EBELL 2

new node 10/16 in honor of trump gig:

merri ok

html unlikely

bak 1 23

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see royal society:

led to Exxon having to dump CEI

desmog uk tag: https://www.desmog.co.uk/directory/vocabulary/765

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API wm o'keefe tried to get ward fired?!

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new Loud and proud climate change denier hangs it up

:{By Timothy Cama:{ | 12/12/2023 }:

From helping to block cap and trade to scuttling the Paris Agreement, Myron Ebell has played a starring role in climate politics. As he readies to retire, his adversaries say he can’t exit soon enough.

Myron Ebell in London in 2017. Leon Neal/Getty Images

“A superstar of the Denialosphere” is how former journalist Eric Pooley described Myron Ebell in his 2010 book “The Climate War.”

Business Insider wrote in 2009 that Ebell “may be enemy #1 to the current climate change community.”

“One of the single greatest threats our planet has ever faced,” the Sierra Club opined in 2016. Rolling Stone put him in its list of top six “misleaders.”

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And those are just the labels Ebell has boasted about in his own biography.

Ebell, 70, has been at the forefront of climate change denial for more than two decades — and in fighting against conservationists before that — through his advocacy, commentary and influence with conservatives and Republicans.

He’s played roles in blocking cap-and-trade legislation for carbon dioxide, the unsuccessful 1990s efforts to change the Endangered Species Act and former President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement.

And while he acknowledges that man-made emissions have led to some warming, he dismisses the idea that there is any such thing as a climate crisis, calling the idea “preposterous.”

Now, he’s hanging up his hat. Ebell stepped down as director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment in August. He’s remained with the group as a senior fellow, though he’s retiring fully at the end of January.

“I’ve been here a long time. And we’ve done some things and I brought some energy to the job,” he told E&E News in a recent interview reflecting on his career.

“But … my energy level has gone down,” he said, a change that he says is “partly due to getting older and partly due to side effects from the [Covid-19] vaccines,” effects he declined to detail further but said he continues to recover from.

Health and science authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, say serious adverse side effects from the vaccines are extremely rare.

“So I think it’s time to move aside,” Ebell said.

“His name will surely live on in infamy.”

Michael Mann, climate scientist.

Ebell’s climate policy foes reflected on his career as well, acknowledging his outsize influence.

“Nobody has done more damage to efforts to address the climate crisis before it’s too late than Ebell. He has devoted his career to mortgaging the planet for future generations through his paid promotion of denial, delay and dissembling,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The damage has already been done, but he can’t retire soon enough. His name will surely live on in infamy,” he said.

Environmentalist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben had something of a backhanded compliment. “Dogged and effective, he can certainly claim credit for some discernible increment of the planet’s increased temperature.”

“I hope he finds a nice piece of property at sea level for his retirement” is how Jeremy Symons, a longtime environmental communications adviser who often tussled with Ebell, put it.

His allies say they’ll remember his work fondly.

“Myron has been the axel around which climate realist pushback has revolved for the last 25 years,” said Steve Milloy, a high-profile climate science denier who worked with Ebell on Trump’s EPA transition team.

“From his leadership of the Cooler Heads Coalition to his leadership of the Trump EPA transition team, Myron has done yeoman’s work on climate over the decades, always with sagacity and a smile on his face.”

CEI President Kent Lassman said he’s “tremendously grateful” for Ebell’s work over his nearly 25 years at the organization.

“As a result, we enjoy an enviable position as a leader on crucial issues to the future of America and the economy,” he said. “Because of Myron’s successes, our rule of law, property rights and free market environmentalism has been protected against tremendous external assaults.”

From failed academic to land rights champion

Ebell grew up in rural eastern Oregon, outside Baker City, a town of about 10,000 near the original route of the Oregon Trail. His family has been ranching in the area since 1869, shortly after a gold rush started there.

He was an “eternal graduate student,” with stints at the London School of Economics and Cambridge University.

“I wasn’t involved in politics,” he said. “I thought it was a waste of time.”

Upon realizing he “wasn’t going to be very good” at academics, Ebell and his wife moved to Washington in the 1980s. There, he started getting involved in conservative politics, including at the National Taxpayers Union.

Ebell eventually settled on federal lands and property rights issues, channeling his and his family’s experiences with the federal government as a neighbor and landlord. He highlighted difficulties with exercising grazing rights, neglect of forests that led to wildfires and restrictions for endangered species, among other issues.

“I decided … that at that time, the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity was the environmental movement.”

Myron Ebell.

In 1989 he was named the Washington representative for the National Inholders Association, which later became the American Land Rights Association. It’s part of the Wise Use movement that advocates for looser restrictions on the use of land and natural resources.

“The reason I got involved is because I decided … that at that time, the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity was the environmental movement,” he said.

“And secondly, that the conservative movement just didn’t pay much attention to it, and that more effort was needed to be put into challenging the efforts of the preservationists and the environmental movement.”

He takes “a tiny amount” of credit for bringing those issues closer to the forefront for conservatives.

His time at the land rights group coincided with House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution. Ebell and his allies thought they could push through big ESA changes to reduce the burdens for industry and landowners under the new majority.

Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in February 1995. | Greg Gibson/AP

But in a now-famous leaked 1995 memo, Ebell observed that Gingrich’s outspoken love for animals could stand in the way.

“His soft feelings for cuddly little critters is still going to be a big problem,” he wrote.

“I might not have tried so hard at that point if I understood where everyone was on this,” Ebell reflected. “I thought that if the Republicans had a bill that had overwhelming co-sponsorship among Republicans that the leadership would actually bring it up for a vote.”

Climate crisis? ‘Preposterous’

Overall, however, Ebell assesses his work at the American Land Rights Association as successful.

“Back in the ’90s, the preservation movement still believed that the way to end human use and resource production on federal land, to lock it up, was to pass a bill creating a park or wilderness area or something,” he said. “We defeated a lot of bills that were quite popular, creating parks, wild and scenic rivers, wilderness areas.”

Ebell later worked for Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) and then as policy director at Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative think tank launched in 1995 by former Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.). He started to focus there on fighting the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

“My view of things is that you should take on big issues, and you should fight to win. And so if climate was the biggest issue, then that was the one I wanted to be involved in.”

He shifted to CEI in 1999, leading its energy and environment efforts. CEI, a conservative think tank, has gotten funding from various fossil fuel interests, including Exxon Mobil, Marathon Petroleum, Murray Energy, and the political network tied to Charles Koch and his late brother David Koch.

“The reason we haven’t lost a whole lot is because, simply, reality,” he said. “It’s not just the reality of the climate. It’s the reality of energy.”

While many conservatives have argued that the climate isn’t changing and the Earth’s temperatures aren’t in an upward pattern, they have in recent years begun to acknowledge those facts while questioning actions meant to fight them.

Ebell acknowledges there has been man-made warming but isn’t sure how dire a threat it is.

“The idea that it’s an existential threat or even crisis is preposterous. There was simply no evidence for that, there’s no historical evidence for that,” he said. “The rate of warming is a lot less than what has been predicted. The real debate is between the modelers and the data. I’m on the data side.

“Yes, there’s a little bit of warming,” he added. “Yes, human beings are probably causing most of it. But all the indices of the impacts, virtually all of them are made up.”

Scientists studying the issue have long agreed that the planet’s temperature is rising and humans are responsible, via greenhouse gas emissions mainly from burning fossil fuels, for nearly all of the Earth’s warming in recent decades. Furthermore, the emissions and warming are directly linked to impacts such as increasing drought and severe weather.

The planet is on track to smash the all-time record for hottest year ever — the average 2023 temperature has been 1.46 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels.

Ebell helped scuttle cap-and-trade efforts like one from Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). | Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Since he started at CEI, Ebell has worked to torpedo climate change efforts like the moves by some in President George W. Bush’s administration toward regulating carbon dioxide in the power sector and congressional actions toward a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases, among other early attempts at climate policy. His group helped push the “cap-and-tax” label.

Ebell said he knew the proposals from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and others would die when “cap-and-tax” started to spread.

“Once we branded it as just a clever name for a tax, I was pretty sure,” he recalled.

Throughout his time at CEI, he has been the chair of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of representatives of conservative organizations that meets monthly to discuss climate and environmental policy.

Ebell describes it as a way to amplify voices opposed to climate policy, which he says face a significant disadvantage in funding and resources compared with those advocating for climate action.

“The first step” of winning the climate debate, he argued, “has to be to keep the conservatives together and pointed in the same direction. So a lot of our effort has been educating in keeping our allies informed and then letting them participate by being members of the Cooler Heads Coalition.”

The coalition, headed since August by Ebell’s CEI successor Daren Bakst, does not allow journalists at its meetings.

‘Odd’ choice for Trump

A high point of Ebell’s career was in 2016 and 2017, when he led Trump’s transition team for EPA.

It brought him mainstream, international attention as a symbol of Trump’s plans to undo large swaths of the nation’s climate change policies, along with other environmental efforts. POLITICO called Ebell Trump’s “attack dog,” while *Time* said he and other transition leaders were “straight from the swamp.”

Ebell recalls his selection for the post as “odd,” saying that he was a “highly unlikely choice” to lead a transition team.

“I’m not a lawyer. I’ve never worked at EPA. I’ve never worked in the federal government. I have no desire to do so,” he said, contrasting himself to other agency team leaders.

But he also said it was a positive experience. Trump’s transition officials worked to implement his campaign promises, which Ebell said differentiated him from past presidents-elect.

“The experience was very positive, because there was an understanding that the EPA team was supposed to go further and deeper than anybody else, and that I would have the back of the guy running,” he said.

Then-President Donald Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence during an appearance at EPA headquarters in Washington. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Like many partisan activists, Ebell’s influence is strongest when Republicans are in power.

He counts the passage last year, under a Democratic trifecta, of the Inflation Reduction Act as his “biggest defeat.” The sweeping bill dedicated $369 billion to climate and clean energy, the biggest climate effort ever by the federal government.

But Ebell doesn’t look back at the IRA and see mistakes on his side, citing the sudden nature of the bill’s unveiling and passage over the summer of 2022.

“There wasn’t much chance to fight it, because Sen. [Joe] Manchin assured the world that he wasn’t going to do the things that he then suddenly announced that he had agreed to,” he said, referring to the West Virginia Democrat whose support was crucial to advancing the bill.

He’s still hopeful that Republicans can roll it back.

“If we don’t, I don’t see how we can ever get over this energy rationing world that we’re in, because it fully funds the climate industrial complex forever.”

Return to land-use roots

As for Ebell’s next steps, he’s keeping much of it close to the vest, but he’s done with full-time work.

One focus he did reveal is that he became this month the new chair of the American Lands Council, a group launched in 2012 by Utah Republican state lawmaker Ken Ivory. The goal of the group is effecting a wholesale transfer of federal lands to state control. It’s an unpaid position and something of a return to issues that fueled Ebell’s early days in conservative policy and politics.

“The issue has been at a low ebb for a number of years, but now it’s going to become more active,” Ebell said of the drive to transfer federal lands, a concept that faces opposition from Democrats and many Republicans.

“The war on the West is really reviving, not through law, but through administrative actions.”

A portion of the Trans-Alaska pipeline system. | Mario Tama/Getty Images

He cited moves like the Bureau of Land Management’s controversial proposed management plan for its land in southwest Wyoming and the Biden administration’s attempts to stop or limit oil and natural gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Additionally, Utah officials have made moves in recent years toward a potential lawsuit to try to wrest control of federal land.

Ebell still lives near the nation’s capital in Maryland. But he and his wife recently bought a house in his hometown of Baker City, Oregon (elevation: 3,442 feet), and plan to spend some of their time there.

He has hope for conservative energy advocacy after his retirement. He wants his colleagues to focus on getting the Senate to reject the Paris Agreement, having Congress repeal clean energy subsidies and stopping any public funding for transmission lines to bring renewable electricity to cities.

“If we do that, we can say that we’ve — we haven’t won, but you never win things in politics, right? You win, but you don’t win permanently. … You defeat something, or you pass something, and then the issue gets transformed into something very similar, but not exactly the same. And so there’s no final victory here,” he said.

“But there are victories on the battlefield on the way. I think that we can push off a lot of this anti-energy stuff for a long time.”

This story also appears in* Climatewire.

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see below

...The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, for centuries a renowned arbiter of science,harshly criticized Exxon in 2006 for publishing "very misleading" statements about the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. The IPCC found that most of the observed warming of the planet in the late 20th century was probably caused by humans.[CEI ebell ctr-slap?]

The Society's communications manager Bob Ward reminded Exxon pointedly that one of its own scientists had contributed to the IPCC chapter in question.

The Royal Society said it had no problem with Exxon funding scientific research, but "we do have concerns aboutExxonMobil's funding of lobby groups that seek to misrepresent the scientific evidence relating to climate change."

Ward said Exxon was funding at least 39 organizations "featuring information on their websites that misrepresented the science on climate change, by outright denial of the evidence that greenhouse gases are driving climate change, or by overstating the amount and significance of uncertainty in knowledge."

...

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cei ebell attack sir david king major sci advisor, PO'd parliament

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/**2007/05/**skeptic200705

... nearly every week brings a new alarm about global warming, Ebell stays proudly resolute—rather like George W. Bush rationalizing each new setback in Iraq. Only, with global warming, even the Bush administration is now embracing the latest I.P.C.C. report, in principle at least, and trying to make a case that Bush is now a convert to the reality of the threat. With warming, as with Iraq, alarm is growing among U.S. lawmakers. Recently, West Virginia Democratic senator John D. Rockefeller IV,who has championed the coal industry in his state for 30 years, teamed up with Maine Republicansenator Olympia Snoweto write a quietly impassioned letter to ExxonMobil's new chairman and C.E.O., Rex W. Tillerson. The senators asked Tillerson to have ExxonMobil cease and desist from its global-warming-denial campaign. They are, they wrote, "persuaded that the climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally." In particular, they wrote, "We fervently hope that reports that ExxonMobil intends to end its funding of the climate change denial campaign of the Competitive Enterprise Institute are true."

Myron Ebell is shocked—shocked—and, of course, delighted. To be singled out among the three dozen ExxonMobil front groups is quite an honor. "Obviously it helps us with our media and general visibility," he acknowledges. In fact, ExxonMobil stopped funding C.E.I. last year. The company has also indicated to the Royal Society, Britain's prestigious academy of science, that it is reviewing the funding of all outside groups, but insists this is an annual process.

The scope of that edict may not be clear until early 2008, when the company publishes its 2007 Worldwide Giving Report. Already, though, Ebell is portraying C.E.I. as "a little flyspeck" up against the awesome clout of the competition. "The major environmental groups in this country have budgets of collectively over $1 billion a year," he says. "Our budget is $3.7 million a year, of which only about a quarter goes to global warming. Add up the other [global-warming denier] groups and maybe you can get to $10 million."....

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sir David King: 'Chernobyl created a negative view of nuclear technology. I don't think it's the right view'

The Monday Interview: Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government

Steve Connor

Monday 17 January 2005

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/sir-david-king-chernobyl-created-a-negative-view-of-nuclear-technology-i-don-t-think-it-s-the-right-view-15358.html

indep uk

when Professor Sir David King became the Government's chief scientific adviser in October 2000 he did not have to wait long for his baptism of fire. Just four months into the job, he found himself embroiled in the political turmoil caused by Britain's worst outbreak of foot- and-mouth disease.

For a man used to the relative quiet of academia - he is professor of chemistry at Cambridge University - Sir David had to contend with the glare of publicity as well as the heavy burden of providing the scientific advice on which the Government, and the Prime Minister, would be judged.

After convening a panel of experts, Sir David provided the scientific rationale for the ruthless culling of livestock on affected farms and ones with common boundaries. It was, and still is, a deeply unpopular decision, especially when some commentators were calling for vaccination rather than slaughter. Even today there are those who say the Government should have used vaccines rather than culling, a strategy vehemently defended by Sir David who insists many people still do not understand why Britain had no choice but to kill and burn or bury thousands of animals.

"The option to vaccinate but not to subsequently kill the animals was actually not with us," Sir David says. "The Dutch government used vaccination and we did not; as a result the Dutch government had to slaughter vaccinated animals subsequently before they could begin exporting again."

The issue typifies the problems faced by science advisers having to grapple with the complexities of such an issue with major political ramifications. Vaccines against foot-and-mouth exist, but under international rules outside the Government's control, a country that uses vaccines cannot claim to be free of foot-and-mouth, which incurs heavy financial penalties in terms of exports.

The reason for not going down the vaccine route is that there is as yet no validated test to distinguish between a healthy but vaccinated animal with antibodies to the virus and an animal that is infected but shows no obvious clinical symptoms. Such facts are often overlooked, generating further misconceptions. "We need a validated test," Sir David says. "My worry is that if there were an epidemic tomorrow, the British public might be expecting vaccination to be used."

Another misconception was that vastly more cattle and sheep were killed during the epidemic than in normal years, he says. "In the year of the epidemic something like 17 million animals were culled or slaughtered. The average slaughtered in a given year was between 19 and 20 million. So we actually culled or slaughtered fewer animals than we would have slaughtered in a normal year.

"Why was that? Well something like five or six million were probably slaughtered in connection with the epidemic. That means fewer animals were going to abattoirs for food production and we were importing meat at that time.

"It's not really an issue of saving animals, it's saving hardship for farmers that we really should be focusing on. Very few people were predicting that we would emerge with a foot-and-mouth free international status in less than a few years. On 20 January 2002, we regained our FMD-free status. It was extremely rapid for the world's biggest epidemic. I think actually it was a major victory for science."

As head of the Office of Science and Technology, housed in the Department of Trade and Industry, Sir David oils the machinery of public science funding and co-ordinates the efforts of all the chief scientists within government departments. One responsibility is to oversee the Government's Foresight initiative which scans the horizon for future problems, such as the risk of severe flooding in the coming century.

But it is his interest and deep concern over climate change and global warming that has given Sir David his highest profile. Last year, in an article for the American journal Science, which was evidently directed at the Bush administration, Sir David said climate change was a bigger threat than international terrorism. He based his argument on the exceptional summer heatwave of 2003, widely attributed to climate change, when thousands of Europeans died. This was far more than in any one terrorist atrocity.

It was not the sort of message the White House wanted to hear after declaring a global war on terror and at the same time abandoning the Kyoto treaty on limiting man-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Since then, Sir David has been targeted by American lobbyists wanting to cast doubt on his claims and even his scientific credentials.

Last November, for instance, Myron Ebell, from a Washington think-tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, launched a personal attack on Sir David in an interview with Radio 4's Today programme. "We have people who know nothing about climate science, like Sir David King, who are alarmist and continually promote this ridiculous claim," said Mr Ebell, who was introduced as a former adviser to the White House. "Sir David has no expertise in climate science."

Sir David, visibly irritated at the mention of Mr Ebell, says: "Do you know who he is and who pays for him? He works for this right-wing, so-called think-tank [but] I don't think there is much thinking going on. He's a lobbyist; he's never been an adviser to the White House. The White House has issued a statement denying he was ever an adviser. I believe Radio 4 fell for it when Myron Ebell said that he was an adviser to the President. There is no truth in that statement."

He is equally dismissive of Michael Crichton, the science fiction author whose latest novel suggests concerns over global warming amount to alarmist misinformation. "The man is a fiction writer and this is another example of fiction at work," Sir David says. "There is no veracity in that book whatsoever."

The criticisms of Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish economist and global warming sceptic, are a different matter. Lomborg says climate change may be happening but there is nothing we can do about it so we should concentrate on trying to minimise its impacts, especially in the developing world.

Sir David says this is an understandable view of economists who do not look beyond the next 30 years. "The impacts of climate change over the next 30 years are virtually independent of what we do about carbon dioxide emissions and the reason for this is that Earth's system is very slow to respond, there is a very large inertia in this enormous mass, so it takes time.

"Over the next 30 years if we stop carbon dioxide levels at exactly where they are now you will not get a different forward run over the next 30 years. But if you look forward, as we did with flood and coastal defences, to 2080 then you see the impacts are critically dependent on what action we take now.

