOCS]

Under Magdeburger’s leadership, the Town of Fenwick Island contributed $10,000 in taxpayer money to the CRI’s anti-offshore litigation fund, as requested by Stevenson.

“CRI is funded entirely from the voluntary contributions of individuals, foundations and corporations,” CRI says on the FAQ section of its website. “CRI neither solicits nor accepts government funding.”

State think tank affiliates of SPN must “not accept government funding,” according to SPN’s website.

The “SMR Nuclear proposal” Stevenson shared recommended that Meyer initiate a dialogue with Exelon and Delmarva Power about purchasing the Indian River coal-fired power plant in Delaware, which would close the following month. Stevenson’s proposal pointed to “headwinds” facing offshore wind, including from the incoming Trump administration, and recommended Exelon purchase the Indian River plant and eventually convert it to SMR.

“Since there is a long lead time to build SMR’s Exelon would need to operate with coal until the replacement becomes available,” Stevenson said in the proposal, which called for Exelon to sell the power from the plant to Delmarva Power, which is owned by Exelon.

Stevenson’s proposal said Delaware would also need to waive Indian Point’s compliance with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) for the extended period when the plant would continue to burn coal. CRI has long opposed RGGI, the multi-state cap-and-trade program that’s helped reduce power sector greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast and generated funding for energy efficiency and clean energy programs that have saved utility customers $2.7 billion as of 2023.

In 2017, Stevenson acknowledged that his consulting firm, Alternative Strategies Consulting, had worked for “utilities and large energy users” while under examination in a lawsuit where he challenged Delaware’s implementation of RGGI. Stevenson said at the time that he was required to keep the names of all of his clients confidential.

Republican state lawmakers in Delaware have since picked up on the idea of restarting the Indian River coal plant, and potentially converting it to SMR or gas. The plant’s owner, NRG, has said it closed the Indian River plant for economic reasons after two straight years of financial losses for the plant.

Earlier this year, Stevenson contributed to a report where the Mackinac Center laid out its 2026 energy policy recommendations for state lawmakers in Michigan, and called for replacing aging coal plants with nuclear, not wind and solar, power.

“… both the JH Campbell and Monroe coal-fired plants may be suitable locations for either large scale or small modular reactor units,” the Mackinac Center report said.

The report claimed that state lawmakers could save millions by delaying power plant closures, and linked to a December blog post by Stevenson defending the Trump administration’s controversial orders delaying the planned closure of the J.H. Campbell coal plant originally scheduled for May of last year. In the blog post, Stevenson pointed to a 2025 report where the Mackinac Center called for keeping the J.H. Campbell and Monroe plants running until 2040, long past their planned closure dates.

Consumers Energy, which owns the J.H. Campbell plant, has reported that the cost of complying with the Trump administration’s orders has reached $400 million. Consumers Energy is passing those costs on to electric utility customers throughout the 15-state Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regional power grid that includes Michigan. Consumers Energy had previously expected that replacing the J.H. Campbell plant with solar power and energy storage would save Michigan customers $600 million by 2040.

In March, Trump appointees at the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Justice cited Stevenson’s blog post in a legal brief defending the J.H. Campbell plant orders against a legal challenge by Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel. Trump’s Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has issued multiple orders over the past year requiring Consumers Energy to delay closing the J.H. Campbell plant using emergency powers under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act.

“The Trump Administration is crying wolf over a non-existent energy emergency, while at the same time undermining every effort made to increase the efficiency, affordability, and reliability of domestic energy markets,” Nessel said last month, after Wright issued his fifth order targeting the plant for continued operation.

In his blog post, Stevenson argued that the J.H. Campbell plant should remain open at least until the Michigan Public Service Commission approves a new generation plan for Consumers Energy, and that state utility regulators should consider nuclear and natural gas as options for replacing Campbell.

The Mackinac Center wants to keep a DTE coal plant that buys petroleum coke from Koch Carbon running until 2040, rather than closing it by 2032

The Monroe coal plant is owned by DTE, which currently plans to close two of the plant’s four coal-burning units in 2028, and the remainder in 2032. DTE expects to save customers $1.4 billion by closing the plant.

Fuel receipt data compiled by the Energy Information Administration through Form 923 shows the Monroe plant buys petroleum coke from Koch Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, where Charles Koch is chairman and CEO and his son Chase is an executive vice president. Koch Carbon’s piling of petroleum coke in Detroit drew public scrutiny and protest in 2013, prompting the company to move the piles to Ohio. DTE was listed as one of the recipients of the pet coke stored at the Detroit location in Koch Carbon’s response to a request for information from the EPA’s Air Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Branch.

Stevenson and the Mackinac Center want to repeal Michigan’s landmark clean energy laws

In March, Stevenson delivered testimony in support of Michigan House Energy Committee Chair Pauline Wendzel’s “Project Lighthouse” legislation, House Bills 5710 and 5711, which would repeal Michigan’s landmark [2023 clean energy laws](https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/commission/workgroups/2023-energy-legislation#::text=The%20laws%20also%20include%20three%20one-time%20proceedings:,Increases%20the%20cap%20from%201%25%20to%li%25).

The legislation approved by Republicans in the Michigan House would slow down the “build-out of the cheapest, fastest energy, limiting Michigan’s ability to leverage federal investments and pushing the state toward more expensive, long-term fossil fuel infrastructure” if it becomes law, according to the Michigan League of Conservation Voters (LCV).

It would also remove “basic planning and reporting requirements, allowing pollution to go unreported and increasing costs as energy demand grows,” Michigan LCV said.

In his testimony in support of the legislation, Stevenson again pointed to a 2025 report prepared for the Mackinac Center by the Center for the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based SPN affiliate, and Always on Energy Research, a SPN partner. The Lignite Energy Council, a coal industry group that’s opposed 100% clean energy legislation in neighboring Minnesota, paid the Center of the American Experiment $115,000 for electrical grid and reliability modeling in 2023.

The 2025 reportclaimed that powering Michigan with coal, gas, large-scale nuclear, and SMR would be cheaper than transitioning to a mix of wind, solar, nuclear, and energy storage. In addition to postponing the closures of the J.H. Campbell and Monroe plants until 2040, the report called for outfitting the state’s existing coal and gas plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS). The report also claimed relying on wind, solar, and energy storage “could lead to numerous blackouts throughout the year.”

“Our study might be contested,” Stevenson acknowledged in his testimony.

SMR projects in the U.S. and globally have run into cost overruns, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Multiple high-profile utility projects aimed at demonstrating the commercial viability of CCS for coal plants have devolved into costly economic boondoggles mired in public scandal.

Always on Energy Research has churned out similar reports for other SPN groups, including two reports focused on New England’s power grid prepared for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and SPN groups based in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. The Acadia Center, an environmental group working to halve carbon emissions in the Northeast by 2030, has published rebuttals of Always on Energy Research reports on New England.

“Misleading analysis grossly inflates the cost of clean energy, selectively ignores fuel savings, and proposes highly unrealistic alternative scenarios,” the Acadia Center said of Always on Energy Research’s methodology in its latest rebuttalin January.

Stevenson received funding from SPN to lead a nuclear waste discussion group with nuclear industry contacts

Isaac Orr of Always on Energy Research noted in a presentation to state lawmakers in North Dakota in September that Stevenson had joined Always on Energy Research as the group’s Director of Nuclear Development. The presentation included a slide that listed Stevenson’s nuclear industry contacts:

INDUSTRY CONTcts gfx always on

Orr’s presentation also said that Stevenson “currently chairs a discussion team to end the used nuclear fuel problem with key members of the nuclear industry, and states that may host recycling and storage through federal legislation.”

Stevenson said in an article last summer that he received a grant from SPN to form the discussion group, in which he described SPN affiliates’ work with supportive lawmakers to identify potential host-states for nuclear waste.

DonorsTrust contributed $50,000 to Always on Energy Research, $200,000 to CRI, nearly $2.9 million to the Mackinac Center, and over $9.8 million to the State Policy Network in 2024. DonorsTrust does not publicly disclose the names of its donors, but tax-exempt foundations that donate to Donor Trust are required to report those contributions publicly in their annual reports to the IRS.

Right-wing tech investor Peter Thiel’s foundation contributed $426,775 to DonorsTrust in 2024, and $1,276,111 in 2023. Thiel has backed major advanced nuclear and SMR start-ups like Oklo, Helion, and General Matters.

Stoking opposition to wind and solar farms

Last year, Stevenson sent President Trump’s political appointees to the U.S. Department of Interior a barrage of messages recommending actions the agencies could take to fulfill Trump’s campaign pledge to halt offshore wind development. EPI obtained copies of the communications through a FOIA request.

Stevenson served on Trump’s first Environmental Protection Agency transition team in 2016. The Mackinac Center has credited Stevenson’s earlier research as having “played a role” in killing the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era EPA’s attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants nationally for the first time.

“Hi, I have been actively opposing offshore wind for both economic and environmental reasons since 2017, and formed a national coalition, the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, assisting a number of beach community groups organize and grow,” Stevenson said in one email sent to multiple Trump administration officials at DOI in mid-April of 2025.

Stevenson’s anti-offshore wind campaign began in Delaware with the launch of CRI’s Save Our Beach View campaign, which stoked local opposition to offshore wind projects planned off the coasts of Maryland and Delaware.

In 2021, Stevenson and CRI announced the launch of the American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP) to raise money for anti-offshore wind litigation through the Ocean Environment Legal Defense Fund. Membership in ACOP included anti-offshore wind groups and SPN think tanks based along the East Coast, plus the Mackinac Center in Michigan.

The Mackinac Center has a history of opposing offshore wind power development in the Great Lakes region, but supports continued operation of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil and gas pipeline. Tribes, environmentalists, and the State of Michigan have fought for years to shut down Line 5, which runs below the Straits of Mackinac that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, due the risk of a catastrophic spill.

CRI initially served as a fiscal sponsor for the anti-offshore wind group Protect Our Coast NJ.

CRI also offered to serve as a conduit to raise money for anti-offshore wind “Save the Horseshoe Crabs” ads in response to an email from Dianna Harris of Protect Our Coast Delmarva obtained from the Town of Fenwick Island.

“We are planning a zoom call next week with a wider group of about 50 people that have been paying close attention so we may raise some money then,” Stevenson said in one email to Harris.

In 2025, Stevenson and David Wojiick of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow served as the lead signers on a letter that called on Trump’s Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to revoke federal approvals for eleven offshore wind projects, including four that were already under construction. Cosigners included anti-offshore wind activists from the East and West Coasts, the Great Lakes region, and representatives of multiple SPN affiliate and partner groups.

Stevenson emailed the letter to Burgum to Trump appointees at DOI and BOEM. Laura Keehner Rigas, a White House Liaison to DOI, received a copy of the letter from Stevenson, and forwarded Stevenson’s email to four other political appointees.

“Thank you!” Deidre Kohlrus, a Senior Advisor to Burgum, responded to Rigas.

While operating out of Delaware, Stevenson signaled openness to solar and had solar panels on his roof. Upon arriving at the Mackinac Center, Stevenson quickly got to work attacking solar farms in Michigan.

“The future of electric generation is clearly nuclear, not solar, and state legislation needs to change in recognition of this reality,” Stevenson said in a January blog post for the Mackinac Center.

The Mackinac Center has for years served as a platform for promoting the views of anti-wind and anti-solar activists in Michigan, including Kevon Martis. In 2024, Martis was the public face of the Citizens for Local Choice ballot committee, which aimed to repeal a 2023 Michigan law that streamlined siting of wind and solar farms. Citizens for Local Choice failed to gather enough signatures to get the issue on the ballot, but received a $10,000 contribution from Tom Rastin, a retired gas industry executive who has bankrolled opposition to solar farms in neighboring Ohio.

“Solar projects often face resistance from local governments,” Stevenson wrote in his blog post in January.

“Recognizing local opposition, the Legislature gave the Michigan Public Service Commission authority to override local permit bans,” Stevenson said in the same blog. “Opponents to this law are attempting to repeal it through a ballot initiative.”

Citizens for Local Choice appears to be inactive, but Republican lawmakers in Michigan targeted the 2023 siting law this year as part of Project Lighthouse, as the Mackinac Center noted in another blog post.

Michigan ranked among the top 10 states for new solar additions during the first quarter of this year, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Stand Together Trust reported contributions to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy that totaled $525,000 in 2022 and $400,000 in 2023, both for general operating support, and $421,400 for 2024 for “KAP” (the Koch Associate Program). Stand Together Fellowship contributed $350,000to the Mackinac Center for education in 2020.*}:

Top photo is a screenshot from a Michigan House video of David Stevenson’s testimony before the Energy Committee on April 14, 2026*

Always On Energy ResearchAmerican Coalition for Ocean ProtectionCharles KochChase Kochcitizens for local choiceCommittee for a Constructive TomorrowDavid StevensonDavid WojiickDeidre KohlrusDepartment of InteriorDonald TrumpDoug BurgumEnbridgekevon martisKoch CarbonLaura Keehner RigasLignite Energy CouncilOcean Environment Legal Defense FundProtect Our Coast DelmarvaProtect Our Coast New JerseyStand Together Trusttom rastin

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feb 2018

https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/exxonmobils-climate-disinformation-campaign-is-still-alive-and-well/

In a recent blog post, ExxonMobil executive Suzanne McCarronreiterated her company’s claim that it fully accepts the reality of climate change and that it wants to do something about it....“I want to use this opportunity to be 100 percent clear about where we stand on climate change,” she wrote. “We believe the risk of climate change is real and we are committed to being part of the solution. So why is the company still a part of—in fact, a major part of—the problem?An exchange between Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt during a recent is a case in point, providing a window into how ExxonMobil’s undue influence continues to block climate action.

During the January 30 hearing, which was held by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, Sen. Cory Booker inadvertently provoked Inhofe by raising the issue of environmental justice.The New Jersey Democrat cited the threat climate change-induced flooding poses to three dozen Superfund sites in his state and asked Pruitt if he was “taking into account the environmental burdens disproportionately impacting communities of color, indigenous communities and low-income communities.”

Inhofe seized the opportunity to contradict Booker, claiming that minority and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed by environmental protections, specifically citing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have dramatically reduced carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants if Pruitt hadn’t repealed it.

Booker, Inhofe said, was implying that Pruitt was trying to “punish” vulnerable Americans. “I wanted to just remind you,” Inhofe told the committee, “that we had a guy I remember so well, Harry Alford. He was the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He provided some of the most powerful testimony that I have ever heard when it comes to the effects of the Clean Power Plan and some of the other regulations … on black and Hispanic poverty, including job losses and increased energy costs.

“[Alford] was very emphatic as to who was paying the price on these,” the Oklahoma Republican continued, “and I think sometimes that the previous administration forgot that there are already people out there who are paying all they can pay just to try to eat and keep their house warm.”

ExxonMobil’s Echo Chamber

Inhofe’s source for his assertion? A discredited, ExxonMobil-funded study by an Exxon-funded advocacy group that was based on discredited studies by other ExxonMobil-funded organizations.

Inhofe rested his argument on previous congressional testimony by Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a shoestring, mom-and-pop operation that is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. “Of course we do and it is only natural,” Alford wrote on NBCC’s website. “The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel…. [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend.”

One of NBCC’s closest economic friends is ExxonMobil, which has donated more than $1.14 million to the group since 2001.

