Greenpeace says Koch funds misinformation about global warming

LONDON - Great Britain’s The Guardian on March 30 reported on an investigation by environmental activist group Greenpeace that identifies privately owned U.S. oil company Koch Industries as the paymaster of global warming skeptics in the U.S. and Europe.
Greenpeace accuses Kansas-based Koch, which owns refineries and operates oil pipelines, of funding 35 conservative and libertarian groups, as well as more than 20 congressmen and senators. Between them, Greenpeace says, these groups and individuals have spread misinformation about climate science and led a sustained assault on climate scientists and green alternatives to fossil fuels.
Greenpeace says that Koch Industries donated nearly $48 million to climate opposition groups between 1997-2008. From 2005-2008, it donated $25 million to groups opposed to climate change, nearly three times as much as higher-profile funders such as ExxonMobil.
Koch also spent $5.7 million on political campaigns and $37 million on direct lobbying to support fossil fuels.
In a hard-hitting report, which appears to confirm environmentalists' suspicions that there is a well-funded opposition to the science of climate change, Greenpeace accuses the funded groups of "spreading inaccurate and misleading information" about climate science and clean energy companies.
"The company's network of lobbyists, former executives and organizations has created a forceful stream of misinformation that Koch-funded entities produce and disseminate. The propaganda is then replicated, repackaged and echoed many times throughout the Koch-funded web of political front groups and think tanks," said Greenpeace.
"Koch industries is playing a quiet but dominant role in the global warming debate. This private, out-of-sight corporation has become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition. On repeated occasions organizations funded by Koch foundations have led the assault on climate science and scientists, 'green jobs', renewable energy and climate policy progress," it says.
The groups include many of the best-known conservative think tanks in the U.S., like Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment. All have been involved in "spinning" the "climategate" story or are at the forefront of the anti-global warming debate, says Greenpeace.

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U.S. court allows global warming suit against energy companies to proceed

Residents and owners of land along the Mississippi Gulf Coast were allowed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to bring a class action suit against energy, fossil fuels, and chemical companies for their alleged contributions to global warming, reversing a decision by a lower court.
The suit alleged that the companies created a public nuisance by emitting greenhouse gases, which contributed to global warming and allegedly made Hurricane Katrina more damaging than it would have been otherwise, destroying their private property in addition to causing damage to public property.
The landowners also filed trespass claims asserting that the companies’ greenhouse gas emissions caused saltwater, debris, and various hazardous substances to enter and damage their property.
Finally, negligence claims asserted that the defendants had a duty to conduct their businesses in a way to avoid unreasonably damaging the environment, public health, public and private property, and that the defendants breached this duty.

6°C rise in temperature predicted by 2030: irreparable harm to planet

According to the International Energy Agency, the recovery from the current recession could spark a massive energy crisis with increased demand for fossil fuels from China and other developing countries, tighter oil supplies and skyrocketing oil prices.
The longer-term picture looks even more challenging. If the world continues to guzzle oil and gas at its present pace, global temperatures will rise by an average of 6°C by 2030, causing "irreparable damage to the planet."
The agency's annual World Economic Outlook report was released on Nov. 10.
The warning from the IEA, an intergovernmental energy watchdog based in Paris, could add extra weight to the negotiations leading up to the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month, when leaders will attempt to come to an agreement on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol's limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.
The IEA report says the world faces a looming disaster if its leaders drag their feet in Copenhagen. Among the predictions likely to alarm the big energy consumers:
• Unless there is an "energy revolution," the planet will heat up by about 6°C by 2030 - about three times the rate of global warming that is considered manageable by most scientists. That, says the normally sober IEA, "would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change and irreparable damage to the planet."
• The global recession has brought the first significant yearly drop in energy demand since 1981, giving the planet a rare breather from carbon emissions. But this is a "unique" moment, the report says, whose gains will be quickly obliterated without a significant move toward alternative energies. The impending energy crisis is "far greater than many people realize," it says.
• Energy demand will rebound sharply once the recession ends and rise about 40 percent by 2030. Fossil fuels - oil, coal and gas - will make up about three-quarters of the global increase in energy consumption.
• Coal usage will grow annually about 2.5 percent from now to 2030, which could lead to massive increases in air pollution.
• Without the energy revolution that the IEA says is necessary, oil prices will rise by 2020 to about $100 a bbl. in pre-2008 dollar values and by 2030 to about $115 a bbl.
To avoid all this, the IEA says the world needs to spend about $10.5 trillion in extra money from 2010 to 2030 to foster new low-carbon energy sources.