"The economists are right if we are concerned only about ourselves and possibly our children, but when you start talking about grandchildren then it all goes pear-shaped."

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1 23 CAP open ltr ~ kevin has no affiliation?!

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cli wire  https://www.eenews.net/articles/conservatives-urge-mccarthy-to-disband-climate-committee...conservative groups are pushing to end the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis if Republicans take control of the House next year.

In a letter to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), 18 conservative organizations said there is “no need for a select committee on climate change.”

“With no ability to advance legislation to the House floor, the Select Committee historically serves as a soap box for tax and spend politicians to intimidate American energy companies, energize climate activists and stump for big-government policies that raise energy prices for consumers and weaken American energy independence,” they wrote The group includes Americans For Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Energy Alliance President Tom Pyle and Heartland Institute President James Taylor....The letter reflects an ongoing split in the party that could echo into next year in the likely event that McCarthy becomes speaker after Tuesday’s midterms.

While Pyle, Ebell and others have spent years advocating against climate policy and disputing mainstream climate science, elected Republicans have taken on a softer tone on the issue in recent years.

If Republicans do choose to revive the panel, it could serve as a platform for the party to discuss Biden administration energy policies and for Select Committee ranking member Garret Graves (R-La.) to amplify the party’s messaging. Graves has declined to say publicly whether the committee would return.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) created a predecessor to the panel when Democrats took the House in 2008, then formed the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in 2019 after they came back to power. It has no legislative authority but has at times caused friction with other committee chairs.

The conservative groups argued the issue would be better served being addressed by the standing committees.

“We urge you to disband the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and let the committees with appropriate jurisdiction and legislative ability take up the topic of climate change,” they wrote.

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https://twitter.com/Mike_Palicz/status/1588610503978668032/photo/1

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FURIES

no lnx

https://apps.publicintegrity.org/united-states-of-petroleum/fueling-dissent/

‘A lot like climate’

In June, two peer-reviewed studies trumpeted a conclusion at odds with years of solid science: fine-particle pollution long linked to premature death and chronic illness isn’t as dangerous as health advocates contend. If true, the findings would call into question health benefits claimed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has set ever-tightening air-quality standards.

There was a catch, however. The articles — which were published within a week of one another — appeared in Critical Reviews in Toxicology and Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, two journals favored by industry consultants alleged to promote pay-for-play science. And both studies were funded by API, a trade group that has spent $40 million since 2013 to lobby Congress on topics ranging from taxes to global warming.[twitter]

“Our study is published...air quality does not kill. $600 million of EPA junk science up in smoke,” climate-change skeptic and Donald Trump acolyte Steve Milloy tweeted in June, linking to the Regulatory Toxicology article. During a congressional luncheon a month later, the former coal executive took credit for conceiving the study before turning it over to friend, S. Stanley Young, and two other statisticians, who authored the final article. No mention of Milloy’s involvement is made in the publication.

Read more about how Big Oil is trying to sow skepticism of science among judges ]

Some of the same data were used in the Critical Reviews article published by Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr., which also disputed the link between fine particles and mortality. Cox, a biostatistician from Colorado, started consulting for API in 1988. Cox disclosed that his paper “benefitted from close proofreading and copy-editing suggestions from API” but denied in an interview that his findings were influenced. In November, he was named the next chair of the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, drawing criticism from groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The science on particle pollution, much like the science on global warming, is exhaustive and widely accepted, with thousands of studies pointing to serious health implications. The World Health Organization notes that particulate matter “affects more people than any other pollutant,” with effects observed at even “very low concentrations.” The particles — found in automotive and industrial exhaust and smaller than one-fifth of the width of a strand of hair — form a toxic mix with ozone that lodges deep in the lungs. Unlike Cox, most researchers are no longer fixated on whether this form of pollution is fundamentally dangerous; they worry instead about whether it can cause — not just exacerbate — chronic illness.

Attacking the science is one way of undermining the Clean Air Act, said John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which advocates for more protective air-quality standards. The Clean Air Act is routinely hailed as one of the most cost-effective federal laws, even by business groups. In 2015, the EPA estimated that the law will have saved the U.S. economy $2 trillion by 2020 while costing $65 billion to implement. About 85 percent of the act’s benefits come from reducing fine-particle pollution, which raises the risk of early death. Opponents of the law “deny that air pollution is deadly … or even harmful in order to try to pretend that no benefits are delivered,” Walke said.

Steve Milloy

milloy’s July luncheon at the Rayburn House Office Building — billed as a “congressional staff and media briefing” — was little more than a plug for his latest book, “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” which condemns the “echo chamber of deceptive science” on ozone and fine particles. The event was hosted by Myron Ebell, who chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, a climate-skeptics’ group that began as an alliance of free-market think tanks. “It’s a lot like climate,” Milloy told the audience. “This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”

“It’s a lot like climate... This stuff is pulled out of thin air.”

Reached for comment, Milloy said the study is not an attack on the Clean Air Act but part of his 20-year effort to expose the EPA’s “garbage-in, garbage-out” air pollution research. He denied having any formal ties to API. “I am very, very disappointed in the American Petroleum Institute and all the oil companies for not defending their products, for leaving the science to people like me,” he said.

Young, who authored the study, stood behind its findings and disputed the idea that industry funding presents ethical conflicts. His study data are publicly available, he said, but the EPA isn’t as transparent. Ebell agreed, accusing the agency of using “junk science” to justify air-quality and greenhouse-gas regulation.

Despite their misgivings about the EPA, all three men have become tethered to the agency. Earlier this year, Ebell oversaw the EPA transition for Trump, leading a group that included Milloy. Young was named to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board in October.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., co-founder of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, complained that such appointments have become all too common.  “These people were fringe fanatics and industry stooges fighting on behalf of the industry a propaganda war against science,” he said.

Milloy and Ebell were listed among the authors of a $2 million plan to amplify uncertainty in climate science — as revealed in a 1998 API memo leaked to The New York Times. Both say the memo grew out of an API brainstorming session that never resulted in concrete action, with Milloy calling it “just a big joke.”

Years before, API had refuted the very concept of global warming under President Charles DiBona, who joined the institute shortly after a stint as energy policy advisor to Richard Nixon in the 1970s. White House communications show that DiBona regularly met with then-API President Frank Ikard, a close friend of Nixon’s, before becoming Ikard’s deputy in 1974....

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duck 1 23

fossil fuels likely not going anywhere, despite fusion 'breakthrough' touted by Biden officials

justthenews|23 days ago

Fusion technology is promising but years away from usefulness, according to experts, who added that investments in wind, solar, and electric vehicles aren't helping with the climate issue.

Biden Taps Oil From Communist Dictatorship After Rejecting Cleaner Fuel From US Ally

MSN|36 days ago

meaning that they have not actually done anything to reduce global emissions," Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's center for energy and environment, told the DCNF.

Trump's Win Could Position China as the New Climate Change Leader

Inverse|20 days ago

In September, Trump appointed Myron Ebell, a notable climate change denier, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the transition to Trump's administration. Under Obama ...

Pollution Won't Kill You, Says Climate Skeptic Conference

Inverse|6 years ago

This year's schedule is jam-packed with pseudoscience; the speaker list boasts the likes of Myron Ebell, who will receive an award for "speaking truth to power." The conference features a ...

Electric vehicles are exploding from water damage after Hurricane Ian, Florida official warns

FOX 10 Phoenix|91 days ago

"[The EV push] is really kind of a con job," Myron Ebell, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Energy and Environment, told FOX Business in July. "It may be a good ...

Pruitt's EPA Will Give Automakers What They Want: Fewer Emissions Rules

Futurism|5 years ago

"The proposed rollback is going to be quite a significant number," Myron Ebell, director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute ...

==

ebell  and jt enforcers

wait, what?

https://www.eenews.net/articles/gop-criticizes-its-own-on-climate

ref climatewire 5/19

https://www.eenews.net/articles/gop-criticizes-its-own-on-climate/?ref=drilled

rep. Matt Gaetz (center), a Florida Republican who accepts that man-made climate change is occurring, is being criticized by conservatives for offering legislation to address global warming. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom

As some Republicans inch toward climate policy for the first time in years, those in the party who reject climate science are getting nervous that a more permanent shift is coming.

And they’re going on the attack against their former allies.

A group called Energy & Environment Action Team recently sent a 16-page pamphlet to every member of Congress encouraging lawmakers to reject all climate policy and connecting concern about global warming to political losses.  In bold letters across the top, the pamphlet stated, "The Plan is … No Plan! Why the GOP shouldn’t do anything on climate."

"There is absolutely no reason for any Republican to offer a plan to ‘combat climate change,’" the pamphlet continued. "Such a plan, if enacted would accomplish nothing good for America or the climate."

A growing number of Republican lawmakers, including some who have disputed climate science for years, are not only now acknowledging global warming but also putting forward climate policies. But some worry that their colleagues are simply shifting to climate action because they have been spooked by the popularity of the Green New Deal.

"If you are planning on running against the Green New Deal, it seems sort of odd to play footsie with key elements of the Green New Deal," said Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna, who was on President Trump’s Energy Department transition team.

In March, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) proposed a "Green Real Deal" resolution that acknowledges the reality of climate change and the threat it poses to national security, and seeks to use innovation to combat global warming. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) called for a bipartisan "New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy" that would increase the share of renewables on the energy grid, boost nuclear power and encourage electric car production.

"Congressman Gaetz and others are going to do what they think is best, but the idea that Republicans are going to outcompete with Democrats with respect to who can have the best government-based solution to anything is ridiculous and profoundly unserious," McKenna said.

While modest in comparison with the ideas put forward by Democrats — none of the Republican proposals would restrict fossil fuel use, for example — such plans have angered groups allied with the GOP for years.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and other groups opposed to regulations want to increase political pressure on Republicans who are proposing climate action to "educate them and thereby bring them back into line," said Myron Ebell, director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment and head of the Trump EPA transition team.

Ebell said he is particularly concerned that there seems to be a push among House leadership to craft climate policy. He accused House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of misleading others in the party and said some lawmakers, including Reps. Garret Graves (R-La.) and Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), have been misinformed by advocates on the value of clean energy.

"It’s when conservatives have decided to offer alternatives, they have gotten beat, because in the public’s mind it becomes very difficult to tell the difference between the left’s plan and the right’s plan and then pretty soon they’re compromising it, they’re coming to some sort of middle ground and pretty soon we’ve lost the whole issue," he said.

Ebell added: "It’s pretty clear to anybody who looks at it, there is no middle ground."

A spokesman for Gaetz said the congressman has discussed "the reality of climate change" with Republican lawmakers as well as with Trump. Gaetz, who once proposed eliminating EPA, is optimistic that more Republicans will eventually form their own plans to address climate change, spokesman Luke Ball said. Gaetz doesn’t view those in the party who reject science as a lost cause because the scientific evidence is now so overwhelming that it will push others to act, his spokesman said.

"Gaetz is concerned at the lack of support he has received from members of his own party who continue to deny the science of climate change," Ball said. "He believes history will judge harshly those who refuse to acknowledge this issue or take actionable steps to address it."

Other GOP lawmakers criticized from the right for climate policy were more reluctant to call out their colleagues.

Graves is one of the most visible congressional Republicans when it comes to the issue of global warming. Not only does he serve as the top GOP lawmaker on a new House climate change committee, but Graves has a history of acknowledging the risks of a warmer planet (Climatewire, March 11).

In a brief Capitol Hill interview, he said he hasn’t encountered noticeable pushback from climate deniers or climate contrarians. But he said he’s still cognizant of the way he must broach the issue with other Republicans.

"What you have to do is to meet people where they are and sort of use verbiage or words that translate to people the right way," Graves said.

"You may not be able to go into some Republican circles and say that, ‘Hey, I’ve got this plan on how we’re going to reduce greenhouse gases in the United States and we’re going to convert everything to renewable energy,’" he said.

But Graves added that the audience could be more receptive "if you come in and start talking about strategies on how we can reduce energy costs by improving efficiency and conservation [or] by bringing new technologies to the table."

Nonetheless, conservatives who oppose climate policy plan to escalate their attacks if members of the party don’t back down.

The recent 16-page brochure attacked a few lawmakers for being concerned about climate change, labeling Gaetz as "one Republican to fall for the climate-baiting guilt-trip." The pamphlet, which misrepresents and distorts climate science, portrays Republicans as politically victorious when they reject climate policy. It blamed the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s loss in the 2008 presidential election on his climate policy.

Steve Milloy, editor of JunkScience.com and the author of the pamphlet, said it’s a signal to Republicans not to get out of line on climate policy. Democrats have united on the other side, he said, and the GOP should also do the same. He blamed Republican actions on climate change on young staffers who don’t yet understand the party’s position. Milloy said he plans to make sure other lawmakers don’t "drift" and warned he would extend his advocacy beyond pamphlets.

"People say all kinds of shit, and if they stop saying it, then OK, but if they persist, well, tougher action will be required," he said. "Then it’s going to be ugly."

The differences between Gaetz’s plan and the Green New Deal backed by progressive Democrats are mere "window-dressing," wrote James Taylor, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, which aims to muddy climate science.

Taylor has said that Republicans risk alienating their base if they craft climate policy. He said that "weak-minded congressional Republicans" who try to respond to the Green New Deal take away the chance to run against it in the 2020 elections.

He has written critically of Gaetz in particular and even referred to him as "Matt Gore" in reference to Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president and environmental activist.

"Gaetz, Alexander, and their small cadre of Republican climate alarmists are seeking to undermine the conservative Republican voter base and Trump on one of his most important policy principles," he wrote. "Their betrayal of Trump and the conservative Republican base will almost certainly and justly come back to haunt them."

The fight on the right over climate change isn’t a new one for Alex Flint, who leads the Alliance for Market Solutions, a conservative group that supports carbon taxes.

Earlier this year, Flint criticized climate contrarians for their views and argued that denialism is anathema to conservatism because it ignores the risks of global warming. And "being irresponsible disqualifies anyone from being a true conservative," he wrote at the time (Climatewire, April 15).

In an interview Thursday, Flint made the case that the rejection of climate science is losing ground with Republicans.

"But we won’t know until after the 2020 elections how rapidly it’s occurring," he said.

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lcv aug 2022 who hooked him up? ebell?

Washington, D.C. – In response to Blake Masters winning the Republican Primary for U.S. Senate in Arizona, LCV Victory Fund issued the following statements:

“Blake Masters has tied himself to big oil and MAGA radicals who want to upend our democracy,” said LCVVF Regional Campaigns Director Eva Estrada. “He continues to question climate science and has repeatedly pushed the Big Lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Thankfully Arizonans have a proven climate leader who has taken on big oil and fought time and again to protect our democracy. LCV Victory Fund has made this race a top priority and will fight like hell to keep Captain Mark Kelly in the Senate.”

“We feel the impacts of climate change everyday. Record breaking heat and worsening droughts are affecting millions across our state, especially those who can least afford it.” said Chispa Arizona State Co-Director Vianey Olivarria. “It is frightening to see Blake Masters, a known climate denier and white supremacists, as the GOP nominee. “He does not reflect our values. Climate and the future of our communities is top of mind for Arizonans, and we deserve leaders in Congress who will stand up for us. We know Arizonans will elect a reasonable leader to the Senate again – Senator Mark Kelly.” 

Blake Masters has shown time and again he is a radical candidate, questioning science and threatening our democracy:

• :{He has repeatedly }:{ in interviews, claiming, “we have to figure out if the earth is warming and why….”}:
• Blake Masters was Peter Thiel’s Deputy on the Trump transition team when they attempted to appointWilliam Happer, a known climate change denier, to be Trump’s science adviser. 
• He has continuously repeated the big lie, pushing the false claim that President Trump won the 2020 election. Trump’s endorsement of Masters said ‘Blake knows that the ‘Crime of the Century’ took place, he will expose it and also, never let it happen again.’
•  Super PAC funded by Masters’ old boss Peter Thiel blasted his opponent for not believing that the election was stolen from President Trump. ‘Mark Brnovich says President Trump is wrong on voter fraud. Really? Brnovich failed to convene a grand jury, certifying Biden as president. Now he’s nowhere to be found, making excuses … instead of standing with our president.”

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https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/739889/redacted-groundswell-notes-and-action-items-from.pdf

ginni groundswell working group: jan 2013

12. NEED WORKING GROUPS for division of labor for 30 front war (Ginni to seek out/discuss); seek volunteer leaders or team-players on various

fronts. Expectation: Teams should connect once a week before Groundswell meeting.

1. Guns: Michael James Barton, Gayle Trotter, Rick Manning

2. Messaging: Dan Bongino,Cherylyn Harley LeBon, Alex Cortes,Anita MonCrief

3. Groundgame: Peter List

4. Getting on Offense: Anita MonCrief

5. Alternative to Rove: Sandy Rios

6. National Security lane - Frank Gaffney

7. Energy and Environment lane – Myron Ebell

8. UN lane - Austin Ruse

9.Shadow Govt teams: Tom Fitton, Mike Farris, Heritage?

10. Benghazi– Boykin, Thomas,Fitton

11. Others needed: Immigration,

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==

aha wow omg:

cfg big lobbyist on climate vs CoC? enforcer drives polarization, RINO hunters

Climate science skeptics grasp for power in changing GOP

Nick Sobczyk, E&E News reporter

Published: Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Skeptics of mainstream climate science and hard-line conservatives think they still have a hold on the GOP, despite a recent rhetorical evolution among congressional Republicans.

Climate science skeptics grasp for power in changing GOP

MARCH 10, 2020

As originally published in E&E News.

By: Nick Sobczyk

March 10, 2020

Skeptics of mainstream climate science and hard-line conservatives think they still have a hold on the GOP, despite a recent rhetorical evolution among congressional Republicans.

It’s part of a battle for the soul of the party between hard-right organizations, such as the Club for Growth, and the newfangled and well-funded ecosystem of conservative clean energy groups, led most prominently by ClearPath and Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.

There are abundant signs on Capitol Hill that people who question climate science are losing clout with Republicans. But they are insistent that not much has changed, particularly with President Trump still in the White House.

“I don’t think we’re losing much ground,” said Myron Ebell, a prominent energy advocate with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a longtime opponent of the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are warming the planet. Ebell helped lead Trump’s EPA transition team.

“I do think that there’s been more hand waving,” he added, “but I don’t think Republican voters have been influenced very much by the hand waving and the shouting.”

Party leadership on Capitol Hill would beg to differ. And even some Trump-loyal Republicans are happy to distance themselves from the climate science denial movement, even if they’re not willing to offer the kind of policies many experts say will be necessary to reduce the use of fossil fuels — the primary driver of climate change.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his top energy deputies rolled out a package of small-ball climate change bills last month, pointing to polls that show younger voters increasingly worried about the issue.

None would reduce fossil fuel use, but they would aim to reduce emissions through carbon capture and sequestration (Greenwire, Feb. 12).

Meanwhile, Republicans on powerful committees such as Energy and Commerce have largely dropped outright climate denial for the kind of “energy innovation” talking points favored by CRES and ClearPath.

“Both sides now recognize climate is changing, temperature is increasing we need to do something about it,” said Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.). “We’re just speaking out and making our own views known better, and there is more evidence.”

Policywise, what they’re doing is phenomenal and unbelievable and beyond anything we could have hoped. It truly is.

Marc Morano, director of communications at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow]

The fact remains, however, that the Republican president frequently denies climate change and for a time employed a man — William Happer — tasked with performing a critical review of federal climate science.

For skeptics and libertarian ideologues alike who want to see the federal regulatory regime torn down, that’s an important audience.

“Policywise, what Andrew Wheeler is doing is phenomenal. Policywise, what Donald Trump is doing is phenomenal,” said Marc Morano, director of communications at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, who has questioned climate science for years.

“Policywise, what they’re doing is phenomenal and unbelievable and beyond anything we could have hoped,” he said. “It truly is.”

Fighting over the details

There’s no meaningful debate among climate scientists about whether temperatures are rising because of man’s industrial activity.

A host of peer-reviewed studies warn of potentially catastrophic economic and environmental effects, many of which are readily apparent today, without dramatic changes to global greenhouse gas emissions. Most objections to the science have virtually zero credibility in the world’s scientific community.