What did the company get for that money?

In 2015, NBCC commissioned a report that claimed the Clean Power Plan would “inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities.”

In fact, unchecked climate change would more than likely hurt those communities most, and investments in energy efficiency under the plan would ultimately lower electricity bills across the country.

How did NBCC arrive at its upside-down assessment? The Union of Concerned Scientists took a close look at the report and found it was based on several flawed fossil fuel industry-friendly studies. Two of those bogus studies were produced by ExxonMobil grantees: the Heritage Foundation, which received $340,000 from ExxonMobil between 2007 and 2013, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received $3 million between 2014 and 2016.

The Chamber study, which came out just days before the EPA released a draft of the Clean Power Plan, was debunked not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and The Washington Post. Among its many faults, the Chamber study—which was co-sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute—wildly inflated the cost of the plan and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.

ExxonMobil Spreads its Money Around

But there’s more than just the fact that ExxonMobil financed deliberately flawed studies to try to derail the Clean Power Plan. The company also is a major supporter of a number of Senate EPW Committee members, including Inhofe, who are adamant climate science deniers.

Inhofe has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, which has donated $1.85 million to his campaign war chest over his long career in Congress, more than twice than any other industry.Three oil and gas companies are among the senator’s top 10 corporate contributors: Koch Industries, Devon Energy and …ExxonMobil.

Six of the other 10 Republicans on the EPW Committee also are on ExxonMobil’s donation list, including Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the current committee chairman. Roughly half of the $119,500 ExxonMobil contributed to the seven senators over the last decade went to Barrasso and Inhofe, the committee’s previous chairman.

Then there’s ExxonMobil’s link to Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general before President Trump tapped him to run the EPA. From 2012 through 2013, he chaired the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA)and afterward served on the organization’s executive committee. From 2014 through 2016, ExxonMobil gave RAGA $160,000 in three annual installments.

Just a few weeks after the company made its 2016 donation of $50,000,Pruitt and then-RAGA Chairman Luther Strange, at the time Alabama’s attorney general, co-authored a National Review column attacking a coalition of state attorneys general investigating ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies for misleading investorsand the general public about climate change. Parroting ExxonMobil’s argument, Pruitt and Strange charged that the coalition was violating the company’s first amendment right to free speech.

“The debate” over climate change, they wrote “is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”

Inhofe Upstaged

In this case, Inhofe’s counterfactual comment didn’t make it into the ensuing media coverage. Along with nearly everything else that was said during the two-and-a-half hour marathon, it was eclipsed by a bombshell dropped by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. The Rhode Island Democrat revealed that during a February 2016 radio interview, Pruitt said Trump would be “more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama, and that’s saying a lot.” Whitehouse read Pruitt’s remark aloud and asked him if he recalled making it.

“I don’t,” Pruitt responded, “and I don’t echo that today at all.”

“I guess not,” Whitehouse replied.

Not surprisingly, that embarrassing nugget was the story. There was no way that Inhofe’s rambling, ExxonMobil-sponsored falsehood could compete in the media with red meat like that. But overshadowed or not, Inhofe provided yet another incontrovertible piece of evidence that—despite ExxonMobil’s statements to the contrary—the company is still very much engaged behind the scenes in trying to stymie any government attempt to seriously address climate change.

Posted in: Climate Change, Energy, Science and Democracy, Scientific Integrity

Tags: disinformation

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Bradley even has an enemies list.

In board meetings and committee meetings in 2014, Bradley Foundation staff distributed and discussed a chart of "Organizations that Attack Conservatives." The chart lists 17 groups with information about their size, funders, and leadership. The groups are a mixture of good government groups, media groups, public relations firms, and funding organizations including, in alphabetical order:

Alliance for Justice; American Bridge, BerlinRosen; Center for American Progress/Think Progress Blog; Center for Media and Democracy; Change.org; Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW); Color of Change; Common Cause;Democracy Alliance; Fenton Communications; FitzGibbon Media; Media Matters for America; Mother Jones, One Wisconsin Now; Open Society Institute; and Progress Now.

A note with the chart says Bradley wanted to "survey the landscape of such groups for a more informed perspective about that which could perhaps be done to mitigate the damage they could do." The note says the information about the groups came from two Berman websites "Activistfacts.com and CREWexposed.com, projects of the Bradley-supported Center for Consumer Freedom" (Meeting of the Implementation and Impact Committee, October 14, 2014).

Through Berman, the Bradley Foundation can engage in unseemly opposition research and disinformation campaigns, while still keeping the appearance of a staid, philanthropic institution.

According to the Bradley Files, Bradley has given Berman groups at least $6.5 million. Bradley gave Berman's "Employment Policies Institute," an organization that spreads misinformation about the effects of minimum wage increases and other workplace reforms, a total of $3,650,000 between 2009-2015; Berman's "Center for Consumer Freedom," a front group created to undermine public support for food-safety and animal welfare groups, $625,000 between 2009-2013; Berman's "Center for Union Facts," created to attack and undermine unions and collective bargaining, $2,240,000 between 2006-2015.

In addition, Bradley funds the "Capital Research Center" to work with Berman on projects. The Center is not part of the Berman operation, but is run by a former Berman employee, Scott Walter. It received $2.5 million from Bradley between 1998-2015.

But for all intents and purposes, the Bradley foundation is underwriting the activities of three people: Berman and Co. President Richard Berman, Vice President Sarah Longwell (who is often listed as the contact for Center for Consumer Freedom and many other Berman groups), and Vice President Michael Saltsman (who is also listed as the head of the Employment Policy Institute, which is located within Berman's offices).

Bradley bankrolls Berman for at least three sets of activities:

Dissemination of Studies

Berman's Employment Policies Institute (EPI) was named to confuse the public with an actual think tank, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which employs a host of PhD-level economists and other support staff. Berman's EPI has no economists on staff, but does employ "Research Director" Michael Saltsman, who has no advanced degree. MSNBC's Chris Hayes pinned Saltsman down on that point in a remarkable interview.

In 2013, Bradley earmarked $300,000 for a new Berman project within EPI called the Interstate Policy Alliance (IPA). In 2014, the grant for the same work doubled to $600,000 and included "crisis communication" for Bradley-funded groups on the receiving end of bad publicity, and in 2015, Bradley provided $400,000. Click here for a full list of Berman IPA groups.

Bradley documents describe IPA as a "discrete channel" for "studies" that could be utilized by state-based groups "toachieve maximum credibility in local and social media outlets."

"Created at Bradley's behest in 2012 and with continuing Bradley support since then, IPA is a discreet channel for the better coordination and presentation of helpful, high-quality research on existing and proposed state-level, free-market policies around the country. It provides this research, too often out of reach for many small state think tanks, and customizes it for each state to achieve maximum credibility in local- and social-media outlets. The Searle Freedom Trust has joined Bradley in support of the project" (Barder Fund, August 18, 2015).

State think tanks participating in Berman's IPA, which include Wisconsin's Bradley-supported MacIver Institute, do not have to pay for the research or its packaging or dissemination. They are able to easily access data that has been uploaded to a password-protected website. As needed, Berman's IPA also helps with report writing, graphic design, news release preparation, op-ed placement and the scheduling of interviews, (EPI, Grant Proposal Record, 11/10/2015 ).

In 2015, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Energy and Policy Institute revealed how IPA operated, when it reported that the Beacon Hill Institute was releasing misleading studies attacking President Obama's Clean Power Plan, an ambitious multi-year effort to cut carbon pollution and mitigate the harmful effects of climate change.The funding for the study came through the previously unknown group called the Interstate Policy Alliance.

In many of its sponsored research "studies," IPA promotes fossil fuel development over renewables. This has been a long-term agenda item of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate funded bill mill and many State Policy Network "think tanks" and advocacy groups funded by Bradley. In addition, the Bradley documents examined by CMD show Bradley is funding numerous climate denial groups, including Myron Ebell's Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute.

Infrastructure Investments...

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API fuckery

http://web.archive.org/web/20180705200611/https://publicintegrity.org/2014/12/04/16320/benzene-and-worker-cancers-american-tragedy

no lnx pix

Bloated and bed-ridden, his skin browned by blood transfusions, John Thompson succumbed to leukemia on November 11, 2009.

A carpenter by trade, Thompson, then 70, had spent much of his life building infrastructure for the petrochemical industry in his native Texas — synthetic rubber plants in Port Neches, chemical facilities in Orange. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he often encountered benzene, stored on job sites in 55-gallon drums, which he used as a cleaning solvent. He dipped hammers and cutters into buckets full of the sweet-smelling liquid; to expunge tar, he soaked gloves and boots in it.

Thompson never figured the chemical could do him harm. Not when it stung his hands or turned his skin chalky white. Not even when it made him faint. But after being diagnosed with a rare form of leukemiain 2006, relatives say, he came to believe his exposure to benzene had amounted to a death sentence. Oil and chemical companies knew about the hazard, Thompson felt, but said nothing to him and countless other workers.

“They put poison on his skin and in the air he breathed,” said Chase Bowers, Thompson’s nephew. “He died because of it.”

Thompson died before a lawsuit filed by his family against benzene suppliers could play out in court, where science linking the chemical to cancer could be put on display. Over the past 10 years, however, scores of other lawsuits, most filed by sick and dying workers like Thompson, have uncovered tens of thousands of pages of previously secret documents detailing the petrochemical industry’s campaign to undercut that science.

Internal memorandums, emails, letters and meeting minutes obtained by the Center for Public Integrity over the past year suggest that America’s oil and chemical titans, coordinated by their trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, spent at least $36 million on research “designed to protect member company interests,” as one 2000 API summary put it. Many of the documents chronicle an unparalleled effort by five major petrochemical companies to finance benzene research in Shanghai, China, where the pollutant persists in workplaces. Others attest to the industry’s longstanding interest in such “concerns” as childhood leukemia.

Exposed: Decades of denial on poisons

Taken together, the documents — put in context by interviews with dozens of lawyers, scientists, academics, regulators and industry representatives — depict a “research strategy” built on dubious motives, close corporate oversight and painstaking public relations. They comprise an industry playbook to counteract growing evidence of benzene’s toxic effects, which continue to command the attention of federal and state regulators and be fiercely debated in court.

benzene graf

What is benzene?

Benzene is a highly flammable, colorless (light yellow at room temperature), liquid, volatile organic compound with a sweet smell. It evaporates into the air quickly and dissolves only slightly in water. It comes from both natural and industrial sources, and can be found in water, air and soil. It is a known human carcinogen.

How common is benzene?

Benzene is the 17th most-produced chemical in the U.S. and is used in the manufacturing of common household items such as plastics, lubricants, dyes, adhesives and pesticides. The main sources of human exposure to benzene are gasoline and cigarette smoke exposure.

How harmful is benzene?

There is an association with leukemia at a chronic exposure level of 10 parts per million, or lower. A worker exposed at 10 ppm of benzene for 40 years is 155 times more likely to die from leukemia than an unexposed worker.

Benzene is found in:

Cigarette smoke

Solvents

Crude Oil

Diesel exhaust

Gasoline

Styrofoam

Ingredients used to make synthetic rubber, lubricants, dyes, detergents, drugs and pesticides

Occupations linked to benzene exposure:

Steel workers

Refinery workers

Printers

Shoe makers

Laboratory technicians

Gas station employees

Firefighters

"The conspiracy exists, and the conspiracy involves hiding the true hazards of benzene at low doses."

“The conspiracy exists, and the conspiracy involves hiding the true hazards of benzene at low doses,” said Robert Black, a Houston lawyer who represents plaintiffs in toxic tort cases. Since 2004, while handling dozens of lawsuits filed on behalf of workers sickened byleukemia, lymphoma and other diseases associated with benzene, Black has obtained 16,000 pages of internal records detailing the industry’s research tactics, which he shared with the Center. Other lawyers provided an additional 5,000 pages.

The documents may represent the tip of the iceberg. For decades, the petrochemical industry has employed what one litigation guide calls a “comprehensive strategy” for defending against workers’ legal claims. Penned by a senior attorney at Shell Oil, the undated document lays out a coordinated “industry response” aimed at shielding internal company records on benzene. It warns defense attorneys to “avoid unnecessary or inadvertent disclosure of sensitive documents or information,” for instance, and to “disclose sensitive benzene documents only on court order.”

“We don’t know what the health effects are because they’re not going to let us know,” Black said. “It’s an American tragedy.”

Five million Americans at risk

Benzene emissions in the United States have declined sharply since 1987, when federal regulators set the occupational exposure limit at 1 part per million. Over roughly the same period, there has been a66-percent drop in releases of the chemical into the environment.Yet experts say it remains a formidable threat. “You’re still seeing elevated risks of leukemias and lymphomas among occupational groups exposed to benzene,” said Peter Infante, a former director of the office that reviews health standards at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who has studied the pollutant for 40 years, “as well as populations being polluted from these benzene sources.”

In May, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 5 million Americans — not counting those with workplace exposures — face heightened cancer risks from benzene and 68 other carcinogens spewed into the air by one such source: the nation’s 149 oil refineries. “We are concerned about benzene,” said Kelly Rimer of the EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, which has proposed a rule that would require refinery operators to monitor for the chemical along their fence lines.

Internal documents reveal industry 'pattern of behavior' on toxic chemicals

By David Heath and Jim Morris December 4, 2014

A dozen dirty documents

By Kristen Lombardi and Jared Bennett December 5, 2014

New battlefront for petrochemical industry: benzene and childhood leukemia

By Kristen Lombardi December 8, 2014

“It’s a known human carcinogen,” Rimer said, “and it’s emitted from lots of sectors.”

One month later, California officials lowered the long-term exposure level for benzene from 20 parts per billion to 1 ppb — among the lowest in the country— setting the stage for further emissions cuts at refineries and bulk-oil terminals in that state. Melanie Marty, of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said regulatory limits are now “getting lower and lower for [benzene’s] non-cancer risks” — dizziness, rapid heart rate, neurological problems, anemia — and not just its carcinogenic effects.

“We have to make sure we’re not exposing people to things we can do something about,” she said.

A naturally occurring component of crude oil, benzene is used to make household products such as plastics, pesticides and dyes. It remains a key ingredient in gasoline, a source of exposure for workers as well as the public: In 2006, the EPA found benzene to be such a “significant contributor to cancer risk from all outdoor air toxics” that it limited levels in fuel. Even oil executives acknowledge its ubiquity;in documents, they call it “universal” and “a basic petrochemical building block.” Benzene ranks 17th among the top 20 chemicals produced in the United States, according to the federal government.

The petrochemical industry’s decade-long research effort on benzene echoes those launched by other industries — asbestos, tobacco, plastics — that used science tocreate doubt. These industries have employed a host of tactics to try to convince courts and regulators that a chemical or product causes no harm. At times, they funded their own studies in an attempt to show the lack of adverse effects. Experts say the petrochemical industry has bankrolled more research — at greater cost — than anyone but Big Tobacco, which coined the phrase “manufacturing doubt.”

“The more they feel threatened by the outcome of independent research, the more they will quote-unquote invest in their own,” said Celeste Monforton, a public health researcher and lecturer at George Washington University, who has written about corporate corruption of science. Monforton considers the petrochemical companies’ study of workers exposed to benzene in Shanghai to be the most expensive and elaborate effort by any industry to try to refute damning scientific evidence.

