Denial makes strange bedfellows.
Two of the leading sources of anti-scientific disinformation on global warming — George Will and Anthony Watts’ blog WattsUpWithThat — have embraced a man, Robert Bradley, who proudly shilled for Enron CEO Ken Lay, who was convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges in 2006.
Watts and I, you may recall, got into a tiny dustup a couple weeks ago (see Exclusive: New NSIDC director Serreze explains the “death spiral” of Arctic ice, brushes off the “breathtaking ignorance” of blogs like WattsUpWithThat and here). Since then, Watts has been throwing everything at me including the kitchen stink, with four full posts attacking me this month. I was planning to ignore him, until two things happened.
First, Watts ran a truly nonsensical piece (here) by Bradley, who is now President of the Institute for Energy Research, which “has received $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.” Bradley is one of the Denier-Industrial-Complex Kooks (DICKs) — see, for instance, “Mysterious industry front-group affiliated with Ken Lay’s former speechwriter launches anti-Waxman-Markey ads with phony MIT cost figures.”
Second, George Will published a piece, “Tilting at Green Windmills” in which he uses a discredited Spanish “study” to claim clean energy investments don’t create jobs (for debunking by CP and the Regional Minister of Innovation, Enterprise and Employment for the Government of Navarre, see here and here and here). Will’s piece is noteworthy for this remarkable admission:
[This] study was supported by a like-minded U.S. think tank (the Institute for Energy Research, for which this columnist has given a paid speech.
That’s right, George Will published an entire piece based on disinformation bought and paid for by a think tank that is bought and paid for by ExxonMobil and run by Ken Lay’s former top shill — and Will also took money from that think tank. At least editorial page editor Fred Hiatt required that much in return for letting Will publish his umpteenth article full of misleading and inaccurate statements.
Now you may say, wait a minute, Joe, sure Bradley served as Director of Public Policy Analysis at Enron, where he was a speechwriter for CEO Kenneth Lay,” who was “convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges on May 25, 2006″ — but how can you say he proudly shilled for Lay when he has wiped any trace of his connection to Enron from his IER bio here?
Well, I have had the misfortune of knowing Bradley for a long time, since Enron Energy Services (EES) reached out to many leading experts on energy efficiency, and they really liked by book, Cool Companies. Certainly none of the energy efficiency folks were aware of what Enron was doing or they would have quit immediately. I don’t even know if anyone in EES management knew what Ken Lay and his buddies in top management were doing to fraudulently rip-off the public.
And I have no idea whether Bradley knew of the fraudulent activity, but he certainly knew what kind of company he was working for. Over the past several months, Bradley has bombarded me with requests to publish articles about the disinformation he and his IER buddies have written. Just last month he wrote to me and James Hansen:
I wish you (and him) could have been in the Enron government affairs meetings on CO2 trading–we were going to game it to death and make money coming and going. And no one was quaking about the future of global climate.
and before that he wrote to us:
We were going to laugh all the way to the bank with our CO2 trading until the banks said no more laughing–you’re broke. Keep trying Joe–Enron Lives!
As the Biblical Proverb says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
Enron does live in on the likes of people like Bradley. That’s why Waxman-Markey has put in many safeguards to protect the public from fraud in the CO2 trading.
Does that mean the system will be free from fraud? Of course not. You can write all the laws you want against fraud and robbery and other crimes, and greedy people who think they are smarter than everyone else will still break the law. The same is true of the tax code — people try to cheat it all the time and some succeed.
But one thing you can certainly say about CO2 trading: The overwhelming majority of CO2 emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels, and flows of natural gas, oil, and coal are very closely tracked in this country, both sales and purchases. So it would be quite hard to engage in significant fraud of the kind that would lead to, say, much higher actual emissions than were being measured and regulated. And as for cornering the market and running up the price of a tradable commodity, an Enron specialty, again, W-M has multiple safeguards to prevent that outcome.
I am not going to waste time here debunking the latest Bradley-Watts attack on me since I have dealt with almost every point in previous posts. It is 100% nonsense, which is it no surprise since it is largely an excerpt from something Roger Pielke, Jr. wrote. But it does contain one unintentionally humorous attack I will address in a later post.