Still, politically, Ebell doesn’t think it’s useful for conservatives to cede the debate because he said McCarthy’s efforts won’t convince voters who want the federal government to address climate change to vote Republican.

“If local environmental groups or local media in their districts start looking into these bills and start giving them publicity in the local media, they’re going to have a hard time explaining themselves because we’ve conceded that global warming’s a problem, and we’ve got a plan which will do nothing to address it,” Ebell said.

“So I think it’s not a well-thought-out way to proceed on this issue, and I doubt that they’re going to get very much positive spin out of it with voters,” he said.

Prominent conservative organizations, meanwhile, are making similar arguments with more subtle references to the science of climate change.

After McCarthy, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves and other Republicans came out with their package of bills last month, the Club for Growth promptly blasted it, threatening to withhold endorsements from supporters.

“When you give an inch on principle, you concede a negotiating posture that has also led to devastating bipartisan agreements on bailouts, spending and regulation,” Scott Parkinson, vice president of government affairs for the Club for Growth, wrote in a subsequent letter to the editor in The Washington Post last month.

“Club for Growth will continue to work with principled conservatives who reject climate alarmism and fight for energy and environmental policies based on sound economic principles,” he wrote.

Despite those disagreements, the Republican efforts on climate aren’t actually all that new, and they’re generally more focused on repackaging GOP-backed policies through a climate change lens.

One of the bills they rolled out last month, for instance, would make permanent the 45Q tax break for carbon capture and sequestration, which a Republican-led Congress expanded in 2018.

Graves, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis’ ranking member, is also leading a letter to National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, to be sent in the coming weeks, urging the White House to promote fossil fuel exports as a way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Top Republicans, including Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, are expected to sign.

The Trump administration, of course, is already gung-ho about exporting fossil fuels, but Republicans argue that it can help the fight against climate change because U.S. exports have lower life-cycle emissions than sources in the developing world.

The current backdrop, however, is that U.S. emissions are increasing, undermining Republicans who point to emissions reductions during the last 15 years. EPA’s most recent numbers found that greenhouse gas emissions rose 3.1% in 2018 — during Trump’s second year in office — despite the continued decline of coal (Climatewire, Feb. 13).

Meanwhile, the party as a whole still roundly rejects carbon pricing and regulations, tools that most climate experts say will be necessary to deploy clean energy technology to the market and reduce emissions fast enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

“Looking back over the last several years there have been policies that are entirely consistent with Republican ideology that we can continue doing that achieve multiple goals,” Graves said. “My whole thing is let’s not sit here and fight over the details of the science.”

Constituent services?

Ebell and other skeptics dismiss conservative clean energy groups as empty vessels with money but no loyal supporters, but they’re having an impact.

CRES alone spent nearly $500,000 lobbying on various energy issues in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to disclosure forms, including with several outside lobbying firms.

Much of the lobbying effort went toward getting clean energy priorities into the tax extenders package at the end of last year, according to CRES Executive Director Heather Reams, but CRES and ClearPath were enthusiastic about Republicans adopting their rhetoric in early 2020.

Still, Reams said she doesn’t see her group’s efforts as in direct conflict with those who question climate science. Rather, she believes she offers Republicans who want to talk about climate change a supportive landing pad.

“They’re responding to voters,” Reams said. “So I think it’s a very unfair position that some groups are putting Republican members in. These are complex problems and deserve complex solutions, and keeping your head in the sand is not a solution.”

And in a sign that the climate skeptic wing’s influence could be petering out, the Heartland Institute — a conservative think tank that has long dispersed debunked theories about climate change — laid off some of its staff last week amid reported financial woes (Greenwire, March 9).

Efforts to promote carbon taxes as a conservative solution to climate change have been less successful so far, however, showing the limits of the Republican transformation. Currently, the policy has only a small constituency.

Read the rest of the article here....e&e

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A biography submitted when Ebell testified before Congress celebrates his reputation with environmental groups, noting he and three of his CEI colleagues were included in “A Field Guide to Climate Criminals” distributed at the UN climate meeting in Montreal in December 2005. Ebell was also listed as one of the six top “Misleaders” by Rolling Stone magazine in a 2005 issue. [68]

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off bs bio he sends for testimony; note how he boasts about attackers (// horner on greenpeace gos thru trash regularly)

Myron Ebell

Director of Freedom Action

and

Director, Center for Energy and Environment

Competitive Enterprise Institute

1899 L Street, N. W., 12th floor

Washington, DC 20036

Tel: (202) 331-2256

Mobile: (202) 320-6685

Myron Ebell is director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and

Environment, which is one of the world’s largest and most effective Free Market

Environmentalism programs. He also serves as director of Freedom Action, a web-based

grassroots activist organization dedicated to putting freedom on the offensive, and chairs the

Cooler Heads Coalition, which comprises over two dozen non-profit groups in this country and

abroad thatquestion global warming alarmismand oppose energy rationing policies. CEI and

the Cooler Heads Coalition led the successful decade-long fight to defeat cap-and-trade

legislation.

Climate of Doubt, a PBS Frontline documentary aired in October 2012, featured long

interviews with Mr. Ebell. In March 2010, the Financial Times called Mr. Ebell “one of

America’s most prominent climate-change skeptics.” In July 2009, the Business Insider’s Green

Sheet named him third in its list of the Ten Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics, after

Professor Freeman Dyson and Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, and commented, “Myron Ebell may be

enemy #1 to the current climate change community.”

Eric Pooley devotes a chapter of his recent

book, The Climate War, to Mr. Ebell and calls him “a superstar of the denialosphere.”

Among numerous other recognitions, Vanity Fair magazine published a long, highly

critical profile of Mr. Ebell in their May 2007 “second annual Green Issue.”

Greenpeace

featured Mr. Ebell and three of his CEI colleagues in “A Field Guide to Climate Criminals”

distributed at the UN climate meeting in Montreal in December 2005. 

:{:{}:

}:

Rolling Stone magazine in

its November 17, 2005 issue named Mr. Ebell one of the six top “Misleaders”on global warming

in a special feature, along with President George W. Bush, Senator James M. Inhofe, and the late

Michael Crichton. 

As a result of a BBC Radio interview in November 2004, seven members of

the British House of Commons from all three major parties introduced a motion to censure Mr.

Ebell “in the strongest possible terms.”

The Clean Air Trust in March 2001 named Mr. Ebell its

"Villain of the Month" for his role in convincing the Bush Administration not to regulate carbon

dioxide emissions.

Prior to coming to CEI, Mr. Ebell was policy director at Frontiers of Freedom,a public policy advocacy organization founded by the late former US Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.).

While at Frontiers of Freedom, he worked on property rights, the Endangered Species Act,

federal-lands policies, and global warming. He previously served as senior legislative assistant to

Rep. John Shadegg (R-Az.), where he helped develop landmark legislation that would transform

the Endangered Species Act into a program that respects property rights and actually protects

endangered wildlife habitat, and before that as Washington representative of the American Land

Rights Association and as assistant to the chairman of the National Taxpayers Union. He was

one of the founders of the Grassroots ESA Coalition and served several years on its board and as

its unpaid co-ordinator.

Mr. Ebell has appeared as a guest on numerous television shows, including the ABC

Evening News, NBC Nightly News, PBS News Hour, BBC Newsnight, BBC World, CNBC,

CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, MSNBC, ITN, Voice of America, Televisa, Sky TV, Al

Jazeera, PBS’s NOW, Fox News's Special Report, O'Reilly Factor, and Hannity and Colmes, and

on national television networks in Australia, Canada, China, Russia, France, Belgium, Greece,

Switzerland, and Germany. He has spoken frequently on a variety of BBC radio news shows and

on hundreds of radio talk shows, including G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Lars Larson,

Dennis Miller, Jim Bohannon, Blanquita Cullum, Janet Parshall, Neal Boortz, Thom Hartmann,

Jane Chastain, Alan Colmes, Alan Nathan, Air America, and National Public Radio's Diane

Rehm, Talk of the Nation, To the Point, Living on Earth, Morning Edition, and All Things

Considered.

Mr. Ebell has appeared in a number of documentary films, including most recently Greedy Lying

Bastards, Dirty Business, and Cool It! In 2004 and 2009, he was featured in BBC Radio

documentaries and in 2005 participated in a BBC World Television debate on the Kyoto

Protocol. Mr. Ebell's writings have appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York

Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Human Events, Forbes, London’s

Guardian, London’s Standpoint Magazine, Orange County Register, Newark Star Ledger,

Riverside Press Enterprise, Philadelphia Inquirer, Manchester Union Leader, Washington Times,

Charleston Daily Mail, Anchorage Daily News, and Environmental Law Forum.

Mr. Ebell has testified before eight House and Senate committees. On radio and

television and in person, he has debated then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, then-EPA

Administrator Carol Browner, then-CEQ Chairman Katie McGinty, then-Acting CEQ Chairman

George Frampton, then-British Environment Minister Michael Meacher, former British

Environment Minister John Selwyn Gummer, then-Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk,

European Environment Agency Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade, several Senators and

Representatives, and the heads of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, League of Conservation

Voters, Wilderness Society, Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth UK, National Environmental

Trust, Public Citizen, and Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy. In May 2005, the Oxford

Union invited Mr. Ebell to speak in a debate on global warming. He also spoke on the opening

plenary panel of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual meeting in 2004, along with

Teresa Heinz Kerry, Ted Danson, and Franco Harris.

The Weather Channel named CEI one of

the ten most influential groups or individuals in the global warming debate; notably, no other

non-profit groups, including environmental pressure groups, were named to the list.

A native of Baker County, Oregon, where he grew up on a cattle ranch, Mr. Ebell holds a

B.A. from Colorado College (cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and an M.Sc. from the London

School of Economics, where he was a pupil of the notable political philosopher, Michael

Oakeshott. He was also a postgraduate research student at the University of California at San

Diego (where he was a Board of Regents’ Fellow) and at Peterhouse, Cambridge University.

==

2017 2x? yup kooky

https://www.alternet.org/amp/how-trump-ally-myron-ebell-spread-misinformation-big-tobacco-and-big-oil-2647312735

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guk ctt 1019

The director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) Center for Energy and Environment, Myron Ebell, for example, told the Guardian: “CEI believes strongly that the policies being proposed by climate alarmists to deal with global warming pose much greater threats to human flourishing than do the effects of global warming. Abundant, affordable energy is a necessary condition of human wellbeing but the global energy-rationing policies being pursued, like those in the Paris climate treaty, threaten to consign billions of people around the world to energy poverty and perpetual economic stagnation.”

==

3x?

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112016/myron-ebell-climate-denier-epa-donald-trump

no lnx

Myron Ebell, the Climate Contrarian Now Plotting the EPA's Precarious Future

Donald Trump's choice to lead the EPA transition team has a long history of pushing climate denial, assailing environmental protections and trumpeting fossil fuels.

John H. Cushman Jr.

BY JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR.

NOV 16, 2016

[Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute

Myron Ebell's profile on the Competitive Enterprise Institute's website includes links to his work casting doubt on climate change and urging resistance to climate action. Photo illustration by Paul Horn/InsideClimate News]

Myron Ebell, chosen by Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, traces a long history as a determined conservative firebrand.

He rose through the ranks of the "wise-use" movement to land at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pushing an ideology of private property and free markets reigning supreme. He led activists calling themselves the Cooler Heads Coalition, pushing a brand of no-holds-barred climate denial, putting himself at the center of divisive advocacy wars over fossil fuels and the environment.

For decades, he has pushed the radical insistence that the environmental left has it all wrong: the science, the ideology, the economics and the politics of climate change.

The same views apply across the landscape of environmental policy, from land and water conservation to energy production.

During an earlier transition from one administration to another, as the Bush-Cheney Republicans arrived to displace the Clinton-Gore Democrats in 2001, he shared his views in an online chat sponsored by the Washington Post. He said Gail Norton, a Reagan-era private-property-rights champion nominated for Interior Secretary, and Spencer Abraham, a founder of the Federalist Society who had voted to abolish the Energy Department but now would run it, were "superb choices." But he reckoned that Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate from New Jersey who was to head the EPA, "may turn out to be a good choice or may not."

It was a savvy move to damn Whitman with such vanishingly faint praise. It would not be long before she was a victim of intense maneuvering against forceful action on climate change during the opening Bush-Cheney years. Ebell thought Whitman should only be retained if her EPA would "stop claiming regulatory authorities far beyond its legal authority."

It's just like his view today, except that there are new Obama-era targets, like the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.

Through all that ensued since 2001—the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol and the rise of the Paris Agreement; the Supreme Court decree that the EPA must control carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels; and the ensuing fight over regulations to do just that—Ebell has never wavered in his views.

So his ascendancy in the Trump camp alarms and exasperates people like Eric Schaeffer, former head of enforcement at EPA and now executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.

They know him as the author of a famous denialist alt-science memo in the 1990s, as an advocate who helped scuttle the Kyoto Protocol in the 2000s. He is also known as a happy warrior at CEI, funded generously by Exxon and by dark-money donors, that never concedes the field. They know that CEI remains engaged in a furious fight with state attorneys general over its own role in Exxon's record on climate change. They can only imagine how far he and the Trump team might go in de-funding and de-fanging the EPA.

"It tells me they are not approaching this analytically, logically, or even as economists," Schaeffer said. "They are approaching it as ideologues. And that's pretty dangerous. It used to be, even to some extent under 'W,' you talked in code or at least made some kind of showing of your interest in the environment and clean air and water, and having a credible EPA. They've completely thrown that overboard."

Already, CEI is getting very specific about the kinds of actions the Trump administration should take. This week it listed three executive orders exemplifying those that should be deep-sixed. (They involve energy conservation by the federal government, international development aid and protection of infrastructure from climate impacts.)

If the Clean Power Plan meets its demise, and particularly if the Paris Agreement goes down the same drain, the defeat for 21st century environmentalism would exceed the undoing of the Kyoto Protocol or the failure of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate bill early in the Obama years.

At its heart, it would be a victory for denial. And it would vindicate the long game plan of fossil fuel forces that recognized that financing the machinery of ideology was just as important as financing political campaigns—because Big Oil and Big Coal contributed relatively little this year to the Trump campaign, even as the fossil fuel camp scripted his thinly-embellished policy declarations.

One irony, said Jeremy Symons, associate vice president for climate policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, "is that Trump said he would 'drain the swamp,' but Ebell is a creature of the swamp. He has been taking money from years from industry to slow and stop climate change."

Robert Brulle, a sociologist who has extensively documented the industry's support of climate denial, said CEI's biggest funder, pouring in $9.1 million between 2002 and 2013, was the Florida-based Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking. Run by futures trader William Dunn, the foundation is a major donor to free market think tanks and advocacy groups like the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The second largest funder, with $5 million since 2004, is Donors Trust, which has been called the "dark money ATM of the conservative movement." Its donors include the libertarian Koch brothers and other free enterprise philanthropists. Exxon also is among CEI's largest funders with $2 million between 2000 and 2005, but the big oil company hasn't given to CEI directly since 2006, when it began scaling back its funding of groups that deny climate science.

As far back as 1998, Ebell was among a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute and its allies proposing a denialist project to ''maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences,'' according to a memo they wrote.

During and after the election of 2000 and the transition from the Clinton-Gore administration to the Bush-Cheney regime, CEI fought to influence Washington's formal climate science assessments. Its lawyers sued to make sure that one major document, the National Climate Assessment, would not carry any policy weight.

In 2002, Ebell offered CEI's help to Philip Cooney, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, to "clean up the mess." That was in the wake of the State Department filing a U.S. Climate Action Report that included the United Nations finding that global warming posed a significant risk and was caused by fossil fuel emissions.

Cooney, who joined the Bush administration after a decade as a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, had edited government reports to emphasize doubt about climate change. That was documented in 2005 by whistleblower Rick Piltz, a former senior official in the government's climate change science program. (Piltz resigned from the government and founded Climate Science Watch in 2005. He died in 2014. Cooney resigned from the Bush administration after Piltz's disclosures and took a job at Exxon.)

"Thanks for calling and asking for our help," Ebell said in an email to Cooney in 2002.

But true to form, his email had a badgering, even threatening tone, criticizing the Bush administration's handling of climate change reports and warning that CEI would fight any policies it viewed as errant. Ebell promised in the email "to do as much as we could to deflect criticism by blaming the EPA for freelancing."

Ebell said it was imperative to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish."

Whitman, he said, should go.

"It seems to me that the folks at EPA are the obvious fall guys, and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible," Ebell wrote.

Whitman, who now runs her own strategic planning and consulting group, said in an interview that she never had any personal dealings with Ebell. While at EPA, the pressures that concerned her the most came mainly from Cheney and his staff. "I suspect he had a little more pull than Myron," Whitman said. As for Ebell: "There's always going to be those kind of people out there. You just can't worry about it."

The incident prompted two state attorneys general to request a Justice Department investigation into any improper collusion, but that went nowhere.

Several Democratic attorneys general referenced possible collusion between Exxon and groups like CEI when they announced investigations of Exxon for potential climate fraud. That came after InsideClimate News and others published histories of Exxon's own climate research and its subsequent support for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus.

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands went so far as to subpoena CEI's records from the Bush-Cheney transition era, but CEI fought back hard—as did Exxon and several Republican state attorneys general and Republicans on a House committee—and deflected the inquiry.

At a meeting of Republican state attorneys general this summer, Ebell lashed out at Exxon foes, saying the Democratic attorneys general and environmental organizations were colluding to "silence and defund the opponents of global warming alarmism."

An audio recording of the session "Climate Change Debate: How Speech is Being Stifled" was obtained and released by the Center for Media and Democracy.

Ebell set the tone by disparaging those who embrace the overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is warming.

"Why is the left so intent on trying to win the debate by silencing and de-funding their opponents? Well, they have a little problem, we've got reality on our side," Ebell said.

"So when you expose all of these arguments as phony, what is left but trying to win by silencing and defunding your opponents?" he said.

As CEI has done in legal filings and in newspaper advertising, he called it a matter of constitutionally protected free speech.

Months before Trump emerged victorious, and before Ebell was named to play a big role in the new administration's agenda-setting, he declared confidently that "right now the climate inquisition is in retreat," he said. "It's in retreat because of what ExxonMobil has done. What CEI has done."

Now that Ebell is on the inside of an administration, though, his influence is likely to multiply. "That's what worries me," said Whitman. "Of all the promises Trump made during the campaign that now seem to be a little less certain, EPA is probably the one he'll stick with, because it is so universally thought of as being the source of all evil. And that is very troubling."

Neela Banerjee, Marianne Lavelle and David Hasemyer contributed reporting for this story.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

POLITICS REGULATION

DONALD TRUMP EPA CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE DENIAL

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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060713373

The proposed White House panel that would conduct an "adversarial" review of climate science is dead for now, as President Trump grapples with negative perceptions of his environmental record at the outset of his reelection campaign.

The monthslong push from within the National Security Council to review established science on climate change divided White House advisers and generated sharp opposition from researchers across the country. The effort, led by a physicist overseeing technology issues at the NSC, William Happer, stalled indefinitely amid internal disagreements within the White House, according to two sources.

"It's been totally stymied by the forces of darkness within the administration, but also by the looming election campaign," said Myron Ebell, a senior fellow at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute who led the EPA transition team under Trump.

Happer has consulted conservative groups that attack climate science in an attempt to recruit members for the proposed panel. He's spoken with policy analysts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and CO2 Coalition, a group Happer founded and that claims that the world would be better off with higher levels of carbon dioxide emissions. The theories promoted by those groups are rejected by NASA, NOAA and the world's top science academies.

Happer initially wanted Trump to issue an executive order to create the "Presidential Committee on Climate Security." He wanted the panel to review assertions within the National Climate Assessment related to risks from climate change on national security. Happer briefed Trump on climate science at least twice (Climatewire, June 24).

The idea to create the panel has caused strife within the White House. Among its critics are deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell; Kevin Hassett, the outgoing chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council; and Kelvin Droegemeier, the president's science adviser. Thosesupporting the plan include Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and Brooke Rollins, assistant to Trump in the Office of American Innovation.