The reason, in her mind, is clear: “Litigation is continuing and potential for environmental exposures is still significant,” she said. “They need to protect their economic interests.”

Underwritten by the biggest names in petrochemicals — British Petroleum, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell Chemical — and administered by the powerful APIlobby, the Shanghai Health Study purported to examine how benzene exposure affects workers’ health.It consisted of three inquiries: The first investigated the link between benzene and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as well as acute myeloid leukemia, or AML; the second, progression of diseases caused by the chemical; and the third, the exposure level at which such biological markers as lower blood cell counts indicate benzene's toxicity.

But the study’s outcome seemed to some like a foregone conclusion. Documents suggest oil companies set out to counter U.S. government research tying benzene to more types of cancer and at lower exposure levels than previously known. They show how company executives and scientists plotted objectives and “expected” results before the study began, banking on conclusions that would play down health hazards.

“This is just appalling,” said Carl Cranor, a philosophy professor at University of California, Riverside, who has read some of the Shanghai documents. “This does not sound like a scientific inquiry where you’re not sure what the outcome will be.”

Infante, the former OSHA official, who now testifies for plaintiffs in benzene litigation, put it more bluntly: “It’s called potential bias.”

Study’s authors: No bias

Industry representatives and the scientists they paid to do the Shanghai work say such criticism is unwarranted. Some oil executives, they say, may have been seeking an alternative to government research; others may have wanted to better understand benzene’s connection to disease. Whatever the impetus, they argue, scientific integrity was not compromised.

“There could have been the best intentions or the worst intentions,” said Harvey Checkoway, an epidemiology professor at University of California, San Diego, who served on a scientific review panel created by the petrochemical companies to review the study. “We set that aside for the research.”

Richard Irons, one of the study’s two principal investigators and now head of a consulting firm that does research for the petrochemical industry, said that “if you’re ignorant, it’s a logical conclusion” to view the work as biased. “But it’s an accusation not founded in fact.” Irons acknowledged that he has never testified for a plaintiff in a benzene exposure case. The API has financed his work on benzene since the early 1990s, documents show. Irons said he’s no longer receiving money from the institute but has gotten $100,000 for a small benzene project from the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main lobby group.

Defenders of the Shanghai study stress the independence of its design. Scientists, they say, have operated under the guidance of not just the scientific review panel, but of two Chinese government ministries and two university boards, all ensuring a proper inquiry. Many of the results — positive and negative, they say — have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

“The results don’t support the presumption of bias,” Irons said, explaining that, so far, the research has confirmed benzene’s association with AML as well as myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, a cancer of the bone marrow.

The study’s co-principal investigator, Otto Wong, who directed the work on AML and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said, “I was interested in doing a cutting-edge study and I was confident I had control over our [portion]. The rest is really not a concern.” Wong acknowledged that he has never testified for a plaintiff in a benzene exposure case. His ties to the oil industry date to the 1970s. Now retired, Wong said he has “no contact with the API people at all.”

Representatives of BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips all declined to comment for this article, referring questions to the API, which did not respond to repeated interview requests. In a one-paragraph statement, Shell said the company’s financial “support for the study reflects our ongoing commitment to health, safety, and product stewardship,” stressing that “the study was wholly independent of Shell.”

ExxonMobil, whose scientists participated in the Shanghai study, said in a written statement that it “supports scientific research through funding and technical support,” painting its involvement in this project — as well as a 2012 ExxonMobil-sponsored study of benzene-exposed workers showing adverse health effects at levels below legal occupational limits — as part of a longstanding corporate commitment to better understanding the chemical. The 2012 results in particular prompted ExxonMobil to “voluntarily reduce allowable benzene exposure limits to one-half of OSHA legal limits” at its workplaces, it said — or 0.5 ppm for an eight-hour shift.

By contrast, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommends that workers limit their benzene exposure to an average of 0.1 ppm during a shift.

“Our conservative approach to setting workplace benzene exposure limits is influenced by the most up-to-date scientific evidence, which includes the 2012 study,” ExxonMobil said, noting that its short-term limit is five times lower than OSHA’s.

As the Shanghai findings seep into the scientific literature and, ultimately, the courts, the petrochemical industry generally admits that benzene causes AML and MDS at higher doses. But other blood and bone marrow cancers continue to kill — at lower and lower exposures to the chemical.

Michael Boley in April, 1994. Courtesy of the Boley family

On February 27, 2012, Michael Boley, 68, died of a disease Shanghai researchers say can’t be tied to benzene: chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, a form of MDS, combined with another bone-marrow condition known as “myeloproliferative disease.”

Strong and industrious, with a knack for avoiding even the flu, Boley spent 23 years at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in St. Marys, Ohio, site of a seminal benzene study by NIOSH  in the 1970s. The research quantified for the first time the leukemia risk for workers exposed to the chemical in the plant’s Pliofilm unit, prompting OSHA to work on the benzene standard that took effect in 1987.

Michael Boley worked at a Goodyear plant in St. Mary's, Ohio, for 23 years. His 15th anniversary with the company appeared in Goodyear's newsletter. Courtesy of the Boley family

Boley didn’t make the benzene-soaked rubber film for which the unit was named; rather, he was a plant electrician, supervisor and engineer who worked there for an hour or two daily. Still, he knew benzene was in the air: While in the unit he noticed “Authorized Personnel Only” signs for Pliofilm workers who, he testified in a deposition, “were monitored on a regular basis.” At times, he complained about the unit’s “sweeter-than-gasoline” smell. Once, Boley asked a supervisor if he could have the same blood test the company administered to Pliofilm workers.

“His comment was, no, we wouldn’t require monitoring,” Boley testified. “Our levels would be safe.”

Four decades later, after enduring the fatigue, feebleness and shortness of breath accompanying a diagnosis of chronic monomyelocytic leukemia, or CMML, Boley sued Goodyear and its benzene suppliers, including ExxonMobil. “He wanted them to know what had happened to him,” said his widow, Cheryl. But the suit went nowhere: In 2011, Boley settled the litigation in a confidential mediation. His still-pending workers’ compensation claim has seen little traction.

“He couldn’t prove it,” Cheryl said, alluding to the companies’ claims that benzene couldn’t have caused her husband’s illness. Those claims were supported by Irons and other scientists affiliated with the Shanghai study, who reported in a journal article last year that “benzene exposure does not appear to be a significant predictor of CMML.”

Mounting evidence against benzene:

1928

First case

The first case of benzene-induced leukemia is reported.

1948

Only safe concentration is zero

The American Petroleum Institute concludes that “the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero.”

1977

Goodyear study

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health launches a study of two Goodyear plants in Ohio where workers are exposed to benzene at high levels — 10 parts per million to 100 ppm. Responding to the study, theOccupational Safety and Health Administration issues an emergency temporary standard for benzene of 1 ppm, down from 10 ppm.

1978

Final standard

OSHA issues its final benzene standard of 1 ppm, sparking alegal challenge from API that lasts nearly a decade and goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1981

Ohio results

NIOSH researchers examining the two Ohio plants establish that theexposures increased five-fold the workers’ risk of developing leukemia.

1990

Benzene Task Force

The API’s Benzene Task Force kicks off an industry campaign to counter the Ohio study. The oil lobby acknowledges that “high doses of benzene can cause some forms of cancer,” but not necessarily “low concentrations.”

1994

National Cancer Institute study

A National Cancer Institute study of benzene-exposed workers in Shanghai, China, appears on the petrochemical industry’s radar.

1997

National Cancer Institute study

The first NCI paper reports significantly elevated risks of leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome and non-Hodgkins lymphoma at levels of benzene exposure around the OSHA limit of 1 ppm.

2000

A new Shanghai study

The Benzene Task Force outlines the strategy for the industry’s own Shanghai study as well as other benzene research efforts “designed to protect member company interests…” Documents paint the research as a counterweight to the NCI study.

2001

"Benefits" to bottom lines

BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Shell Chemical sign an agreement with the task force and API launching what will become the Benzene Health Research Consortium to fund what’s expected to be a five-year study costing approximately $20 million.

2003

Project unveiled

The Shanghai study is publicly unveiled at China’s Fudan University, home to the project’s multi-million-dollar, state-of-the-art laboratory.

2004

No safe exposure

The NCI releases its second major study of benzene-exposed Chinese workers. It shows that workers who inhaled less than 1 ppm of benzene had fewer white blood cells than unexposed workers, strongly suggesting there is no safe exposure threshold for the chemical.

2005

Shanghai costs soar

Shanghai project expenses soar to more than $26 million.

2006

Benzene regulations launched

The EPA launches what some experts consider its most substantive effort to regulate benzene in years — a rule requiring the reformulation of fuel to reduce benzene content. “Benzene is the most significant contributor to cancer risk from all outdoor air toxics,” EPA officials state.

2007

"Risk management"

An API memo details the lobby group’s benzene “risk management” program, which aims to “develop scientific data . . . for use in science advocacy, risk management, litigation support.” The memo states that benzene is “of particular concern to the industry” because “tighter regulation . . . could impose substantial costs.”

2009

Shangai project ends

The Shanghai project officially ends, though articles about the research will continue to appear in scientific journals and be used by industry to defend lawsuits by U.S. workers exposed to benzene.

2014

Continued impact

As of October, 30 papers have been published with consortium funds; in general, the Shanghai study has found that only certain subtypes of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) show statistically significant associations with the chemical. It also has shown “a possible association” between benzene and a subtype of non-Hodgkins lymphoma — a controversial finding that some industry scientists dispute.

Only safe level ‘is zero’

The petrochemical industry has known about benzene’s dangers since the turn of the last century. As far back as 1948, the API’s toxicological profile of the chemical discussed “reasonably well documented instances of the development of leukemia as a result of chronic benzene exposure,” cautioning that “the only absolutely safe concentration … is zero.”

Later, as scientific evidence of benzene’s hazards accumulated and regulatory limits on workplace and environmental levels tightened, the industry took a different stance. By 1990, the API and member companies such as BP, Chevron, Mobil and Shell had launched a research program meant to keep further restrictions at bay — or, minutes from an API meeting in 1992 state, research “that will be most useful in improving risk assessment and influencing regulation.”

Within years, the catalyst for the Shanghai Health Study appeared. In 1995, company representatives turned their attention to work by the National Cancer Institute, which was repeating the Pliofilm study in China to examine the effects on workers exposed to benzene at levels below the OSHA limit. Exxon, which had yet to merge with Mobil, even sent company scientists on a fact-finding visit to interview government researchers.

“We are monitoring the NCI studies,” an Exxon memo explained, “because of their potential impact concerning the health risks at low benzene exposures.”

In 1997, the NCI published a landmark study on benzene-exposed workers in Shanghai. The results reinforced past research showing the chemical causes leukemia, said Richard Hayes, a former NCI epidemiologist and the study’s lead author, but “what moved the science forward” were two findings: That workers with chronic benzene exposures had an increased risk of developing MDS and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — i.e., diseases other than leukemia — and that such effects could be triggered by doses of the chemical as low as the OSHA limit.

In 2004, the NCI released the results of a second study. It found that Chinese shoe makers inhaling benzene in amounts below the OSHA limit had fewer white blood cells than unexposed workers, suggesting the chemical has no safe threshold.

“In general,” Hayes said, “we found benzene was a larger problem than we originally thought.”

The industry quickly attacked the NCI’s work. Documents show that the API commissioned a $25,000 “critical review” of the government research from California epidemiologist Wong. In a 10-page paper, Wong challenged the NCI study from every conceivable angle. “The findings,” he wrote, “are unreliable.”

Wong insists today that his corporate funding had no influence on this conclusion. “My critique of the NCI study was comprehensive and specific,” he said. “I was responsible for every comment.”

For the industry, the review had the desired effect: It cast enough doubt on the NCI’s first study to convince the EPA, in 2000, not to rely on the research for estimating benzene’s carcinogenic effects. “We thought there were methodological issues that might be questionable,” said Bob Sonawane, of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, who has overseen agency assessments of benzene’s health risks. The agency did use the NCI work to assess non-cancer effects in 2002, Sonawane said.

By then, industry representatives were already thinking beyond conventional critiques. Wong remembers reaching out to Chinese scientists about a possible benzene study before broaching it to industry contacts. “I knew quite a few people at API and member companies,” he said. “We just started a conversation.” The campaign to finance an alternative study in China was kicked off in earnest in the late 1990s, when the API approachedIrons, then a pathology professor at University of Colorado, Boulder.Irons said API officials asked him to visit Shanghai in 1999 and consider doing a study similar to the NCI’s, which examined workers’ diseases and estimated their benzene exposures after the fact and “had some provocative findings.”

Irons went to China. Upon his return, he urged the API to instead conduct what he calls “a real-time clinical study,” in which researchers examine workers’ diseases as they occur. Within a year, he, Wong and ExxonMobil scientists had drafted proposals for the Shanghai study, which the API circulated among its members to drum up financing.

API representatives went from company to company, giving what amounted to a sales pitch for the Shanghai study. They laid out just what executives might anticipate in return.

A 2001 document listed the following “expected” results:

Provide strong scientific support for a lack of a risk of leukemia … at current ambient benzene concentrations to the general population.

Establish … current occupational exposure limits do not create a significant risk.

Refute the allegation that Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma can be induced by benzene exposure.

Other documents show that the industry was counting on such findings to combat stringent regulation and stave off “tremendous” costs that would come from having to cut benzene emissions. “Significant issues of concern” identified in a 2001 PowerPoint include potential requirements to reformulate gasoline and “control emissions from stationary sources.”

Liability also was a worry. Documents warned of “litigation costs due to perceptions about the risks of even very low exposures to benzene” and lawsuits “alleging induction of various forms of leukemia and other hematopoietic diseases,” including more commonly diagnosed lymphomas.

For some in the industry, the bait proved enticing.

“Given the magnitude of [health, safety and environment] issues surrounding benzene as well as the litigation claims we continue to see, I believe it would be worthwhile to participate,” a Shell executive wrote in an email in 2000, a year before the company and its four counterparts formed the Shanghai study’s official sponsor: the Benzene Health Research Consortium.

Later, as consortium members tried to plug an ever-increasing budget gap — boosting the research’s price tag from $19 million in 2001 to more than $35 million in 2008 — their argument turned repeatedly to economics. One 2003 script for a CEO-level phone call states, “This study will positively impact our global business concerns.”

Critics say such documents expose the Shanghai study for what it is: An industry attempt to buy scientific evidence. “It’s all about influencing science to get what industry wants,” said Myron Mehlman, formerly chief toxicologist at Mobil, who became a whistleblower in 1989 after the company fired him for complaining about benzene levels in its gasoline. He sued Mobil, winning a $7 million judgment.

Mehlman remembers hearing about the Shanghai study in 2005 and immediately firing off letters to 45 executives at sponsoring companies. “I knew the scientists would do whatever it takes and whatever the industry needs done,” he said. In response, he said, he got a consortium form letter that “just re-confirmed how the study is being done for a single purpose — to get desirable outcomes.”

Industry-funded researchers bristle at the science-for-sale accusations.

“I didn’t see refuting anything as my charge,” said Irons, the study’s co-principal investigator, “and I wouldn’t have responded favorably to that.”

In depositions, however, Irons conceded that oil companies had a vested interest in the project.

