UPDATE: Note from author Susan J. Crockford

Hi all,

Between 12 June and 15 July, all ebook formats of my polar bear attack thriller - EATEN - will be on sale for $0.99 (yes, 99 cents - that’s $1.28 Canadian).

I’d like to get the news out on this special ebook deal as far and wide as possible, especially into northern communities and other remote locations where shipping hardcover books is exorbitantly expensive.

I’m attaching an image that you might use in various social media formats like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, etc.

This science-based novel is a fast-paced thriller that features fatal polar bear attacks in a surprising Canadian location- it’s meant to be thought-provoking as well as entertaining. Amazon reviews suggest it’s done the job for readers so far. Also see.

Thanks for letting your friends and colleagues know about this special deal.

Coupon code for Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/592875 (all versions of the ebook other than Kindle, including NOOK, Kobo, iTunes, and pdf) is: HY25Q (not case sensitive)

Kindle version: https://www.amazon.com/Eaten-novel-Susan-Crockford-ebook/dp/B0182FUIV0/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Susan J. Crockford, scientist and novelist. Please see my author website

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Finally, courage to counterpunch the green bullies.

When the name Resolute was chosen in 2011, after the merger of Bowater and Abitibi-Consolidated, the Canadian company, a global leader in the forest products industry and the largest producer of newsprint in the world, likely didn’t know what a harbinger it was. Today, it stands alone, set in purpose, with firmness and determination. Displaying the rare courage to stand up to the typical environmental extremists’ campaign of misinformation and shaming designed to shut it down, Resolute Forest Products is fighting back.

Many people are probably unaware of the shakedown tactics used by groups whose touchy-feely names belie their true goals.

Like most companies, Resolute originally went along. As Peter Foster explains in the Financial Post: “a cabal of radical environmental non-governmental organizations, ENGOs - including Greenpeace, ForestEthics and the David Suzuki Foundation - agreed to stop their campaigns of customer harassment in return for the members of the Forest Products Association of Canada, FPAC, agreeing to sanitize a swathe of the Canadian Boreal forest, and to ‘consult’ on development plans. Astonishingly, governments played no part.” The result was the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. The ENGOs ultimately aspired to put the majority of the Boreal forest off limits - ending economic development. Regarding the Greenpeace-promoted concept of “intact forest landscape protection,” Laurent Lessard, Quebec’s Minister of Forest, Wildlife and Parks, says it threatens “absolutely devastating” economic implications.

Resolute had been a major supporter of the Agreement and has participated in other efforts between ENGOs and industry to work out differences. Despite that, using a campaign of lies and intimidation, ENGOs have constantly attacked Resolute. At one point, in 2012, the false claims were so egregious, Resolute threatened legal action against Greenpeace - which garnered an unprecedented apology and retraction from Greenpeace. However, it came back with vengeance. Greenpeace continued to publicize the same false statements and dubbed Resolute a Boreal forest “destroyer.”

Engaged in a war without violence, Greenpeace has since attacked Rite-Aid Pharmacy for “getting millions of pounds of paper from controversial logging giant Resolute Forest Products,” calling Resolute “a company with a history of environmental destruction.” Greenpeace was successful with a similar harassment campaign against Best-Buy. Resolute was the company’s primary paper supplier, but due to the shaming, Best-Buy announced it would seek other sources. Greenpeace has no plans to stop the tactic. Other targeted companies include Canadian Tire (a retailer with more than 1,700 outlets), Home Depot and Office Depot, Proctor & Gamble and 3M. Foster reports: “Greenpeace itself has calculated that its campaigns have cost Resolute at least $100 million.”

Somewhere between the Greenpeace retraction and May 2013, an epiphany - similar to what occurred between the president of the U.S. and the space alien in the movie Independence Day - must have taken place. In the clip, the captured alien is choking someone with its tentacle and the president is trying to negotiate with it. He tries to reason with the alien and suggests that they could “coexist.” He asks the alien what it wants them to do. The alien simply responds: “Die.” Resolute must have realized that no matter how many agreements it might sign, the global network of ENGOs will come back with more and more rigid requirements until the tentacles choke the company out.