An official at NSC disputed the characterization that the panel was dead, even while confirming that it had been indefinitely delayed. The plan has suffered several downgrades over the months. It was initially proposed as a rapid response team of climate science critics who would challenge government publications on human-caused warming. Recent discussions have centered on the idea of forcing government climate scientists to participate in a debate with critics of their work who deny that humans are causing widespread changes on Earth (Climatewire, June 6). Most recently, the plan was diminished to creating dueling white papers that would elevate climate denialism to the level of consensus science.

Those in talks to participate as critics of mainstream science include John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and Judith Curry, former head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. A potential leader of the exercise was Paul Robinson, a former Department of Energy official who oversaw talks about nuclear weapons tests with the Soviet Union, but who is not trained in climate science.

Trump supporters who want the administration to be more aggressive in its rejection of climate science were frustrated that the climate review panel had been sidelined. Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute sees it as a sign that the Trump campaign is sensitive to Democratic attacks on climate change.

"The reelect campaign has been completely taken over by the usual cast of Republican establishment consultants who are primarily concerned with making very large amounts of money on the campaign," Ebell said.

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nb guk links

https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-america-environmental-leader-2639096425.html

Despite cutting more than 80 environmental regulations, appointing a climate change denier to the National Security Council and giving senior administration roles to people who worked for the fossil fuel industry, President Donald Trump will deliver a speech Monday that a White House spokesman said will "recognize his administration's environmental leadership and America's role in leading the world," as the Guardian was the first to report.

Trump intends to tout the country's clean air and water. Although, he often boasts that the U.S. has the cleanest air in the world, statistics show otherwise. The nonprofit Health Effects Institute's State of Global Air 2019 report ranked the United States 37th dirtiest out of 195 countries for ozone, also known as smog.

Furthermore, a report published last month showed that the U.S. had more days with unhealthy air during the first two years of Trump's term than in the previous four years, as the Associated Press reported.

Many of his policies and rollbacks will threaten the air, land and water in the U.S. for years to come, experts say. In boasting about his environmental record, Trump could discuss marine debris cleanup efforts or he could discuss funds earmarked to restore the Florida Everglades, but he has little else to go on, according to the Guardian.

Yet, in an off-the-record conference call on Wednesday, the White House asked key supporting groups to spread the message that the U.S. under Trump continues to be an environmental leader.

Trump's environment officials, including U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, interior Sec. David Bernhardt and council on environmental quality Chief Mary Neumayr will be at the White House on Monday for the event titled Presidential Remarks on America's Environmental Leadership, according to the Guardian.

Jonathan Watts, who did not report the story but is the global environment editor for the Guardian, wrote on Twitter that Trump's speech is "straight out of Orwell."

While the president has denied that the climate crisis exists and even wrote on Twitter that the concept was created by the Chinese to make American manufacturing non-competitive, some Republicans want him to acknowledge the problem while others want him to continue to deny its reality.

The Guardian reported on how several conservative groups would like Tump to address the environment. Sarah Hunt, of the cross-partisan Rainey Center, said Trump should use the opportunity to endorse America's emissions cuts so far.

"American energy innovation allows our nation to lead the world in greenhouse gas emissions reductions – we've cut our emissions over 10 percent since 2005," Hunt said to the Guardian. "The president should be proud that American natural gas, wind and solar energy are creating jobs and fighting climate change. I would love to see him announce an initiative that will help our great American clean energy companies export their zero-carbon energy technology to the rest of the world."

Trump could also make the case that cheap energy will lift up the poor, even if that energy is fueled by coal, oil and gas.

Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to the Guardian he wants to hear the president say, "the alternative to the Green New Deal is not carbon taxes and making people poorer. It's the Trump energy agenda, which makes people wealthier. Wealthier is healthier, the wealthier we are, the higher our environmental quality."

Analysis from academics, medical experts like the American Lung Association, and environmental experts suggests otherwise. Trump's policies, delivered at the behest of the fossil fuel industry will threaten the health of Americans, could significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions, and lead to thousands of deaths from hazardous air quality, according to the New York Times.

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omfg coherent climate sci supp start nyt 619

...Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka made a well-publicized effort to talk him out of leaving the Paris accord in 2017. But after being vanquished by officials including Mr. Bannon, Mr. Pruitt, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II, there is little evidence she has resisted his approach since then.

The president’s advisers amplify his disregard. At the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the rapidly warming region as a land of “opportunity and abundance” because of its untapped reserves of oil, gas, uranium, gold, fish and rare-earth minerals. The melting sea ice, he said, was opening up new shipping routes.DISASTER CAP'LISM?!

“That is one of the most crude messages one could deliver,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who served as the NATO ambassador under George W. Bush.

Image

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the Arctic as a land of “opportunity and abundance” as a consequence of global warming.CreditMandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images]

At the National Security Council, under Mr. Bolton, officials said they had been instructed to strip references to global warming from speeches and other formal statements. But such political edicts pale in significance to the changes in the methodology of scientific reports.

Mr. Reilly, the head of the Geological Survey, who does not have a background in climate change science, characterized the changes as an attempt to prepare more careful, accurate reports. “We’re looking for answers with our partners and to get statistical significance from what we understand,” he said.

Yet scientists said that by eliminating the projected effects of increased carbon dioxide pollution after 2040, the Geological Survey reports would present an incomplete and falsely optimistic picture of the impact of continuing to burn unlimited amounts of coal, oil and gasoline.

“The scenarios in these reports that show different outcomes are like going to the doctor, who tells you, ‘If you don’t change your bad eating habits, and you don’t start to exercise, you’ll need a quadruple bypass, but if you do change your lifestyle, you’ll have a different outcome,’” said Katharine Hayhoe, the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and an author of the National Climate Assessment.

Not all government science agencies are planning such changes. A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, asked if its scientists would limit the use of climate models, wrote in an email, “No changes are being considered at this time.”

The push to alter the results of at least some climate science reports, several officials said, came after November’s release of the second volume of the National Climate Assessment.

While the Trump administration did not try to rewrite the scientific conclusions of the report, officials sought to play it down — releasing it the day after Thanksgiving — and discredit it, with a White House statement calling it “largely based on the most extreme scenario.”

Image

This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to finalize the legal rollback of two of President Barack Obama’s most consequential policies: regulations to curb planet-warming pollution from vehicles and power plants.CreditGeorge Etheredge for The New York Times]

Still, the report could create legal problems for Mr. Trump’s agenda of abolishing regulations. This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to finalize the legal rollback of two of President Barack Obama’s most consequential policies: federal regulations to curb planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks.

Opponents say that when they challenge the moves in court, they intend to point to the climate assessment, asking how the government can justify the reversals when its own agencies have concluded that the pollution will be so harmful.

That is why officials are now discussing how to influence the conclusions of the next National Climate Assessment.

“They’ve started talking about how they can produce a report that doesn’t lead to some silly alarmist predictions about the future,” said Myron Ebell, who heads the energy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded research organization, and who led the administration’s transition at the E.P.A.

A key change, he said, would be to emphasize historic temperatures rather than models of future atmospheric temperatures, and to eliminate the “worst-case scenarios” of the effect of increased carbon dioxide pollution — sometimes referred to as “business as usual” scenarios because they imply no efforts to curb emissions.

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Scientists said that eliminating the worst-case scenario would give a falsely optimistic picture. “Nobody in the world does climate science like that,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. “It would be like designing cars without seatbelts or airbags.”

Outside the United States, climate scientists had long given up on the White House being anything but on outlier in policy. But they worry about the loss of the government as a source for reliable climate research.

“It is very unfortunate and potentially even quite damaging that the Trump administration behaves this way,” said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “There is this arrogance and disrespect for scientific advancement — this very demoralizing lack of respect for your own experts and agencies.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Climate Fight, Trump Will Put Science on Trial

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ebell works w/ CEQ to kill McCain-Lieberman bill:

Kert Davies, originally published on ClimateInvestigations.org 

InsideClimate News’ Marianne Lavelle published a long piece this weekend, chronicling Senator John McCain’s rise and fall as a climate leader. The story highlights a campaign I worked on in 2000, where we asked all the presidential candidates the simple and still pertinent question, “What’s Your Plan?” on global warming.McCain was one of the only candidates that took it on. He went back to Washington in the middle of 2000, having been defeated by George W. Bush in the primaries, and immediately started holding hearings on climate change science.

As always, there is more to the story.  When McCain emerged as “Captain Climate”in the early 2000s, and introduced the first serious bipartisan legislation to cut emissions, he became the target of a multifaceted attack by anti-regulatory free market organizations.  It turns out, many of these organizations and front groups were quietly being funded by ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers.

This pressure may partly explain why McCain later abandoned climate change when he ran for President in 2008 and attacked his colleagues’ efforts during the 2009 push for climate legislation.  By that point McCain had succumbed to the now standard Republican talking points on climate.  Oh, and lest we forget, he also picked Sarah Palin as a running mate and starting down the “Drill, Baby, Drill” path (the opposite of sane climate policy) and the rest is history.

No one has really explained how this turn away from climate leadership really happened. Most commentators attribute it to political choices McCain himself made, without really analyzing the outside pressure that closed in on McCain from 2000 to 2008.

InsideClimate News notes briefly that there was a coordinated effort to oppose McCain’s efforts run by corporate-funded entities.  Climate Investigations Center went back and looked at our records for documentation of thecampaign to the kill the McCain-Lieberman climate legislation as it gained momentum. First introduced in 2001 by the two Senators, The Climate Stewardship Act (S.139) was the first national, bipartisan legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas pollution. This bill eventually became the ground-zero target for climate deniers and corporate interests.

Unfortunately, a month after the first McCain-Lieberman bill was introduced, the attacks on September 11th changed everything. McCain and Lieberman, a neo-con Democrat at the time, were among the first to lead the charge to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, well ahead of the Bush Administration according to many accounts from that time.

By 2003, McCain and Lieberman got back to thinking about climate change together and leveraged the first full Senate vote on their bill by forcing Majority Leader Bill Frist’s handon an energy bill he was trying to pass.

The McCain-Lieberman bill garnered surprising support but lost 43-55, well short of the 60 votes needed to avoid an override under Senate rule.  Corporations saw this as a close call and began a concerted effort to kill the momentum in 2004 (see below). In 2005, the bill was renamed The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, and in McCain style, stubbornly brought up for another vote where it lost by a bigger margin, 38 Yea to 60 Nay votes.

I know for a fact that they got blindsided on this.  They thought they had paved the way for success. In a meeting with a McCain staffer after the second vote, I showed them an ExxonSecrets map (similar to the one below) of the organizations and individuals that worked to kill the bill. The staffer knew there were various organizations and companies lobbying against the bill, but had no idea the level of coordination, nor the ExxonMobil funding channels.

[secrets chart]

Was the Exxon Denial Machine built to fight Sen. McCain?

It has always been interesting that our database of ExxonMobil climate denial funding shows a dramatic increase in spending after 2000, which coincides with McCain emerging as a climate champion.

The graph above shows the yearly totals of ExxonMobil’s grants to climate denying non-profit organizations and breaks out the total grants specifically earmarked for climate change between the years of 1997-2006.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that corporate polluters thought they were off the hook with the Bush-Cheney victory over Gore-Lieberman.  Yet ExxonMobil’s funding of climate denial organizations ballooned to its highest levels between 2000 and 2005 as the McCain-Lieberman legislation gained momentum. Between 2003-2005, Exxon wrote grants totaling more than $3.3 million dollars each year to climate-denying organizations.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the leader of theCooler Heads Coalition(CHC) and recipient of over $2 million dollars total from ExxonMobil between 1997-2005, aggressively fought Sen. McCain’s climate leadership in the early 2000s. Aleaked 2003 email from **Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy at CEI, lays out a target list for lobbying against the “McLieberman” bill. FOIAed documents show communications in 2003 between Myron Ebell and the Bush White HouseCouncil on Environmental Quality, where Ebell details the campaign against McCain.  CEI also put out press releases against the legislation, held eventsto debate it, and used the CHC network of climate deniers to wage their campaign.

The Exxon-funded groups were also being funded by the Koch brothers and their foundations.  In January 2003, CEI co-authored a letter with the Koch-funded Citizen’s for Sound Economy to the Bush Whitehouse decrying the McCain-Lieberman legislation.  ExxonMobil gave CEI $465,000 that year according to Exxon documents, the largest Exxon haul by CEI in any year.An unredacted CEI IRS 990 for 2003 lists a $100,000 donation from David Koch himself and only $180,000 from ExxonMobil (probably an accounting anomaly).

United 4 Jobs, DCI Group and Exxon cash

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/12/bradley-foundation-funds-web-climate-change-deniers/

Armiak

Bradley Foundation internal documents reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveal a concerted effort by the organization to delegitimize climate science, while promoting fossil fuel energy development in the United States.

An analysis of Bradley’s climate-related activities shows that the foundation has made significant grants to support energy policy think tanks, attack-dog groups that target environmentalists, and efforts to discredit climate science.

A 2013 internal foundation document details how Bradley “instructed staff to explore options…to make more energy-related grants.” The document also notes that the Board gave a “terminal grant” of $263,591 to the Sand County Foundation (SCF), which previously administered the Bradley Fund for the Environment.

The documents do not reveal Bradley’s motivation in splitting from SCF, but they do outline a serious effort to promote fossil fuel industry interests at the expense of the environment.

CENTERS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL AND FOSSIL FUEL DEVELOPMENT

As part of its push to support studies and public relations to cast doubt on mounting scientific evidence on climate change, Bradley has focused its resources on “Energy Policy Centers,” many of which are housed in “Bradley-supported” State Policy Network (SPN) “think tanks.” SPN is a web of 156 right-wing groups in 49 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, and the UK that receives funding from the billionaire Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and the Roe Foundation, as well as many multi-national corporations.

The examined documents show that the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment (CEPE) at the Manhattan Institute**for Policy Research (MIPR), a member of SPN, received a total of $500,000 for its Center, with another $200,000 distributed in 2016. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) CEPE works to promote fossil fuel development despite the devastating effects of climate change. A background document on CEPE states its goal clearly: “The Center’s research and public education activity aims at demonstrating that the United States is poised to reap substantial economic benefits in the form of job creation, lower gasoline and electricity prices, and increased productivity provided public policies allow companies to access valuable energy resources and distribute them at home and abroad.”

A recommendation by Bradley staff on the Manhattan Institute’s 2016 grant proposal specifically states that CEPE is worth funding because, “They have succeeded in identifying and publicizing so many of the falsehoods that surround energy and the environment.” (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) Anexample of this “success” can be found in the work of CEPE senior fellow Mark Mills, who is recognized as originating the idea that North America can surpass the Middle East as the largest energy supplier in the world. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, November 12, 2013)

The Energy Policy Center (EPC) at another SPN “think tank”, the Independence Institute, received $195,000 from the Bradley Foundation between 2012 and 2016.

Bradley documents examined show that EPC’s purpose is to “consciously counter-balance former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s environmental think tank” at Colorado State University, which promotes a “New Energy Economy.”

Bradley considers EPC to be highly successful in fighting local and federal environmental initiatives. The Bradley documents note that EPC was a “key coalition partner” in preempting local bans on fracking in Colorado, and that it “has developed a toolkit for policymakers, attorneys general, and other conservative state think tanks to help them push back against U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.” (Independence Institute GPR, June 2, 2015)

In addition to these two centers, Bradley has funded the Center for Energy and Environment (CEE) at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an “associate member” of SPN,and the Center for Energy Innovation and Independence at Consumers’ Research.

CEE is led by the prominent climate change denier Myron Ebell, who steered Trump’s EPA transition team. Ebell also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, which brings together right-wing activists and scholars for monthly meetings. The coalition was established on May 6, 1997, “to dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and risk analysis.”

CEI was long tied to tobacco disinformation campaigns, but is now a leading organization in the movement to discredit climate science.

Bradley does not mention how much of its funding to CEI was designated for CEE operations. Between 1986 and 2015, Bradley Foundation gave $2.2 million to CEI, the majority of which was “to support general operations.” (Competitive Enterprise Institute GPR, June 2, 2015).

The Center for Energy Innovation and Independence received $250,000 from Bradley in 2013 to get the new group off the ground. According to a background document, the group “will closely monitor federal environmental regulations and potentially lay the foundation for multi-state litigation against them, similar to those actions in the Obamacare and Dodd-Frank lawsuits, of which aggressive (Scott) Pruitt was and is a part.” Pruitt is the former AG of Oklahoma and recently resigned as the EPA Administrator under Trump.

SMEAR CAMPAIGNS AND FUNDING EFFORTS TO DISCREDIT CLIMATE SCIENCE

At the same time Bradley rolled out funding for “Energy Policy Centers,” it was doling out cash to discredit environmental organizations and climate change science.

A grant proposal record for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a front group created by the close Bradley ally Rick Berman, details an organized effort to weaken the credibility of well-respected, national environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and Food and Water Watch. (The Center for Consumer Freedom GPR, November 12, 2013) Berman also founded Berman and Company, a notorious Washington, D.C.-based corporate lobbying and PR company known for creating numerous corporate “front groups” and astroturf propaganda campaigns.

Berman’s anti-environmental project at CCF was called Big Green Radicals and was seeded with a $150,000 “public education” grant from Bradley in 2013.

According to Bradley’s background document, the Big Green Radicals project would include the following components:

[N]ew, updated research profiles for NRDC, Food and Water Watch, and Sierra Club; standalone websites for all three organizations; a Facebook group seeded with several thousand fans to provide a base for the message; the production of two online videos to explain the real agenda of the environmental left; and Google keyword advertising for members of the media and the public searching for information about one of the targeted groups.

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

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

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

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

ENERGY ROUNDTABLES

Documents show that, beginning in 2013, Bradley provided funding to the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, also an SPN member, to host and organize two “energy roundtables” a year — one before the Heritage Foundation’s annual Resource Bank meeting, and the other before SPN’s annual fall meeting. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 10, 2015)

The $50,000-per-year grant from Bradley for the meetings was matched “by staff arrangement” by the C:{onsumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a front group for the energy industry that promotes fossil fuel development and opposes efforts to regulate its activities.}:

“Planned and put on in close cooperation with the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), the roundtables allow state think tanks to better promote free-market energy and environmental policies,” one document states. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 12, 2013)

Attendance has been high at the roundtables, with as many as “67 SPN leaders” attending the event in Denver in September 2014. The agenda for that meeting details presentations from a number of fossil fuel lovers including: Artic Power, Consumer Energy Alliance, Vital for Colorado, Devon Energy, GOPAC (a political action committee that backs and trains Republican candidates), and Freedom Partners. Freedom Partners, a funding conduit for the billionaire Koch brothers, delivered a talk on “Messaging and State Action.” (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 11, 2014)

BRADLEY GRANTEES WORKED TOGETHER TO DEFEAT LOCAL REGULATIONS ON FRACKING IN COLORADO

In 2014, the Independence Institute and Berman’s Big Green Radicals worked in lockstep in Colorado to defeat local fracking bans, such as the one that passed by ballot measure in Longmont in November of 2013. A 2015 Bradley backgrounder on the Independence Institute praises the anti-fracking work of Independence Institute’s Energy Policy Center, saying, “It has also been a key coalition partner in the movement to stop local and statewide bans on hydraulic fracturing. Last year, current Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper crafted a delicately balanced compromise on local control of oil and gas drilling that removed all initiatives on the issue from the state ballot.”

Berman’s Big Green Radicals rolled out an attack campaign to discredit anti-fracking efforts in the state in May of 2014. Big Green Radicals assertedthat “extreme groups, mostly based far from Colorado in San Francisco, New York, or Washington D.C., are spending millions and spreading their anti-science message to scare voters into approving ballot measures in November to send the oil and gas industry (and the jobs and affordable energy it provides) packing from the Centennial State.”

The efforts by these two groups were successful in overturning local fracking bans. Bradley agreed and decreased its funding recommendation for EPC to $25,000 in 2016, saying, “it is unlikely that there will be any significant developments for EPC in the upcoming months, and therefore staff believes this reduced award is important.”

