Coal-fired cooperative coughs up cash to climate crank

That Darn Pat

Say you don't like the results of climate science. What to do? Us, we suffer from night terrors. But the Colorado-based Intermountain Rural Electric Association -- a group heavily invested in coal-burning utilities -- is going with the fossil-fuel industry's favorite alternate strategy: buy more favorable science! They've donated $100,000 to notorious climate crank Pat Michaels, and are urging other industry types to come up with more. Michaels, a University of Virginia professor, fellow at the Cato Institute, and isolated scientific outlier, has long had a large megaphone, quoted endlessly by a mainstream media determined to "balance" the other 99 percent of scientists. But with other skeptical voices falling silent, perhaps from an overdue sense of shame, it's more important than ever that the remaining shills be well paid. Coal-fired utilities dread the thought of mandatory caps or taxes on carbon dioxide emissions, which would increase their operating costs and make renewable energy sources more financially attractive. Can't have that.

straight to the source: Forbes, Associated Press, Seth Borenstein, 27 Jul 2006

straight to the source: ABC News, Clayton Sandell and Bill Blakemore, 27 Jul 2006

new in Gristmill: Small Colorado coal burner pays big bucks to climate change denier

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Comments: (2 comments)

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Climate Change Denier Rhetoric

Dear Gristmill,

This has been bugging me for a long time, and it is not just you. I keep hearing this phrase, and I hate it. Can you tell the people who come up with the talking points to tone down the "denier" rhetoric a notch or two? At least refrain from doing it yourself. I formally call shenanigan on this style of argument. It makes you sound more like a religeous zealot shouting "heretic" than people who are concerned with a correcting a problem. Mr.Michaels may very well be a rent-a-geek schilling for the energy industry. Calling him a climate change obfuscator might is a lot more accurate (although not as catchy), but shouting "Heretic!" when somebody questions the prevailing conventional wisdom makes y'all sound like Pat Robertson in Birkenstocks. Are the Jesus approved diet shakes next? Save the denier talk for people who think the holocaust was a hoax and the earth is flat. The Earth's climate is an extraordinarlily complex thing, and there is abundant credible evidence to indicate that the addition of billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere over the past two centuries is causing our planet to retain more heat. Because climate is a global phenomena, there are bound to be a lot of changes when we mess with it. Duh. What those changes are, how fast they occur, and what we do to either counteract or adapt to them is a whole other ball of wax, with a lot less certainty. Language that conflates those who disagree with predictions of future events in extraordinarilly complex systems such as the climate, with the wackjobs who deny the occurrence of well established historical facts, like the holocaust and the shape of the planet does a disservice to your argument, and is easy ammo for those who would like to discredit your argument.

BTW, I reserve the right to take back everything I said here if Mr. Michaels ever authors a paper stating that global warming is impossible, because the exra CO2 simply falls off the edge of the planet before any warming can occur.

by idahoooo at 10:49 AM on 29 Jul 2006

Supply and demand

100k! As fewer and fewer shills for fossil fuel industry propaganda are available, the price goes up. An example of the free market in scientific corruption.

Cato and other corporate supported think tanks are the brokerage firms in this market.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 8:57 AM on 30 Jul 2006

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