On May 23, 2013, Resolute filed a lawsuit against Greenpeace claiming it damaged the company’s “business, goodwill and reputation.” The suit asserts defamation, malicious falsehood, and intentional interference with economic relations and seeks damages of $5 million as well as punitive damages of $2 million, plus costs. Greenpeace says the suit “is an effort to subdue Greenpeace into silence and send a message to other groups that they should stay quiet.” It believes the suit should have been thrown out, but despite several attempts, the Judge has disagreed and allowed unflattering accusations about Greenpeace’s global law-breaking activities to remain.

While the Canadian lawsuit makes its way through the courts and the appeals process, Resolute has just taken another bold step to defend itself against the green bully’s attacks.

On May 31, Resolute took a page from the ENGO’s playbook and, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, filed a civil RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) suit against Greenpeace and a number of its associates who, though they claim to be independent, act cooperatively. The RICO Act intended to deal with the mob as a loose organization, or “enterprise,” with a pattern of activity and common nefarious purposes, such as extortion. (Greenpeace has asked the Justice Department to use the RICO Act to investigate oil companies and organizations that sow doubts about the risks of climate change.)

The 100-page complaint alleges that Greenpeace and its affiliates are a RICO “enterprise.” According to the Resolute news release, it describes the deliberate falsity of the malicious and defamatory accusations the enterprise has made and details how, to support its false accusations, “Greenpeace has fabricated evidence and events, including, for example, staged photos falsely purporting to show Resolute logging in prohibited areas.” The suit also calls Greenpeace a “global fraud” out to line its pockets with money from donors and says that “maximizing donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace’s true objective.” Additionally, it cites admissions by Greenpeace’s leadership that it “emotionalizes” issues to manipulate audiences.

In the U.S. lawsuit, Resolute is seeking compensatory damages in an amount to be proven at trial, as well as treble and punitive damages.

Patrick Moore, one of the original founders of Greenpeace, is disappointed that the group that originally wanted to help, is now an extortion racket. He told me: “I am very proud to have played a small role in helping Resolute deal with these lying blackmailers and extortionists.”

Discovery in both the Canadian and U.S. lawsuits will open up records and could well peel back the moralist tone to expose a global job-destroying, anti-development agenda. For too long ENGOs have been allowed free rein over regulating natural resources in what is really economic warfare on workers.

At a recent meeting, the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, according to Foster, “acknowledged that it was time to stand up and recognize ‘the significant economic implication of misinformation’” - though one has to wonder what took them so long.

Resolute is counter-punching the green bullies - and it’s about time. Just ask the coal miners in West Virginia or the farmers in Central California who are wild with enthusiasm for the Trump candidacy that promises to end the regressive regulations and return the U.S. to economic strength.

Hopefully other companies will now tune into the public’s change in attitude and, with firmness and determination, will, also, fight back to protect shareholders and workers.

Why do donors give money to the Sierra Club? Are they trying to strangle the American economy?

The liberal green group is celebrating its “victory” of putting America’s major coal producers out of business - to say nothing of the tens of thousands of miners placed in unemployment lines. Several thousand more mining jobs were lost last month. ‎

Now the Sierra Club wants to similarly bury the oil and gas industry.

Here is how the Sierra Club spokeswoman, Lena Moffit, explains the strategy: “We have moved to a very clear and firm and vehement position of opposing gas. We oppose any new gas-fired power plants. We also have a policy opposing fracking.”

That’s an amazing admission given that natural gas is a clean burning fuel that is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and real pollutants too. Then she admitted:‎ “We are doing everything we can to bring the same expertise that we brought to taking down the coal industry and coal-fired power in this country to taking on gas in the same way… to ensure that we’re moving to a 100% clean energy future.”

This means no oil, gas, or coal. Right now we get about three-quarters of our electricity from gas and coal and most of our transportation fuels come from oil. Do they want us to use bicycles?

