In a letter to BP America CEO Lamar McKay, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) are demanding that BP disclose its “spending on corporate advertising and marketing relating to the the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and relief, recovery, and restoration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.” Their request follows the efforts of Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) to get answers about BP’s massive greenwashing campaign, which includes months of full-page advertisements in national and regional newspapers, radio spots, television commercials, and Internet ads on websites including ThinkProgress.org. Outside estimates of the scope of the greenwashing campaign managed by BP’s public relations firm Mediashare are in the tens of millions of dollars, the Washington Post’s Krissah Thompson reports:

After the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April, BP went on the air with television ads and bought a series of full-page ads in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other papers to position itself as an imperfect but responsible corporation committed to the cleanup of the gulf. The company has spent $55.8 million on television and print advertising so far this year, according to the Nielsen Co., which tracks ad spending.

According to Media Monitors, BP’s radio spots surged to 10,684 last week, with a particular focus on Florida stations. Since mid-July, BP’s internet ads have been running on political blogs, including Talking Points Memo, the Common Sense Media network of liberal sites from FireDogLake to AmericaBlog, and a host of right-wing sites, including Eagle Interactive‘s network with RedState and the Salem Web Network’s Townhall.com and Hot Air.

BP seems to be working harder to protect its brand than to help the people of the Gulf Coast, argued Alabama Attorney General Troy King. He has filed suit against BP because “while BP is spending millions on print ads and airtime, it’s not spending what it should on claims.” Fortunately, BP’s control of the claims process will finally end Monday, with the launch of Kenneth Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

(HT Mother Jones)

BP has an agreement with Common Sense Media to be notified about this story, reserving the right to pull ads from ThinkProgress.

This could drive an amplifying feedback, undermine biofuels strategy

Earth has done an ecological about-face: Global plant productivity that once flourished under warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline, struck by the stress of drought.

NASA-funded researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running, of the University of Montana in Missoula, discovered the global shift during an analysis of NASA satellite data. Compared with a six-percent increase spanning two earlier decades, the recent ten-year decline is slight — just one percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels, and the global carbon cycle.

“We see this as a bit of a surprise, and potentially significant on a policy level because previous interpretations suggested that global warming might actually help plant growth around the world,” Running said.

“These results are extraordinarily significant because they show that the global net effect of climatic warming on the productivity of terrestrial vegetation need not be positive — as was documented for the 1980′s and 1990′s,” said Diane Wickland, of NASA Headquarters and manager of NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology research program.

That’s from a remarkable NASA news release today, “Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth” (see narrated video below).

On Friday, the journal Science publishes the study itself, ” Drought-Induced Reduction in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 2000 Through 2009” (subs. req’d), which found:

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Windstalks Harvest Wind Energy In A Field

… [A] group of designers has created a new style of wind farm that takes a few cues from nature itself.

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Part 2, DeepClimate throws McShane and Wyner into the penalty box: “This is a deeply flawed study”

Last week, the anti-science crowd were touting a couple of statisticians who had launched a slashing cross-check on a small portion of the scientific research supporting  our scientific understanding that current warming is very likely unprecedented in the last thousand years.

As I discussed here, the McShane and Wyner analysis actually produced a Hockey Stick — and even as the climate science community ducked the blow, the Medieval Warm Period got hit in the head (see also Deltoid, who spruced up their graph):

But wait, the anti-science disinformers say,  you left out the part of their analysis where they call into question all such graphs.  And that was because I am on vacation and was waiting for the refs who I knew were busy  reviewing the tapes  before making their penalty call.  In short, I knew that part of the analysis was deeply flawed.

I have been told that when McShane and Wyner is actually  published it will be accompanied by several commentaries.  I  am confident they will identify rather significant shortcomings in the paper.  So  you may surmise that one reason you haven’t seen more definitive debunkings to date is that some people are holding off until those commentaries are published.

But in the meantime, you can read an evisceration of their analysis by Deep Climate –  a terrific climate science blogger known for uncovering details of just how some of the most fraudulent charges against Mann and the Hockey Stick graph were trumped up by the anti-science crowd in the first place.

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This Wonk Room cross-post is part of a Progressive Media blogging series on the fossil fuel-funded Prop 23 effort to repeal California’s clean energy climate law. Read Rebecca Lefton’s posts on Prop 23′s economic impact, national repercussions, and funding from Texas oil companies.

Much has been reported about how Texan oil companies Valero and Tesoro have been fighting to repeal the landmark clean energy climate change law, AB 32. The Wonk Room recently obtained a PowerPoint from Tesoro showing that the company made a pitch to oil companies, including BP, to join their effort known as Proposition 23.

But there is another powerful out-of-state fossil fuel interest trying to eviscerate California’s pioneering climate change law: Koch Industries. The Wonk Room has learned that Koch Industries is funding the lead “grassroots” group organizing support for Proposition 23, and is also funding the Pacific Research Institute, the main think-tank producing junk studies smearing AB 32.

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This post is part of a Progressive Media blogging series on the fossil fuel-funded Prop 23 effort to repeal California’s clean energy climate law. Read Rebecca Lefton’s posts on Prop 23′s economic impact, national repercussions, and funding from Texas oil companies.

Much has been reported about how Texan oil companies Valero and Tesoro have been fighting to repeal the landmark clean energy climate change law, AB 32. The Wonk Room recently obtained a PowerPoint from Tesoro showing that the company made a pitch to oil companies, including BP, to join their effort known as Proposition 23.

But there is another powerful out-of-state fossil fuel interest trying to eviscerate California’s pioneering climate change law: Koch Industries. The Wonk Room has learned that Koch Industries is funding the lead “grassroots” group organizing support for Proposition 23, and is also funding the Pacific Research Institute, the main think-tank producing junk studies smearing AB 32.

As ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room have detailed, Koch Industries is the largest funder of climate change denying and anti-environmental regulation fronts worldwide and its Americans for Prosperity Foundation is responsible for helping to create the so-called Tea Party movement. While the Koch brothers at the helm of Koch Industries are committed right-wing ideologues, their financing of front groups helps boost the profits of their conglomerate. Koch Industries contributes heavily to carbon pollution through their asphalt, timber, and oil refinery subsidiaries, and the University of Massachusetts lists Koch as the the 10th worst air polluter in America.

In its corporate newsletter, Koch Industries explicitly states that the low carbon fuel standard California is set to adopt to comply with AB 32 carbon emissions regulations would harm its bottom line because Koch imports mostly high-carbon crude oil from Canada. Another Koch newsletter warns that its Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota specializing in high-carbon Canadian crude would become much less profitable for Koch if low fuel standards mirroring AB 32 are adopted around the country.

In an attempt to kill AB 32 and squash the likelihood that similar laws spread nationwide, Americans for Prosperity California — a front group founded and funded by Koch Industries executive David Koch — has been organizing Tea Party rallies with Prop 23 proponent Assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Linda), bringing Tea Party support to AB 32 repeal hearings, and producing videos calling on Californians to pass Prop 23. The Wonk Room, with help from CAPAF intern Tara Kutz, has produced a video detailing Koch’s secret role in repealing Californian clean energy:

WR: Moreover, here is a rare clip of Americans for Prosperity operative Meredith Turney bragging to Koch Industries executive David Koch that her front group will help take over the Golden State. Koch Industries fears that laws like California’s revolutionary AB32 will hurt their bottom line, that’s why, like the tobacco industry, they are funding front groups. Here, in a Koch Industries corporate document, they say clean energy laws like AB32 will quote “be very bad news for our industry.”

Watch it: