Smog envelopes downtown Houston, TX (Flickr's Rick Kimpel)

The oil, gas and coal industries get billions of dollars in subsidies and tax giveaways every single year. A group of 35 U.S. senators last year identified $122 billion over 10 years in oil subsidies that could be cut. And globally, fossil fuel industries receive six times more government subsidies than clean energy, according to the International Energy Agency. Those aren’t loan guarantees – it’s gone and we’ll never get a dime back. Where are the media investigations into how many millions in bonuses are paid to the CEOs of these oil giants?

Instead, today we see another headline about a clean company trying to get off the ground, this time electric car battery maker Ener1:

Ener1, an electric car battery company that the Obama administration awarded a $118 million stimulus grant to expand its operations, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday after being unable to repay pressing debts. […]

Ener1 is the third company to seek bankruptcy protection among those the Energy Department backed as part of the president’s signature program to invest in clean energy. Solyndra, a California solar-panel maker, and Beacon Power, a Massachusetts energy-storage firm, entered bankruptcy court proceedings in the fall, after having received taxpayer-guaranteed loans of $535 million and $43 million, respectively.

Ener1 wasn’t controversial with Republican members of Congress when it had the backing of a Republican president:

Ener1’s application for stimulus money had bipartisan support among Indiana lawmakers. The company received $10.5 million in grants and contracts under the George W. Bush administration.

Despite obsessive coverage by the Washington Post and other media outlets, the Department of Energy’s clean energy investment program remains an incredibly safe investment. A Bloomberg Government analysis found that 87 percent of the portfolio is low-risk and that even if all 10 of the higher risk projects had to default, hundreds of millions of dollars would still remain in the Congressional fund to cover losses. And as the Ener1 example shows, even “default” could signify only a bump in the road, not the end of it – private investors have stepped up to back the company and it continues to employ hundreds of people at its Indiana plant.

America’s successful investments in the clean economy don’t get nearly as much media attention. Among the largest Energy Department investments were $5.9 billion in loans for Ford for projects in plants across 5 states. These projects were responsible for sustaining 33,000 permanent jobs making far more fuel efficient vehicles, including electric vehicles. This morning, Ford reported its sales, revenue and earnings are all rising.

As for the reporters who just can’t help themselves from writing negative stories about clean energy, you have to remember the Washington press corps thrives on controversy and in the extremely competent Obama administration, scandals have been hard to come by. But that hasn’t stopped reporters from trying. In this click-driven multimedia age, even a thin attempt at controversy can deliver big numbers for media outlets thanks to the polluter-political industrial complex.

Opposition to clean energy investments isn’t about the deficit, jobs or protecting our wildlife and public health – it’s about election year politics. Many of the very same members of Congress complaining about direct taxpayer investments are same people who blocked legislation that would’ve created a market-based cap-and-trade system to put a price on carbon pollution. So what’s their solution? They don’t have one.

But even after months of relentless attacks on clean energy, a November ORC International poll found  77 percent of Americans agree “the U.S. needs to be a clean energy technology leader and it should invest in the research and domestic manufacturing of wind, solar, and energy efficiency technologies.”

Here’s the bottom line: The National Wildlife Federation’s 4 million supporters from across the political spectrum want clean energy and they want leaders who’ll face down special interests to deliver it. And coming off a year in 2011 that saw global warming-fueled extreme weather cause record damage, action on clean energy is more critically needed than ever.

Take Action

The Environmental Protection Agency is acting now to limit carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, but is coming under assault from polluter-funded attack groups. Let the EPA know you support limits on carbon pollution.

Photo by Mila Zinkova via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s happening again – Big Oil is using deceptive tactics to confuse the public about climate science. And this time, the attack threatens polar bears. We need your help to see through their smokescreen and to stand up for the truth.

Let’s go step by step to understand the attack, why it’s happening, and how we can fight back together.

The Strategy

A federal agency is looking into compliance with procurement process regulations, so global warming must not be happening and we can stop protecting polar bears. No, really – that’s what climate science-denying polluter front groups are claiming.

It’s become a familiar pattern, most recently repeated in the illegally hacked climate scientist email story:

• Take a complicated story most people don’t fully understand yet and make wild, completely unsubstantiated claims about what it means.
• Target individual scientists with personal attacks, leaving other advocates of scientific truth fearful of speaking out and being the next victim.
• Urge journalists to report to the controversy, leaving the public confused.