It’s not just the environmentalists who are advancing this lunatic agenda. The three most prominent Democrats in America aren’t far behind in this maniacal mindset of killing domestic industries. President Obama says we have to shift to a “keep it in the ground” strategy when it comes to all fossil fuels. Bernie Sanders is the sponsor of a Senate bill that would effectively ban all oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

Hillary Clinton has announced that global warming is “the defining issue of our time” and hopes for a future when there is no drilling for oil and gas. This would end America’s access to an estimated $50 trillion of energy resources.

But think about this: the oil and gas industry is responsible for 10 million jobs and more than $1 trillion American output every year. End oil and gas production and you crush all of this economic output. Do they care?

Certainly they show no remorse over the devastation of the coal industry.

By the way, the workers the greens want to throw out of work are truckers, construction workers, petroleum engineers, welders, pipefitters, geologists, and many other hardhat workers. Many if not most are union members.

Why are the industrial unions not in full scale revolt against the greens like the Sierra Club and billionaire Tom Steyer, who are out to give them pink slips?

Of course the make-believe retort is that we will transition to windmills and solar panels. In other words, we will shift back to the energy sources of the Middle Ages. Windmills will power our steel plants. Solar energy will electrify our factories and homes - except when the sun doesn’t shine. Germany thought it could “go green” and that strategy has raised energy prices and put the hurt to its manufacturing industries.

The lost energy employment will never be replaced with so-called “green jobs.” We already fell for that scam at the start of the Obama administration.

The greens are out to get the blue collar American workers. Obama, Hillary, and Bernie are willing accomplices to the economic homicide. Their religious fervor to stop global warming at all costs means they are willing to sacrifice the jobs of millions of American workers. So much for the socialist vision of a workers’ paradise.

Dr. Gordon Fulks

In an essay published on Saturday May 7, 2016, Oregon Legislator Mike Nearman asked those who objected to his skepticism about Anthropogenic Global Warming to provide the evidence (data) that convinced them we are headed for a climate catastrophe. In response, he got the typical name-calling and other bad behavior we have come to expect from those thoroughly sold on the prevailing paradigm.

Most of us who actually are scientists realize that Nearman was precisely correct to request the robust empirical data that should back up all science, but in the case of Global Warming is substantially missing. Proponents like to confuse the issue by providing evidence of warming that could come from several natural sources and ignore the crucial question about a link to human activities. And when confronted with the ruse, some resort to calling opponents “absolute idiots.”

Of course, the only “absolute idiots,” are those who believe that science is too sacred to be questioned.

Scientists continually question prevailing wisdom to see if we can improve on it. When science first emerged out of the politics and religion of the seventeenth century with the formation of the British Royal Society, the founding members chose the motto “Nullius in verba” or “Take no one’s word for it.” That expressed their determination to avoid the domination of authority and to decide scientific matters by an appeal to data gathered by experiment. Once freed from the domination of politics and religion, science made amazing progress.

Let me provide the robust empirical data and sturdy arguments that Representative Nearman requested.

We need not concern ourselves with the great complexity of the earth’s climate but only the predictions of those who claim to be able to predict climate catastrophe from man-made CO2. Their predictions stem from billion dollar Climate Models that one would hope could justify their cost. But they do not.

Here is a comparison of their predictions with robust empirical data from NASA satellites and radiosondes. The two satellite data sets come from the two official NASA contractors (UAH and RSS), one alarmist and one skeptical.

Fulks_May2016_chart1

If anyone prefers a similar comparison from climate alarmists, he should look at the very last page of the supplementary information for Santer et al., PNAS 2013. There he will find a table that shows the Climate Models running hot by a factor of about two in temperature trend. While not exactly the same as the comparison from Professor John Christy above, it is also proof that the models are fatally flawed, and even alarmists who are members of the US National Academy of Sciences recognize it.

For those unfamiliar with “fatal flaws,” these are deficiencies so egregious that the entire paradigm collapses.

The government’s case against carbon dioxide is based on what they call “Three Lines of Evidence,” or three arguments. In addition to their assertion that the Climate Models are able to accurately predict the future, they assert that the slight warming we have observed has to be from carbon dioxide because of a ‘hot spot’ in the tropical mid-troposphere. And they assert that we have observed unusual global warming recently. None of these are remotely correct.