“The oil companies … expected … it would be used for regulation, litigation, and for understanding the health effects of benzene,” he testified in 2010, adding that he didn’t believe a “funding source or the amount of money necessarily impacts on the [study’s] objectivity.”

Wong sounds a similar note. “We didn’t know what the results were before the study began,” he said, claiming he wasn’t privy to “any discussion” among the sponsoring companies. He considers it “just unthinkable” that critics would suggest “all those outside scientists, together with us, tried to create some results.”

Noting that the study relied on actual cases from 29 Shanghai hospitals, Wong explained, “It’s very difficult to argue that we have influenced our data one way or another.”

Members of the Shanghai study’s scientific review panel echo this sentiment. They saw no signs of overt bias in the design, they say, no way to yield preconceived results. “That wasn’t my experience,” said John Cherrie, a former panelist now heading occupational health research at a British nonprofit that has worked for the petrochemical industry. “The studies were designed to investigate the true situation without any obvious bias.”

Some would-be funders weren’t so sure, documents show.

In 2002, consortium members landed a meeting with seven scientists from Dow Chemical Company to pitch the Shanghai study. The meeting came after the scientists had voiced what one described as “specific technical concerns” about its design. Dow eventually opted not to contribute.

In a deposition two years later, Dow’s head of epidemiology, James Collins, testified that the company feared the study could generate inaccurate risk estimates and thus “be biased.”

‘Independent’ review panels

Documents suggest the Shanghai study’s sponsors were keenly aware of such perceptions. To deflect criticism, they set up “independent” review panels consisting of 10 ethicists and scientists, reputable leaders in fields like epidemiology, clinical medicine and bio-statistics. By 2001, panelists were meeting investigators and reviewing protocols — “essentially quality control,” said Jerry Rice, who chaired the scientific panel. Advisory in nature, the boards have remained involved in nearly every aspect of research.

Industry representatives viewed the boards as essential for lending credibility to the study. “There are going to be people out there who will want to misinterpret and criticize the study,” one argued in a 2003 email. “It is important that ‘the integrity’ … be maintained” with the panels.

Panelists insist the boards weren’t simply for show. They say industry representatives routinely encouraged them to offer criticisms and recommendations, and they obliged. Documents show investigators incorporated so many panel suggestions that research costs soared $3 million in one year alone.

“I never felt there was any desire to muzzle or tone down criticism,” said Rice, formerly with the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, who oversaw the agency’s evaluations of chemicals for carcinogenic risks from 1996 to 2002. At IARC, Rice had come to know oil industry executives, who recruited him for the panel. “If there had been any of that, we’d have all quit.”

Still, company executives maintained tight control over the study. Documents indicate the consortium operated like a corporation, replete with committees governing research, finances and communications. Once a year, it hosted a meeting of 50 or so participants, flying American and Chinese scientists as well as review panelists to a two-day retreat to discuss the work as executives observed. Twice a year, consortium members combed through detailed progress reports filed by investigators.

The consortium also required industry review of draft manuscripts until 2005, when Irons penned his first. In it, Irons announced preliminary results linking a previously unrecognized form of myelodysplastic syndrome -- MDS -- to benzene exposure. The draft set off debate within ExxonMobil and Shell, both of which alerted the EPA — as the law required — to what was vaguely described in a consortium email as “health findings reported in a draft publication.”

At the time, Irons expressed reservations over the manuscript-review requirement.

Consortium members dropped it but kept the review boards. For years, panelists kept circulating “ready-for-submission manuscripts” for “feedback,” documents show.

Consortium members have worked especially hard on controlling their message. Before the Shanghai study began, the communications committee was crafting its marketing strategy. Documents reveal reams of “if asked” statements and media-relations plans, listing objectives such as “counter activists’ negativity.” Among the committee’s tasks, according to a 2001 email:

perception needs to be that this is not being done to protect against litigation

use a consulting attorney to address these issues of perceived motivation

Consortium sales pitches to prospective contributors, expressed in recruitment briefs, “call sheets” and “adaptable” slideshows, epitomize this corporate spin. Publicly, members have claimed altruistic motives for backing the Shanghai study. During a presentation in 2002 at PetroChina, a Chinese oil firm targeted for sponsorship, one Shell scientist proclaimed, according to a company email, “We believe it is important to understand the hazards of the products we make and sell, and we believe it is the right thing to do!”

Privately, consortium members betrayed less charitable motives. A draft of a 2002 recruitment brief reminded potential sponsors that “there is continued concern with the potential health effects of benzene as it relates to worker exposure …  and personal injury claims.”

In response, a Shell executive urged colleagues to “delet[e] the reference to legal liabilities” and emphasized that “the only reason we are doing this is in support of protecting workers.”

Widows like Carolyn Wright have trouble processing such statements. Her husband, Eric, was a consummate company man whose closets brimmed with Shell awards, buckles, hats and magnets. Wright spent 34 years, from 1976 to 2010, working on offshore vessels for five oil companies — 18 at Shell. A trained “gun shooter,” he repaired sonar equipment, breaking down air guns. He soaked parts in benzene-laced solvents in a diesel-engine room, breathing in the chemical at exposures estimated to be two to five times greater than the legal limit.

Eric Wright guiding a seismic streamer cable in 1976, his first of 34 years working on offshore rigs. Courtesy of the Wright family

Wright died, at 63, of leukemia in 2010, exactly five months after receiving an MDS diagnosis.Most of that time he remained hospitalized, beset by body sores, eye infections and a failing gall bladder. Within weeks, he couldn’t feed or bathe himself; eventually, he couldn’t hold up his head. Carolyn remembers leaving her husband’s bedside twice — first, to get clothes and then to visit a funeral home.

“They took away my best friend,” she said, referring to Shell and eight other petrochemical companies she and her husband sued 14 days before his death. “They were responsible because they made the benzene.” She settled the case for an undisclosed amount, most of which went toward her husband’s outstanding medical bills and legal fees. Shell admitted no liability.

“I’d rather have my husband,” Carolyn said. “There is not another one like him.”

Seeding the literature

The petrochemical industry’s research strategy had another key component: publication. Oil and chemical companies have long seeded the scientific literature, paying consultants to publish in peer-reviewed journals. They often use the published articles to advance their positions in regulatory and legal arenas. Infante, the former OSHA official, considers benzene “a good example of how the general scientific literature is being polluted by people working for industry.”

A 2002 Shell summary of the Shanghai project defined a “Key Measure/Indicator of Success” as a “Cost effective study reported in public literature … [that would] support … advocacy.”

By the time the research consortium disbanded in 2009, Irons and his colleagues had released results in 20 journal articles as well as at an “international benzene symposium,” in Germany. Industry-funded scientists have added to the literature since; according to Irons, the consortium’s dollars have yielded a total of 30 papers.

Such publications can play a critical role in benzene litigation. The Shanghai study has helped companies deny liability by casting doubt on causation, the central issue in a toxic-tort lawsuit. One tactic the industry has employed — with aid from the study — is to separate cancers into subsets, making it harder to prove a specific link between benzene and the disease. David Eastmond, a toxicology professor at University of California, Riverside, said that the petrochemical industry “gets sued on a fairly regular basis” over “a wide range of diseases.”

“If [it] could narrow down which subtypes are caused by benzene,” he explained, “the industry could eliminate a number of lawsuits.”

Industry-funded Shanghai researchers found that only certain subtypes of MDS and AML are significantly linked to benzene.

Now, in claims involving auto mechanics, gas station attendants and printers, plaintiff’s lawyers are seeing this claim play out in court. There is the case, for example, of a contract worker for southeast Texas refineries and chemical plants who washed his tools in benzene and later developed MDS. Citing a 2009 article by Irons, defense lawyers argued that the worker didn’t have the subtype of MDS associated with benzene exposure. The worker’s family resolved the case under terms that remain confidential.

In another case, a refinery technician who used benzene in laboratory experiments developed the very MDS subtype the 2009 article tied to the chemical. In testimony, however, defense experts used the Shanghai research not to affirm this link, but rather to debate whether his MDS was, in fact, properly diagnosed. The case settled in 2010 as part of a confidential agreement.

"You don’t want to find out you have cancer at that age because of somebody else’s wrongdoing."- Brian Milward

Some find such defenses scientifically disingenuous. Hayes, the former NCI scientist, who is now head of epidemiology at New York University’s medical school, explained that scientists cannot eliminate a disease subtype simply because a study doesn’t show an association with benzene exposure. “It doesn’t mean there isn’t any effect,” he said. “The end result is to sow the seeds of doubt.”

Wong said that all he and his fellow researchers can do is report their findings — positive and negative. “I’m sure some people use the results in their own way,” he said, referring to defense lawyers. “I can’t really speak to that.”

Acknowledging that “no study can prove a negative,” Irons defends the Shanghai research as “the best available evidence” benzene causes only certain disease subtypes. That “doesn’t reduce the fact that benzene is associated with MDS,” he said — or, for that matter, AML. And ultimately, some say, these findings aren’t as conclusive as oil executives may have wanted.

“In terms of something that would once and forever cause the petroleum industry’s legal liability problems to go away,” said review panelist Rice, “it didn’t do that.”

In fact, some outcomes have hurt defendants in court. In 2004, after 30 years fixing refrigerators at ice-skating rinks and meat-packing plants — receiving a daily dose of petroleum-based products — Brian Milward developed a rare condition known as acute promyelocytic leukemia, or APL. At the time, he was 47 years old.

“You don’t want to find out you have cancer at that age because of somebody else’s wrongdoing,” Milward said, explaining he had no idea the solvents and paints he used to clean and seal pipes contained benzene until after he was diagnosed.

Brian Milward with his granddaughter while Milward was receiving chemotheropy treatment. Courtesy of Brian Milward

In 2007, he filed suit against Rustoleum Paints and 20 other manufacturers, whose experts argued no epidemiological studies show a link between benzene and APL. Experts hired by Milward countered that evidence linking benzene to AML essentially links it to all subtypes, including APL. The judge disagreed, ruling for the defendants. But the debate has stymied the case, fueling appeals on both sides, and sparking a brief signed by 27 preeminent scientists affirming benzene can cause any leukemia.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai study affirmed the very link Milward’s lawyers tried to draw. In a 2010 article confirming benzene’s tie to “an increased risk of AML,” Wong discussed the relationship by disease subtype. APL was the “most strongly related” to benzene exposure, he wrote.

While the ruling against Milward eventually was struck down, he has yet to appear before a jury. After settling with every defendant but Rustoleum, he has watched the company challenge the science again. This time, defense experts question whether his workplace exposures could have caused his cancer. A second appeal is pending.

Now in remission, Milward must grapple with cancer’s lasting effects. Nearly a decade of chemotherapy, along with diabetes and a rare bowel disorder, have left him battling what he calls “absolutely ridiculous” fatigue. Retired and on disability, he remembers returning to work twice. First, he resorted to napping to endure an eight-hour shift. When his boss assigned him to office duty, pushing paper and making calls, he still fell asleep at his desk.

“I can’t really do anything,” said Milward, 57 — at least, not what he loves: repairing race cars, working in his yard, playing with his grandchildren. “It just sucks when you get a cancer like this.”

‘He never complained’

To family and friends in Deweyville, Texas, a pine-shaded  town along the Louisiana border, John Thompson was “John” — a life-long resident, church deacon and carpentry teacher who reinforced souls as much as structures. To Irons, the Shanghai study investigator who charged $600 per hour as an expert witness, he was “John H. Thompson” — deceased, one of three case referrals from a corporate-defense firm, all in lawsuits alleging cancers caused by benzene.

Thompson had built scaffolding for refineries and chemical plants in the 1960s and early '70s. At the end of most workdays he'd be covered in a thick adhesive known as mastic and would use pure benzene to get it off his hands, clothes and tools. In 2010, three months after Thompson’s death, Irons flew to Houston from China to testify in the benzene litigation, armed with what he has called “the largest single study of AML in history” —the Shanghai study. In a deposition, the scientist touted the research, saying it “inform[ed] with respect to disease specificity to a much greater degree than other previous epidemiological studies.”

“Assumptions and presumptions,” Irons testified, “have to be modified and re-assessed.”

The comment proved prescient in Thompson’s case.

In 2006, the former contract worker was mowing his lawn when he mentioned feeling fatigued. A pillar of a man, Thompson, then 66, had gotten two heart stents without uttering a gripe. “He never complained,” said Chase Bowers, his nephew. Not when he broke both arms on an oil rig, or lost his left eye in a shop accident. Bowers, who, as a teenager, was raised by Thompson and his wife, Carol, remembers watching a tree branch rip open his uncle’s ear. One emergency-room visit and Thompson returned to work.

“That’s the kind of guy he was,” Bowers said.

Within days of the lawn-mowing episode, Thompson learned he had acquired AML — specifically, a subtype of AML known as “inversion 16.”

"If oil companies are willing to spend $36 million to fund research, how much are they afraid of losing?"- Chase Bowers, nephew to John Thompson

In the contentious world of toxic-tort litigation, Thompson’s case seems like a classic: The only leukemia the petrochemical industry has admitted benzene can cause is AML — especially at higher doses.According to the Shell benzene-litigation defense guide, the industry might have classified Thompson’s case as “high risk”: He not only suffered from AML, but, as the guide states, “pure benzene is involved,” and his “exposure took place prior to OSHA involvement.” Experts hired by the family estimated Thompson’s cumulative benzene exposures were five times greater than the legal limit.

At trial, however, the case turned out to be anything but a slam dunk. Citing the Shanghai study, Irons worked to debunk a link between benzene and the type of AML afflicting Thompson. The Shanghai research has shown approximately two of the 20 AML subtypes are significantly associated with the chemical, he testified — neither of them “inversion 16.”

“We found many cases of inversion 16,” Irons said in court. “We did not find an association between benzene exposure and inversion 16.” Other scientists disagree, arguing that if benzene causes one subtype of AML, it likely causes all of them.

Keith Hyde, a Beaumont, Texas, lawyer who represents plaintiffs in toxic-tort cases, including the Thompsons, remembers Irons highlighting one Shanghai article after another at trial, raising doubt. “You have doubt here and there through all these industry studies,” Hyde said. “Let’s just say they do their job.”

After two weeks of testimony, the Thompson case ended in mistrial.  The suit ultimately was resolved under terms that remain confidential.

In April, Carol, Thompson’s widow, died of liver cancer. In the years after the benzene trial, she rarely mentioned the ordeal — too many painful memories. She had to relive her husband’s death daily in court, watching videos and hearing testimony on his decline. “It was devastating for my aunt,” Bowers said. In his view, she never understood the extent to which oil and chemical companies hid benzene’s hazards and tried to spin the science.

“There’s obvious vested interest here,” Bowers said of the Shanghai study. “If oil companies are willing to spend $36 million to fund research, how much are they afraid of losing?”

Ashley Schwartz contributed to this story.

More stories about

Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, ExxonMobil, Commodity chemicals, Benzene, Chemical industry, Mutagens, Petrochemicals, BP, Acute myeloid leukemia, Toxic tort, Myelodysplastic syndrome, PetroChina, Richard Irons, John Thompson, Chase Bowers

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Booker, Inhofe said, was implying that Pruitt was trying to "punish" vulnerable Americans. "I wanted to just remind you," Inhofe told the committee, "that we had a guy I remember so well, Harry Alford. He was the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He provided some of the most powerful testimony that I have ever heard when it comes to the effects of the Clean Power Plan and some of the other regulations … on black and Hispanic poverty, including job losses and increased energy costs.