By the time the truth comes out, it’s too late – just enough doubt has been sowed to keep the profits rolling in.

The Attack

In the latest version, polluter groups are attacking the work of Dr. Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist whose heartbreaking observations (pdf) documented polar bears’ vulnerability to the global warming-fueled retreat of summer Arctic sea ice.

His research was apparently the first documentation of polar bears drowning at sea on long swims. The study is part of a mountain of evidence that led to polar bears being listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (though the National Wildlife Federation argues they should be considered endangered).

“When it comes to science demonstrating the threat to polar bears posed by global warming, this study is only the tip of the iceberg,” says Dr. Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. “The latest major study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey further documents that on long swims to receding Arctic sea ice, some bear cubs are disappearing, and their mothers burn much-needed calories. So far, 2011 is no exception – the Arctic’s summer sea ice is at record-low levels.”

Big Oil’s strategy reveals much more about its own shameful lack of integrity as it does about Dr. Monnett’s work. That’s because the federal agency itself says its probe has “nothing to do with scientific integrity,” instead focusing on contract questions:

Some new details have emerged in the mysterious case of Charles Monnett, the government wildlife biologist under investigation by the Department of Interior’s Inspector General. When Monnett, who works for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) in Alaska, was placed on adminstrative leave last month pending an investigation into unspecified “integrity issues,” there was speculation that the probe was linked to the biologist’s 2006 paper on polar bear deaths in the Arctic. But a spokeswoman for BOEMRE insisted last week that the investigation has “nothing to do with scientific integrity, his 2006 journal article, or issues related to permitting, as has been alleged.”

On Tuesday, Monnett’s legal representatives at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released a memorandum that the IG’s office issued to the biologist last Friday indicating that its investigation centers on the procurement process for a research project on “Populations and Sources of Recruitment in Polar Bears.” The University of Alberta in Canada is the lead organization on the ongoing study, but BOEMRE provided a substantial portion of the funding. The agency ordered to the university to “cease and desist” all work on the study five days before Monnett was suspended in mid-July. [NWF Update: Suspension has since been lifted.]

The IG’s memo to Monnett requests an August 9 meeting to discuss “compliance with Federal Acquisition Regulations, disclosure of personal relationships, and preparation of the scope of work.”

Here’s just one example of how Big Oil’s allies have been executing their smokescreen strategy. The New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation) ran an op-ed on Tuesday claiming BOEMRE’s probe–again, BOEMRE itself now says it has nothing to do with the polar bear study– saying that while “the specifics of the investigation are as yet unclear,” we can safely leap to the conclusion that climate science itself is in question. Sound familiar?

The article was written by Matt Patterson of a polluter front group called “Capital Research Center.” The CRC has received $265,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998 according to ExxonSecrets.org, along with millions more from organizations built with polluter profits like the Sciafe Foundations. Like many polluter front groups, the CRC had extensive ties to the tobacco industry before moving on to climate science denial.

What, you expected Exxon Mobil to attack climate and polar bear science directly? That’s not how it works. Polluters pay front groups to do it for them, so instead of coming from a big, bad oil company, the attacks appear to be coming from a dispassionate third party.

The Motive

Why is attacking the science connecting polar bears and global warming so critical for these polluter front groups? Oil companies have been pushing relentlessly to drill in the Arctic, not only in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas – which the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has designated under the Endangered Species Act as critical polar bear habitat. Given the rock-solid scientific evidence, Big Oil knows it can’t win a fair debate, so it needs to resort to smokescreens and personal attacks to have any shot at drilling.

“The BP Gulf oil disaster reminds us that offshore drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, such as critical habitat for polar bears and other Arctic species, is simply not worth the risk,” says Dr. Doug Inkley.

via Norbert Rossing

Fight Back for Polar Bears

Legislation in Congress right now would gut the Endangered Species Act, and cripple the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect wildlife, clean air and water. Please take a moment to ask your members of Congress to stop this attack threatening polar bears.