The point is that one shouldn’t have to debunk anything Bradley writes — or anything the Institute for Energy Research has published or supported, including George Will. You just need to consider the source.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
the right-wingers self-delusion is mercifully loosening it’s grip on the wider public. how nice to see the climate bill pass – hopefully we can now ramp-up action fast enough to actually avoid catastrophic climate change.
I’m beginning to think that the deniers are becoming more irrelevant – like when all the tabacco executives testified/lied to congress…the game was over.
Now the issue is that people don’t understand that the horrible effects are not going to wait for generations down the line but are happening here and now and by 2050 we are in for a world of pain.
And on this point, the paper we love to hate has done it again!!!!!
With an article on forest fires and beetle destruction…It even had this money quote:
“But scientists say that recent winters have also lacked the stretches of deep cold — 20 to 40 degrees below zero — that can check the insects’ spread.”
YET the article never mentions climate change!!!!!! I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I’m starting to wonder….
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/us/28wildfires.html?_r=1&ref=us
[JR: Good catch. I'll blog on this Monday.]
I wondered about the UC3M study. I’m sure it’s going to be relentlessly cited by the PP (right-center party in Spain) in the next national elections, in their efforts to unseat the PSOE (socialist party, whose leader Zapatero is president of Spain at the moment).
Your pal Bradley also has links to the pollution-pimping Heartland PR organization.
And guess who’s enabling George Will’s serial lying habit with multi-6-figure media buys?
Seems like there’s been a whole new rush of denial pieces recently, maybe connected with the new energy legislation. Here’s another example making it’s rounds in part of the blogosphere:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html
It always amazes me how that site manages to have something near 100% of the comments cheering on the denial.
Wait ’til the chimp choir is notified of this. There will be screeching and ululating all over this board.
Nonetheless, they NEED to screech and smash bones, as they are now marginalized and not at the table.
Why are they marginalized?
Why, our mere voting and passing a bill negates all their arguments. They are no longer at the table. They aren’t even in the room. They are out in the hall. Finally.
Best,
D
Don’t be so smug about marginalization; money still talks, the rest walk.
Huh, I wonder what hung up my short earlier comment in the moderation queue?
Oh Gawd, are we now in for the onslaught again? Counting…three…two…one…
Ken, we had a wild storm Friday preceded by roiling clouds the likes of which I never saw before. An acquaintance said ominously “Oh the weather is getting so strange. I think it’s those satellites…you know, they’re up there everywhere, beaming down…” !
I told her that climate change means more energy in the system which leads to stronger storms and she looked at me as though that had never occurred to her – which it probably hadn’t. She seemed okay with the notion though.
I think you are right, people are more and more in agreement that something is not quite right – although some of them would rather blame satellite beams than their own SUV. That will change though.
Another bark beetle story in the NYTimes today – (link). And again, I saw no mention of climate change as a factor (please correct me if I’m wrong!). And again, its author (Kirk Johnson) is not among the seven reporters on the NYTimes”Environmental S.W.A.T. Team” , as announced by CJR back in January (link; “…team comprises Andrew Revkin and Cornelia Dean from Science, Felicity Barringer and Leslie Kaufman from National, Elisabeth Rosenthal from Foreign, Mia Navarro from Metro, and the Washington bureau’s Matthew Wald”; editor is Erica Goode).
I’m going to contact Erica Goode and others. and see if I can find out if there’s been a change in Team membership – or if “The Others” have invaded the NYTimes climate beat.
[JR: I'll hit this tomorrow, thanks.]
keep up the good fight brother, we all need sites like yours so we can compare what is going on to what is being said.
we need people like you.
Don’t get too excited about the new global warming bill that just passed the House; it hasn’t passed the Senate yet!!
Found this goody on this
page at IER: But that’s not the end of it. CBO didn’t score anything but the “cap and trade” part of the bill…not the renewable energy mandate, not the additional costs of complying with the bureaucratic nirvana of
new standards for energy efficiency of lighting for home art and “personal spas,” etc. In some parts of the country, the “You Must Obey” renewable energy mandate could force significantly higher costs on consumers and businesses.