It is uncertain where the next battleground for energy development will be for Bradley, but the documents demonstrate that they have the funds to bankroll infrastructure in place to discredit climate science and smear the opposition.

OTHER NOTABLE BRADLEY GRANTS

Other significant Bradley grants to support fossil fuel development or dispute climate science in recent years include:

• $150,000 to Opportunity Ohio for “program activities.” (2016)
• $100,000 to Energy and Environment Legal Institute for “transparency practice general.” (2016) HORNER SCHNARE
• $20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2016)
• $200,000 to Competitive Enterprise Institute for “general operations” and “litigation.” (2013, 2015)
• $100,000 toThe Sand County Foundation for “energy resource development.” (2014)
• $100,000 to National Center for Policy Analysis for “general operations.” (2014)
• $20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2014)

==

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2 recent open letters:

CEI freakout on foia by virgin islands for 10 years, see fed overreach

pretty much same pl orgs on Paris treaty pullout. ebell 1st name

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RAGA talk:

Attorney General Luther Strange 01:39

Well as you all know by now, this past February, we, Republican AGs historic victory in the Supreme Court with our decision stopping Obama’s Clean Power Plan . You might say in response to that, maybe they just decided to do it on their own, a group of Democratic attorneys general calling themselves AGs United for Clean Power, I’ve heard them called the “Green 20,” I don’t know exactly what they would call themselves and their allies are taking steps at I believe threatens the First Amendment and we’ve written a lot about that the idea of criminalizing public policy differences very publicly. And that’s what we’re here to talk about today.

Attorney General Luther Strange 02:33

Just this morning, Congressman Ted Lieu and Sheldon, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, announced plans to introduce a resolution accusing fossil fuel companies of using a sophisticated campaign to deceive the public of climate change. However you feel about climate change, I think we can all agree there should be a vigorous debate on the issue, what to do about it, and without criminalizing people who may have a different opinion. So we have two good panelists. I’m going to do a quick introduction, I’m going to turn it over to our first panelist and we’ll go from there.

Attorney General Luther Strange 03:09 Myron Ebell is director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute Center for Energy and Environment. This is one of the most effective advocates for free market environmentalism. He also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, the ad-hoc coalition of 28 non-profit groups that question global warming alarmism and oppose energy rationing policies. He’s got a very strong background in government and he worked for several people including someone I really admire, Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming. A native born and grew up in California. Graduated from Colorado College, school of economics. So we’re going to hear from Myron first.

Attorney General Luther Strange 03:45

We’ll also hear Chet Thompson, the President of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association. Chet has nothing but so I’m not going to belabor him but Chet has a very diverse, very impressive background in advising policy makers and industry on energy issues. His association is one of the leading in that regard so he’ll come second. I want to ask Myron to start off our discussion today, give us his perspective and I will fill and then we’ll allow plenty of time to hear from you in the audience to give us your perspective. Myron come on up .

Myron Ebell, CEI 04:40

Thank you Attorney General Strange. And thank you all for having me. It’s a, I’m very pleased that you invited me and it’s a great honor to be here. Of course as he mentioned, I was an undergraduate for four years here in Colorado Springs, Colorado College. It’s always great to get out of Washington. But of course, one of the reasons it’s so great to get out of Washington is to get away from all the lawyers. But I just want to say you’re the right kind of lawyers. And one thing you may not know about the Competitive Enterprise Institute, even if you’ve heard of us before, is that we do a lot of litigation and we have been co-litigants in a lot of cases. For example, Dodd-Frank litigation and currently the costly Clean Power Plan litigation.

Myron Ebell, CEI 05:38

Let me just say first about CEI, we’re asmall free market policy institute.The reason a lot of people haven’t heard of us is because we’re small and secondly because– and underfunded I might point out–the other reason, of course, is that we don’t do taxes and spending. We do regulations, which is a much harder and a less rewarding thing to be in than fighting higher taxes.

Myron Ebell, CEI 06:03

So let me just say, I want to point out thatthese subpoenas issued by Attorney General Schneiderman in New York, by the Attorney General in the Virgin Islands Claude Walker and by the Attorney General of Massachusetts Maura Healey and I think by Kamala Harris in California. These are not by any means the start of the story of trying to silence and defund the opponents of global warming alarmism in energy integration and policies. Nor should this be taken out of the context of what the left is doing to try and silence and defund all types of groups on all sorts of issues. Let me just give you one example of the background because it involves CEI. 

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In 2006, ExxonMobil was first targeted. ExxonMobil posts all of their contributions to nonprofit groups on their website. So in 2006 after Lee Raymond retired and was replaced by Rex Tillerson, the environmental left pounced, first the Royal Society in London, they don’t have legal authority but they have a huge amount of intellectual authority. At first, they demanded that ExxonMobil stop funding CEI. And when ExxonMobil announced they would agree to do that, they then said, well now they have to stop funding all the other groups they fund. The same thing happened later that year with Senators Olympia Snowe, a Republican, and a Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, said, well we’re glad you stopped funding CEI, if that is indeed true, but now you have to stop funding all the other groups. [logic just flipped?]  Now, Exxon’s annual total was about 2.5 million dollars. 2.5 million dollars to 20 some groups.CEI is the leader of the opposition, it was the largest recipient but there were many smaller groups and bigger groups that got funding. 2.5 million dollars was something that the left thought was worth fighting over.

Myron Ebell, CEI 08:30

As it turned out in 2009 and 10 when the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, it was a very close sort of thing, whether the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade billwould be passed or not. It is a very close sort of thing. And the fact that we had lost those resources made it much harder. And people say, well there was a lot of corporate resources. Yeah, but most of the corporate resources were in favor of Waxman-Markey. So we’ve been through this before. Now what’s, I’d just like to show you what 2.5 million dollars, should make you laugh.If you look at just 10 environmental groups, their annual budget is just over 900 million dollars. If you add up the next 20 environmental groups, you’ll get another 8 or 900 million dollars. If you add up the next 50 or 100 you’ll get another 8 or 900 million dollars.

So the free market environmental community in Washington, D.C. consists of fewer than 50 people. And people say, “well you have corporate allies.” Well, in fighting cap-and-trade, theU.S. Climate Action Partnership was much, much better funded than the opponents of cap-and-trade.Carbon tax. Who supports a carbon tax? ExxonMobil, Shell, BP. So this is a David versus Goliath battle. I pointed out, it’s nice to remember that David won.

Myron Ebell, CEI 10:08

So, so why is the left so intent on trying to win the debate by silencing and de-funding their opponents? Well they have a little problem, we’ve got reality on our side. Let me just point out, here’s, here’s the famous John Christy graph that shows the modelresults versus the actual beta. The model results predict a lot of warming. The data doesn’t show much warming. And the, the circles and the squares on the bottom, those are two separate data sets. One is weather balloons and the other is satellite data. They’re in pretty close agreement. They’re not in agreement with the model projections. So what does the other side do? Well the first thing they try to do is try to change reality. They try to change the facts. So they reinterpret the data so the United States climate temperature data, as reinterpreted by the federal government, they make the 1930’s and 40’s much cooler and that makes it look like there’s been a significant warming but in fact there has not.

Myron Ebell, CEI 11:25

So the next thing they try to do is exaggerate the impacts. And I have about 50 slides I could show you on the impacts of climate change. This is just tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes. Do you see a trend? The next thing they do is try to claim that replacing, turning world’s energy economy upside down, which is currently 80 percent fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) is really easy. And it’s really cheap. And it will create huge economic growth around the world. Well they make claim of this, going back to the 1970’s, these two have lines from the Wall Street Journal show. 1978 solar power 20 percent of needs by 2000 that is more subsidies, more solar. 2006, renewable fuels may provide 25 percent of U.S. energy by 2025. They make the same claims today. And that reality is just as far from being accomplished as it was in the 1970’s. So, so when you expose all of these arguments as phony and what is left but trying to win by silencing and defunding your opponents?

Myron Ebell, CEI 12:49

Now in Exxon’s case, they have already silenced them. They have already stopped funding the opponents of energy rationing and what is left to shake down Exxon and the industry. [RICO?] That’s why you continually hear this is just like big tobacco. Big oil is just like big tobacco. So this did not start last summer when Sheldon Whitehouse, the Senator from Rhode Island, published an op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he said, “it’s time to investigate big oil and their allies, just like we went after big tobacco.” This didn’t start then. It started in 2012 when there was a conference at the in La Jolla, California, according to , where I was privileged at one point to be a graduate student. Notice the subhead, “lessons from tobacco control.” You may not be able to read these but these are just little tidbits from the report that was published and I’m not going to spend much time on it because I’m already running out of time. But notice some of the organizers: Naomi Oreskes, Peter Frumhoff, also notice the name Matt Pawa, and Sharon Eubanks, and Mary Christina Wood, she’s the one who’s got the children’s lawsuitagainst climate change.

Myron Ebell, CEI 14:12

So on the 29th of March, the AGs United for Clean Power had a big pow wow in New York City. They had a press conference that ended with Al Gore and six AGs. Any of these AGs expressed an interest in being part of the litigation against Exxon and the idea is Exxon is the first. We move from Exxon to oil and their allies and then we move to the other fossil fuels.

So Peter Frumhoff was one of the private speakers at this conference. Before the press conference, Peter Frumhoff briefed them. Then Matt Pawa from the Pawa law firm. So this has been going on since 2012. Here are his helpers. And I won’t go through the list but I would just mention that Tom Steyeris also involved. He is a separate track from the Rockefellers, he’s working on his own. His lawyer Ted White in Denver is the key guy. 

Tom Steyer is not as important in the AGs United for Clean Power, but he is the key guy in arranging the governor’s court, the governor’s court for a clean energy future, which is the parallel organization. He’s, they’ve got not 17, they’ve got 23 governors. Four republicans. Rick Snyder of Michigan, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Terry Branstad of Iowa and Charles Baker of Massachusetts. And they tried to get more. They tried to get Hogan in Maryland, for example, McCrory in North Carolina and so on. So right now the climate inquisition is in retreat.

It’s in retreat because of what ExxonMobil has done. What CEI has done. And what a number of the attorneys general here today have done, in supporting our rights to free speech and freedom of association. So I want to thank Attorney General Strange for writing and getting the signers on that letter, I’m not going to go through everyone who signed it but we are very grateful and I think it had a big impact and I will talk about that later on where we go from here. But this query is far from over. Okay. Claude Walker, the Virgin Islands AG has been pushed back. Maura Healey has been somewhat pushed back. Kamala Harris is running for governor[he means senate? he think ca ppl like exxon?] and she has gone quiet at least for the moment. But Eric Schneiderman in New York has the Martin Act, which is much more powerful.

Myron Ebell, CEI 16:55

So his big deal is to, he gave a speech in which he lashed out at First Amendment opportunists.Speaking out on behalf, against global warming alarmism and against energy rationing policies. His First Amendment opportunists. He’s clearly rattled by, especially the letter from AGs. He’s clearly rattled by that. So we need to keep pushing that. We need to keep saying this is a matter of constitutional rights. And the second thing is don’t believe that the other side is going to give up.

This is not about winning a court case. This is a shake down of one of the biggest industries in the world. Tobacco, the tobacco settlement, it’s 10 billion dollars a year in protection money going to 46 states that litigated. 10 billion dollars a year. Think how much bigger the oil industry is, and the tobacco industry, and you get an idea of what their goals is. They see trillions of dollars in protection money and they are not going to give up. So, so they play a long game. Let me just conclude. Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, has said that the Justice Department is looking at it. And the Democratic platform advocates, it hasn’t been finally , the current Democratic party platform for this year says that they should be investigated for misleading shareholders and the public about the risks of climate change. So I’ll leave it right there and thank you very much.

Chet Thompson, AFPM 18:50

Thank you General Strange I appreciate it. Myron,

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gen'l http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/meet-myron-ebell-the-climate-contrarian-leading-trumps-epa-transition/

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-trump-ally-myron-ebell-spread-misinformation-big-tobacco-and-big-oil

"Frontiers will [change] the debate from one about teenage smoking and industry practices to one about massive tax increases, bigger government and loss of individual freedom.” —Frontiers of Freedom funding proposal to Philip Morris

When Phillip Morris didn’t like new FDA regulations that targeted cigarette sales to children and teens,Myron Ebell—who recently served as the head of President Trump's EPA transition team—was there to "change the debate" to fit the tobacco giant's agenda.

The FDA's proposed regulations included prohibiting outdoor advertising of any tobacco products near schools or playgrounds, strictly regulating labeling and prohibiting tobacco company sponsorships of public events. To fight the new restrictions, tobacco industry-funded Frontiers for Freedom started a campaign to cast doubt on the validity of the new regulations.

Frontiers, a conservative "educational foundation," hired Ebell as policy director to help run the campaign, even using his name to raise money for the project. In a fundraising letter to Philip Morris in 1998, Frontiers highlighted Ebell as an example of why more funding was needed to run an organized push to make regulating the tobacco industry "politically unpalatable."

The Frontiers campaign was pure spin. The tobacco companies' First Amendment rights were being trampled on, it claimed—more big government overreach. From pushing the dubious claim that rules infringed on smokers' and tobacco companies' rights to blaming smokers themselves, Ebell oversaw Frontier's tobacco-industry-funded drive to fight regulation. It took a 14-year battle for Congress to pass the regulations and make them stick. In the end, the tobacco advertising regulations made significant progress in curbing teen smoking, no thanks to Ebell and Frontiers for Freedom.

In April 1998, Ebell and a handful of other marketing experts sat around a table with some of the largest U.S. fossil fuel companies to discuss a plan for a similar attack on climate science. Representatives from Exxon, Chevron, utility giant Southern Company and the American Petroleum Institute worked with operatives from established conservative think tanks and public relations wonks to draft a program designed to attack public and political perceptions about climate change. They dubbed it the "Global Climate Science Communications Plan."

The plan's strategy was similar to Frontier's anti-regulation tobacco campaign. This time the goal was to make climate change-related regulation politically unpalatable. The foundation of the plan was to sow doubt about the scientific validity of action on climate change, even though in 1998 the science was already solid. Of the 96 papers published on global warming that year, just one disagreed about human activities driving warming. That truth about the state of the science was replaced with a push to convince "a majority of the American public" that "significant uncertainties exist in climate science.”

The seven-page directive boldly stated that "victory will be achieved" when the uncertainties about climate science are part of "common knowledge," when media recognizes and covers those uncertainties and when those promoting action on climate science appear out of touch.

Strategies and tactics of the plan included:

• Recruit and train a team of scientists for media outreach
• Produce a steady stream of op-eds written by these scientists
• Organize and teach conservative grassroots groups
• Become a one-stop-shop for members of Congress, state leaders and teachers looking for information about climate change
• Distribute materials directly to schools and convince a national TV journalist to produce a TV program outlining the supposed uncertainties

It worked. In 2007, television journalist John Stossel did a bang-up job promoting climate confusion with his special, "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity," for a special edition of "20/20." By 2016, a Pew poll found only 9 percent of conservative Republicans believed that climate research reflects the best available evidence, while 57 percent of that same group felt that climate research is influenced not by valid science, but by scientists' desire to advance their careers.

In 1999, Ebell moved to Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank funded by many of the same oil companies he'd sat around the table with the year before to hatch the plan to misinform the American public. From 1998 to 2005, ExxonMobil provided CEI with over $2 million of funding. As director of CEI's Center for Energy and Environment, Ebell put the plan to work.

Impacting the voice of elected officials was another key aspect of "victory” named in the 1998 disinformation plan. By that measure success was swift in coming. Just two years after the plan was hatched,CEI joined with conservative Senator James Inhofe as co-plaintiff in a lawsuit over the National Assessment, a federal report on climate change's impacts on the United State.

The lawsuit was designed to suppress publication and distribution of recent climate science findings. In 2003, CEI sued the U.S. government directly, demanding the National Assessment not be disseminated. In 2005, Senator Inhofe joined with Ebell and other climate science deniers on a speaker's panel for a CEI panel to discuss the Future of International and U.S. Climate Policy. By 2012, Ebell was bragging on his blog about Inhofe's legislation to block EPA regulations. It was a victory: Climate-change-related regulation had become politically unpalatable.

Opposition to the validity of climate science skyrocketed among conservative politicians after 1998. Fighting all government action on global warming is now a bullet point on the GOP’s purity test. Over that same period, oil industry financial support for political campaigns and lobbying efforts have overwhelmingly gone to Republicans.

The election of Donald Trump was icing on the climate science denial cake. Ebell was tapped to head Trump's EPA transition team. Eighteen years of work deceiving the public finally paid off for Ebell. His dream of drastically reducing the power of the EPA is being realized. Ebell headed Trump's EPA transition team. He oversaw the writing of a policy paper—not available to the public—that will steer fellow climate science denier and EPA antagonist-turned-EPA head Scott Pruitt. Under Pruitt's leadership, climate change-related regulations will be rolled back and the EPA's budget will be cut by 24 percent.

Ebell has no background in science. He studied philosophy and has a master’s degree in political theory. His understanding of modern climate science sounds like this:

The models say that much of the warming will occur in the upper latitudes and in the winter. At the risk of further ridicule in kooky blogs in England, where global warming alarmism is now a religion, that sounds pretty good to me. Fewer people will die from the cold.

Fossil fuel industries got what they wanted. Conservative politicians got what they wanted. CEI got what it wanted. Ebell got what he wanted. All at the expense of the environment, public health and the stability of future generations.

Watch a reporter shred Myron Ebell:

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A former top aide to Donald Trump says the president will "definitely" pull out of the Paris climate deal. Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s transition efforts for the Environmental Protection Agency, also said Monday that climate and environmental activists are "the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world."

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guard uk

.com/environment/2017/jan/30/green-movement-greatest-threat-freedom-says-trump-adviser-myron-ebell

no link

The environmental movement is “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world”, according to an adviser to the US president Donald Trump’s administration.

Myron Ebell, who has denied the dangers of climate change for many years and led Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) until the president’s recent inauguration, also said he fully expected Trump to keep his promise to withdraw the US from the global agreement to fight global warming.

Ebell said US voters had rejected what he dubbed the “expertariat” and said there was no doubt that Trump thinks that climate change is not a crisis and does not require urgent action.

Trump has already replaced the climate change page on the White House website with a fossil-fuel-based energy policy, resurrected two controversial oil pipelines and attempted to gag the EPA, the Agriculture Department and the National Parks Service.

Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and “bullshit”, has packed his administration with climate-change deniers but appeared to soften his stance after his election win, saying there is “some connectivity” between human activity and climate change. However, he also claimed action to cut carbon emissions was making US companies uncompetitive.

Ebell, who has returned to his role at the anti-regulation thinktank the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said on Monday: “The environmental movement is, in my view, the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.”

The CEI does not disclose its funders but has in the past received money from the oil giant ExxonMobil. “Our special interest is, I would say, freedom,” Ebell said.

During the US presidential campaign, Trump pledged to withdraw from the climate change deal agreed by 196 nations in Paris in 2015, making the US the only country considering doing so. “I expect President Trump to be very assiduous in keeping his promises,” Ebell said.

Rex Tillerson is big oil personified. The damage he can do is immense

Bill McKibben

Trump’s pick for secretary of state, the former ExxonMobil boss Rex Tillerson, appeared to contradict the president about leaving the climate agreement at his confirmation hearing, saying the US should keep “its seat at the table”.

“Who is going to win that debate? I don’t know but the president was elected and Tillerson was appointed by the president, so would guess the president will be the odds-on favourite,” said Ebell. “The people who elected him don’t want a seat at the table.”

[meme alert]

“The people of America have rejected the expertariat, and I think with good reason because I think the expertariat have been wrong about one thing after another, including climate policy,” he said. “The expert class, it seems to me, is full of arrogance or hubris.”

“I don’t think there is any doubt that [Trump] thinks that global warming is not a crisis and does not require drastic and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. The deal agreed by the world’s nations in Paris aims to hold the global temperature rise to well below 2C, a target that requires dramatic cuts in carbon emissions. Without this, the world’s climate experts concluded there will be “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” on people and the natural world.

