I’m shocked, shocked! I tell you!, to hear that deniers are being paid to lie…
Most Credible Climate Skeptic Not So Credible After All:
Patrick Michaels has more credibility than your average climate skeptic. Unlike some of the kookier characters that populate the small world of climate denialists—like Lord Christopher Monckton, a sometime adviser to Margaret Thatcher who claims that “We are a carbon-starved planet,” or H. Leighton Steward, a retired oil executive and author of a best-selling diet book who argues that carbon dioxide is “green”—Michaels is actually a bona fide climate scientist. As such, he’s often quoted by reporters as a reasonable expert who argues that global warming has been overhyped. But what Michaels doesn’t mention in his frequent media appearances is his history of receiving money from big polluters.
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But Michaels’ credibility on climate is called into question by a trove of documents from a 2007 court case that attracted almost no scrutiny at the time. Those documents show that Michaels has financial ties to big energy interests—ties that he’s worked hard to keep secret. Here’s the back story:
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Several years ago, the auto industry launched a salvo of lawsuits challenging the tougher vehicle emissions standards that had been introduced in many states. In 2007, Michaels was scheduled to appear as an expert witness on behalf of a challenge by Green Mountain Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge and the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers to emissions standards in Vermont. The auto industry’s lawyers planned to put Michaels on the stand as an expert witness who would question the scientific finding that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet. But it soon became clear that lawyers defending Vermont’s law were going to ask Michaels about the clients of his “advocacy science consulting firm,” New Hope Environmental Services.
Michaels had never made a list of his clients public, and he refused to do so now, arguing that it was a confidential matter. The judge disagreed, and ruled that Michaels’ clients were a “viable area of cross examination.” “I understand that maybe it’s a little embarrassing,” said Judge William K. Sessions III. “[But] it’s not highly confidential information.”
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In addition, Greenpeace recently obtained an older copy of Michaels’ curriculum vitae via a Freedom of Information Act request that shows that the Western Fuels Association, a coal and fuel-transportation business group, gave him a $63,000 grant in the early 1990s for “research on global climatic change.” He also received $25,000 from the Edison Electric Institute, an association of electric utilities, from 1992-95 for “literature review of climate change and updates.” And a 2006 leaked industry memo revealed that he received $100,000 in funding from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association to fund climate denial campaigning around the time of the release of An Inconvenient Truth. Reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote in his 1998 book The Heat is On, one of the earliest works documenting industry funding for climate change skepticism, that Michaels also received $49,000 came from the German Coal Mining Association and $40,000 from the western mining company Cyprus Minerals.
When will we treat the bought-and-paid-for deniers the same way we now view the doctors who worked for the cigarette companies decades ago and told people smoking was safe, or that some brands weren’t so bad, etc.? Will it takes decades or a “climate 9/11″ event? Or could it happen with nothing more dramatic than more people in the media doing their jobs? (OK, that last one was a bitter joke–just like the media.)