Looks like a full court press on pushing the paranoid far right into action. Now even the CBO is part of the new world order
[JR: The efficiency stuff would LOWER the overall cost, too, as ACEEE showed.]
TVMOB has this spectacularly
paranoid interview with Heartland from earlier this month. TVMOB serves up this: All it is, is another way of keeping this flagging, failing scare in the headlines between now and the Copenhagen Climate Summit organized by the UN for December 2009. And at that summit, they are hoping the first steps to turn the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into a world government will be taken.
and the scary thing is when the right wing media puts out this crap, some people in America are going to believe it. TVMOB was in the
House just a few months ago. CATO, Heartland, IER, and more–what the heck
is going on?
Gail,
I heard a woman who hosts a show on our local Pacifica affiliate KPFT here in Houston actually blame the changing climate on the HAARP Shortwave radio experiment taking place in Alaska. So I called into the show to remind the listening audience that there is a machine that substantially contributes to change our climate and it is parked in our garages. It produces 19.4 lbs of a gas called CO2 for every gallon of gasoline it consumes.
In other news I saw on the ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos and Senator Chuck Grassley was disputing the cost of ACES and the CBO’s figures and spewing out the same talking points that Gingrich and Boehner had said back in April and March respectively that the bill would cost every American $1300 per year. Grassley was even disputing the CBO report while repeating the same debunked cost figures without providing any study to back it up. Thank god Paul Krugman, St. Paul of Princeton, was there to correct him. He stated that it was not only the CBO but the EPA that had cited similar figures on the cost of ACES.
My radio marketing professor was right. If you repeat something often enough people will internalize it. The fact that it is not true is not relevant.
Another bark beetle story in the NYTimes today – (link). And again, I saw no mention of climate change as a factor (please correct me if I’m wrong!).
Out here, where it is happening, the local papers usu mention this as a factor, even if far right. We know.
Best,
D
Enron was such a nest of snakes.
Chris Horner is an alumnus.
Joe,
Informed, non-denialist CP readers can appreciate your derogatory humor (i.e. the D.I.C.K. comment), but you risk turning off new readers who may be more sensitive to such words, however subtle they may be. Perhaps you can tone down the derogatory wit and keep the focus on the facts, which are clearly on your side?
BTW, I’ve read an article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi warning that financial companies like Goldman Sachs are positioning themselves to exploit and profit from the carbon credit system, at public expense. Are there safeguards in the climate bill to prevent this?
[JR: Well I try to entertain and inform at the same time, using as much humor as possible on this otherwise grim subject, and readership keeps rising at a fast pace. I always appreciate sincere comments from readers, though, and I will factor that in as this blog continues to evolve.
The point of using a market-based mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to allow the profit motive to inspire human ingenuity and market efficiencies, which is why such mechanisms have historically achieved deeper emissions reductions faster and cheaper then economic models have predicted. There certainly are a number of safeguards in the climate bill to minimize the chances of fraud or market manipulation. I'll try to do a post on this on July. But there is no law that has been yet issued by man -- or God, for that matter, if you believe he is the source of the 10 Commandments -- that people can't find clever (and not-so-clever) ways of violating. That, however, is as true of old-style command-and-control environmental regulation as it is of cap-and-trade.]
Wonhyo, Is it not the function of financial companies to exploit and profit from markets? Without them, there would be no markets. I could be wrong; I am not an economist.
W-M specifically brings all the markets created by cap and trade out into the sunshine, and into very strict regulation.
The current market failures were incubated in a climate of non regulation.
Free markets + regulation = economic growth
Free markets + regulation + repsect for natural capital = sustainable wealth
Sent to NYT Environmental S.W.A.T. team editor Erica Goode -
Hello Ms Goode -
I’m curious about the NYT Environmental S.W.A.T. team makeup at this point, since the NYT seems to be running environment/climate stories without the participation of said team, as I understand it to be constituted (from the January CJR Observatory post).
Could you tell me please -
Is the team still active?
Has its membership changed since the January CJR post announcing it?
(Is John M. Broder on it? Kirk Johnson?)