Once you do, please pass this post along to your friends using the share, tweet and like buttons at the bottom of this post, or just email the link to your friends. The more people know about Big Oil’s deceptive tactics, the stronger our case will be for protecting polar bears.

Chesapeake Bay photo by Scott Bauer

The government shutdown clock is ticking away furiously in Washington, D.C. as Congress wrestles with a budget agreement.

While many Americans have no choice but to ride out the storm, bad water riders in the house-passed Continuing Resolution, or H.R.1, continue to cloud the budget battle.

These harmful and unnecessary pieces of legislation have little to do with the budget bill or spending cuts and more to do with handcuffing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and creating giant loopholes for big polluters.

Bad water riders will:

• Ban EPA from closing recent Clean Water Act loopholes that remove protections for many waters,  jeopardizing the drinking water for 117 million Americans, threatening over half the nation’s stream miles, and opening 20 million acres of wetlands and prime wildlife habitat to polluters and developers. The Clean Water Act gives the EPA the authority to hold polluters accountable for oil spills, sewage and animal waste dumps, and other pollutants that go into rivers, lakes streams, estuaries, and wetlands.
• Ban EPA from protecting municipal water supplies, fisheries, and other critical water resources from being destroyed by large-scale mining, public works, and development projects that dredge, fill, and pollute productive waters.  EPA’s use of its Clean Water Act “404(c)” authority, a deliberative and open process rarely used, has saved taxpayers millions of dollars on wasteful and destructive public works projects, and saved Americans some of their most precious bays, rivers, and streams. This authority has only been used 13 times, and most recently to block the Yazoo Pumps project in Mississippi, which would have destroyed valuable wetlands and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars.
• Endanger the Chesapeake Bay by blocking efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay just as progress is finally being made to limit allowable pollution in the waters that feed the Bay through fair and effective measures. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, covering 6 states and Washington, D.C. The watershed supports rural economies and the $730 billion-a-year outdoor recreation industry.
• Endanger Florida Waters by blocking recently issued water quality standards for Florida’s lakes and flowing waters that are necessary to protect Florida’s waters from excess pollution from sewage, manure and fertilizer.  Excessive nutrient pollution from these chemicals and waste has created toxic algae blooms in Florida waters that can spread for over a 100 miles. The blooms undermine water quality in Florida, which lowers properties values, hurts waterfront businesses, and serves a major health risk to people, pets, and wildlife.
• Endanger the San Francisco Bay Delta by blocking key measures to protect imperiled salmon, Delta smelt, and the health of the entire Bay-Delta ecosystem, which is reliant on its life-giving water supply.
• Endanger Klamath salmon restoration by blocking a study critical to rebuilding what was once the Nation’s third largest salmon-producing river systems, while also accommodating fisheries, landowner, and electric utility stakeholders.
  
• Allow more stream dumping of coal mining waste by blocking EPA from restricting water pollution from proposed mountain top removal and other coal-mining projects, and from the toxic coal ash waste that is contaminating our streams and water supplies.

Speak Up for Wildlife

You can help stop the attacks on water and wildlife in the Continuing Resolution by speaking up for wildlife at NWF’s Action Center. Don’t let these bad water riders wash away America’s bedrock environmental safeguards.

Now the polluter-funded think tank-media complex has a new target – whitewashing the Gulf oil disaster. Robert Nelson has an opinion piece made up to look like a news article in the Weekly Standard claiming the Gulf oil disaster caused little damage and calling anyone who would claim otherwise “secular equivalents to the devil.”

Why would a public policy professor at the University of Maryland write something not just so wrong, but with such an angry, combative tone? A look at Nelson’s extracurricular activities reveals a web of connections to big polluters like Koch Industries & Exxon Mobil:

• Nelson is a senior scholar with George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, a pro-polluter think tank founded & funded by the infamous Koch brothers. Legendary for its ability to produce credible-sounding research to back industry positions, the Wall Street Journal once called Mercatus “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of.” The Mercatus Center has received a mind-boggling $9,074,500 from the Kochs, as well as $240,000 from Exxon Mobil.
• Nelson is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, which works to deny the scientific consensus that manmade carbon pollution is causing global warming. Not coincidentally, many of its staff used to work on denying the link between cancer & cigarette smoking. The Independent Institute has received $160,000 from the Kochs, as well as $85,000 from Exxon Mobil.

