Here are two follow-ups to DC lobbying firm (Bonner) forged anti-Waxman-Markey letters from minority groups to Rep. Perriello (D-VA) “” former employee says firm “Just got caught this time.” The first, by Wonk Room, identifies Bonner’s dirty corporate client.

The coal industry’s top front group has admitted to hiring Bonner & Associates to block clean energy reform. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a public-relations juggernaut funded by electric utilities, mining corporations, and other coal interests to derail mandatory limits on global warming pollution, “acknowledged” paying for Bonner’s “outreach” fraud “” the forging of letters from civil rights organizations opposing the American Clean Energy and Security Act:

The group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity acknowledged this afternoon that it had contracted Bonner & Associates earlier to perform “limited outreach,” but the advocacy group denounced the firm’s actions.

ACCCE’s choice of Bonner comes a little surprise, as Bonner has built a reputation as one of the most effective and amoral Astroturf companies inside the Beltway, having generated “grassroots” campaigns on behalf of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

When not paying for Astroturf fraud, ACCCE was the top lobbyist on climate change and clean energy last year, spending $10.5 million on powerhouse lobbyists such as the Podesta Group and Guinn Gillespie. ACCCE has been praised for the “sophistication” of its public message of supporting mandatory emissions limits in theory while virulently opposing the passage of any actual legislation.

In addition, ACCCE has a $20 million budget for online campaigns for “shaping public attitudes” in favor of coal, has run tens of millions of dollars of television and radio ads, has handed out “clean coal” t-shirts and baseball caps, and even promoted “Frosty the Coalman” carols.

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The coal industry’s top front group has admitted to hiring Bonner & Associates to block clean energy reform. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a public-relations juggernaut funded by electric utilities, mining corporations, and other coal interests to derail mandatory limits on global warming pollution, “acknowledged” paying for Bonner’s “outreach” fraud — the forging of letters from civil rights organizations opposing the American Clean Energy and Security Act:

The group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity acknowledged this afternoon that it had contracted Bonner & Associates earlier to perform “limited outreach,” but the advocacy group denounced the firm’s actions.

ACCCE’s choice of Bonner comes a little surprise, as Bonner has built a reputation as one of the most effective and amoral Astroturf companies inside the Beltway, having generated “grassroots” campaigns on behalf of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

When not paying for Astroturf fraud, ACCCE was the top lobbyist on climate change and clean energy last year, spending $10.5 million on powerhouse lobbyists such as the Podesta Group and Guinn Gillespie. ACCCE has been praised for the “sophistication” of its public message of supporting mandatory emissions limits in theory while virulently opposing the passage of any actual legislation.

In addition, ACCCE has a $20 million budget for online campaigns for “shaping public attitudes” in favor of coal, has run tens of millions of dollars of television and radio ads, has handed out “clean coal” t-shirts and baseball caps, and even promoted “Frosty the Coalman” carols.

More about ACCCE from the Wonk Room Resource Library.

*But however you answer my question, don’t cite me no scientific evidence.

Someone sent me a terrific set of the “deniers rules for debate” from Mercurius.  Let me introduce them by way of a February 2008 email exchange I had with a denier over the headline question (see here).  The denier wrote:

I have been doing enormous amounts of research in this global warming (caused by man) theories and have concluded that there is not ONE shred of evidence to back it up.  Can you PROVE to me that global warming is being caused by mankind?

Hmm. Not one shred of evidence? “PROVE”-in all caps, too!  I know this is mostly pointless, but still, it was the day after my daughter’s first birthday, and I was feeling in good spirits about humanity, so I replied:

This one is easy. Either you believe in science “” i.e. we went to the moon, you go to the doctor, you have IT equipment you rely on “” or you don’t. If you don’t, I can’t “prove” anything to anybody. If you do, then the IPCC reports “” which are nothing more than a literature review by the top scientists in the world, commissioned by and summarized for policymakers, signed off by every friggin’ govt in the world “” are as much proof as a human being could possibly want.

Yes, I was younger and naive back then.  Now I wouldn’t strike thru friggin’.  So he replied:

Sorry Joe but your email back to me is not proof of evidence. As for the IPCC report, I don’t buy into what they say. That is not proof. And yes, I very much believe in science which is why I don’t believe in humans have caused global warming. But my question is simple, what scientific proof can you show me, and I am not talking about some report from the UN, that humans are causing the Earth’s temperature to rise. Also, what is the right temperature for the Earth to be at?

Yes, well, the deniers, they believe in “science,” they just don’t believe in scientists or hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles or scientific “evidence,” which brings me to Mercurius’s list of things the deniers will accept as evidence:

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The Sierra Club is running this full-page advertisement in CQ, The Hill, Politico, Roll Call, and the National Journal’s Congress Daily AM tomorrow. Click here to enlarge.