Are you still its editor?
Do environmental stories by non-team members still get edited by the team’s editor?
Thank you for your time, and for helping us readers to understand.
Anna Haynes
The Canadian media is so pre-historic…
Why Barack Obama is bad for Canada
The new President’s ambitions could have a devastating effect on our economy
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/06/24/why-barack-obama-is-bad-for-canada/#idc-container
But it turns out that Obama has a knack for making people feel good when perhaps they ought to be watching their back. “Then the realities begin to take root when you look at what is taking place here in Washington,” says Corcoran. The reality is that Obama is leading an aggressive effort to remake American energy policy with potentially severe consequences for the oil sands, and by extension, the Canadian economy.
The oil sands currently export about half of their production of 1.2 million barrels per day to the U.S.
were not going to make the 2 °Cs for sure because we wont be coming off the stuff fast enough….
The new energy world would rely more on natural gas. This abundant fossil fuel emits carbon but is relatively clean when compared with coal. But people would have to decide whether to accept new pipelines that are needed to ship the gas around the country _ just as they would have to deal with the need for new power lines to move solar and wind energy to where it’s needed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/27/how-the-climate-bill-may-_n_221869.html
Joe, I like your blog and I read a lot of what you post, but I’m baffled by one thing. Why do you give next to no attention to the international political scene?
Even if the US were to cut its emissions to zero overnight this would not solve the global CO2 problem. Moreover, in the unlikely event that any one country (even the US) achieved this it would likely be by “exporting” their own emissions to other countries through offsets, outsourced manufacturing and so on.
Climate change will only be solved when the world acts in unison. Given the US’s unique position this is most likely to happen when the US displays real leadership on the international stage. We “foreigners” wait and watch.
W-M is an unfortunate and belated start. Things must improve rapidly and drastically.
[JR: I blog at length on the international situation -- see my many posts on China, in particular, and Europe. But quite naturally most of my posts in the last week or two have focused on Waxman-Markey.]
NY Times and WaPo = the yin and yang of climate change coverage?
Krugman has a great editorial today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=1
Which leads me to ponder…..
How is it that the NY Times editorial pages are so strong on climate change yet the news pages are so weak?
And: How is it that the WaPo news pages can be so strong on climate change and the editorials so awful?
The newspapers are a strange mirror image of each other……
Everything which *ilkins just complained about is either completely contradicted by information easily found on this site, or the complaint just doesn’t make any sense. Does *ilkins know this?
Probably.
Ken, great article. Is this a watershed moment?
Yuebing, Yes, I believe it is…no matter how weak the climate bill may be…the landscape will have fundamentally shifted.
One last thought about NY Times:
The thing about the the Times is that it is a fundamentally conservative organization…they don’t really want to be out in front on anything….there is also a unhealthy dose of “cool kid” detachment in their reporters’ approach to the news…it’s a combination, that, with a few exceptions, keeps the paper as a lagging indicator….
HOWEVER, once the gray lady is awoken and latches onto “the news” they deploy resources like no other paper in the country and in short order end up “owning” the story…
We can only hope that she wakes up soon!
Ken, Dr. Krugman hit it out of the park. WOW. I have written him more than once that he really should cover climate change because it is the biggest economic story ever, and I’ve sent him pictures of dying trees on his very own Princeton campus.
I think his candor now is really significant. He has a very high profile in the MSM so I think it will be hard for other news outlets to ignore this.
[JR: I blog at length on the international situation -- see my many posts on China, in particular, and Europe. But quite naturally most of my posts in the last week or two have focused on Waxman-Markey.]
I appreciate that, but I haven’t seen much about COP15 on ClimateProgress. It is crucial that something good comes out of this summit as it will, in effect, replace Kyoto. People are critical of Kyoto but it was eventually ratified by every country in the world apart from the US and has provided the mandate in Europe and elsewhere which politicians needed to take action.
My biggest gripe with the US is that it is too inward looking. The US gives the impression that either it can solve the climate problem or the problem cannot be solved. Quite frustrating for those watching from afar.
