Chief Climate Skeptic, Brought to You By Big Energy

by Chris Santiago · 2010-02-28 11:29:00 UTC
Topics:

Patrick Michaels is the mainstream media's go-to-guy for denying climate change. He's quoted heavily in a recent CBS News Report knocking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He's taken pot shots at climate scientists in the Wall Street Journal, on Anderson Cooper, and even in the sacrosanct pages of The Grey Lady.

And it's no wonder he's been dubbed honorary captain of the Skeptics: Michaels holds a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's a senior fellow at both the arch-conservative Cato Institute and George Mason University's School of Public Policy. As a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, he seems, on the surface, like the boy crying wolf from the inside.

But in a recent post, Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones points out that—surprise, surprise—Patrick Michaels has money ties to Big Energy. Not only that, Michaels has gone out of his way to hide these ties from the public.

In 2007, a cadre of auto industry heavyweights wanted to challenge the state of Vermont's emission standards. They planned to call Michaels to the stand to poke holes in the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change.

But when the lawyers defending Vermont's law pushed to make Michaels' clients at New Hope Environmental Services public—and when the judge in the case agreed that the client list was fair game—Michaels balked, saying that to do so would "imperil his livelihood." The auto industry pulled him off the stand. Court documents later revealed that at least one of Michaels' major clients was, you guessed it, a ginormous energy company.

And that's just tip of the (melting) iceberg. Sheppard lists a long, dirty history of energy industry payouts to Michaels for denying climate change, including grants from the Western Fuels Association, the Edison Electric Institute, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, the German Coal Mining Association, and Cyprus Minerals.

Ironically, one of Patrick Michaels' biggest beefs with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is its lack of transparency. Ain't that the pot calling the kettle black.

Photo Credit: _J_D_R

Chris Santiago is a freelance writer and editor. He most recently worked at McGraw-Hill and "got green" at Oberlin College.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Democrat Blanche Lincoln Helps Gut the Clean Air Act
NEXT STORY:
Stopping the Water Grab in Nevada

COMMENTS (34)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.