Climate Science Denial Groups Offer to Hide Fossil Fuel Funding

Major Climate Science Denial Groups Offer to Hide Fossil Fuel Funding, Greenpeace Investigation Finds

By Graham Readfearn • Tuesday, December 8, 2015   DeSmogBlog 

 

An undercover investigation by environment group Greenpeace has found some of the world’s most vocal climate science denial groups were willing to accept cash from fossil fuel interests in return for writing articles and reports that reject the impacts of greenhouses gases.

Greenpeace operatives posing as representatives of coal and oil companies were told that while the reports could be produced, there were ways that the sources of funding could be hidden.

Academics affiliated with leading US academic institutions Princeton and Penn State universities are implicated in the Greenpeace research.

According to a report on the investigation at Greenpeace's EnergyDesk website, Princeton's Professor William Happer had revealed he had accepted cash from coal company Peabody Energy in return for providing testimony to US congress but had routed the cash through a climate denial group. Happer also offered his services but said that a new climate science denial group, CO2 Coalition, should be used to channel the funds.

Groups including the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Donors Trust are also alleged to have been complicit in providing “peer review” services for fossil fuel clients and, in the case of Donors Trust, in providing an untraceable route for the fossil fuel payments.

The story comes as Happer is preparing to give evidence to a congressional hearing of the Senate Subcomittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, chaired by Republican and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. That hearing is scheduled for Tuesday December 8 and also calls fellow “sceptics” Dr John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr Judith Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology and conservative commentator Mark Steyn.

A DeSmogBlog investigation into Donors Trust and its partner group Donors Capital Fund found that between 2005 and 2012, some $479 million of income to the two groups was untraceable. Of the amounts that were traceable, DeSmog found that $7.65 million had come from the Knowledge and Progress Fund (KPF). 

On the KPF board are oil billionaire and major Republican benefactor Charles Koch, his wife Liz and son Charles Chase Koch. Richard Fink, a Koch company director and long-standing aide to Charles Koch, is also a KPF director.

The Greenpeace investigation raises questions about the use of the Donors funds in financing climate science denial groups.  Donors Trust, together with oil giant Exxon, have also funded the work of Harvard-Smithsonian affiliated researcher Dr Willie Soon, who claims carbon dioxide cannot change the climate.

Greenpeace also claims that CO2 Coalition board member William O'Keefe, a former Exxon lobbyist, had suggested in an email to Happer that Donors Trust be used as a route to conceal cash from a fictional Middle eastern oil and gas company.

The investigation also targeted Happer's work with the London-based contrarian group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by former UK chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Greenpeace wrote:

Professor Happer, who sits on the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, was asked by undercover reporters if he could put the industry funded report through the same peer review process as previous GWPF reports they claimed to have been “thoroughly peer reviewed”. Happer explained that this process had consisted of members of the Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal.

 

He added: “I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.”

Asked for comment by Greenpeace, the GWPF said in a statement that it rejected Greenpeace's investigation, saying any claims it had offered to put a fossil fuel commission report through its own version of peer review were a “fabrication”.

Railroads required to plan for a worst-case oil train spill in WA state

Willamette River as part of an oil-spill training exercise in Portland

Railroads required to plan for a worst-case oil train spill in Washington state

By Samantha Wohlfeil    The Bellingham Herald      May 17, 2015 

Under a new state law signed by Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday, May 14, large railroads will be required to plan with the state for “worst-case spills” from crude oil unit trains, but exactly what that worst-case scenario looks like is not yet clear.

The law requires railroads to plan for the “largest foreseeable spill in adverse weather conditions,” but doesn’t define “largest foreseeable spill.”

In April, BNSF railway employees told Washington emergency responders that the company currently considers 150,000 gallons of crude oil – enough to fill five rail tank cars – its worst-case scenario when planning for spills into waterways. Crude oil trains usually carry about 100 rail tank cars.

“We’ve already seen worse than that though, haven’t we?” asked Roger Christensen, Bellingham’s interim emergency manager,....

...The amount is lower than what has been spilled and partially burned off in several high-profile crude oil train derailments in the last three years: ....