"[Alford] was very emphatic as to who was paying the price on these," the Oklahoma Republican continued, "and I think sometimes that the previous administration forgot that there are already people out there who are paying all they can pay just to try to eat and keep their house warm."

ExxonMobil's Echo Chamber

Inhofe's source for his assertion? A discredited, ExxonMobil-funded study by an Exxon-funded advocacy group that was based on discredited studies by other ExxonMobil-funded organizations.

Inhofe rested his argument on previous congressional testimony by Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a shoestring, mom-and-pop operation that is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. "Of course we do and it is only natural," Alford wrote on NBCC's website. "The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel…. [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend."

One of NBCC's closest economic friends is ExxonMobil, which has donated more than $1.14 million to the group since 2001.

What did the company get for that money?

In 2015, NBCC commissioned a report that claimed the Clean Power Plan would "inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities."

In fact, unchecked climate change would more than likely hurt those communities most, and investments in energy efficiency under the plan would ultimately lower electricity bills across the country.

How did NBCC arrive at its upside-down assessment? The Union of Concerned Scientists took a close look at the report and found it was based on several flawed fossil fuel industry-friendly studies. Two of those bogus studies were produced by ExxonMobil grantees: theHeritageFoundation, which received $340,000 from ExxonMobil between 2007 and 2013, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received $3 million between 2014 and 2016.

The Chamber study, which came out just days before the EPA released a draft of the Clean Power Plan, was debunked not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and The Washington Post. Among its many faults, the Chamber study—which was co-sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute—wildly inflated the cost of the plan and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.

ExxonMobil Spreads its Money Around...

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NBCoC MISI BS study:

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404 --> WB  https://blog.ucsusa.org/john-rogers/new-flawed-study-of-the-clean-power-plan-how-the-misi-study-gets-it-so-wrong-759

JUNE 12, 2015,

no lnx many

an op-ed in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily uses a new study to make unsubstantiated claims about the economic impacts of the proposed Clean Power Plan on vulnerable communities. Since the op-ed didn’t provide a link to the actual analysis, we hunted it down and took a look behind the headlines. And when we did, we found that the foundations of this new “analysis” are shaky indeed.

A house built on sand

The new study, conducted by Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) on behalf of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), purports to look at a range of EPA regulations, but focuses on the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

energy-clean-power-plan-black-chamber-of-commerce-study-cover-not-science

But here’s the first of the study’s fatal flaws: it depends, as it explicitly says (p. 21), on the findings of seven other studies, which it lists. But those seven include:

Three studies that came out before the EPA published the draft CPP, meaning they don’t actually study the CPP as proposed—even though that’s the supposed focus of the NBCC/MISI analysis

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One that was just (self-described) “preliminary analysis” from the United Mine Workers of America, a group you’d be hard-pressed to characterize as an unbiased voice in this debate

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Three other studies funded by other fossil fuel interests who oppose the Clean Power Plan

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Two of those studies were the focus of a recent UCS webinar showing how such studies use bad assumptions and get used to sow confusion and spread disinformation about the CPP.

One of those, done byIHS on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is the report most cited in this new work, even though it was one of those that came out before the draft CPP, and even though there was, as the Chamber itself admitted, “a big difference” between what they’d modeled and what EPA put forth (which the new study doesn’t acknowledge).

The flaws in the study by Energy Ventures Analysis (EVA) for Peabody Energy (the largest U.S. coal company) are also clear. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions has pointed out that, unlike other studies, EVA’s didn’t even show a business-as-usual case, meaning that any CPP results were floating in a vacuum, without reference to a base case of shifting energy costs and other economic factors.

Ignoring the bedrock

Equally telling are the studies that didn’t make NBCC/MISI’s literature review:

The EPA’s own cost-benefit analysis, which showed investments in energy efficiency under the Clean Power Plan will ultimately generate savings on electricity bills nationally

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Studies from academic sources, which show the CPP delivering widespread health co-benefits by reducing harmful air pollution from power plants

One by the NAACP that has documented the costly and disproportionate impacts of power plant pollution on “low-income communities and communities of color”

Another recent analysis by researchers at the University of Maryland suggesting the CPP will lead to a net increase in jobs.

But you wouldn’t glean any of that from the new NBCC/MISI report. No, it follows in the footsteps of previous misleading studies by exaggerating the costs and ignoring the benefits of climate action.

The elephant in the neighborhood

And that brings up another of the study’s fatal flaws: it forgets about climate change. In the op-ed, the only mention of “mitigation” is about avoiding the supposed impacts of the regulation. And even in the study itself, nary a word.

If you ignore the benefits side of the cost-benefit equation, it's hard to come up with anything but bad news. But when you take a solid look at both sides of the equation, you see a pretty impressive net-positive.

Hard to believe, I realize. But somehow the author makes it through the entire study without mentioning global warming. This, a purported study of a regulation, but it doesn’t even acknowledge the incredible amount of science behind the need for just such a regulation. All it’s got is one mention of “warmer climates” and the importance of air-conditioning… which, it turns out, we’ll need more of as the climate warms.

And who is going to be disproportionately affected by that warming climate and other impacts? In many cases, the same vulnerable populations that the new study is supposedly defending.

On the other hand, that grievous omission isn’t entirely surprising, since the author of the study has claimed—despite the wealth of information very much to the contrary—that more carbon dioxide is actually a good thing. Not so much.

Poor science, bad policy

It all adds up to a study that Juan Declet-Barreto of the Natural Resources Defense Council calls:

“…a cynical attempt at co-opting the Latino and African American communities into rejecting the most significant controls to power sector air pollutants and toxics affecting their health and communities.”

The Clean Power Plan is about the fundamental need to address climate change, including on behalf of those who are least equipped to deal with its impacts. A study of the CPP that forgets that isn’t worth the electrons it’s printed on.

Poor science may make for good headlines, but it definitely makes for bad policy.

JOHN ROGERS is a senior energy analyst with expertise in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies and policies. SEE JOHN'S FULL BIO.

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Wall Street Journal published an editorial on April 23 that derided electric vehicles in Germany as "dirty," based on a recent study that has been called into question by a number of experts and mainstream German news outlets. The Journal's editorial board, which has a history of climate denial, has attacked both German energy policy and electric vehicles (EVs) before.

The dubious study has also been hyped by climate deniers and right-wing outlets in the U.S., including Infowars and The Daily Caller.

Experts point out major flaws in German study on electric vs. diesel cars

The study was conducted by the Ifo Institute, a Munich-based think tank, and argued that a Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle driven in Germany is responsible for more carbon dioxide pollution than a Mercedes C220d diesel vehicle. The study, which was released in German on April 17 and has not yet been translated into English, finds that the Tesla emits between 156 and 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, compared to 141 grams of CO2 from the diesel Mercedes. The study attributes roughly half of the Tesla's emissions to the vehicle’s production process, including its battery, which the authors assume will only last 10 years or 150,000 kilometers. The other half of the Tesla’s estimated emissions in Germany come from electricity used to charge the car, some of which is generated by burning coal.

English-language summaries of the study include a press release from the Ifo Institute and a Brussels Timeswrite-up.

Soon after the study's release, German-language outlets started pushing back on its findings and methodology, including Der Spiegel, the highest-circulation news magazine in Europe, and WirtschaftsWoche, a weekly business news magazine. Articles in both publications highlighted miscalculations and faulty assumptions, and pointed to a number of other studies on EVs that had come to opposite conclusions.

One English-language debunk of the study came in a Twitter thread from Netherlands-based energy researcher Auke Hoekstra. Hoekstra noted that the study's claims about the diesel Mercedes' emissions are wrong -- the Mercedes emits closer to 220 grams of CO2 per kilometer, rather than 141, he argued. He also highlighted how the authors used an extremely low number for how long an electric vehicle battery lasts. He stated, “even Tesla's from the olden days can drive 600 000 km before the battery reaches 80% capacity.” He summed up his criticisms:

To summarize: EVs only emit more CO2 if you make unrealistically negative assumptions for battery production, battery life and electricity mix while making unrealistically positive assumption about diesel consumption.

Correct ANY of these and the tables are turned. Bigly.

— AukeHoekstra (@AukeHoekstra) April 22, 2019

Hoekstra also argued that the analysis should not be presented as an academic study. Instead, he characterized it as “the opinion of three people, … none of whom have any background” in EVs or batteries. One of the authors, Hans-Werner Sinn, has been criticized for using dubious assumptions in energy studies before: Sinn received strong pushback on a 2018 paper he wrote claiming that energy storage requirements ultimately limit the expansion of renewable energy. Sinn has also argued that criticism of Volkswagen over its role in the Dieselgate scandal has been exaggerated, and placed much of the blame for the scandal on U.S. efforts to regulate diesel engines.

Another debunk of the Ifo study came from Fred Lambert, chief editor of the electric transportation news site Electrek. He noted:

One of the biggest mistakes they are making is that they are comparing the full production and lifecycle of an electric vehicle, including the emission from the electricity uses, against the production and lifecycle of a diesel car without accounting for all the energy used to produce the diesel and supply it to the cars.

Lambert also called out the study’s authors for falsely assuming a battery life of 150,000 kilometers and for failing to note that Germany is planning to rapidly decarbonize its electricity system, which would greatly improve the carbon footprint of EVs in the near future.

Another criticism of the study has been its focus solely on Germany's energy grid and the authors' failure to take into account the overall mix of the larger European energy market that Germany is a part of. German carmaker Volkswagen, which manufactures both EVs and diesel vehicles, responded to the study by defending EVs. In an English-language article by Deutsche Welle, a German international broadcaster, Volkswagen noted that with Germany's current electricity mix, its Golf EV would have a similar CO2 output as a diesel car of the same type -- 142 grams per kilogram compared to 140. However, “using the European energy mix for calculations, which includes large amounts of nuclear energy from France and water power from Norway, the e-Golf's carbon footprint would be down to 119 g/km” -- far below the CO2 output of a diesel car.

Other analyses have disproved the claim that EVs are not environmentally friendly. In 2018, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that a U.S.-based EV is equivalent to a conventional gasoline car that gets 80 miles per gallon. Unlike the German study, it looked at all of the emissions from fueling and driving both vehicles. It also found that EVs will get cleaner over time as electric grids get cleaner, noting that its 2018 estimate was an improvement of 7 mpg from 2017. And a 2017 report from the Transport & Environment group, a Brussels-based transportation policy group, found that EVs emit fewer greenhouse gases than diesel cars even when EVs are powered by the most carbon-intensive electricity.

Right-wing outlets in the U.S. promote Ifo’s study to disparage EVs

Although the Ifo study is specific to Germany’s electric grid and has been widely criticized, climate deniers and right-wing outlets in the U.S. have picked up on it and are using it to disparage EVs generally. Steve Milloy, a notorious denier and frequent Wall Street Journalcontributor, tweeted about the study on April 19. On April 22, extreme right-wing outlet Infowars wrote about the study, and far-right conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson tweeted about the Infowars piece. The right-wing website Zero Hedge wrote about the study too, and a tweet pointing to that post was retweeted by Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump EPA official and current Fox News contributor.

After The Wall Street Journal wrote about the study, still more right-wing outlets covered it, including The Daily Caller, which has a long record of inaccurate reporting on climate and energy issues, and The Western Journal, a conservative news outlet with a history of deceptive climate claims.

The Wall Street Journal has a long track record of misleading on climate and energy issues

The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages have spread misinformation about climate change for decades. A Media Mattersstudy found that from January 2015 to August 2016, one-third of the paper’s climate-related opinion pieces contained climate denial or other inaccurate statements about climate change. We’ve also found that the paper's opinion section is ExxonMobil’s chief apologist for its climate change lies, and it has defended the fracking industry against accusations that it contaminates drinking water. According to a recent article in Current Affairs,the Journalhas shifted in recent years from denying climate change to downplaying it, but still remains an impediment to clean energy and climate action. The Wall Street Journal has always been a pro-polluter, pro-industry paper, so it’s no surprise that it would overlook flaws and publicize questionable research that disparages a direct threat to the fossil-fuel industry.

Posted InEnvironment & Science, Climate Change, Energy

Network/OutletWall Street Journal, The Daily Caller, Infowars, Western Journal

PersonSteve Milloy, Paul Joseph Watson

Stories/InterestsClimate Change, Electric Vehicles

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https://www.ecowatch.com/exxon-climate-disinformation-campaign-2534087685.html

ExxonMobil’s Climate Disinformation Campaign Is Still Alive and Well

By Elliott Negin

In a recent blog post, ExxonMobil executive Suzanne McCarron reiterated her company's claim that it fully accepts the reality of climate change and that it wants to do something about it.

"I want to use this opportunity to be 100 percent clear about where we stand on climate change," she wrote. "We believe the risk of climate change is real and we are committed to being part of the solution."

So why is the company still a part of—in fact, a major part of—the problem?

An exchange between Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt during a recent oversight hearing is a case in point, providing a window into how ExxonMobil's undue influence continues to block climate action.

During the Jan. 30 hearing, which was held by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, Sen. Cory Booker inadvertently provoked Inhofe by raising the issue of environmental justice.The New Jersey Democrat cited the threat climate change-induced flooding poses to three dozen Superfund sites in his state and asked Pruitt if he was "taking into account the environmental burdens disproportionately impacting communities of color, indigenous communities and low-income communities."

Inhofe seized the opportunity to contradict Booker, claiming that minority and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed by environmental protections, specifically citing the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which would have dramatically reduced carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants if Pruitt hadn't repealed it.

Booker, Inhofe said, was implying that Pruitt was trying to "punish" vulnerable Americans. "I wanted to just remind you," Inhofe told the committee, "that we had a guy I remember so well, Harry Alford. He was the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He provided some of the most powerful testimony that I have ever heard when it comes to the effects of the Clean Power Plan and some of the other regulations … on black and Hispanic poverty, including job losses and increased energy costs.

"[Alford] was very emphatic as to who was paying the price on these," the Oklahoma Republican continued, "and I think sometimes that the previous administration forgot that there are already people out there who are paying all they can pay just to try to eat and keep their house warm."

ExxonMobil's Echo Chamber

Inhofe's source for his assertion? A discredited, ExxonMobil-funded study by an Exxon-funded advocacy group that was based on discredited studies by other ExxonMobil-funded organizations.

Inhofe rested his argument on previous congressional testimony by Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a shoestring, mom-and-pop operation that is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. "Of course we do and it is only natural," Alford wrote on NBCC's website. "The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel…. [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend."

One of NBCC's closest economic friends is ExxonMobil, which has donated more than $1.14 million to the group since 2001.

What did the company get for that money?

In 2015, NBCC commissioned a report that claimed the Clean Power Plan would "inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities."

In fact, unchecked climate change would more than likely hurt those communities most, and investments in energy efficiency under the plan would ultimately lower electricity bills across the country.

How did NBCC arrive at its upside-down assessment? The Union of Concerned Scientists took a close look at the report and found it was based on several flawed fossil fuel industry-friendly studies.Two of those bogus studies were produced by ExxonMobil grantees: the Heritage Foundation, which received $340,000 from ExxonMobil between 2007 and 2013, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received $3 million between 2014 and 2016.