Ebell, speaking in London, claimed that the motivation for climate action was protecting a special interest: “The climate-industrial complexis a gigantic special interest that involves everyone from the producers of higher priced energy to the academics that benefit from advancement in their careers and larger government grants.” The IMF has calculated that fossil fuels receive $10m every minute in subsidies, while the fossil fuel industry spends at least $100m a year on lobbying.

Scott Pruitt confirmation hearing for Environmental Protection Agency: the key points

Read more

China’s president, Xi Jinping, recently reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to tackling climate change and said the nation’s green investments were already “paying off”. China pledged earlier in January to invest $360bn in renewable energy by 2020.

In an echo of Trump’s claim that climate change was a hoax invented by China, Ebell said: “China is making big investments in producing more solar panels and windmills, which they sell to gullible consumers in the western world, so that power and electricity prices will become higher and the Chinese economy will become more competitive.”

Many experts say that the best way to “make America great again” would be to invest in the fast expanding, trillion-dollar market for clean technologies and that failing to tackle climate change will destroy economic growth.

Sam Hall of Bright Blue, a liberal conservative thinktank in the UK, said: “Despite the attempt by fringe elements to import ‘alternative facts’ from the US, mainstream conservatives in the UK support tackling climate change cost-effectively. Only last week, Theresa May’s Conservative government set out how she wants Britain to take advantage of the economic opportunities of new low carbon industries, such as battery storage and electric vehicles.”

Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US EPA, is a climate change sceptic and has sued the agency he is now set to lead 14 times over the EPA’s smog, mercury and other pollution regulations. His confirmation vote in the Senate is expected on Wednesday.

...

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http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-ebell-epa-advisor-2097121562.html

ref no link img

By Alex Formuzis and Sonya Lunder

Myron Ebell, head of President-elect Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, is a notorious denier of global warming whose biography unashamedly notes that he's considered a "climate criminal" by activists and "a superstar of the denialosphere" by The Climate War author Eric Pooley. But he's also director of environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which touts "the life-enhancing value of chemicals"—chemicals like arsenic, DDT and PCBs.

One of the the Competitive Enterprise Institute's projects is SafeChemicalPolicy.org. The site is bursting with articles and reports that cast doubt on the dangers of toxic chemicals and pesticides in food, water and consumer products, and disparage the work of public health advocates, with Environmental Working Group (EWG) one of the site's favorite targets

Here are just a few examples:

SafeChemicalsPolicy.org downplays the risks of arsenic in drinking water and toxic pesticides found on foods young children love to eat.

An article on the site says it's wrong for schools to notify parents before pesticides are sprayed inside and around schools.

It disparages public health advocates' concerns over fetuses being exposed to endocrine disruptors in the womb, including Monsanto's notorious PCBs and the now-banned pesticide DDT.

It actually makes the claim that glyphosate—the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, which the World Health Organization considers probably carcinogenic to humans—has "liberated" children from having to work in corn fields, pulling weeds.

There's much more: Anti-BPA Packaging Laws Jeopardize Public Health, Silent Spring Was Wrong and Erin Brockovich's Toxic Fearmongering.

"The simple reality," says the site, "is that modern living means living with chemicals." We couldn't agree more. The problem is that too many of those chemicals are hazardous to our health. The EPA is supposed to protect us from dangerous chemicals, not defend them, as Ebell would almost certainly do if he ran the agency.

As it turns out, EWG is a popular target among Trump's other top advisers. Steve Bannon, the former campaign CEO and incoming chief White House strategist attacked us when he was running the alt-right website Breitbart News.

We're used to it. In fact, when science deniers like Ebell and Bannon regularly get worked up over something you've said or done, it usually means you've said or done something right.

==

In various interviews on Thursday, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition chief Myron Ebell confirmed the Trump team would probably seek significant cuts to the agency's workforce and budget, but would not provide details of specific policy recommendations he made to the president.

http://www.ecowatch.com/ebell-epa-purge-2218823381.html

In various interviews on Thursday, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition chief Myron Ebell confirmed the Trump team would probably seek significant cuts to the agency's workforce and budget, but would not provide details of specific policy recommendations he made to the president.

Ebell, who told the AP that the federal government has "been staffed with scientists who believe the global-warming alarmist agenda," floated the idea of downsizing EPA from 15,000 to 5,000 employees as an "aspirational goal" but acknowledged that getting cuts that significant past Congress would be a challenge for the administration.

On the Hill, Sen Tom Harper, D-DE, blasted EPA Administrator nominee Scott Pruitt for giving answers "shockingly devoid of substance" to senators' written follow-up questions, as Oklahoman environmental lawyers lobbied lawmakers Wednesday to highlight Pruitt's cozy relationship with industry during his time as Oklahoma attorney general.

For a deeper dive:

Ebell:AP, Washington Post, Greenwire, Politico Pro

Pruitt: The Hill, InsideClimate News

Commentary: Washington Post explainer

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desmog cooler heads:

Actions

December, 2015

The Cooler Heads Coalition worked with a number of think tanks and advocacy groups including the Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, CFACT, Competitive Enterprise Institute and Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) to battle against a binding agreement at the COP-21 climate conference in Paris. [19]

As part of the effort, members of CHC from the US, Canada, and Europe attended a press conference on December 7 at a Heartland event titled “Day of Examining the Data.” The is below. [19]

img vid?

According to aCFACT Press Release, “CFACT is teaming up with the Heartland Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition to analyze the UN discussions, inject facts, and make available leading scientific and policy experts who offer much-needed balance to the climate debate. They will conduct a series of scientific briefings, press conferences and displays.”[22]

August 7, 2015

Myron Ebell, Chair of the Cooler Heads Coalition, spoke with H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute on the “extreme costs and minimal benefits [of] President Obama’s clean power plan.” [7]

June 19, 2015

Myron Ebell, Cooler Heads Coalition Chair, denounced Pope Francis'sEncyclical** on the Environmentas “scientifically ill-informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent, and morally obtuse.” [8]

According to Ebell,  “It is also theologically suspect, and large parts of it are leftist drivel, albeit couched in the vocabulary of Catholic social teaching” and a “”diatribe against modern industrial civilization.” [8]

March 4, 2015

The Cooler Heads Coalition's GlobalWarming.org showcased two charts that reported to “[expose] the unsustainability of the European Union’s proposal” to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions. [9],[10]

According to Marlo Lewis, “millions of people could still get hurt along the way before the wretched thing falls apart.”

June, 2009

Cooler Heads Coalition memberslobbied against the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” also known as the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill. [11], [12]

May 3, 2004

CHC held a congressional and media briefing entitled “Impacts of Global Warming: Why the Alarmist View is Wrong” on Capitol Hill.

Speakers included well known global warming deniers such as Madhav L. Khandekar, Nils-Axel Morner, Paul Reiter, and Patrick Michaels. They presented arguments against claims that global warming will cause increases in extreme weather events, sea level rise, vector-borne diseases, and species extinction. [14]

May 16, 2003

The Cooler Heads Coalition and the George C. Marshall Institute co-sponsored a media briefing by noted climate change denier Willie Soon, in an event titled “Was the 20th- Century Climate Unusual? Exploring the Lessons and Limits of Climate History.” [23]

May 14, 2002

CHC held a briefing at the National Press Club, in conjunction with Frontiers of Freedom and the Science and Environmental Policy Project, entitled “Experts Discuss Why U.S. Should Withdraw From Kyoto Treaty.” [13]

Publications

The Cooler Heads Coalition publishes a regular “digest” that regularly includes commentary and articles from leading climate change deniers. Samples below:

==

ref cei BS

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to “cancel immediately” all of President Obama’s “illegal and overreaching executive orders,” and he strongly opposes Obama’s climate agenda. Will Obama’s climate policy executive orders be among the first on Trump’s chopping block?

Here are three prime targets for repeal, beginning with the most recent.

• Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade (March 19, 2015). This order requires federal buildings to obtain at least 30 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030. All new federal buildings constructed in that year must be “energy net-zero,” meaning their energy consumption must be “balanced by onsite renewable energy.” Also in 2030, 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles in agency fleets must be zero-emission and plug-in hybrid vehicles. To carry out those and many other requirements, agencies must establish “chief sustainability officers” to implement “green supply chain management” under the tutelage of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In addition to using our tax dollars to expand the federal trough for green special interests, the order is a consciousness-raising exercise. If kept in place, it will help perpetuate climate-centric groupthink in federal agencies.

• Climate Resilient International Development (September 23, 2014). “This order requires the integration of climate-resilience considerations into all United States international development work to the extent permitted by law.” The main problem here is that development is the best strategy for making poor countries more resilient, and affordable energy is critical to development. Elevating “climate-resilience considerations” too easily becomes an excuse to deny poor countries access to affordable energy, ignore the real causes of poverty (corruption, lack of strong property rights), and legitimize phony grievances against the fossil energy-rich United States.

• Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change (November 1, 2013). This order requires federal agencies to promote “engaged and strong partnerships and information sharing at all levels of government” to help “safeguard our economy, infrastructure, environment, and natural resources” from climate change impacts. Agencies are to “support and encourage smarter, more climate-resilient investments by States, local communities, and tribes, including by providing incentives through agency guidance, grants, technical assistance, performance measures, safety considerations, and other programs, including in the context of infrastructure development.” In other words, the order directs agencies to recruit, indoctrinate, bankroll, and coordinate climate activists at all levels of government. Perhaps a better title for the order is “Mobilizing the Long March through the Institutions.”

==

transition energy:

icn:

Myron Ebell, chosen by Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, traces a long history as a determined conservative firebrand.

He rose through the ranks of the"wise-use" movement to land at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pushing an ideology of private property and free markets reigning supreme. He led activists calling themselves the Cooler Heads Coalition, pushing a brand of no-holds-barred climate denial, putting himself at the center of divisive advocacy wars over fossil fuels and the environment.

For decades, he has pushed the radical insistence that the environmental left has it all wrong: the science, the ideology, the economics and the politics of climate change.

The same views apply across the landscape of environmental policy, from land and water conservation to energy production.

During an earlier transition from one administration to another, as the Bush-Cheney Republicans arrived to displace the Clinton-Gore Democrats in 2001, he shared his views in an online chat sponsored by the Washington Post. He said Gail Norton, a Reagan-era private-property-rights champion nominated for Interior Secretary, and Spencer Abraham, a founder of the Federalist Society who had voted to abolish the Energy Department but now would run it,were "superb choices." But he reckoned that Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate from New Jersey who was to head the EPA, "may turn out to be a good choice or may not."

It was a savvy move to damn Whitman with such vanishingly faint praise. It would not be long before she was a victim of intense maneuvering against forceful action on climate change during the opening Bush-Cheney years. Ebell thought Whitman should only be retained if her EPA would "stop claiming regulatory authorities far beyond its legal authority."

It's just like his view today, except that there are new Obama-era targets, like the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.

Through all that ensued since 2001—the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol and the rise of the Paris Agreement; the Supreme Court decree that the EPA must control carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels; and the ensuing fight over regulations to do just that—Ebell has never wavered in his views.

So his ascendancy in the Trump camp alarms and exasperates people like Eric Schaeffer, former head of enforcement at EPA and now executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.

They know him as the author of a famous denialist alt-science memo in the 1990s, as an advocate who helped scuttle the Kyoto Protocol in the 2000s. He is also known as a happy warrior at CEI, funded generously by Exxon and by dark-money donors, that never concedes the field. They know that CEI remains engaged in a furious fight with state attorneys general over its own role in Exxon's record on climate change.They can only imagine how far he and the Trump team might go in de-funding and de-fanging the EPA.

"It tells me they are not approaching this analytically, logically, or even as economists," Schaeffer said. "They are approaching it as ideologues. And that's pretty dangerous. It used to be, even to some extent under 'W,' you talked in code or at least made some kind of showing of your interest in the environment and clean air and water, and having a credible EPA. They've completely thrown that overboard."

Already, CEI is getting very specific about the kinds of actions the Trump administration should take. This week it listed three executive orders exemplifying those that should be deep-sixed. (They involve energy conservation by the federal government, international development aid and protection of infrastructure from climate impacts.)

If the Clean Power Plan meets its demise, and particularly if the Paris Agreement goes down the same drain, the defeat for 21st century environmentalism would exceed the undoing of the Kyoto Protocol or the failure of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate bill early in the Obama years.

At its heart, it would be a victory for denial. And it would vindicate the long game plan of fossil fuel forces that recognized that financing the machinery of ideology was just as important as financing political campaigns—because Big Oil and Big Coal contributed relatively little this year to the Trump campaign, even as the fossil fuel camp scripted his thinly-embellished policy declarations.

One irony, said Jeremy Symons, associate vice president for climate policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, "is thatTrump said he would 'drain the swamp,' but Ebell is a creature of the swamp. He has been taking money from years from industry to slow and stop climate change."

Robert Brulle, a sociologist who has extensively documented the industry's support of climate denial, said CEI's biggest funder, pouring in $9.1 million between 2002 and 2013, was the Florida-basedDunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking. Run by futures trader William Dunn, the foundation is a major donor to free market think tanks and advocacy groups like the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The second largest funder, with $5 million since 2004, is Donors Trust, which has been called the "dark money ATM of the conservative movement." Its donors include the libertarian Koch brothers and other free enterprise philanthropists. Exxon also is among CEI's largest funders with $2 million between 2000 and 2005, but the big oil company hasn't given to CEI directly since 2006, when it began scaling back its funding of groups that deny climate science.

As far back as 1998, Ebell was among a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute and its allies proposing a denialist project to ''maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences,'' according to a memo they wrote. SMOKING GUN

During and after the election of 2000 and the transition from the Clinton-Gore administration to the Bush-Cheney regime, CEI fought to influence Washington's formal climate science assessments. Its lawyers sued to make sure that one major document, the National Climate Assessment, would not carry any policy weight.

In 2002, Ebell offered CEI's help to Philip Cooney, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, to "clean up the mess." That was in the wake of the State Department filing a U.S. Climate Action Report that included the United Nations finding that global warming posed a significant risk and was caused by fossil fuel emissions.

Cooney, who joined the Bush administration after a decade as a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, had edited government reports to emphasize doubt about climate change. That was documented in 2005 by whistleblower Rick Piltz,a former senior official in the government's climate change science program. (Piltz resigned from the government and founded Climate Science Watch in 2005. He died in 2014. Cooney resigned from the Bush administration after Piltz's disclosures and took a job at Exxon.)

"Thanks for calling and asking for our help," Ebell said in an email to Cooney in 2002.

But true to form, his email had a badgering, even threatening tone, criticizing the Bush administration's handling of climate change reports and warning that CEI would fight any policies it viewed as errant. Ebell promised in the email "to do as much as we could to deflect criticism by blaming the EPA for freelancing."

Ebell said it was imperative to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish."

Whitman, he said, should go.

"It seems to me that the folks at EPA are the obvious fall guys, and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible," Ebell wrote.

Whitman, who now runs her own strategic planning and consulting group, said in an interview that she never had any personal dealings with Ebell. While at EPA, the pressures that concerned her the most came mainly from Cheney and his staff. "I suspect he had a little more pull than Myron,"Whitman said. As for Ebell: "There's always going to be those kind of people out there. You just can't worry about it."

The incident prompted two state attorneys general to request a Justice Department investigation into any improper collusion, but that went nowhere.

Several Democratic attorneys general referenced possible collusion between Exxon and groups like CEI when they announced investigations of Exxon for potential climate fraud. That came after InsideClimate News and others published histories of Exxon's own climate research and its subsequent support for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus.

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands went so far as to subpoena CEI's records from the Bush-Cheney transition era, but CEI fought back hard—as did Exxon and several Republican state attorneys general and Republicans on a House committee—and deflected the inquiry.

At a meeting of Republican state attorneys general this summer, Ebell lashed out at Exxon foes, saying the Democratic attorneys general and environmental organizations were colluding to "silence and defund the opponents of global warming alarmism." DOES HE MEAN RICO?

An audio recording of the session "Climate Change Debate: How Speech is Being Stifled" was obtained and released by the Center for Media and Democracy.

Ebell set the tone by disparaging those who embrace the overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is warming.

"Why is the left so intent on trying to win the debate by silencing and de-funding their opponents? Well, they have a little problem, we've got reality on our side," Ebell said.

"So when you expose all of these arguments as phony, what is left but trying to win by silencing and defunding your opponents?" he said.

As CEI has done in legal filings and in newspaper advertising, he called it a matter of constitutionally protected free speech.

Months before Trump emerged victorious, and before Ebell was named to play a big role in the new administration's agenda-setting, he declared confidently that "right now the climate inquisition is in retreat," he said. "It's in retreat because of what ExxonMobil has done. What CEI has done."

Now that Ebell is on the inside of an administration, though, his influence is likely to multiply. "That's what worries me," said Whitman. "Of all the promises Trump made during the campaign that now seem to be a little less certain,EPA is probably the one he'll stick with, because it is so universally thought of as being the source of all evil. And that is very troubling."

Neela Banerjee, Marianne Lavelle and David Hasemyer contributed reporting for this story.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

POLITICS

REGULATION

DONALD TRUMP

EPA

==

ebell spoke at raga conf on free sp:

wapo ref 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/conservative-groups-pour-money-into-races-for-state-attorneys-general/2016/09/23/7a57030c-7e86-11e6-8d13-d7c704ef9fd9_story.html?utm_term=.c83a00e2b380

The Republican state attorneys general have attacked Democratic AGs over an investigation into whether ExxonMobil knew about the threat of climate change as early as the 1970s and whether the oil giant violated securities law by misleading the public and investors about the potential consequences.

The New York and Massachusetts attorneys general have issued broad subpoenas in the matter, but Exxon, which says it has already provided New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman about 1 million documents, has complained that Schneiderman is violating the company’s freedom of speech.

Republicans have accused Schneiderman of colluding with environmental groups and liberal nonprofits to come up with a plan to use the same strategy against the oil industry that was used against the tobacco industry.

The flap was at the top of the agenda when RAGA held its summer meeting at the Broadmoor hotel in Colorado Springs on July 11. The first panel, attended by hundreds of corporate executives, was titled “Climate Change Debate — How Speech Is Being Stifled.”

The meeting did not include any scientific experts on climate change. Instead the panel included a longtime denier of climate change,Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Chet M. Thompson, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, whose plants are major emitters of greenhouse gases. The AFPM gave RAGA $50,900 last year and has given $135,000 so far in 2016.

“We’ve got reality on our side,” Ebell said. He called the investigation of Exxon an “inquisition.” Ebell’s group received about $2 million from Exxon in the 2000s before the company switched direction and stopped funding the small group.

Challenging the overwhelming consensus among scientists that climate change is real, Ebell said that “the first thing they try to do is try to change reality. They try to change the facts.” He added, “The next thing they try to do is exaggerate the impacts.”

“This is not about climate change, and it’s not about fraud,” Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange interjected, according to a recording of the event provided by the Center for Media and Democracy. “It’s about if elected officials should be able to turn the prosecutorial power of their states against their political opponents in contradiction of our First Amendment and our basic speech rights in this country.”

Strange, who becomes RAGA chairman in November, told the group that he had “never received a penny from Exxon in any campaign I’ve run.” The oil giant, however, gave $50,000 to RAGA in 2015 and another $50,000 this year, according to filings by RAGA to the Treasury.

---

http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/10/12/media-guide-fossil-fuel-industry-players-setting-trump-s-energy-agenda/213618

Myron Ebell

The Trump Connection

Myron Ebell is reportedly running the Trump campaign’s EPA transition team.

The Fossil Fuel Connection

Ebell is the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has received $1,690,000 in funding from ExxonMobil since Ebell joined CEI in 1999. During that time period, CEI also received approximately $5.2 million from DonorsTrust and $1.1 million from Donors Capital Fund -- two dark-money groups backed by the oil billionaire Koch brothers -- as well as $150,000 from the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation and $104,703 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. The Washington Postrecently reported that DonorsTrust “is staffed largely by people who have worked for Koch Industries or non-profit groups supported by the conservative Koch brothers” and “has given to other non-profit groups supported by the Kochs.” Ebell said in an August 5 interview on C-SPAN that he would “like to see a lot more funding” from big coal companies.