...“Until we have further regulatory clarity from the U.S. Department of Transportation on how the agency will require railroads to calculate ‘worst-case discharges’ to waterways, BNSF is considering using 150,000 gallons,” Melonas wrote. “BNSF is open to discussing the justification of this quantity with Federal or State environmental agencies.”....

... The new law tasks the state Department of Ecology with crafting the worst-case scenario for railroad contingency plans in a process that could take a year or longer, and will include input from the railroads and the public, said Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, preparedness section manager for Ecology....   more here

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/17/4296383_railroads-required-to-plan-for.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/17/4296383_railroads-required-to-plan-for.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/17/4296383_railroads-required-to-plan-for.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/17/4296383_railroads-required-to-plan-for.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Oklahoma oil billionaire demanded university fire scientists studying dangers of fracking

RawStory    Tom Boggioni    May 16, 2015

A billionaire oil tycoon, who is a major donor to the University of Oklahoma, approached a dean at the school demanding that the university fire scientists who were studying the link between fracking and the increase of earthquakes in the oil-rich state.

According to Bloomberg Business, Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm met with Larry Grillot, dean of the university’s Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, in 2014 and expressed his dismay with work being done on the school’s Oklahoma Geological Survey.

“Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed,” Grillot wrote to Dammy Hilliard, University Vice President for External Relations and Planning.

In the email, Grillot noted that Hamm had made a veiled threat to the university, telling the dean, “he would be visiting with Governor [Mary] Fallin on the topic of moving the OGS out of the University of Oklahoma.”....    more here

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/05/17/4296383_railroads-required-to-plan-for.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

As Galena IL Tank Cars Burned, Industry Met at White House to Weaken Safety Standards

U.S. rail industry pushes White House to ease oil train safety rules

By Valerie Volcovici and Patrick Rucker     Reuters    3/10/15

The U.S. rail industry is pushing the White House to drop a requirement that oil trains adopt an advanced braking system, a cornerstone of a national safety plan that will soon govern shipments of crude oil across the country.

Representatives of large rail operators met with White House officials last week to argue against the need for electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, or ECP brakes, saying they "would not have significant safety benefits" and "would be extremely costly," according to a handout from the meeting.

ECP brakes trigger all axles simultaneously rather than one at a time in current design.

More than a dozen industry representatives made their case at the Washington meeting last Friday, a day after a crude oil train derailed in Illinois.

Reuters reported last month that the national oil train safety plan now under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget would require the advanced braking.

The Transportation Department has concluded that ECP braking would deliver meaningful safety improvements but the industry officials argued that the department estimates "grossly overstate benefits and understate costs."

The industry claims fitting rail stock with ECP brakes would not prevent accidents, but merely limit the number of cars that derail in an accident.

Adopting the new technology would lead to more frequent service problems and mechanical delays, industry officials said.

The oil train safety plan being considered by the White House would also demand tougher tank cars and other safety steps that the government estimates would cost at least $3 billion over the next 20 years.

Oil and rail executives contend that much higher costs would needlessly hinder a sector that has helped push a national energy renaissance.

The Oil Spill That Could Happen Here, Part 1

Sightline Institute  Eric de Place  and Ahren Stroming on March 11, 2015

Spills are an unfortunate reality of moving oil on or near water. Try as we might to avoid them, the record shows that they happen in rivers, along coastlines, and in bays and harbors. They happen in remote areas and in the middle of cities. They happen in fog, in storms, and sometimes during fair weather. They happen around the world and they happen in Northwest waters. (Plus, near-misses and almost-spills happen with frightening regularity too.)

In the next few years, the Northwest will decide whether or not to green-light staggering increases in crude oil facilities. These plans would mean more tankers in the Salish Sea serving an expanded tar sands pipeline in British Columbia, along with oil train-to-vessel sites everywhere from the Columbia River to Grays Harbor to Puget Sound. If these projects go ahead, the best analytical assessment of regional spill risk demonstrates that more oil on the water is a near-certainty for region’s future.

 

Whether we will minimize that risk—by saying no to crude oil expansion—or multiply it—by agreeing to the industry’s plans—remains to be seen. To better understand that risk, it is helpful to examine oil spills in places similar to the Northwest. These are places with established spill response programs, experience with tanker ship traffic, and serious Coast Guards.

These are the stories of the the danger ahead.....    more here