The Chamber study, which came out just days before the EPA released a draft of the Clean Power Plan, was debunked not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and The Washington Post. Among its many faults, the Chamber study—which was co-sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute—wildly inflated the cost of the plan and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.

ExxonMobil Spreads its Money Around

==

mother of all pivots:

...The letter drafted by Cooney – and vetted by Rove – insists that the Climate Action Report "reinforces" the "significant scientific uncertainties" emphasized in the president's climate policy. Edits to the rough drafts of the letter were blacked out by White House censors, but Rove's pithy endorsement of the final draft survived. "Great," he wrote in praise of Cooney's spin. "Defends the report rather than staying focused on the policy." In other words, Cooney had succeeded in emphasizing the report's overhyped uncertainties, thus shifting attention away from the White House's do-nothing approach to global warming.

At the same time, Cooney got a pat on the back from Bill O'Keefe, his old boss at API. In a letter to Bush's chief of staff, O'Keefe – by that point a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil – urged the president to tighten up the White House spin machine and make sure all communications were "on the same page, with the same message." O'Keefe also faxed a copy to Cooney with a handwritten note reading, "P.S. You are doing a great job."

From then on, Cooney wielded a heavier pen when editing official reports on global warming. Not content to obscure science with uncertainty, he began to rewrite the science itself. Draft documents made public by the House Oversight Committee reveal thatCooney now had veto power over federal scientists, including Richard Moss, coordinator of the Climate Change Science Program Office, and even James Mahoney, the assistant commerce secretary nominally in charge of America's climate science.

In one document, Moss and Mahoney attempted to push back on several of Cooney's more than 100 edits to an EPA document called "Our Changing Planet" – each of which served to amplify uncertainty and downplay the threat posed by global warming. Cooney repeatedly overruled Moss and Mahoney with an aggressive "no" scrawled in the margins. On another document Cooney marked up, he commanded EPA officials that "these changes must be made." Beside one strike-through marked with a star, Cooney wrote, "Red Flag: Do not cite National Assessment" – dismissing the landmark report commissioned by Bush's father.

Although some of Cooney's edits were revealed in a New York Timesstory in June 2005 that led to his departure, the full extent of his interference has never been reported. His commissarial coup came in April 2003, with his revisions to the EPA's Draft Report on the Environment. He began by deleting the sentence "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment." He then deleted the top-line assessment by the National Research Council, which establishes an unequivocal cause-and-effect link – "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere as the result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." In its place, Cooney wrote the following mishmash of his own creation: "Some activities emit greenhouse gases and other substances that directly or indirectly may affect the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation, thereby potentially affecting climate on regional and global scales."

The changes sparked a rebellion by the EPA's senior scientists. In an internal memo uncovered by Congressional investigators, they wrote that Cooney's edited text "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change" and "may leave an impression that cooling is as much an issue as warming." Whitman was also furious. "The language that CEQ found acceptable was such pablum," she says now. "It was so much below the level of sophistication of the report that I felt it would have denigrated it all." But her solution to this problem was to simply delete the section on climate change – handing Cooney a carte-blanche victory.

Whitman says she killed the section hoping that scientific documents included with the report would speak for themselves. But the capitulation helped drive her to the breaking point. Four days after bowing to Cooney, she resigned as head of the EPA.

Internal documents uncovered by  Rolling Stone reveal that Cooney did far more than edit scientific reports to suit the administration's point of view. Just as neoconservative hawk Douglas Feith funneled false intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs to the vice president, Cooney steered industry-sponsored junk science on global warming to Cheney."What disturbed me most," Whitman says, "was the administration's record of taking the most extreme of the science – what I call the 'political science' – and giving it the same weight as the real science."

The most egregious example of cooked intelligence was a study underwritten in part by the API, Cooney's former employer. The study, which purported to show that the twentieth century was not unusually warm, was authored by two astrophysicists, both of whom were on the payroll of the George C. Marshall Institute, a climate-denial group funded by ExxonMobil and now headed by Bill O'Keefe, Cooney's former boss. The paper's publication in a minor German journal in January 2003 quickly created a scandal, with the editor in chief and three other editors resigning in shame after acknowledging that the paper was fundamentally flawed and should never have been published.

"It was sham science," says McCarthy, the Harvard scientist. "It's almost laughable, except that this study was held up by the administration as a definitive refutation of the temperature record."

But even as the paper was being discredited, it was causing great excitement in the White House. When Kathie Olsen of the Office of Science and Technology Policy forwarded the study to Cooney, he responded with an enthusiastic, "Thanks, Kathie!" Six minutes later, according to internal e-mails, the study was in the hands of Kevin O'Donovan, who served as Cheney's point man on climate. The study also grabbedPresident Bush's attention, as revealed in an e-mail sent two days later to a high-ranking White House official: "Bob – if you din't [sic] already have, this is the study the President was talking about."

The study gave Cheney's office the quasi-plausible refutation of climate science it was waiting for. According to a memo reviewed by congressional investigators, but which the CEQ refused to make public, Cooney was eager to promote the sham science. The study, he e-mailed O'Donovan, "represents an opening to potentially reinvigorate debate on the actual climate history of the past 1,000 years." The paper, he added, "contradicts the dogmatic view held by many in the climate science community that the past century was the warmest in the past millennium. . . .We plan to begin to refer to this study in administration communications on the science of global climate change."

One e-mail exchange about the study underscores just how many industry foxes were guarding the climate henhouse. WhenMatthew Koch (a White House energy adviser who today lobbies for API)saw the study, he wrote to Cooney (the former API lobbyist who is now "corporate issues manager" for ExxonMobil) and CC'd O'Donovan (who now works for Shell Oil).

"What??!!" Koch wrote in mock disbelief at the study's claim that the planet isn't really heating up. "I want to grow oranges in the Arctic!"

Such joking aside,the administration continues to hold up the discredited study as a counterweight to the IPCC's scientific, peer-reviewed findings on global warming. Testifying before the House Oversight Committee in March, Connaughton lauded the study as a "new and major piece of science." His only regret, he said, is that "I'm not a scientist, so I can't find it conclusive."

Although Cooney resigned in 2005, the campaign of disinformation he implemented had the desired effect. Two months after Cooney returned to work for Exxon-Mobil, the Cheney energy plan was passed into law. A massive giveaway for the fossil-fuel industry,the Energy Policy Act authorized $6 billion in subsidies for oil and gas production and another $9 billion for coal producers. Worst of all, the bill fast-tracked the construction of coal-fired power plants that would hasten global warming.

Nor did Cooney's return to the oil industry spell an end to the administration's meddling in climate science. Less than a month later, before the G8 summit on climate change, the administration killed the opening line of the eight-country report – "Our world is warming" – and quashed a section that cited "increasingly compelling evidence of climate change." Last month, in negotiations leading up to the newest round of G8 talks, the administration blocked another motion that "resolute action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions."

"It's the ideological bent of the current administration," says McCarthy. "They seem absolutely resistant to any call to action, no matter what the science says."

Indeed, the campaign to sow doubts about climate change has grown more aggressive in recent years. No longer is the administration simply censoring scientific reports – it has moved to silence the scientists themselves. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the administration refused to allow a top federal scientist whose research links increased hurricane intensity to global warming to speak to the press. It sent out a gag order to top government polar scientists, demanding that anyone attending international scientific conventions agree not to speak to reporters about "climate change, polar bears and sea ice." And it ordered a former intern from the Bush-Cheney campaign in the NASA press office to prevent Dr. James Hansen, the godfather of global-warming science, from talking to the media.

"Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career," Hansen testified before Congress in March, suggesting that NASA's press office had become an "office of propaganda." This month, when news leaked that the Pentagon plans to kill a satellite program critical to monitoring the Earth's climate, NASA's scientists issued a confidential memo warning that the move "places the overall climate program in serious jeopardy."

In many ways, the administration's refusal to budge on global warming mirrors its intransigence on Iraq. No matter how bad the reports from the field get, Bush appears determined to stay the course. "Never once – not a single time – have they revisited the decision to not do anything serious about global warming," says Symons, who sat in on Cheney's task force. "They say it's more 'serious' now than they did earlier on. But the president has never said, 'Let's start over and come up with a real plan.'"

Even when Bush proposes what looks like a plan, it's designed to stall real progress on global warming. In May, America's allies in the G8 unveiled an ambitious proposal: Member nations would cut planet-warming pollution in half by 2050, accepting mandatory caps on carbon emissions. But the administration flatly rejected the plan, which it called "fundamentally incompatible with the president's approach to climate change."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/six-years-of-deceit-20070628

==

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy 

6 eds resigned, incl main

==

2003 bogus paper allowed B43 pivot?

guardian.com/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review

guard uk no links

...The head of the CRU, Professor Phil Jones, as a top expert in his field, was regularly asked to review papers and he sometimes wrote critical reviews that may have had the effect of blackballing papers criticising his work.

Here is how it worked in one case.

A key component in the story of 20th-century warming is data from sparse weather stations in Siberia. This huge area appears to have seen exceptional warming of up to 2C in the past century. But in such a remote region, actual data is sparse. So how reliable is that data, and do scientists interpret it correctly?

In March 2004, Jones wrote to ­Professor Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, saying that he had "recently rejected two papers [one for the Journal of ­Geophysical Research and one for Geophysical Research Letters] from people saying CRU has it wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either appears I will be very surprised".

He did not specify which papers he had reviewed, nor what his grounds for rejecting them were. But the Guardian has established that one was probably from Lars Kamel a Swedish astrophysicist ­formerly of the University of Uppsala. It is the only paper published on the topic in the journal that year.

Kamel analysed the temperature records from weather stations in part of southern Siberia, around Lake Baikal. He claimed to find much less warming than Jones, despite analysing much the same data.

Kamel told the Guardian: "Siberia is a test case, because it is supposed to be the land area with most warming in the 20th century." The finding sounded important, but his paper was rejected by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that year.

Kamel was leaving academic science and never tried to publish it elsewhere. But the draft seen by the Guardian asserts that the difference between his findings on Siberia temperatures and that of Jones is "probably because the CRU compilation contains too little correction for urban warming." He does not, however, justify that conclusion with any data or analysis.Kamel says he no longer has a copy of the anonymous referee judgments on the paper, so we don't know why it was rejected. The paper could be criticised for being slight and for not revealing details about its methods of analysis. A reviewer such as Jones would certainly have been aware of Kamel's views about mainstream climate research, which he had called "pseudo-science". He would also have known that its publication in a journal like GRL would have attracted the attention of professional climate sceptics. Nonetheless, the paper raised important questions about the quality of CRU's Siberian data, and was a rare example of someone trying to replicate Jones's analysis. On those grounds alone, some would have recommended its publication.

Kamel's paper admits the discrepancy "does not necessarily mean the CRU surface record for the entire globe is in error". But it argues that the result suggests it "should be checked in more regions and even globally". Jones was not able to comment on the incident.

Critics of Jones such as the prominent sceptical Stephen McIntyre, who runs the Climate Audit blog have long accused him of preventing critical research from having an airing. McIntyre wrote on his web site in December: "CRU's policies of obstructing critical articles in the peer-reviewed literature and withholding data from critics have unfortunately placed issues into play that might otherwise have been settled long ago." He also says obstructing publication undermine claims that all is well in scientific peer review.

Dr Myles Allen, a climate modeller at the University of Oxford and Professor Hans von Storch, a climate scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research, in Geesthacht, Germany signed a joint column in Nature when the email hacking story broke, in which they said that "no grounds have arisen to doubt the validity of the thermometer-based temperature record since it began in about 1850." But that argument is harder to make if such evidence, flawed though it might be, is actively being kept out of the journals.

In another email exchange CRU scientist Dr Keith Briffa initiates what looks like an attempt to have a paper rejected. In June 2003, as an editor of an unnamed journal, Briffa emailed fellow tree-ring researcher Edward Cook, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, saying: "Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting [an unnamed paper] – to ­support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please."

Stahle is a tree-ring professor from the University of Arkansas. This request appears to subvert the convention that reviewers should be both independent and anonymous.

Cook replied later that day: "OK, today. Promise. Now, something to ask from you." The favour was to provide some data to help Cook review a paper that attacked his own tree-ring work. "If published as is, this paper could really do some damage," he said. "It won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically, but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies, without showing that their improved [inverse regression] method is actually better in a practical sense."

Briffa was unable to comment. Cook told the Guardian: "These emails are from a long time ago and the details are not ­terribly fresh in my mind."

Jones did not restrict his harsh criticism of papers he saw as flawed to pre-publication reviews. He and Mann also had a reputation for harsh criticism of journals that published papers they disagreed with.

In March 2003, Mann discussed encouraging colleagues to "no longer submit [papers] to, or cite papers in" Climate Research.He was angry about that journal's publication of a series of sceptical papers "that couldn't get published in a reputable journal", according to Mann. His anger at the journal had evidently been building for some time, but was focused in 2003 on a paper published in January that year and written by the Harvard astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. The pair claimed that Mann's famous hockey stick graph of global temperatures over the past 1,000 years was wrong. After analysing 240 studies of past temperatures from tree rings and other sources, they said "the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1,000 years, nor is it the most extreme". It could have been warmer a thousand years before, they suggested.

Harvard press-released the paper under the headline "20th century climate not so hot", which would have pleased lobbyists against the climate change consensus from the American Petroleum Institute and George C Marshall Institute, both of which had helped pay for the research. Mann told me at the time the paper was "absurd, almost laughable". He said Soon and Baliunas made no attempt in the paper to show whether the warmth they found at different places and times round the world in past eras was contemporaneous in the way current global warming is. If they were just one-off scattered warm events they did not demonstrate any kind of warm era at all. Soon did not respond to Guardian requests to discuss the paper.

The emails show Mann debating with others what he should do. In March 2003, he told Jones: "I believed our only choice was to ignore this paper. They've already achieved what they wanted – the claim of a peer-reviewed paper. There is nothing we can do about that now, but the last thing we want to do is bring attention to this paper"

But Jones told Mann: "I think the sceptics will use this paper to their own ends and it will set [the field of paleoclimate research] back a number of years if it goes unchallenged." He was right. The Soon and Baliunas paper was later read into the Senate record and taken up by the Bush administration, which attempted to get it cited in a report from the Environmental Protection Agency against the wishes of the report's authors.

Persuaded that the paper could not be ignored, Mann assembled a group of colleagues to review it. The group included regular CRU emailers Jones, Dr Keith Briffa, Dr Tom Wigley and Dr Kevin Trenberth. They sent their findings to the journal's editorial board, arguing that Soon's study was little more than anecdote. It had cherry-picked data showing warm periods in different places over several centuries and had provided no evidence that they demonstrated any overall warming of the kind seen in the 20th century.

The emails reveal that when the journal failed to disown the paper, the scientists figured a "coup" had taken place, and that one editor in particular, a New Zealander called Chris de Freitas, was fast-tracking sceptical papers on to its pages. Mann saw an irony in what had happened. "This was the danger of always criticising the sceptics for not publishing in the peer-reviewed literature. Obviously, they found a solution to that – take over a journal." But Mann had a solution. "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. ­Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues … to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

Was this improper pressure? Bloggers responding to the leaking of these emails believe so. Mann denies wanting to "stifle legitimate sceptical views". He maintains that he merely wanted to uphold scientific standards. "Please understand the context of this," he told the Guardian after the scandal broke. "This was in response to a very specific, particularly egregious incident in which one editor of the journal was ­letting in a paper that clearly did not meet the standards of quality for the journal."