What Else You Need To Know

Ebell has claimed that the Clean Power Plan is “obviously illegal,” and on Federalist Radio, he said of the Paris climate agreement: “I don’t want to say it’s a disaster, but I think it is potentially a disaster for humankind and not necessarily any good for the planet.”

Ebell is also the chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a collection of groups that “question global warming alarmism and oppose energy-rationing policies,” according to CEI. In 2006, CEI ran a television ad with a tagline about carbon pollution that stated, "They call it pollution. We call it life." According to Vanity Fair, Ebell said he was “delighted at the howls it provoked.” In March 2015, during a Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) panel on climate change, Ebell falsely claimed that NASA deceptively "switch[es] the data" to make its climate change models look accurate. And in September 2015, Ebell spoke at a panel at the Republican Attorney Generals’ Association (RAGA) summer meeting titled “Climate Change Debate — How Speech Is Being Stifled.” The Post reported that during the panel, Ebell “challeng[ed] the overwhelming consensus among scientists that climate change is real.”

In 2003, Ebell worked with the Bush administration to attack an EPA report stating that human activities cause climate change. The Guardian reported:

Central to the revelations of double dealing is the discovery of an email sent to Phil Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, by Myron Ebell, a director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI is an ultra-conservative lobby group that has received more than $1 million in donations since 1998 from the oil giant Exxon, which sells Esso petrol in Britain.

The email, dated 3 June 2002, reveals how White House officials wanted the CEI's help to play down the impact of a report last summer by the government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in which the US admitted for the first time that humans are contributing to global warming. 'Thanks for calling and asking for our help,' Ebell tells Cooney.

The email discusses possible tactics for playing down the report and getting rid of EPA officials, including its then head, Christine Whitman. 'It seems to me that the folks at the EPA are the obvious fall guys and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible,' Ebell wrote in the email. 'Perhaps tomorrow we will call for Whitman to be fired,' he added.

Harold Hamm

The Trump Connection

Trump is considering Harold Hamm as energy secretary, according to a Reuters report. Additionally, Trump adviser Stephen Moore toldPolitico’s Morning Energy that Hamm is the “most influential” person in shaping Trump’s energy policies.

The Fossil Fuel Connection

Hamm is the CEO of Continental Resources, one of the top independent oil producers in the U.S. and a pioneer in fracking. Hamm is reportedly worth $10 billion. If appointed, Hamm would be the “first U.S. energy secretary drawn directly from the oil and gas industry since the cabinet position was created in 1977," according to Reuters.

What Else You Need To Know

Hamm is a member of the Interstate Oil And Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), a “quasi-governmental” organization created by Congress that, according to Donald Flexner, chief of the energy section of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, essentially serves as an oil industry lobbying group and “has been quietly working for decades to restrict federal oversight of oil and gas,” as InsideClimate News (ICN) reported. The IOGCC claimed credit for a measure within the 2005 Energy Policy Act that exempted hydraulic fracturing -- or fracking -- from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. That provision, known as the “Halliburton loophole,” has “helped enable the modern fracking boom that has created vast economic benefits, but also has been implicated in cases of drinking water contamination, air pollution and rising emissions of climate-changing methane,” ICN reported.

In 2014, a New York Timesinvestigation documented that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general were engaged in an “unprecedented, secretive alliance” with large fossil fuel companies to “push back against the Obama regulatory agenda," and that Hamm was one of Pruitt’s “closest partners.” Hamm served as chairman of Pruitt’s re-election campaign in 2013 and 2014, and in recent years, Pruitt has been fighting the EPA’s efforts to protect drinking water from industrial pollution and reduce methane emissions, among other environmental and health safeguards.

Hamm also exploited the June mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub to baselessly call for more drilling. During his July 20 speech supporting Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Hamm stated: "Every time we can't drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded. Orlando brought this home once again. … Every onerous regulation puts American lives at risk. Developing America's own oil supply is a matter of national security.” But the CIA chief said he was not “able to uncover any link” between the Orlando shooter Omar Mateen and ISIS, and increased U.S. oil production has done nothing to weaken -- and may even have helped -- ISIS, as Fortunereporter Chris Matthews has explained.

Stephen Moore

The Trump Connection

In May, Politico reported that Trump tapped Stephen Moore to assist in remaking his tax plan. Moore is currently listed on Trump’s “economic advisory council.”

The Fossil Fuel Connection

In January 2014, Moore became the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobiland millions from the Koch Family Foundations. On September 28, Politico reported that Moore went on leave from the Heritage Foundation through the election, but he is currently listed on the website as a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow.”

What Else You Need To Know

In November, Moore completely distorted a NASA scientist’s study about East Antarctic ice to claim it was an “indication” that global warming is “actually not happening.” Moore has also claimed that opposing fracking “is like being against a cure for cancer” because it is “one of the great seismic technological breakthroughs” that is “giving us huge amounts of energy at very low prices.”

==

==

the good e&E:

TRANSITION

Who is Myron Ebell?

Evan Lehmann, E&E News reporter

Climatewire: Monday, November 21, 2016

Myron Ebell, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute,testifies at a 2009 hearing on cap-and-trade legislation in the House. Ebell, a prominent climate change skeptic, is leading the U.S. EPA transition for the Trump administration. Photo courtesy of C-SPAN.

Andrew Moylan was about to make waves. So he arranged a meeting with Myron Ebell, to lay out his plan to push Republicans toward supporting a carbon tax.

Moylan was giving early notice to one of Washington's biggest critics of climate science. He didn't expect the bespectacled Ebell to lend his support. Still, Moylan described what happened next as "unusual."

"Myron just cut right to the chase and said, 'Listen, you're wrong, and we're going to beat you,'" recalled Moylan, now executive director of the libertarian R Street Institute.

The encounter, which occurred several years ago, encapsulates Ebell's unmoving attitude against climate action or even a willingness to discuss it, according to people who have tried.

E&E News' ongoing coverage of the new administration and the changes taking place on Capitol Hill. Click here to view the continuing coverage.]

Now, after a career of advancing theories that question the scientific underpinnings of global warming, he is overseeing U.S. EPA's transition into President-elect Donald Trump's administration. It's not lost on many observers, liberal and conservative alike, that Ebell is not a scientist and has never worked for the agency whose environmental mission he has attacked for years.

Environmentalists have called his selection a "sick joke." Even some Republicans wonder how someone who has spent most of his career at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, could be thrust into a prominent role that includes interviewing agency staff, identifying potential employees and designing a new direction for EPA under a president who has threatened to shrink its authority.

"Given that Arrhenius sussed out the mechanics of global warming in the 19th century, it's kind of sad that we have a physics denier leading the environmental transition for a 21st-century president," said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, an environmental group leading efforts to end the use of fossil fuels.

He was referring to the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius, who in 1896 pioneered the "greenhouse law," a mathematical formula that is still used to calculate carbon dioxide's impact on temperatures.

Ebell declined to comment for this story. But it's likely that he would welcome a debate with McKibben about how much the Earth is warming, or not warming, because of human activity. It's also plausible that Ebell would feel victorious at the end.

Those who know him shrug off the idea that Ebell is a hired gun for the fossil fuel industry. He's a true believer, they say.

Professionally, he's fought with lawmakers and criticized the pope. He's declared war, and victory, over climate advocates. And he takes partial credit for convincing Republicans to avoid action on warming.

Away from work, Ebell is married to a Sunday school teacher, and he has four grown children. Along the way, he has stumbled financially on his house and with the IRS.

Before all of that, he was a bookish kid who shot mule deer.

A homestead on fire

Ebell grew up in the sagebrush hills of eastern Oregon, in a town settled by gold miners at the beginning of the Civil War. Baker City is nestled in a small bowl at 3,500 feet, and tall mountains climb toward the sky in most directions.

It's closer to Idaho geographically, and politically, than to the liberal coastline and Portland. Ebell would have seen the strong influence of the federal government, which owns more than half the land in Baker County, on policies affecting cattle grazing, land access and wildfire.

To this day, Ebell criticizes the "bicoastal urban elite" who insist on being "hysterical" about the idea that climate change affects everything from storms to drought. Environmentalism isn't about protecting nature, he has said, but about advancing "eco-imperialism."

The Ebells homesteaded their Oregon farm in the 1860s. It grew to several thousand acres, and to this day, a creek and other features carry his family name. Ebell's childhood property, named Sky Ranch, is still in the family. Much of its evergreen forest burned in a wildfire last August.

Ebell was there, watching the trees crackle with flame from the base of small Cassidy Mountain at his cousin's barn lot. He blamed the government, not climate change. Mismanaged federal forests left too much tinder in the mountains, and rules preventing roads slowed response times, said John Ebell, the cousin.

"He knows what the problems are," he said of Myron.

As children, they sometimes hunted deer together and rode horseback. They grew apart in high school because of divergent interests. Myron was focused on "learning and book reading," said John Ebell, who preferred fixing tractors and other machinery.

Ebell left his family's remote mountain home in 1971 to attend Colorado College. But he carried his childhood convictions with him.

After graduating, he attended the London School of Economics, where he earned a master's degree, according to a two-page biography written by Ebell. He appears to have been unhurried during that period of his life, taking postgraduate classes at Cambridge University and the University of California, San Diego.

The first professional job Ebell lists on his biography is assistant to the chairman of the National Taxpayers Union. News reports suggest that occurred sometime in the late 1980s.

By 1990, then in his late 30s, he was representing theNational Inholders Association as a lobbyist. The group fought against federal policies on behalf of people with cabins and other property in national parks and forests — so-called inholders.

It was then that Ebell first tussled with former Rep. Barney Frank, the Democratic gay lawmaker from Massachusetts.

Ebell arranged for himself to testify, at the last minute, about private easements to public lands. At one point, he called environmental groups "radical," and Frank, who was acting chairman of the subcommittee, pushed him to cite those that were and were not on the fringe.

Ebell: "Well ... some are more radical than others."

Frank: "Why don't you start with the most radical and we'll go from there."

Ebell later provided a list in writing.

Ebellian or Orwellian?

He kept appearing in Congress, though usually in the audience. In 1994, Democratic Senate staffers summoned three U.S. Capitol Police officers when Ebell refused to remove fliers from a press table describing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as secretary "of the inferior." Ebell was verbally reprimanded.

Six months later, in early 1995, Ebell showed his willingness to antagonize authority again. This time, he poked the top Republican. In a leaked memo, he claimed that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was going to be a "big problem" on loosening the Endangered Species Act. The memo said Gingrich has "soft feelings for cuddly little critters."

Ebell also served as a legislative assistant to former Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) and as policy director at Frontiers of Freedom.

At about that time, Ebell and his family ran into financial trouble. Public records show that his house in Prince George's County, Md., was foreclosed on in 1996. He had purchased it eight years earlier for $130,000. The Maryland Department of Assessment & Taxation lists the current owner as Citicorp Mortgage Inc., but court records from last year involving the bank say Ebell and his wife "are the owners of the property."

Ebell and his family still live in the house.

His finances were again pulled into public view in 2011, when the IRS applied a federal tax lien to his finances in the amount of $114,780. Court records indicate that Ebell satisfied that debt in 2013.

I think he understands other people's viewpoints. I think he just dismisses them.

Andrew Moylan, R Street Institute

Ebell began working on climate policy in earnest just before he joined the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1999.

A year earlier, he and 12 other people representing the fossil fuel industry and conservative groups wrote the "Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan." The memo by the American Petroleum Institute outlines a strategy to "undercut" mainstream findings on global warming. Its goal was to persuade journalists, teachers and others to highlight scientific uncertainties in climate change.

Over the years, Ebell has argued that warming is a good outcome, especially for Minnesotans and other northerners who face bitter winters.He said a report released this year by the National Intelligence Council is "filled with gems of junk science." And he promised to make the idea of a carbon tax politically "toxic" in 2012, so that Republicans would think twice before supporting initiatives like the one proposed by Moylan, of the conservative R Street Institute.

In person, Ebell sometimes talks with razor blades. Those who have dealt with him, even Republicans, say he tends to categorize people as adversaries or allies. There isn't often an in-between.

He has been known to treat those on the right who accept the scientific underpinnings of rising temperatures as "traitors" and "enemies," according to sources.

"He's very Orwellian," said one Republican. "If there's a Republican who wants to be constructive [on climate policy], they're an enemy."

Some believe that Ebell's dissenting voice can benefit serious discussions about climate action. One Republican, who believes that warming deserves Congress' attention, said meaningful legislation should be shaped by everyone in the debate, even those who question the science.

"I think his value is that he shares such a passion. It will help thread the needle" on drafting policy, the Republican strategist said. "You need both opposing viewpoints to get to the art of the possible."

To others, Ebell seems to be eagerly impolite, especially in the world of think-tankers who are used to having their ideas challenged, if it happens, in a starched-shirt kind of way.

Or he's just blunt.

That's how Moylan sees him, even after the meeting in which Ebell promised to fight his carbon tax idea tooth-and-nail. He describes Ebell as a smart, honest, and "exceedingly interesting" person. He also happens to be rigidly adhered to his worldview.

"I think he understands other people's viewpoints; I think he just dismisses them," said Moylan.

Reporters Emily Holden and Kavya Balaraman contributed.

Email: elehmann@eenews.net

==

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Land_Rights_Association

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The **American Land Rights Association** (ALRA) is aWise Use organization based in Battle Ground, Washington. The group describes itself as "dedicated to the wise-use of our resources, access to our Federal lands and the protection of our private property rights."^[1]

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1History
• 2Activism
• 3References
• 4External links

History[edit]

The organization was founded in 1978 by property owners in the community of Wawona, California,^[2] located within Yosemite National Park.^[3] It was initially named the National Park Inholders Association; it describes its mission at that time as "to protect private property landowners from unwanted acquisition by the National Park Service".^[1]

The group changed its name to the National Inholders Association (NIA) in 1980. In 1985, it added a number of grazing permittees on federal land to its membership roll. In the early 1990s, it championed the cause of mining claimholders. In 1995, the organization was renamed the American Land Rights Association (ALRA).^[1]

ALRA and other Wise Use organizations were most politically active in the 1990s fighting land use restrictions by the Clinton administration.[citation ^needed] With Republicans in control in Congress and the White House in the 2000s, ALRA had more friends in Washington;[citation ^needed] this allowed them to exercise some power over the administration's appointments. A notable case was that of John Turner, a friend of vice-president Dick Cheney,^[4] who was under consideration for the #2 position in the Department of the Interior.^[5] ALRA and other property-rights organizations opposed Turner's appointment because of his position as president of the Conservation Fund, which an ALRA release asserted was "dedicated to threatening, dividing and isolating land owners and small towns".^[6] President George W. Bush chose not to appoint Turner, instead selecting mining-industry lobbyist J. Steven Griles.^[5]

Activism[edit]

ALRA cooperates with broad-based conservative organizations on land-use related issues.^[7][8][9] It sponsors the Land Rights Network, a nationwide mail, phone, fax and e-mail lobby outreach network.[citation ^needed] It also organizes the League of Private Property Voters, which has published a vote index since 1990, scoring members of Congress on votes relating to regulations on private property rights and restrictions on use of federal public lands.^[10] The League promotes some general conservative causes unrelated to land use as well: for example, their 2007 ratings of U.S. Senate members were based on ten votes, one of which was a measure to prevent restoration of the Fairness Doctrine on radio and television.^[11] ALRA has also sent representatives to testify before various governing bodies.^[12][13]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^Jump up to:^a^ ^b^ ^c^ "ALRA Mission and History". ALRA website. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
2. Jump up Cushman, Chuck. "Yosemite Alert." ALRA Action Alerts. 2003-03-31. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
3. Jump up "The Redwoods" (vacation-home rental website). Retrieved 2010-01-08.
4. Jump up Mcallister, Bill. "Interior politics take odd twist over top posts". Denver Post. 2001-02-04. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
5. ^ ^Jump up to:^a^ ^b^ Seelye, Katharine G."Bush Is Choosing Industry Insiders to Fill Several Environmental Positions". New York Times. 2001-05-12. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
6. Jump up Eckles, Susan. "Interior Department: the Good, Bad, and Very Ugly". American Land Rights Association: Land Rights Network. Quoted in full at off-road.com. 2005-12-01. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
7. Jump up "American Land Rights Association". State Policy Network. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
8. Jump up "American Land Rights Association (ALRA)".Policy Experts. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
9. Jump up "Land Rights Group Supports Bush Tax Plan". E-Wire press release. 2001-03-05. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
10. Jump up "League of Private Property Voters". American Land Rights Association. 1998-10-16. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
11. Jump up "2007 Private Property Congressional Vote Index". League of Private Property Voters. February 2007. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
12. Jump up "Hearings: Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water". U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. 2003-06-17. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
13. Jump up "National Trails Act: Testimony by Chuck Cushman". American Land Rights Association. 2005-07-26. Retrieved 2010-01-08.

External links[edit]

• Official website

Categories: 

• Advocacy groups in the United States

==

sercwatch

The American Land Rights Association was founded in 1977 by property owners located within Yosemite National Park and was known as the National Park Inholders Assosiation.

"Its mission was to protect private property landowners from unwanted acquisition by the National Park Service," ALRA's website states. [1] In 1980 it changed its name to National Inholders Association (NIA) to broaden its focus to all private land owners within or adjoining public lands. In 1995, the NIA was renamed the American Land Rights Association (ALRA).

"ALRA is a national clearinghouse and support coalition encouraging family recreation, multiple-use, commodity production, and access to federally-controlled and state lands. Its purpose is to oppose selfish, single-use, restrictive land use designations that damage local economies, schools and roads in rural America," it states on its website.[2]

ALRA was one of the leading groups in the anti-environmental Wise Use Movement that reached its peak in the 1990's opposing public lands initiatives of the Clinton administration. With Republicans taking control in Congress and the White House, ALRA had more friends in Washington DC [3] but has still opposed some Republican initiatives [4] and nominees [5].

It sponsors the Land Rights Network, a nationwide mail, phone, fax and e-mail lobby network.

Other SourceWatch resources

• Wise Use Movement

Contact details

ALRA

30218 N.E. 82nd Ave.

PO Box 400

Battle Ground, WA 98604

Tel: 360-687-3087

FAX: 360-687-2973

Web: http://www.landrights.org

Categories: 

• Environment
• United States

==

https://books.google.com/books?id=giTwwvtIkdEC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=National+Inholders+Association+as+a+lobbyist&source=bl&ots=EmJe3EWyxO&sig=XVP4r-bEAgRB5Pn5sfC7tfFnvBk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH2vqq3qbRAhXMSyYKHStuADYQ6AEIQjAG#v=onepage&q=National%20Inholders%20Association%20as%20a%20lobbyist&f=false

cushman bankrupt, irs, borows from elderly; wife recycle organic gardner divorce, envies ron robinson on that score

The War Against the Greens: The "Wise-Use" Movement, the New Right, and the ...

By David Helvarg

==

no link img

Here's what we know about Myron Ebell, Trump's top climate advisor

When it comes to climate change, President-elect Donald Trump has said he does not believe human activity is one of its leading causes - despite 97% of scientists making statements to the contrary, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

In 2012, Trump tweeted that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive."

    The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

Along his presidential campaign trail, Trump vowed to cancel the Paris agreement, dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency and remove restrictions on oil, gas and coal mining. To achieve these goals, Trump has named Myron Ebell, a climate change doubter, to oversee the EPA transition.

Who is Myron Ebell? Here's what we know.

Ebell is a self-proclaimed policy wonk.

Here's what we know about Myron Ebell, Trump's top climate advisor

Myron Ebell believes climate change is a hoax.

Source: The Young Turks/YouTube

According to the Washington Post, Ebell works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has received funding from ExxonMobil. Like Trump, he takes a strong stance against the scientific consensus that climate change is overwhelmingly human-caused.

Ironically, he's not actually considered a scientist. He majored in philosophy at University of California, San Diego and pursued studies in political theory and history at the London School of Economics and Cambridge, respectively.

He believes global warming is sheer alarmism.