Given those polluter ties, it becomes less shocking that Nelson would go to such incredible lengths to bend some facts & ignore many others to suit his purposes:

• Those incredibly high rates of dolphin & endangered sea turtle deaths in the Gulf this summer? Unrelated to the BP oil, says Nelson. That’s right – according to Nelson, unless the creature was found literally covered in oil, it should not even be considered in the conversation of oil disaster impacts.
• If a creature dies in the oil slick & sinks to the bottom, Nelson believes that doesn’t count as part of the disaster toll either.
• That many of the worst impacts of the Exxon Valdez disaster took years to reveal themselves? Nelson doesn’t want to talk about that.

I could spend all day debunking all the distortions & deliberate omissions in Nelson’s piece, but that would miss the big picture. The same groups who denied the link between cancer & smoking and deny the link between carbon pollution & global warming are now being enlisted to deny the impacts of the Gulf oil disaster, and by extension the risks of our oil addiction.

It’s been encouraging to see that, so far, the impacts on the Gulf don’t seem to be following a worst-case scenario. But as the Valdez taught us, it takes years to assess the full impact of a spill.

What we’ve learned this week is that voices from the polluter-funded think tank-media complex are ready to exploit that void to say … maybe all those jobs lost weren’t so bad. And who knows, maybe those endangered sea turtles won’t go extinct. So why not drill baby drill?

When they do, the National Wildlife Federation will be ready to call them out.

©2010 National Wildlife Federation® | by Max Greenberg

The EPA is moving to regulate the carbon pollution that drives global warming. It’s about time, right?

Polluters who have become accustomed to dirtying the environment with impunity don’t think so. They know it means they will need to clean up their act, and that scares them. Which angers them. Which makes them cry ‘power grab.’

Now, when I hear it, I think of a wrestling move, probably involving stomping and yelling. I imagine it’s painful.

But that vaguely scary expression has been used to great effect by opponents of climate action and environmental conservation over the years as a kind of shorthand for government appropriation or conquest. The implication is strong, but the precise nature of the threat is usually purposely vague. For them, a ‘power grab’ can look like almost anything: attempts to enforce the Clean Air Act, U.S. participation in international emissions reduction talks, tougher restrictions against water pollution—all indicators of a coup a-brewin’, all symptoms of an imaginary conspiracy categorically impossible to disprove.*

Just how popular is this treacherous turn of phrase?

Heritage Foundation (9/13/10):

The [EPA's] latest power grab is not going unchallenged, however. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a federal lawsuit to force the EPA to reconsider the regulatory scheme…

Washington Times (9/23/10)

EPA’s power grab is clearly an end run around Congress, which has refused to pass a “cap and trade” bill…

Washington Times (10/8/10)

The EPA ploy is the Obama administration’s response to Congress’ failure to pass a broad climate bill… such an interpretation is a naked power grab by the EPA…

New York Post (12/8/09)

An EPA power grab: CO2 ruling a sure job-killer

National Review (6/10/10)

Curbing an EPA power grab

Sen. James Inhofe on the Clean Water Restoration Act

This bill is further proof that Washington doesn’t ‘get’ rural America.  The Democrats are moving a bill that amounts to the biggest bureaucratic power grab in a generation–and it’s directed right at America’s heartland. In fact, this bill is a significant part of a hostile agenda…

Wall Street Journal (10/28/09)

The aim (of the Copenhagen treaty) is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations…The reason for the power grab is clear enough: Clause after complicated clause of the draft treaty requires developed countries to pay an “adaptation debt”…

Honestly, these aren’t tough Google searches. I could go on and on and on. And so could you!**

Whether launched from the turnbuckle or the U.S. Senate Chamber, the dreaded ‘power grab’ is apparently always on Big Oil/Coal/Politician/Think-Tank’s mind–and frequently all over the opinion pages of some of their most dependable cheerleader publications. It is among the most pliable bogeymen imaginable, referring to alleged congressional bullying, federal agency oversteps, and one-world government plots with equal aplomb–albeit indistinctly, as always. It’s just the kind of meaningless yet unkillable messaging squib that makes a frustrated conservationist want to pull a Flying Hammerlock, like George ‘The Animal’ Steele, on the nearest fear-mongering pol.