[JR: I don't think you can accuse me of not blogging on the international situation or of failing to make it clear that the United States has been the single biggest cause of international in action and must start taking action if it is to get other countries, like China, to do what is needed. The only impression I am trying to give is that if the United States doesn't take any action to solve the problem, then the problem cannot be solved. The same is true of Europe, but you folks have taken a lot more action than we have. The same is also true of China, as I have discussed at length.]
[James Thompson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation. ]
Joe – why do you keep moderating my fairly innocent posts? I have to keep changing name and proxy server just to be allowed to post! It seems a little unfair when most other are able to stick with one persona and I have been through half a dozen!
p.s. I’m not one of your enemies from TBI or WUWT!
[JR: Not sure why your comment went to moderation -- no conspiracy. It just happens sometimes. TBI and WUWT aren't my enemies. They are, as Krugman says, enemies of future generations. I just like to point that out from time to time.]
James,
If it is any solace – I get put in moderation sometimes too –
and I’m a past contributor to this darn blog!!!!!!
The ways of moderation are a mystical force me thinks….
The ways of moderation are a mystical force me thinks
Sometimes I think it’s just random like searching every fifth car at border crossings. I, and am sure others, have had some comments go through and some be moderated on the same thread. Hey, it’s Joe’s blog. Accept the rules or go elsewhere.
Maybe someone should start a blog just for comments in moderation (would insert smiley face here if I knew how).
PaulK,
i have no issue with moderation….it’s one of the quirks of the site…
:)
I have had a number of posts caught in moderation for reasons that are unclear. One included the the phrase “sacred ox ‘gored’ “, so I figured Joe was trying to catch anyone referring to Al Gore, often a tipoff to a denier. It just takes a bit of extra time for the posts to show up, which doesn’t cause any harm. A small price to pay for the relative lack of denier BS on this blog.
Response from Ms Goode to my email asking about current composition of the NYTimes Environmental S.W.A.T. Team -
———————-
Thanks for your interest in our environmental cluster!
In answer to your questions: Yes, I’m still the editor, and I have a deputy editor now, Nancy Kenney.
Yes, John Broder is part of our group. Kirk Johnson is not — he works for the National desk. The other members of the enviro group — or pod, as we often call it — are Andy Revkin, Elisabeth Rosenthal, Leslie Kaufman, Matt Wald, Felicity Barringer, Cornelia Dean and Mia Navarro. Reporters from other sections — most recently, Jim Glanz from Investigations — sometimes do pieces for us. And we often collaborate with reporters from the energy cluster in the Business section.
We edit all of our own stories, then feed them to other sections — National, Foreign, Metro, Science, etc.
Hope this answers your questions and thanks for asking.
——————–
Seems like a pretty simple choice for humanity:
To draw on the combined wisdom of history and science or listen to DICKs (Denier-Industrial-Complex Kooks)
Joe,
Do you see the UN as being central to the process? I do. Unless all nations can sign up to some sort of coherent plan for emissions reduction led by the UN I don’t think progress will be fast enough, sustained and all-inclusive.
Individual nations will always find the temptation of burning or selling more fossil fuel locally outweighs the rather abstract goal of contributing their bit to a global solution. We see this continually in carbon-intensive countries with high living standards such as Australia and Canada.
I agree that the US and China together currently make up a large part of the problem (about 50%), but go it alone and you find lesser nations such as India ramping up their emissions and taking your place. Net result – CO2 keeps rising.
[JR: Central? No. I see the UNFCCC process as valuable yes but the jury is out as to whether it is central. Right now, IF the U.S. can pass the current climate bill, then I have every companies that Europe, Japan, etc. will agree to do at least as much if not more. Then China is far and away the most important after that. They really trump the rest of the developing world all by themselves.]
“James Thomson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
Your blog really doesn’t like me…
[JR: It has a mind of its own!]
Joe,
We’ll have to agree to differ. I might agree with you if the US was setting the bar high, but 17% reduction on 2005 levels by 2020 doesn’t even bring the US back to the 1990 baseline that everyone else is working to. By comparison “The EU has promised to cut emissions by 20% by 2020 and by 30% if other rich countries join in, measured against 1990 levels.”