Naturally de Freitas defends his actions during the incident. "I was never ever found to have done anything wrong, even in the rumpus over the Soon and Baliunas paper. All accusations against me were fully investigated and my performance as editor of this journal was shown to be flawless."

But many on the 10-man editorial board agreed with Mann. There was a revolt. Their chief editor von Storch wrote an editorial saying the Soon paper shouldn't have appeared because of "severe methodological flaws". After their publisher Otto Kinne refused to publish the editorial, von Storch and four other board members resigned in protest. Subsequently Kinne himself admitted that publication had been an error and promised to strengthen the peer review process. Mann had won his argument.

Sceptical climatologist and Cato Institute fellow Pat Michaels alleged in the Wall Street Journal in December last year that the resignations by von Storch and his colleagues were a counter-coup initiated by Mann and Jones. This is vehemently denied by von Storch. While one of the editors who resigned was a colleague of Jones at CRU, von Storch had a track record of independence. If anything, he was regarded as a moderate sceptic. Certainly, he had annoyed both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics.

Also writing in the Wall Street Journal in December, he said: "I am in the pocket of neither Exxon nor Greenpeace, and for this I come under fire from both sides – the sceptics and alarmists – who have fiercely opposing views but are otherwise siblings in their methods and contempt ... I left the post [as chief editor of Climate Research] with no outside pressure, because of insufficient quality control on a bad paper – a sceptic's paper, at that."

The bad blood over this paper lingered. A year later, in July 2004, Jones wrote an email to Mann about two papers recently published in Climate Research – the Soon and Baliunas paper and another he ­identified as by "MM". This was almost certainly a paper from the Canadian economist Ross McKitrick and Michaels that returned to an old sceptics' theme. It claimed to find urbanisation dominating global warming trends on land. Jones called it "garbage".

More damagingly, he added in an email to Mann with the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL": "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is!"

This has, rightly, become one of the most famous of the emails. And for once, it means what it seems to mean. Jones and Trenberth, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, had recently become joint lead authors for a key chapter in the next IPCC assessment report, called AR4.......

==

http://www.alternet.org/environment/citi-report-slowing-global-warming-would-save-tens-trillions-dollars

Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (GPS), a division within Citbank (America’s third-largest bank), recently published a report looking at the economic costs and benefits of a low-carbon future. The report considered two scenarios: “Inaction,” which involves continuing on a business-as-usual path, and Action scenario which involves transitioning to a low-carbon energy mix.

One of the most interesting findings in the report is that the investment costs for the two scenarios are almost identical. In fact, because of savings due to reduced fuel costs and increased energy efficiency, the Action scenario is actually a bit cheaper than the Inaction scenario.... 9/15

==

A new study by the UK’s Energy Research Centre (UKERC) took a deep dive into job creation claims made by proponents of renewable energy and energy efficiency, looking at the figures and projected figures for the EU from a number of angles. It came to the conclusion that in the short run, moving to renewables and ramping up energy conservation would create more jobs than the fossil fuel sector, at a rate of about one job per gigawatt hour of electricity saved or generated by a clean energy source, with the long-term picture murkier because of factors in the economy and government policy that are hard to predict....

http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/11/renewable-energy-jobs/

==

march 2009

http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf

---

IER

Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience by Dr. Manuel Frondel, Nolan Ritter, and Prof. Colin Vance, Ph.D.According to the study, “Germany’s experience with renewable energy promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere, being based on a combination of far-reaching energy and environmental laws that stretch back nearly two decades.” Researchers add this: “German renewable energy policy … has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country’s energy portfolio.”

Key findings:

Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark by Hugh Sharman and Henrik Meyer President Obama has frequently cited Denmark as an example to be followed in the field of wind power generation, stating on several occasions that the Danes satisfy “20 percent of their electricity through wind power.” The findings of this study cast serious doubt on the accuracy of that statement. The report finds that in 2006 scarcely five percent of the nation’s electricity demand was met by wind. And over the past five years, the average is less than 10 percent — despite Denmark having ‘carpeted’ its land with the machines.http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf (actualy the study seems to say that jobs will require subsidies]

Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources by Gabriel Calzada Álvarez, Raquel Merino Jara, Juan Ramón Rallo Julián, and José Ignacio García Bielsa In this paper, the authors examine Spain’s efforts to create “green jobs” through subsidies for renewable energy. They find that these subsidies have harmed Spain’s economy, destroying 2.2 jobs for every 1 job created. This study demonstrates how “green jobs” policy clearly hinders Spain’s way out of the current economic crisis, even while U.S. politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil. The paper marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact of “green job” policies have been made. The following represent some of the study’s key findings:

Adding insult to injury, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Spain’s annual emissions of carbon dioxide have increased by nearly 50 percent since the nation began its aggressive push to subsidize and support “green jobs.” Green Jobs Myths by Andrew P. Morriss, William T. Bogart, Andrew Dorchak, and Roger Meiners This paper examines the promises that a massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with “green jobs.” These scholars survey the green jobs literature, analyze its assumptions, and show how the special interest groups promoting the idea of green jobs have embedded dubious assumptions and techniques within their analyses. The authors explain that before undertaking efforts to restructure and possibly impoverish our society, careful analysis and informed public debate about these assumptions and prescriptions are necessary. Green Jobs: Fact or Fiction? by Robert Michaels and Robert Murphy This paper analyzes four other studies that promote the economic benefits of green jobs. Robert Michaels and Robert Murphy assess the economic integrity and net benefits claimed by these studies, and identified these general problems in their analysis:

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OHIO seitz alt energy alec fight:

Taylor's assertions mimicked those made in a debunked [28] series of reports written for ALEC's RPS attacks [29]. The Ohio anti-RPS report [30] was co-published by the Koch-funded Beacon Hill Institute [31] and the American Tradition Institute (ATI), sister group to the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute[32]. ATI, now known as the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, was largely funded [33] by Montana petroleum millionaire Doug Lair.

Senator Seitz also heard testimony from Daniel Simmons [34] of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), who recited long-debunked statistics from the so-called “Spanish study [35]” and “Danish study. [36]” Koch-funded groups have used these two papers for years to stifle clean energy growth in the United States. Daniel Simmons previously worked for ALEC and the Mercatus Center, which was founded by the Kochs. Heartland [37] and the Institute for Energy Research [38] have financial or personnel ties to the Kansas billionaire Koch brothers.

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 BS

ggl 914

http://www.:{aei.:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:org/outlook/energy-and-the-environment/the-myth-of-green-energy-jobs-the-european-experience/

...

To understand how this works in practice, I now turn to four European countries that went hog wild for renewables, while singing the praises of green jobs: Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom (UK), and the Netherlands.

Spain

Spain has long been considered a leader in the drive to renewable power. Indeed, Obama singled out Spain as an example in a 2009 speech. The president said, "We have enormous commercial ties between our two countries and we pledged to work diligently to strengthen them, particularly around key issues like renewable energy and transportation, where Spain has been a worldwide leader and the United States I think has enormous potential to move forward."[4]

But the story of Spain's green-job leadership took a series of hits shortly after the president's speech. In March 2009, researchers Gabriel Calzada Alvarez and colleagues at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos released a study examining the economic and employment effects of Spain's aggressive push into renewables. What they found confounds the usual green-job rhetoric:[5]

Since 2000, Spain spent 571,138 euros on each green job, including subsidies of more than 1 million euros per job in the wind industry.

The programs creating those jobs destroyed nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy (2.2 jobs destroyed for every green job created).

The high cost of electricity mainly affects production costs and levels of employment in metallurgy, nonmetallic mining and food processing, and beverage and tobacco industries.

Each "green" megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs elsewhere in the economy on average.

These costs do not reflect Spain's particular approach but rather the nature of schemes to promote renewable energy sources.

Spain has found its foray into renewable energy to be unsustainable. Bloomberg reports that Spain slashed subsidies for new solar power plants.[6] As analyst Andrew McKillop observes in the Energy Tribune:

In Spain, where subsidies to the country's massive windfarms and their dependent industries is estimated to have attained as much as 12 billion Euros in 2009, either directly or through "feed-in tariff" subsidy for power sales, government proposals target at least a 30% cut in subsidies. Major wind energy producer firms, such as Gamesa, have begun cutting their workforces, while trying to find sales outside Europe, helped by a weaker Euro. In addition and due to Spain's highly exposed deficit finance status, making it a target for market speculators betting its bond rates must rise, the Spanish government is also likely to cut financial backing to existing renewable energy power plants, built with an expectation of guaranteed prices and government subsidies for 25 years.[7]

And then, there is the matter of corruption. As Bloomberg Businessweek reports, "An audit of solar-power generation from November 2009 to January 2010 found that some panel operators were paid for doing the 'impossible'--producing electricity from sunlight during the night."[8] Further, it appears that the solar power producers "may have run diesel-burning generators and sold the output as solar power, which earns several times more than electricity from fossil fuels." Nineteen people have been arrested in Spain's "clean energy" sector on charges ranging from bribery, to unsavory land deals, to issuing licenses to friends and family, to simple construction fraud. As the Guardian reports, "When Spain's National Commission for Energy decided to inspect 30 solar gardens, it found only 13 of them had been built properly and were actually dumping electricity into the network."[9]

Italy

A similar situation has played out in Italy, also a leader in wind and solar-power deployment. A study performed by Luciano Lavecchia and Carlo Stagnaro of Italy's Bruno Leoni Institute found an even worse situation:

Finally, we have compared the average stock of capital per worker in the RES [Renewable Energy Systems] with the average stock of capital per worker in the industry and the entire economy, finding an average ratio of 6.9 and 4.8, respectively. To put it otherwise, the same amount of capital that creates one job in the green sector, would create 6.9 or 4.8 if invested in the industry or the economy in general, respectively--although differences exist between RES themselves, with wind power more likely to create jobs than [photovoltaic] power. This fact is particularly relevant because we didn't even consider the non-trivial value of the renewable energy produced, but we focused on pure subsidies. If we had considered the energy value, the average stock of capital per worker would result even higher. Since subsidies are forcibly taken away from the economic cycle, and allocated for political purposes, it is especially important to have a clear vision of what consequences they beg.[10]

The researchers also found that the vast majority of green jobs created were temporary: "Using what we see as inflated estimates, from various sources, of already-existing green jobs, we take between 9,000 and 26,000 jobs in wind power, and between 5,500 and 14,500 in photovoltaic energy, as our starting point. From there, we have calculated that thanks to the subsidies Rome has promised, the number of people working in the green economy will rise to an aggregate total of between 50,000 to 112,000 by 2020. However, most of those jobs--at least 60%--will be for installers or other temporary work that will disappear once a photovoltaic panel, or a wind tower, is operative."[11]

Wind and solar power have raised household energy prices by 7.5 percent in Germany, and Denmark has the highest electricity prices in the European Union.

And like Spain, Italy has experienced rampant corruption in the renewable sector. Rather than having numerous individuals defrauding the government, however, the mafia is involved. As Nick Squires and Nick Meo report in the Telegraph, "Attracted by the prospect of generous grants designed to boost the use of alternative energies, the so-called 'eco Mafia' has begun fraudulently creaming off millions of euros from both the Italian government and the European Union."[12] They go on to report:

Eight people were arrested in Operation "Eolo," named after Aeolus, the ancient Greek god of winds, on charges of bribing officials in the coastal town of Mazara del Vallo with gifts of luxury cars and individual bribes of 30,000-70,000 euros.

Police wiretaps showed the extent of the mafia's infiltration of the wind energy sector when they intercepted an alleged mafioso telling his wife, "Not one turbine blade will be built in Mazara unless I agree to it."

In another operation last November, codenamed "Gone with the Wind," fifteen people were arrested on suspicion of trying to embezzle up to 30 million euros in European Union funds. Among those arrested on fraud charges was the president of Italy's National Wind Energy Association, Oreste Vigorito.

Germany

Germany's foray into renewable energy started in earnest in 1997, when the European Union adopted a goal of generating 12 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.[13] Germany's method for achieving such targets was the institution of a feed-in law,which required utilities to purchase different kinds of renewable energy at different rates. In a study of the effects of Germany's aggressive promotion of wind and solar power, Manuel Frondel noted that the German feed-in law required utilities to buy solar power at a rate of fifty-nine cents per kilowatt-hour, far above the normal cost of conventional electricity, which was between three and ten cents. Feed-in subsidies for wind power, he observed, were 300 percent higher than conventional electricity costs.[14]

Needless to say, this massive subsidizing of wind and solar power attracted a lot of investors: after all, if the government is going to guarantee a market for several decades, and set a price high enough for renewable producers to make a profit from, capital will flow into the market. Germany became the second-largest producer of wind energy after the United States, and its investment in solar power was aggressive as well.

But according to Frondel, things did not work out as Germany's politicians and environmentalists said they would. Rather than bringing economic benefits in terms of lower-cost energy and a proliferation of green-energy jobs, the implementation of wind and solar power raised household energy rates by 7.5 percent. Further, while greenhouse gas emissions were abated, the cost was astonishingly high: over $1,000 per ton for solar power, and over $80 per ton for wind power. Given that the carbon price in the European Trading System was about $19 per ton at the time, greenhouse gas emissions from wind and solar were not great investments.

Frondel concludes that "German renewable energy policy, and in particular the adopted feed-in tariff scheme, has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country's energy portfolio. To the contrary, the government's support mechanisms have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security. In the case of photovoltaics, Germany's subsidization regime has reached a level that by far exceeds average wages, with per-worker subsidies as high as 175,000 euros (US$240,000)." He adds:

In conclusion, government policy has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into Germany's energy portfolio. To the contrary, Germany's principal mechanism of supporting renewable technologies through feed-in tariffs imposes high costs without any of the alleged positive impacts on emissions reductions, employment, energy security, or technological innovation. Policymakers should thus scrutinize Germany's experience, including in the US, where there are currently nearly 400 federal and state programs in place that provide financial incentives for renewable energy. Although Germany's promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a "shining example in providing a harvest for the world" (The Guardian 2007), we would instead regard the country's experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits.

As with Spain and Italy, Germany is finding it hard to continue to subsidize wind and solar power at existing levels. In May, the German parliament cut back the subsidy for domestic rooftop solar photovoltaic systems by 16 percent, with free-standing systems cut by 15 percent.[15]

Denmark

Denmark is yet another country that has made wind power a hallmark of its energy policy. Obama praised it for its aggressive wind-power program, telling an Earth Day audience in Iowa that "America produces less than 3 percent of our electricity through renewable sources like wind and solar--less than 3 percent. Now, in comparison, Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power."[16] The US Energy Information Administration tells America's children that "Denmark ranks ninth in the world in wind power capacity, but generates about 20% of its electricity from wind."[17] That sounds impressive, but is it true?

Green programs in Spain destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green job created, while the capital needed for one green job in Italy could create almost five jobs in the general economy.

Not according to CEPOS, a Danish think tank, which issued a 2009 report entitled Wind Energy, the Case of Denmark.[18] The CEPOS study found that rather than generating 20 percent of its energy from wind, "Denmark generates the equivalent of about 19% of its electricity demand with wind turbines, but wind power contributes far less than 19% of the nation's electricity demand. The claim that Denmark derives about 20% of its electricity from wind overstates matters. Being highly intermittent, wind power has recently (2006) met as little as 5% of Denmark's annual electricity consumption with an average over the last five years of 9.7%."