( What’s that? No, I’m not terribly familiar with wrestling beyond references from when my dad was a kid, why do you ask? [dons reading glasses, does math with a slide rule] )

Anyway, the attempts of some to liken environmental action—especially EPA action—to a collectivist putsch are by now as well known and generally bankable as the Minnesota Twins losing to the Yankees in the playoffs. This isn’t fresh or inventive.

Even so, paranoid ‘power grab’ rhetoric has been in the news more than usual lately, as the likes of the American Petroleum Insitute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and various coal and oil interests and elected officials attempt to handcuff the federal government before it enforces a three-year-old Supreme Court decision (PDF) that found global warming emissions are subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act as a harmful pollutant. The EPA has denied numerous petitions targeting climate science and generally stood tough behind Lisa Jackson against countless attacks, but it’s clear Big Polluters aren’t about to give up on their crusade for domination of the natural world. Even as their coffers overflow and their political clout grows, they have found the best way to fight back is often to play the victim and cry ‘takeover.’

This is all fitting. One of the few things I do know about America’s favorite spandex quasisport (wrestling, not Congress) is that the thing is mostly about branding and stagecraft. Clown wrestlers, cowboy wrestlers, amateur herpetologist wrestlers—this isn’t quite how it looked on ancient Greek friezes. In a way, that is precisely why some find it so satisfying. The wrestling entertainment industry has spawned a complex network of characters and storylines with accompanying glossaries, guides, and more footnotes than a stack of David Foster Wallace novels. The theatricality, where wrestling veers close to total artifice, requires suspension of disbelief on the part of its fans, but it actually delivers satisfyingly simple—on the moral spectrum—payoffs with a real sense of finality. The good babyface generally vanquishes the evil heel in the end, and for good reason (he stole his wife/killed his brother/betrayed him!). You know which is which because they just about tell you outright.

Big Polluters, and the groups and people in thrall to them, practice this kind of theater too. In the hands of a talented Senator, editorial writer, or CEO, the venerable federal agency tasked with protecting our natural resources becomes an enemy—an authority-hungry heel hell-bent on regulation. Multi-billion-dollar dirty energy interests  become kindly benefactors or representatives of working class America, courageous babyface underdogs despite their refusal to heed urgent scientific alarms. The ongoing storyline—’angle,’ in pro wrestling argot—becomes a complete distortion of reality. Now, the APIs and Inhofes of the world pummel the EPA to within an inch of its regulatory life, steel chairs and all, blading*** themselves if it spills the blood they need to sell the danger to the American people: ‘LOOK OUT! POWER GRAB!’

Above: potential beneficiary of an EPA 'power grab'

Aside from being counterproductive—kind of tough for government to accomplish things when its actions are viewed through the lenses of  Rowdy Roddy Piper’s sunglasses, no?—the idea that any attempt at regulation, no matter how well founded, obscures or underscores a ‘takeover’ implies ugly things about the people making the accusations; namely, that they are absolutely terrified of the shifting current of history.

Big Polluters and Friends hold a great deal of power already, yet the idea of sound oversight based on established science so unnerves them that they must resort to deranged conspiracy potshots to curry public favor. What does this tell us? That they’re running scared, and will do anything to stem the tide.

Who panics this much despite being so demonstrably in a position of strength? Who frets this loudly despite a clear edge in brawn and glitz?   Maybe a wrestler losing confidence in his own angle.

* Note: Activity— try having your friends disprove the theory that President Lincoln was assassinated as a result of a pact between the Freemasons and a cabal of Venusian race car drivers. They can’t do it, can they? Now you’re almost ready to make your own ‘power grab’ accusations!

** Note: Christopher C. Horner, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute,  recently wrote a book called Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America. I’ll bet this book contains many more examples of ‘power grab’ fear-mongering. Just a guess.

*** Note: can you believe that’s real? I saw it in The Wrestler, but still…

Courtesy of OpenSecrets.org, we can see polluters have already given more than $27 million to candidates for office this fall:

• Oil & Gas Industry: $13,036,908
• Electric Utilities: $12,173,516
• Coal Mining: $1,900,528

Polluters still have another 7 weeks before the November elections to add to these staggering totals. For comparison’s sake:

• Conservation Groups: $1,210,401
• Alternative Energy Industry: $704,481

Political scientists often mention a chicken-or-the-egg question when it comes to donations — do politicians support industry positions because those industries donate to them? Or do industries donate to politicians who are already supportive of their positions? Big polluters seem to have their bases covered no matter what.

