Despite his latest expression of devotion to industry, some of the most ardent deniers apparently remain skeptical of Scott Pruitt. E&E reported Monday that Heartland doesn’t think Pruitt has what it takes to lead the Red/Blue team and challenge the Endangerment finding. Reporters Robin Bravender and Niina Heikkinen got hold of an email from Heartland CEO Joseph Bast with notes from a meeting Heartland convened with its oily allies on the possibility of forming a Red Team.
Highlights from Bast’s email include skepticism among participants that Pruitt will act on the Endangerment finding without pressure, and that someone else would be better suited to run the Red Team project. Bast’s notes call the overall idea of the Pruitt handling the Red Team exercise “vague, probably would not be effective and is unlikely to come about.”
Congressman-turned-Heartland President Tim Huelskamp admitted in the meeting that the planned debate is “political and not scientific,” so we know that at least Heartland and industry can be honest when talking privately with themselves. The email lays out some ideas for properly marketing this political debate, including a focus on Fox News, tweeting at Trump, and a strong emphasis on beating the very very debunked “Co2 is good” drum.
If Heartland et al do convince the administration to take up the Endangerment finding, that alone would be a win, as industry won’t wait for a determination to declare victory. As Bast’s notes from the meeting put it: “we need to be able to say ‘EPA is reconsidering whether CO2 is a pollutant.’” It’s clear that Heartland doesn’t want a scientific debate that would wait for the facts to come in, but a purely political one based on messaging and marketing. (Just like the red team effort.)
Speaking of unscientific political posturing, Competitive Enterprise Institute and the similarly industry-funded Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) sent a letter to the EPA yesterday signed by 60 so-called climate and health experts in support of their joint February 2017 petition to have “an honest, unbiased reconsideration” of the endangerment finding. CEI and SEPP claim the 60 signers “have technical skills and knowledge relevant to climate science and the GHG Endangerment Finding.”
A quick look at the list of 60 supposed experts shows 21 are funded by tobacco or fossil fuels or are affiliated with groups that are, 18 who are listed as retired or emeritus, 8 who have anti-enviro books to peddle (which tend to be published by fossil fuel funded conservative think tanks and almost never peer-reviewed), 5 Williams, 5 Johns, 4 James and 4 Davids and a grand total of zero women.
But are they experts? Well, let’s look at some of them. Once Joe D'Aleo (whose doctorate is honorary) posted a graph to the ICECAP blog thinking it proved, instead of disproved, his point about drought. Willie Soon's gotten over $1mil in fossil fuel money (but of course you know that) and once published a paper so bad half the journal's editors resigned. Greenpeace once got William Happer to admit he uses CO2Coalition to launder fossil fuel money for his denial work and was paid $8,000 in a donation to the group to serve as a witness in the losing Peabody case challenging the social cost of carbon. David Legates has co-authored on Soon's covertly fossil-fuel-funded studies, and wrote a report for an Exxon/Koch-funded group that was riddled with errors. Craig Idso worked for Peabody Coal, while Steve Milloy worked for coal giant Murray Energy. Milloy also wrote pro-smoking columns for FoxNews before it was revealed he was running a tobacco and oil front group (though that hasn’t stopped the WSJ from publishing his PM2.5 denial, which conveniently lets both smoking and fossil fuel pollution off the hook).
So these are not exactly the best choices if one actually wants “an honest, unbiased reconsideration” of the finding, like the letter states. But if one wants a political debate instead of a scientific one, as Heartland’s president admitted, then yes, these are the “Top men working on it.”
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