The CEPOS study revealed that Denmark can only produce and consume as much wind power as it does due to a convenient circumstance: neighboring countries have a lot of hydro power that can quickly and effectively balance the flow of electricity on its energy grid, allowing it to export surplus wind capacity. "Denmark manages to keep the electricity systems balanced due to having the benefit of its particular neighbors and their electricity mix. Norway and Sweden provide Denmark, Germany and Netherlands access to significant amounts of fast, short term balancing reserve, via interconnectors. They effectively act as Denmark's 'electricity storage batteries.' Norwegian and Swedish hydropower can be rapidly turned up and down, and Norway's lakes effectively 'store' some portion of Danish wind power. Over the last eight years West Denmark has exported (couldn't use), on average, 57% of the wind power it generated and East Denmark an average of 45%. The correlation between high wind output and net outflows makes the case that there is a large component of wind energy in the outflow indisputable."

Finally, the CEPOS study found that Danish consumers are the ones who take it on the chin. Denmark's electricity prices are the highest in the entire European Union. And the greenhouse gas reduction benefits? Slim to none, since the exported wind power replaces hydro power, which does not produce significant greenhouse gas emissions. The wind power consumed in Denmark does displace some fossil-fuel emissions, but at some cost: $124 per ton, nearly six times the price on the European Trading System.

Regarding green jobs, CEPOS found "that the effect of the government subsidy has been to shift employment from more productive employment in other sectors to less productive employment in the wind industry. As a consequence, Danish GDP is approximately 1.8 billion DKK ($270 million) lower than it would have been if the wind sector work force was employed elsewhere."

Not surprisingly, Denmark is also finding renewable power unsustainable and is backing away from the technology. As Andrew Gilligan reports in the Telegraph, the Danish state-owned power industry will no longer build onshore wind turbines, and consumers are complaining about high energy rates and environmental despoliation. "Earlier this year, a new national anti-wind body, Neighbours of Large Wind Turbines, was created. More than 40 civic groups have become members. 'People are fed up with having their property devalued and sleep ruined by noise from large wind turbines,' says the association's president, Boye Jensen Odsherred. 'We receive constant calls from civic groups that want to join.'"[19]

The United Kingdom

Our Commonwealth cousins across the pond have also embraced the "green power means green jobs" theory. The UK (Scotland particularly) has pursued an ambitious wind-power agenda.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown told a Labor Party conference, "I am asking the climate change committee to report by October on the case for, by 2050 not a 60% reduction in our carbon emissions, but an 80% cut and I want British companies and British workers to seize the opportunity and lead the world in the transformation to a low carbon economy and I believe that we can create in modern green manufacturing and service one million new jobs."[20]

Ed Miliband, current leader of the opposition, is also big on wind, announcing, "With strong government backing, the UK is consolidating its lead in offshore wind energy. We already have more offshore wind energy than any other country, we have the biggest wind farm in the world about to start construction, and now we'll see the biggest turbine blades in the world made here in Britain. . . . Our coastline means the offshore wind industry has the potential to employ tens of thousands of workers by 2020."[21]

Party does not seem to be a factor in green-job boosting. Prime Minister (and Conservative Party leader) David Cameron, discussing a deal to work on wind turbines with India, said, "The innovation and creativity of business won't just help us save the planet, but is expected to create millions of jobs and billions of revenue in the green goods and services market."[22]

Referring to offshore wind, Cameron is equally bullish: "I want us to be a world leader in offshore wind energy," he said, announcing a national infrastructure plan. "We are making these investments so that major manufacturers will decide that this is the place they want to come and build their offshore wind turbines. This investment is good for jobs and growth, and good for ensuring we have clean energy."[23]

Alas, the UK and Scotland have fared no better than the other countries discussed above in their pursuit of the new green-energy/green-jobs economy, as a recent report by consultancy Verso Economics points out.[24] The study is particularly interesting because its methodology is touted as superior to the methodology used in the Spanish and Italian studies. Verso uses what economists refer to as "input/output" tables to estimate the number of jobs that were foregone in the UK general economy in favor of the green jobs "created" through government subsidies.

Verso's conclusion aligns neatly with those of the Spanish and Italian studies discussed above:

"The report's key finding is that for every job created in the UK in renewable energy, 3.7 jobs are lost. In Scotland there is no net benefit from government support for the sector, and probably a small net loss of jobs."

"The main policy tool used to promote renewable energy generation is the Renewables Obligation, which effectively raises the market price paid for electricity from renewable sources. This scheme cost electricity consumers £1.1 [billion] in the UK and around £100 [million] in Scotland in 2009/10."

"This report uses the Scottish Government's own macroeconomic model for Scotland to assess the impact of identified costs on jobs. A similar model was used by the Scottish Government to measure the opportunity cost of the cut in [the value-added tax] implemented in 2008-09. Based on this, policy to promote renewable energy in the UK has an opportunity cost of 10,000 direct jobs in 2009/10 and 1,200 jobs in Scotland."

"In conclusion, policy to promote the renewable electricity sector in both Scotland and the UK is economically damaging. Government should not see this as an economic opportunity, therefore, but should focus debate instead on whether these costs, and the damage done to the environment, are worth the candle in terms of climate change mitigation."[25]

While the UK and Scotland may have avoided the problems of corruption that afflicted Spain and Italy, they learned something that the warmer countries did not: wind turbines can freeze in winter. Not only do they cease to put out power in very cold weather, they actually need to be heated. As reporter Richard Littlejohn points out in the UK Daily Mail, "Over the past three weeks, with demand for power at record levels because of the freezing weather, there have been days when the contribution of our forests of wind turbines has been precisely nothing. It gets better. As the temperature has plummeted, the turbines have had to be heated to prevent them seizing up. Consequently, they have been consuming more electricity than they generate. Even on a good day they rarely work above a quarter of their theoretical capacity. And in high winds they have to be switched off altogether to prevent damage."[26]

The frozen turbine problem has also occurred in Canada. As Greg Weston of the Telegraph-Journal explained in February 2011, "A $200-million wind farm in northern New Brunswick is frozen solid, cutting off a supply of renewable energy for NB Power. The 25-kilometre stretch of wind turbines, 70 kilometres northwest of Bathurst, has been shut down for several weeks due to heavy ice covering the blades. GDF Suez Energy, the company that owns and operates the site, is working to return the windmills to working order, a spokeswoman says."[27]

The Netherlands

The Netherlands is yet another country that went big for wind power; it is the world's third-largest producer of offshore wind power. And while no data are available about green jobs in the Netherlands, there is evidence that it will not be producing many through its green power plants. The new conservative government has radically reversed course and is slashing subsidies to wind and solar power.

According to the journal Energy Debate, the Dutch government has lost its faith in windmills. The new government in the Netherlands has taken exception to the massive subsidies required to build and operate wind farms--and, in this case, to the expected export of €4.5 billion in subsidies to a German company (Bard Engineering) that would have built, owned, and operated those wind farms. The new prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, is reported to have said, "Windmills turn on subsidies."[28]

On November 30, 2010, the government unveiled its new renewables plan, slashing annual subsidies from €4 billion to €1.5 billion. And not only are the subsidies cut back, what remains will be redirected well away from wind power. As Energy Debate explains:

In the new system (somewhat misleadingly called SDE-plus), which will take effect halfway through 2011, the government will allocate subsidies in an entirely different, and rather complicated way. Subsidies are made available in four "stages" (on the basis of first-come, first-served).

1) In the first stage, a government subsidy of

9 eurocents per kWh (or 79 cents per m3 for gas) is offered, but only to producers of technologies that have "deficits" of less than 9 eurocents. Based on the figures from ECN, these are: biogas ("green gas"), hydropower, power from waste processing installations, and gas from fermentation processes.

2) If there is still money left after this first stage, the second stage will be opened up, in which a subsidy of 11 eurocents per kWh (or 97 cents per m3) will be offered. This stage will be open to producers of onshore wind power and fertiliser-based gas.

3) Again, if there is money left, there will be a third stage with subsidies of 13 cents per kWh or 114 cents per m3. This will be open to producers of hydropower and small-scale biomass.

4) The fourth and last stage (15 cents per kWh or 132 cents per m3) will be open to electricity produced from all-purpose fermentation processes.

Not included in any of the four categories, because they are too expensive, are solar power, large-scale biomass and, indeed, offshore wind power.[29]

Another change in the Dutch attitude toward renewables is how to pay for the subsidies. In the past, subsidies came from the general budget. Moving forward, consumers will see a surcharge on their energy bills. The new direct billing could cool the public's ardor for additional building of "green energy."

According to reports, the new government was planning on a nuclear power renaissance to generate electricity, and one could certainly argue that such a plan would generate "green jobs."[30] However, in the wake of the tragic Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, such a plan will also undergo a great deal of scrutiny.

The irony here is rich. The Dutch, who have been enamored of wind power for hundreds of years,[31] may have finally had enough tilting at windmills. If even they cannot make it work, one has to wonder if anyone can.

Conclusion

Both economic theory and the experience of European countries that have attempted to build a green-energy economy that will create green jobs reveal that such thinking is deeply fallacious. Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, the UK, and the Netherlands have all tried and failed to accomplish positive outcomes with renewable energy. Some will suggest that the United States is different, and that US planners will have the wisdom to make the green economy work here. But there is no getting around the fact that you do not improve your economy or create jobs by breaking windows, and US planners are no more omniscient than those in Europe.

I would like to thank AEI research assistant Hiwa Alaghebandian for her valuable assistance with this Outlook.

Kenneth P. Green (kgreen@aei.org) is a resident scholar at AEI.

View this Outlook as a PDF

www.aei.org/.../the-myth-of-green-energy-j...

American Enterprise Institute

Feb 15, 2011 - President Obama regularly references the green economy in his speeches. .... while singing the praises of green jobs: Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, the ... a study examining the economic and employment effects of Spain's ...

instituteforenergyresearch.org/.../green-jobs...

Institute for Energy Research

Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German ... Thisstudy demonstrates how “green jobs” policy clearly hinders Spain's way out of ...

www.gmo-free-regions.org/gmo.../gmo-free-news-from-denmark.html

While some await the results of a forthcoming French animal feeding study ... modified corn in all of Europe, except Spain, Portugal and Czech republic. ... Industrial biotechnology can build green economy say WWF Denmark and Novozyme.

seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2009385016_will26.html

The Seattle Times

Jun 25, 2009 - A sobering report about Spain's experience with green jobs must be false, writes columnist George F. Will, ... Questioner: "Is that a suggestion that his studyis simply flat wrong?" ... AKC GERMAN SHEPHERD PUPPIES

www.ilo.org/.../wcms_186715.pdf

International Labour Organization

Feb 13, 2009 - sectors of the green economy for Spain are a good opportunity to increase ... indicated that together with Finland and Denmark,. Spain actively ...

www.eea.europa.eu › Media › News

European Environment Agency

The 'green economy' can encourage jobs and innovation - study ... 'Resource-efficientgreen economy and EU policies' considers how European economies ... Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden United Kingdom ... DenmarkPhone: +45 3336 7100. The European Environment Agency (EEA) is an ...

www.oecd.org/...

Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Develo...

Our studies show that moving towards a green economy has significant advantages. The IEA estimates that a 17% increase in the type of investments needed to ...

pjmedia.com/blog/spains-green-policies-an-economic-disaster/

PJ Media

May 18, 2010 - ... catastrophic economic failure of Spain's “green economy” initiatives. ... number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study.

www.greengrowthknowledge.org/.../green-jobs-sustainable-development...

... Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak ... A Case Study of Spain ... It includes both current employment data and studies of employment trends. ... considered capable of paving the way for a transition to a green economy and providing win-win solutions.

www.fightcleanenergysmears.org/cleanenergyjobs.cfm

The US Climate Action Partnership has released an economic analysis showing that at the U.S. economy will ... The "spanish Jobs Study": 9 Inconvenient Truths.

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George Will / Syndicated columnist

Spain's experience with the 'green' economy: Save the planet, lose some jobs

A sobering report about Spain's experience with green jobs must be false, writes columnist George F. Will, because otherwise the behavior of some American importers, seeking to cash in on the U.S. government's promotion of wind power, might be participating in an economically unproductive project.

By George Will

Syndicated columnist

WASHINGTON — The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent — more than double the European Union average — partly because of spending on such jobs?

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report which, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

Calzada says Spain's torrential spending — no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources — on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies — wind-industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each.

And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation — sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency — of capital. (European media regularly report "eco-corruption" leaving a "footprint of sleaze" — gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs from elsewhere in Spain's economy.

The president's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about the report's contention that the political diversion of capital into green jobs has cost Spain jobs. The White House transcript contained this exchange:

Gibbs: "It seems weird that we're importing wind turbine parts from Spain in order to build — to meet renewable energy demand here if that were even remotely the case."

Questioner: "Is that a suggestion that his study is simply flat wrong?"

Gibbs: "I haven't read the study, but I think, yes."

Questioner: "Well, then. (Laughter.)"

Actually, what is weird is this idea: A sobering report about Spain's experience must be false because otherwise the behavior of some American importers, seeking to cash in on the U.S. government's promotion of wind power, might be participating in an economically unproductive project.

It is true that Calzada has come to conclusions that he, as a libertarian, finds ideologically congenial. And his study was supported by a like-minded U.S. think tank (the Institute for Energy Research, for which this columnist has given a paid speech).Still, it is notable that, rather than try to refute his report, many Spanish critics have impugned his patriotism for faulting something for which Spain has been praised by Obama and others. Judge for yourself: Calzada's report can be read at http://tinyurl.com/d7z9ye. And athttp://tinyurl.com/ccoa5s you can find similar conclusions in "Yellow Light on Green Jobs," a report by Republican Sen. Kit Bond.

What matters most, however, is not that reports such as Calzada's are right in every particular. It is, however, hardly counterintuitive that politically driven investments are economically counterproductive. Indeed, environmentalists with the courage of their convictions should argue that the point of such investments is to subordinate market rationality to the higher agenda of planetary salvation.

Still, one can be agnostic about both reports while being dismayed by the frequency with which such findings are ignored simply because they question policies that are so invested with righteousness that methodical economic reasoning about their costs and benefits seems unimportant.

When the president speaks of "new green energy economies" creating "countless well-paying jobs," perhaps they really are countless, meaning incapable of being counted.

For fervent believers in governments' abilities to control the climate and in the urgent need for them to do so, believing is seeing: They see, through their ideological lenses, governments' green spending as always paying for itself. This is a free-lunch faith comparable to that of those few conservatives who believe that tax cuts always completely pay for themselves by stimulating compensating revenues from economic growth.

Windmills are iconic in the land of Don Quixote, whose tilting at them became emblematic of comic futility. Spain's new windmills are neither amusing nor emblematic of policies America should emulate.

The cheerful and evidently unshakable confidence in such magical solutions to postulated problems is yet another manifestation — Republicans are not immune: No Child Left Behind decrees that by 2014 allAmerican students will be proficient in math and reading — of what the late Sen. Pat Moynihan called "the leakage of reality from American life."

George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post, writing about foreign and domestic politics and policy. E-mail: georgewill@washpost.com

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