More than 5,000 energy sector workers flocked to three Texas rallies Wednesday to protest what they view as an onslaught of punitive measures from Washington that threaten oil and gas jobs and domestic energy supplies.

Wow, what an amazing, spontaneous, totally unpaid show of support! Um, right?

The rallies, which also took place Wednesday in Corpus Christi and Port Arthur, were sponsored in part by the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington industry group and lobby whose members include major oil companies.

The events drew employees from industry giants and small businesses that support them — many of whom arrived on buses arranged by API. [...]

Rally participants, treated to hot dogs, live country music and marching bands, donned yellow and red matching T-shirts containing their companies’ names, or blue shirts passed out at the door that declared, “I am an energy citizen.”

I mean, what better way to exercise your First Amendment rights than by wearing a t-shirt with an employer-approved slogan that someone handed you at a rally your employer bussed you to & you were required to attend as part of your job?

Yesterday’s rally was nearly identical to the ones staged by Big Oil last summer. Last year, the oil & gas industries and electric utilities spent an astonishing $320 million on lobbying Congress. (By comparison, conservation organizations spent $22 million.)

Of course, spending more money on lobbying Congress than the Yankees spend on payroll isn’t enough. A lobbying group hired by the coal industry stooped to forging letters to Congress opposing climate action.

So the next time you hear of “citizen” outrage about clean energy & climate action, make sure you know who’s really pulling the strings. Could be this guy or one of his friends.

And be sure to tell your senators that Big Oil doesn’t speak for you.

Photo via Flickr’s EnergyCitizens

“As a result of continued obstruction from every Republican Senator and a few Democratic Senators, the Senate is now on the brink of a colossal failure. This failure amounts to letting polluters off the hook while jeopardizing wildlife and our children’s future. While there is still time for the Senate to act on climate change, we have lost confidence that there is the political will to overcome the oil lobby.

“Too many senators are listening to polluters instead of the American public. Time and again Americans have said they overwhelmingly support action to address our energy and environmental crisis. If the end result is that polluters can emit carbon pollution without limit and without accountability, then the senate has failed to tackle America’s energy and environmental crisis. Too many Senators have learned nothing from the Gulf disaster and the high price we pay when oil lobbyists dictate our energy laws.

“Today’s news is a wakeup call for everyone who cares about these issues, and we will continue to fight for a climate and energy bill that delivers real change.”

The University of East Anglia commissioned an independent review of the Swifthack stolen emails & now the final results (PDF) are in. The conclusion?

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.

Over at Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard closes the book, deciding “climategate” is now “officially a fake scandal.”

And at the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog, Andrew Revkin writes, “One lesson is that anyone hoping to up-end decades of research pointing to a growing human influence on the climate by challenging a single batch of studies (in this case efforts to chart past temperatures using indirect clues like tree rings) is almost surely on a fool’s errand.”

Photo via Flickr’s cokeeorg

Woodward & Bernstein’s Watergate source once famously advised, “Follow the money.” ClimateWire (subscription required) has done just that on an anti-wind power study — and traced it back to Big Oil:

A report critical of the Danish wind power industry that was widely distributed to U.S. media in the months leading up to the Copenhagen climate change conference was financed by an American group with close ties to the oil and coal industries, the study’s Danish authors have acknowledged, stirring the wrath of their country’s wind power association.

[Danish conservative think tank] CEPOS has now acknowledged that the report was commissioned by the Houston-based Institute for Energy Research (IER), a group reportedly financed by the fossil fuel industry and which disseminated the report’s findings in the United States under the title “Something Rotten? Obama Says Danes Receive 20% of Their Power Via Wind; New Study Tells the Real Story.”

According to ExxonSecrets.org, the Institute for Energy Research has received at least $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. And Media Matters ties the group to the Koch Foundation, which is funded by the nation’s largest privately held dirty energy company.

Sounds objective to me!

Photo via Flickr’s AMagill