Last week, the Washington, DC consulting firm Bonner & Associates was exposed for forging letters in opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Bonner forged letters from the Virginia branch of the NAACP and local community organization Cruciendo Juntos to Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), a freshman representative whom the GOP attacked with false ads after he voted in favor of the clean energy legislation. On Friday, Rep. Ed Markey announced his global warming committee would investigate Bonner’s fraud. Today, MoveOn.org began a petition to urge the Department of Justice to investigate this naked fraud in opposition to climate and energy reform:

A lobbying firm hired to fight clean energy was caught sending forged letters from the NAACP and a Hispanic nonprofit to a Democratic congressman. Please conduct a thorough investigation into whether the firm, Bonner & Associates, committed fraud, and how often they’ve done this.

The Sierra Club has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice calling for an investigation, explaining how Bonner’s actions constitute wire fraud:

The Sierra Club will also be running a full-page advertisement in CQ, The Hill, Politico, Roll Call, and the National Journal’s Congress Daily AM tomorrow that mocks the “coalition to kill clean energy jobs” as “tall tales from Washington lobbyists.”

Bonner & Associates have blamed their forgeries on a “temporary employee,” have not admitted whether they sent fraudulent letters to any other members of Congress, and have yet to disclose their clients.

[If  readers know any of the NCEP commissioners listed at the end, I'd suggest sharing your thoughts with them on what useful role they might play in the clean energy and climate debate.]

Jason Grumet, a former campaign adviser to President Obama, said there is little reason for Boxer to try and set stronger emission targets when Obama opened this year’s debate calling for a 14 percent target by 2020.

“There’s not a lot of room to expect to move the legislative product more aggressively than the House,” said Grumet, the executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy. “You have to ask how much value there is in pushing the bill. What does the advocacy community get by pushing farther to the left if there’s no sense they can sustain that outcome?”

So writes E&E News (subs. req’d) today.  I guess Grumet has never heard of actually advocating emissions targets that are based on science (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 8: The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target“).

Readers know I try to be as much a political realist as I am a climate science realist (see here and here), but Grumet’s argument falls apart on both grounds.  I spelled out the scientific perspective from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on what the 2020 GHG target should be in the link above, which is unequivocal that we need to push for as strong a 2020 target as possible, ideally much stronger than the House Bill.

Grumet’s first political argument — that “Obama opened this year’s debate calling for a 14 percent target by 2020″ — simply does not withstand scrutiny.  Since I expect it will be a common refrain in the fall, let me debunk it right now.

Yes, Obama campaigned on returning U.S. GHG levels to 1990 levels by 2020, roughly a 14% cut from 2005.  But Obama has never to my knowledge proposed allowing any offsets to be used in place of those domestic emissions reductions — certainly not the whopping two billion offsets allowed in the bill.  For the record, the IPCC science-based analysis says that offsets should be entirely additional to the 2020 target, not a substitute.  Further, Obama never proposed anything like the strategic reserve in the House Bill, which acts something like a price cap.  Obama also proposed a full auction and, during the campaign, that we “Require 25 Percent of Electricity to Come from Renewable Sources by 2025.”

So there is no possible apples-to-apples comparison between Obama’s 14% reduction target for 2020 and the 17% target in the House bill.  Grumet worked for the campaign and should understand that.

Now if Grumet wants to argue for not strengthening the 2020 on the grounds of RealPolitik, that’s his business, I suppose, except that when he speaks, he represents the entire Commission.   I must ask:  Is publically giving up on fixing the single biggest flaw in the House climate bill really a useful role for the National Commission on Energy Policy, with its array of uber-prestigious members?

Since I was present at the creation of NCEP, let me give a little background on it.  You can read the official history here.

NCEP BACKGROUND

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Exxon Outspends Clean-Energy Industry on Washington Lobbying

Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest U.S. oil producer, spent more on Washington lobbying during the first half of the year than all clean-energy companies combined, researcher New Energy Finance Ltd. said.

Exxon Mobil, based in Irving, Texas, spent $14.9 million lobbying in the six months, 23 percent more than the $12.1 million laid out by companies that make solar panels or wind turbines to generate electricity, London-based New Energy Finance said today in a note to clients. Oil and gas companies spent a total of $82.2 million on Washington lobbyists, according to the report.

And, of course, this doesn’t count their arguably more influential spending to promote climate denial and faulty economic analysis (see “Another ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge“).

Warming World, Potent Poppies

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“Oil prices leapt above $70 a barrel Monday in Asia on investor expectations a recovering global economy will boost crude demand,” the AP reports.

You might call those investors speculators — if speculation can be based on marketplace reality.  The UK’s Independent opens its interview with Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA):

Dr. Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.

The warning is double worrisome because until the last year or two, the IEA had been a bastion of relatively staid and conservative and hence useless energy prognostication (like the U.S. Energy Information Administration still is).  Now the IEA and Birol have joined the fact-based alarmists, warning in its World Energy Outlook 2008, “Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6°C” and proposing aggressive clean energy solutions.

The IEA’s work makes clear that for oil to stay significantly below $200 a barrel (and U.S. gasoline to be significantly below $5 a gallon) by 2020 would take a miracle “” or rather 6 miracles see “Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? Not if we can find six Saudi Arabias!” and “IEA says oil will peak in 2020“).  As the Independent reports today:

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