Here's what we know about Myron Ebell, Trump's top climate advisor

According to Ebell, climate change is something you should not worry about.

Source: Bill Wechter/Getty Images

Ebell is the head of the Cooler Heads Coalition, an organization that describes itself as "an ad-hoc group focused on dispelling the myths of global warming focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis." Ebell leads this group, which challenges "global alarmism" and opposes "energy rationing policies."

He admits that there has been an unusual temperature rise, yet he deems it normal: "There has been a little bit of warming ... but it's been very modest and well within the range of natural variability, and whether it's by human beings or not, it's nothing to worry about," he told Vanity Fair in 2007.

He's been called a "climate criminal."

A protester holds a sign that reads "Myron Ebell Criminal" in Berlin, Germany.

Source: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

During the 2015 U.N. Climate Summit in Paris, global advocacy organization Avaaz ran a campaign that named a group of seven "climate criminals" from a list of over 50,000 delegates at the summit. Ebell was among the seven notorious lobbyists who Avaaz's Acting Executive Director Emma Ruby-Sachs said were sabotaging "a global deal for ambitious climate action, despite over 3.6 million citizens around the world calling for 100% clean energy."

According to Mashable, Avaaz plastered nearly 1,000 "Wanted" posters featuring the faces of "climate criminals" outside five-star hotels in Paris. The organization also handed out flyers at important Metro stations in France's capital city with photos of the lobbyists.  

It's a moniker Ebell had been tagged with before. According to his bio, submitted to the House of Representatives, Greenpeace featured him in "A Field Guide to Climate Criminals" at the 2005 U.N. climate meeting in Montreal.

He opposes the Clean Power Plan.

Here's what we know about Myron Ebell, Trump's top climate advisor

Ebell calls President Obama's Clean Power Plan "illegal."

Source: Reed Saxon/AP

In August 2015, President Barack Obama presented the Clean Power Plan, which seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. Thanks to the Clean Power Plan, the Environmental Protection Agency would have the authority to regulate carbon pollution and expand renewable energy.

Ebell called the plan "illegal," according to Fortune. The New York Times reported that Ebell hoped whoever was elected president "would undo the EPA power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy." Now that Trump is president-elect, Ebell may have the power to roll back the Clean Power Act.

Robert is a news staff writer based in New York. His writing has appeared in the World Politics Review, Fusion, and the Miami Herald. He's a frequent guest in English- and Spanish-speaking media, including CNN, Univision, Al Jazeera, Public Radio International, and Voice of America. You can reach him at rvalencia@mic.com

==

watts glee on "meltdown" petition reactions

There is so much incredulity, that Snopes had to make a page saying that it was in fact true.

==

nyt on trans team:

mug-shot posters, pasted on walls and lampposts around Paris by an activist group during the United Nations climate talks last year, were hardly flattering. They depicted Myron Ebell, a climate contrarian, as one of seven “climate criminals” wanted for “destroying our future.”

But in his customary mild-mannered way, Mr. Ebell, who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, brushed it off.

“I’ve gotten used to this over the years,” he at the talks. “But I did go out and get my photo taken with my poster, just so I have it as a memento.”

In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell.

Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly.

Mr. Ebell, whose organization is financed in part by the coal industry, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the linchpin of that policy, the Clean Power Plan. Developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plan is a far-reaching set of regulations that, by seeking to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation, could result in the closing of many coal-burning power plants, among other effects.

Mr. Ebell has said that the plan, which has been tied up in the courts since it was finalized in 2015, is illegal. In the interview in Paris last year, he said he hoped whoever was elected president would “undo the E.P.A. power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy.”

As the person Mr. Trump has chosen to lead the transition at the E.P.A., Mr. Ebell, 63, will be in a position to begin to do just that.

Mr. Ebell, who did not respond to a request for an interview,grew up on a ranch in Oregon. He got his undergraduate degree at Colorado College and master’s at the London School of Economics, where he studied under the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. He has described himself as “sort of a contrarian by nature and upbringing,” and has said he was very strongly influenced by the “question authority” ethos of 1960s and ’70s counterculture

“I really think that people should be suspicious of authority,” he told an interviewer last year. “The more you’re told that you have to believe something, the more you should question it.”

Mr. Ebell leads the Cooler Heads Coalition, a loose-knit group that says it is “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.” He has been one of the nation’s most visible climate contrarians, known for dispensing memorable sound bites on cable news shows and at events like the annual conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based group that rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.

---

ref, just rebranded cei cee blog:

http://www.globalwarming.org/about/

==

http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/11/17/cnn-s-jake-tapper-exposes-trump-adviser-myron-ebell-industry-funded-climate-change-denier/214515

JAKE TAPPER (HOST): As the world tries to figure out just what comes next, one of the clearest policy differences between the current president and his successor, President-elect Trump, has to do with combating climate change. President-elect Trump has made no bones about his belief, contrary to the vast majority of scientists, that man-made climate change is not a legitimate phenomenon. And now he is tapping one of the nation’s leading climate change deniers to head the transition for the Environmental Protection Agency, someone who may not want the agency to exist at all. 

[...]

TAPPER: Suffice it to say, Donald Trump is not a big believer in man-made climate change, contrary to the views and data of the vast majority of scientists. 

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

DONALD TRUMP: Our plan will end the EPA, which is a -- hey, look, it's all wonderful, but it's a disaster. 

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: That's why the former EPA administrators under Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush hammered Trump during the election for pledging to yank the U.S. from the Paris accords, an international agreement to fight climate change, a move they said, quote, would set the world back decades. Leading the Trump transition team on environmental matters is an avid climate change denier. A man who was once funded by the tobacco industry to fight those seeking to further regulate cigarettes. Myron Ebell is the director of the Center For Energy And Environment, part of a libertarian think tank that, quote, questions global warming alarmism, partly funded by some of the same industries such as coal that are being hurt by the regulations of the fossil fuel industry. Ebell has long fought against environmental regulations, arguing they're an extension of government power. As he told PBS in 2012, he rejects the reams of data and evidence suggesting that man-made climate change is real. 

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

MYRON EBELL:  We believed that the so-called global warming consensus was not based on science but was a political consensus. 

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: That's rejecting evidence accepted by most scientists, as well as a growing number of Republicans, including former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP] 

BOB INGLIS: It's really quite comical, really, to have one of the Merchants of Doubt as the head of EPA. That really would be a continuing joke on America. 

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: As founder of environmental group republicEn, Inglis says there must be a way everyone can move forward together. A balanced way. 

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

INGLIS: This is for real. And it’s happening to us now. We want to take care of the problem. It may be, just maybe, that somebody like Donald Trump could show that there is a free enterprise answer to climate change. But he won't show it if he's got Myron Ebell as the director -- as the administrator of EPA, however. 

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: Trump's appointee will also have the power to affect how we work with the international community to combat a changing environment that has proven deadly time and again. Ebell tops Trump's list less than a year after protesters publicly named him a climate criminal during an annual U.N. conference in Paris.

Related:

InsideClimate News: Myron Ebell, the Climate Contrarian Now Plotting the EPA's Precarious Future

Previously:

Media Guide: The Fossil Fuel Industry Players Setting Trump’s Energy Agenda

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell: "I'd Like To See A Lot More Funding" From Big Coal

CNN Anchor Fact-Checks Trump’s Climate Science Denial: "That's Just Not True"

jake tapper seems like good guy, BBR, palin, trump

==

cee actually cei bs

https://cei.org/issues/energy-and-environment

grab

• ### SJW-day at COP22

William Yeatman

18 November 2016

• ### Clean Power Plan: EPA’s Updated Base Case Now Tallies with EIA Data

Marlo Lewis

3 November 2016

• ### Clean Power Plan Oral Argument Transcript Available Here!

Marlo Lewis

14 October 2016

• ### President Obama and Chinese President Xi will officially join the Paris Climate Treaty on 3rd September

Myron Ebell

2 September 2016

• ### South China Morning Post reports: China and US to ratify landmark Paris climate deal ahead of G20 summit, sources reveal

Myron Ebell

26 August 2016

==

http://www.alternet.org/environment/activists-take-myron-ebell-protest-directly-epa

==

omfg

Homeland Security transition is being led by tobacco giant Altria’s Cindy Hayden. Leading labor is Steve Hart, chairman of Williams & Jensen, who represents small businesses like Coca-Cola, General Electric, HSBC, and VISA. The agricultural sector is being managed by Michael Torrey, who represents lil’ ol’ American Beverage Association.

But what about our core issues of environment and energy? For the Energy Department, Trump’s taking advice from Michael McKenna, who works for MWR Strategies, which represents the chemical giant Dow, the Kochs, and coal giant Southern Company. It’s been reported for months now that fracking magnate Harold Hamm is in the lead for Secretary of Energy.

For Interior, if Trump doesn’t give the position to Trump Jr. (because what did we overthrow British rule for, if not nepotism?) then it may go to Forrest Lucas, co-founder of Lucas Oil.

And for the EPA transition, Trump has tapped none other than Myron Ebell. He not only works for CEI, which is funded by Exxon, the Kochs, big tobacco and other industries, but also directed the Cooler Heads Coalition, which was more or less a front group for Koch front groups.

Ebell’s got quite a history of meddling at the highest level. Back in the George W. Bush administration, he was contacted to help suppress climate research coming from the government, and suggested then-EPA head Christine Todd Whitman be fired for allowing the EPA to commit the mortal sin of releasing a report about the reality and dangers of climate change. Now he gets to present to Trump candidates to choose from, which should cut down on the need for Ebell to have them fired in the future. (Assuming he doesn’t take the job himself, which is rumored that he might.)

---

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112016/myron-ebell-climate-denier-epa-donald-trump

icn

Myron Ebell, chosen by Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, traces a long history as a determined conservative firebrand.

He rose through the ranks of the "wise-use" movement to land at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pushing an ideology of private property and free markets reigning supreme. He led activists calling themselves the Cooler Heads Coalition, pushing a brand of no-holds-barred climate denial, putting himself at the center of divisive advocacy wars over fossil fuels and the environment.

For decades, he has pushed the radical insistence that the environmental left has it all wrong: the science, the ideology, the economics and the politics of climate change.

The same views apply across the landscape of environmental policy, from land and water conservation to energy production.

During an earlier transition from one administration to another, as the Bush-Cheney Republicans arrived to displace the Clinton-Gore Democrats in 2001, he shared his views in an online chat sponsored by the Washington Post. He said Gail Norton, a Reagan-era private-property-rights champion nominated for Interior Secretary, and Spencer Abraham, a founder of the Federalist Society who had voted to abolish the Energy Department but now would run it, were "superb choices." But he reckoned that Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate from New Jersey who was to head the EPA, "may turn out to be a good choice or may not."

It was a savvy move to damn Whitman with such vanishingly faint praise. It would not be long before she was a victim of intense maneuvering against forceful action on climate change during the opening Bush-Cheney years. Ebell thought Whitman should only be retained if her EPA would "stop claiming regulatory authorities far beyond its legal authority."

It's just like his view today, except that there are new Obama-era targets, like the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.

Through all that ensued since 2001—the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol and the rise of the Paris Agreement; the Supreme Court decree that the EPA must control carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels; and the ensuing fight over regulations to do just that—Ebell has never wavered in his views.

So his ascendancy in the Trump camp alarms and exasperates people like Eric Schaeffer, former head of enforcement at EPA and now executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.

They know him as the author of a famous denialist alt-science memo in the 1990s, as an advocate who helped scuttle the Kyoto Protocol in the 2000s. He is also known as a happy warrior at CEI, funded generously by Exxon and by dark-money donors, that never concedes the field. They know that CEI remains engaged in a furious fight with state attorneys general over its own role in Exxon's record on climate change. They can only imagine how far he and the Trump team might go in de-funding and de-fanging the EPA.

"It tells me they are not approaching this analytically, logically, or even as economists," Schaeffer said. "They are approaching it as ideologues. And that's pretty dangerous. It used to be, even to some extent under 'W,' you talked in code or at least made some kind of showing of your interest in the environment and clean air and water, and having a credible EPA. They've completely thrown that overboard."

Already, CEI is getting very specific about the kinds of actions the Trump administration should take. This week it listed three executive orders exemplifying those that should be deep-sixed. (They involve energy conservation by the federal government, international development aid and protection of infrastructure from climate impacts.)

If the Clean Power Plan meets its demise, and particularly if the Paris Agreement goes down the same drain, the defeat for 21st century environmentalism would exceed the undoing of the Kyoto Protocol or the failure of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate bill early in the Obama years.

At its heart, it would be a victory for denial. And it would vindicate the long game plan of fossil fuel forces that recognized that financing the machinery of ideology was just as important as financing political campaigns—because Big Oil and Big Coal contributed relatively little this year to the Trump campaign, even as the fossil fuel camp scripted his thinly-embellished policy declarations.

One irony, said Jeremy Symons, associate vice president for climate policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, "is that Trump said he would 'drain the swamp,' but Ebell is a creature of the swamp. He has been taking money from years from industry to slow and stop climate change."

Robert Brulle, a sociologist who has extensively documented the industry's support of climate denial, said CEI's biggest funder, pouring in $9.1 million between 2002 and 2013, was the Florida-based Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking. Run by futures trader William Dunn, the foundation is a major donor to free market think tanks and advocacy groups like the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The second largest funder, with $5 million since 2004, is Donors Trust, which has been called the "dark money ATM of the conservative movement." Its donors include the libertarian Koch brothers and other free enterprise philanthropists. Exxon also is among CEI's largest funders with $2 million between 2000 and 2005, but the big oil company hasn't given to CEI directly since 2006, when it began scaling back its funding of groups that deny climate science.

As far back as 1998, Ebell was among a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute and its allies proposing a denialist project to ''maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences,'' according to a memo they wrote.

During and after the election of 2000 and the transition from the Clinton-Gore administration to the Bush-Cheney regime, CEI fought to influence Washington's formal climate science assessments. Its lawyers sued to make sure that one major document, the National Climate Assessment, would not carry any policy weight.

In 2002, Ebell offered CEI's help to Philip Cooney, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, to "clean up the mess." That was in the wake of the State Department filing a U.S. Climate Action Report that included the United Nations finding that global warming posed a significant risk and was caused by fossil fuel emissions.

Cooney, who joined the Bush administration after a decade as a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, had edited government reports to emphasize doubt about climate change. That was documented in 2005 by whistleblower Rick Piltz, a former senior official in the government's climate change science program.(Piltz resigned from the government and founded Climate Science Watch in 2005. He died in 2014. Cooney resigned from the Bush administration after Piltz's disclosures and took a job at Exxon.)

"Thanks for calling and asking for our help," Ebell said in an email to Cooney in 2002.

But true to form, his email had a badgering, even threatening tone, criticizing the Bush administration's handling of climate change reports and warning that CEI would fight any policies it viewed as errant. Ebell promised in the email "to do as much as we could to deflect criticism by blaming the EPA for freelancing."

Ebell said it was imperative to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish."

Whitman, he said, should go.

"It seems to me that the folks at EPA are the obvious fall guys, and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible," Ebell wrote.

Whitman, who now runs her own strategic planning and consulting group, said in an interview that she never had any personal dealings with Ebell. While at EPA, the pressures that concerned her the most came mainly from Cheney and his staff. "I suspect he had a little more pull than Myron," Whitman said. As for Ebell: "There's always going to be those kind of people out there. You just can't worry about it."

The incident prompted two state attorneys general to request a Justice Department investigation into any improper collusion, but that went nowhere.

Several Democratic attorneys general referenced possible collusion between Exxon and groups like CEI when they announced investigations of Exxon for potential climate fraud. That came after InsideClimate News and others published histories of Exxon's own climate research and its subsequent support for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus.

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands went so far as to subpoena CEI's records from the Bush-Cheney transition era, but CEI fought back hard—as did Exxon and several Republican state attorneys general and Republicans on a House committee—and deflected the inquiry.

At a meeting of Republican state attorneys general this summer, Ebell lashed out at Exxon foes, saying the Democratic attorneys general and environmental organizations were colluding to "silence and defund the opponents of global warming alarmism."

An audio recording of the session "Climate Change Debate: How Speech is Being Stifled" was obtained and released by the Center for Media and Democracy.

Ebell set the tone by disparaging those who embrace the overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is warming.

"Why is the left so intent on trying to win the debate by silencing and de-funding their opponents? Well, they have a little problem, we've got reality on our side," Ebell said.

"So when you expose all of these arguments as phony, what is left but trying to win by silencing and defunding your opponents?" he said.

As CEI has done in legal filings and in newspaper advertising, he called it a matter of constitutionally protected free speech.

Months before Trump emerged victorious, and before Ebell was named to play a big role in the new administration's agenda-setting, he declared confidently that "right now the climate inquisition is in retreat," he said. "It's in retreat because of what ExxonMobil has done. What CEI has done."

Now that Ebell is on the inside of an administration, though, his influence is likely to multiply. "That's what worries me," said Whitman. "Of all the promises Trump made during the campaign that now seem to be a little less certain, EPA is probably the one he'll stick with, because it is so universally thought of as being the source of all evil. And that is very troubling."

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http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/27/climate-science-denialist-myron-ebell-named-trump-adviser

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s energy policy to dig, drill, and frack as much fossil fuel out of the ground as possible only really works by denying two realities.

The first reality denied is that there is no global agreement to move the world away from the fuels that Trump thinks are the future.

The second reality denied, of course, is the existence of decades of scientific evidence linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

So with this in mind, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s(CEI) Myron Ebell seems a perfect addition to Trump’s team.

As the U.S. media picks through the entrails from the first presidential debate, a few hours earlier it was revealed that should Trump win,:{ Ebell would lead the Republican’s “EPA transition team” that would strip the agency of key powers.}:

Ebell has long fought the legitimacy of climate science while promoting fossil fuels — epitomizing Trump’s current approach to energy and climate science.

For the best part of 20 years, Ebell has been actively working in favor of the fossil fuel industry by attempting to undermine climate science.

In 1998, Ebell joined with the American Petroleum Institute and staff from fossil fuel companies Exxon, Chevron, and Southern Company to try to reshape how the U.S. people understood the risks of climate change.

In a multi-million dollar plan that was leaked, Ebell and others concluded that a “victory” would be theirs only when the public doubted the links between dangerous global warming and fossil fuel burning.

Over the years, the CEI, where Ebell works as the director of the Center for Energy and Environment, has accepted cash from fossil fuel interests including oil giant ExxonMobil and foundations funded and controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

Bad Company

Ebell looks to be in good company in the Republican nominee’s camp. 

In August, Trump’s team announced Kathleen Hartnett-White as one of several new additions to its “economic advisory team.”

Hartnett-White is another who doubts the well-established link between fossil fuel burning and climate change.

In a column last year, Hartnett-White lauded the “environmental benefits” of fossil fuel burning, while claiming the evidence for climate change was waning.

Hartnett-White is director of an energy and environment project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) — another group that has taken money from the Koch brothers.

In July, the TPPF released a “research booklet” written by contrarian Dr. Roy Spencer that attempted to undermine findings related to sea level rise, extreme temperatures, and other impacts from burning fossil fuels.

Hartnett-White is also an adviser to the CO2 Coalition — a group that includes extreme climate science denier Patrick Moore, who rejects any evidence for human-caused climate change.

Trump’s key energy adviser, Republican congressman Kevin Cramer, is also a self-confessed “skeptic.” 

Another Trump aide and potential energy secretary in a Trump presidency is Harold Hamm, the founder and CEO of major oil producer Continental Resources. Hamm has also been a donor to Cramer's political campaigns. As DeSmog has reported, Hamm's company could gain from any future decisions to allow the Keystone XL pipeline.

Trump's Climate Hoax

During the presidential debate, climate change was barely mentioned. At one point, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton taunted Trump, saying that he “thinks climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.”

Trump interjected, saying “I do not say that,” going on to disparage solar power. He has claimed a tweet saying global warming was a concept “created by and for the Chinese” was a joke, but has continued to refer to climate change using terms like “hoax” since.

Given the “advisers” Trump is surrounding himself with so far, it seems unlikely he will get in touch with reality ahead of the November election.

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