Campaign contributions and global warming

The ongoing debate over global warming seems to create new panic attacks by the day. Pity the energy companies who will create great extremes to instill fear and anxiety in the minions buying their propaganda. With shouts of clean coal technology and the glaciers are not melting, bought off politicians are now elevating the soon to be raging out of control debate. Key to this sad story is campaign contributions.

Leading the charge against climate change protagonists is Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), another shining example of the failed leadership program. He continues a wicked game of dirty politics by calling for a criminal investigation of some American and British scientists. This stems from apparently hacked emails in November 2009, from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Information in these emails has led to an attack on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), part of the UN’s climate science body, for using information in climate reports that had not been diligently researched. In the information was a statement that all Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, thanks to global warming. Now, new information is being released, apparently with erroneous temperature data regarding numerous weather stations throughout China.

Listing 17 “key players” in a recent US Senate report, ‘Consensus‘ Exposed: The CRU Controversy, Inhofe’s report accuses the IPCC of “obstructing release of damaging data and information; manipulating data and knowingly using flawed climate models to reach preconceived conclusions; colluding to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science ‘consensus’; and assuming activist roles to influence the political process.” Gee, the classic pot-black syndrome. Inhofe’s aggressive marketing campaign may soon find the shadows of deceit begin to glow, thanks in no small part to the irony of greed.

One need go no further than the report’s introduction for finding gaping holes in yet another government boondoggle, starting with the first sentence. Hard questions need to be asked about this report along with the basic question of whether the right hand is connected to the left hand. As in, is Inhofe aware of the Quadrennial Defense Review, a Pentagon report suggesting the US military industrial complex is quite aware of the consequences of global warming, and is developing a national security strategy to deal with it?

Limited in number but powerful and efficient, critics of global warming have launched an aggressive attack, thanks to those campaign contributions, leading the public down a path toward serious environmental destruction. No matter. Energy companies seem to have found a weak link in a small part of the environmental movement, and have based their attack on fear, disinformation, and fraud. Sound familiar? For bottom dwellers like Inhofe, the contributions are pouring in. His proud list of political contributions over the last five years reads like a nightmare world for environmental scientists.

Since 2005, the top five contributors shoveling political money toward Inhofe and his sleazy agenda are all directly related to the energy industry. They include Koch Industries, Murray Energy, Contran Corp., Devon Energy, and OGE Energy. That is just the top five list for ONE senator. As expected, during this same time period, the top industry donating money to him is oil & gas, with electric utilities coming in at number four. Mining makes the top ten industrial contribution list at number nine. These numbers do not include retirees, lobbyists, the GOP, and lawyers. Many of them are directly related to numerous energy corporations while still maintaining their own separate categories on the top ten list of industries contributions.

Included in this war against global warming supporters is an apparently coordinated effort of increased freedom of information act requests and a spike in hate mail. Not content to lie down and take the abuse, several members of the scientific community are fighting back. Rick Piltz, head of the Climate Science Watch website, states: "Scientists who are working in federal labs are being subjected to inquisitions coming from Congress. There is no question that this is an orchestrated campaign to intimidate scientists,” comparing it to a “classic Joe McCarthyite witch-hunt.”

On the list of 17 is NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist with the Goddard Institute. Commenting on the increased FoIA requests, he notes that: “"In my previous six years I dealt with one FoIA request. In the last three months, we have had to deal with I think eight. These FoIAs are fishing expeditions for potentially embarrassing content but they are not FoIA requests for scientific information."

Sadly, physical evidence regarding the environmental impacts of global warming is no longer required as proof. More important in the debate are stolen documents from a small percentile of the scientific community, aimed at discrediting the entire field of science. Just as sad, as energy companies bribe politicians to promote attempts at winning over a gullible segment of the public and suppressing any attempts at citizen participation, we all end up losing. The planet deserves better. Citizens must wake up and educate themselves.