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2009/05/us,-eu-climate-change-targets-are-comparable-/65021.aspx
On this basis it is hard to see how W-M will galavnize other coutries into more agressive targets.
[JR: "Galvanize" is not the word I'd use. And the 2020 target is too weak, but shouldn't be the sole focus of attention.]
Can’t disagree over China though. Their explosive economic growth rate based on dirty coal, coupled with 20% of the entire world population is an unfolding disaster.
[JR: W-M allows U.S. to negotiate a deal with China -- and gives us some change Copenhagen will not be the abject failure it would be if W-M dies.]
Thank you!!!!
In my tussles with the haute sycophancy, I recently saw Obama et al. accused of being Enron all over again. Great fuel, thanks.
toadies all. Fuel for fools. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Enjoy.
A followup note re the bark beetle/firefighting story – I’d asked editor Goode a) informally, to confirm that she hadn’t edited it (since it came from Johnson, who’s not in her pod), and b) whether there’s anything in place to keep, say, the National desk from encroaching on her topical turf. No response (so far) except to ask why I was asking (which I explained).
A subject for a future edition:
http://www.csiro.au/news/Permafrost-climate-change-threat.html
CSIRO – Australia’s largest scientific research agency
Contact Enquiries: Phone – 1300 363 400 | Email – Enquiries@csiro.au
Permafrost melt poses major climate change threat
Reference: 09/108
New research shows that the amount of carbon stored in frozen soils at high latitudes is double previous estimates and could, if emitted as carbon dioxide and methane, lead to a significant increase in global temperatures by the end of this century.
1 July 2009
“Massive amounts of carbon stored in frozen soils at high latitudes are increasingly vulnerable to exposure to the atmosphere,” says the Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project at CSIRO, Dr Pep Canadell.
“The research shows that the amount of carbon stored in soils surrounding the North Pole has been hugely underestimated.”
“Using the new carbon pool estimates from this research, permafrost degradation could account for the entire upper range of carbon-climate feedbacks currently estimated by climate models,” Dr Canadell says.
In a paper published in the latest edition of Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Dr Canadell says frozen high-latitude soils have the potential to release vast quantities of carbon and methane into the atmosphere and subsequently influence carbon-climate feedbacks.
“Warmer temperatures at high latitudes are already resulting in unprecedented permafrost degradation,” he says. “Projections show that almost all near-surface permafrost will disappear by the end of this century exposing large carbon stores to decomposition and release of greenhouse gases.”
Models developed in collaboration with Dr Canadell show that global warming could trigger an irreversible process of thawing.
“A number of feedbacks increase the vulnerability of these soils. For example, heat generated from increased microbial activity could lead to sustained and long-term chronic emissions of carbon dioxide and methane.”
In addition, ‘thermokast lakes’ formed as permafrost thaws, would draw heat to deeper layers and bring methane to the surface.
Increased fire frequency will also trigger permafrost degradation and thermokast collapse.
“Using the new carbon pool estimates from this research, permafrost degradation could account for the entire upper range of carbon-climate feedbacks currently estimated by climate models,” Dr Canadell says.
“The potential for significant feedbacks from permafrost carbon could be realised with only a small fraction of currently frozen carbon released to the atmosphere. For example if only 10 per cent of the permafrost melts, the resultant feedback could result in an additional 80 ppm carbon dioxide equivalent released into the atmosphere, equating to about 0.7°C of global warming.”
The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR) [external link]
The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research is a partnership between CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.
———————
Does anybody have any idea of how to shut down the methane production from tundra lakes that used to be frozen peat bogs? Doing the obvious multiplication: 100% of permafrost = 800ppm CO2 equivalent = 7 degrees C. That puts us over the limit all by itself. These are huge lakes, not small ponds.
Just for completeness, a followup note re my day-before-yesterday followup note (June 30th, 2009 at 10:49 pm) – I did not get answers to my 2nd set of questions to Erica Goode.
(which were: a) informally, to confirm that she hadn’t edited this story (since it came from Johnson, who’s not in her pod), and b) whether there’s anything in place to keep, say, the National desk from encroaching on her topical turf.)