Over the seven decades since the end of the Second World War when human emissions of carbon dioxide increased substantially, temperatures have risen over only two of those decades. Two of seven decades is not a very good correlation. And we know that the increase that began in the late 1970s occurred in concert with a change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) known as the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1977. That was ocean warming not greenhouse gas warming. It is similar to the El Nino warming we are currently experiencing that originates with warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific off of the coast of Peru. These last about a year and are typically followed by several years of the opposite condition known as La Nina.

When the PDO is in its warm state, we get more and stronger El Ninos over a period of several decades and hence generally warmer conditions followed by several decades of cooler conditions. We observed one complete PDO cycle in the 20th century, with the earth warming up to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and then cooling off to the cold of the 1960s and 1970s. The cyclical nature of the earth’s climate is readily apparent in many individual station temperature data sets but not in the compilations cooked by alarmists. It is especially visible in the Arctic which responds strongly to ocean cycles.

Hence, the robust temperature data we have shows that our climate is cycling normally. The fact that there is nothing unusual going on that we have not seen before is another fatal flaw in the Obama Administration’s climate science.

The third fatal flaw is the complete absence of a hot spot in the tropical mid-troposphere. That is very obvious in this comparison:

Fulks_May2016_chart2

The government’s case against carbon dioxide is fatally flawed in three ways (3 LoEs), and carbon dioxide is innocent, as Representative Nearman suspected.

Nearman’s very proper request for robust temperature data completely vindicates him. And his worry about the quality of scientists coming out of Oregon universities is unfortunately well founded too.

Thank you Mike!

For those who would like to research this further, they can find the government’s 3 LoE arguments in official Environmental Protection Agency documents and in President Obama’s very lengthy National Climate Assessment - 2014. Our detailed rebuttal to the NCA - 2014 can be found many places, including here.

This was written in an essay style to be easily accessible to a wide audience. It was signed by fifteen accomplished scientists and economists. For those who prefer similar arguments presented in a legal style and submitted under oath to the US Supreme Court, they can look at our merit stage brief here and at an earlier cert brief.

For the best global temperature measurements we have from NASA satellites, readers should go to Dr. Roy Spencer’s website
where they will find not only the latest Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA) but a complete table of all the NASA MSU satellite temperature data from 1979 by region, and useful commentary from Spencer.

Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.

On Bernie Sanders’ website, there is this statement of the utopian future of energy:

Transitioning toward a completely nuclear-free clean energy system for electricity, heating, and transportation is not only possible and affordable; it will create millions of good jobs, clean up our air and water, and decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

OK, let’s see what that means: no fossil fuels, no nuclear, undoubtedly no or little hydro.  What’s left?  Basically wind and solar.  Sure enough, there’s this:

We will act boldly to move our energy system away from fossil fuels, toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal because we have a moral responsibility to leave our kids a planet that is healthy and habitable.

And don’t get the idea that Bernie is alone in these fantasies.  In the same March speech where she said “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” Hillary also added that her energy policy would “bring economic opportunity - using clean, renewable energy as the key - into coal country.”

Can anybody around here do basic arithmetic?  These ideas can’t possibly add up unless the government subsidies necessary to induce the development of wind and solar power are treated as completely costless free money.  Government as the infinite source of costless free money—actually that’s the essence of progressivism, so I don’t know why I should have expected anything else from these guys.

Over at the Manhattan Institute, Robert Bryce is out with a new report titled “What Happens To An Economy When Forced To Use Renewable Energy?” Of course, the answer to the question is that so-called “renewable energy” is much more expensive than the fossil fuel alternatives, and the extra costs necessarily have to get piled on the population somewhere or other—in higher electricity prices, in higher taxes, in lost jobs or economic opportunities, or something else.  The world “leaders” (if we want to call them that) in so burdening their populations are the big countries of Europe, so we can assess the consequences of these policies by comparing the experience of those countries since they started down this road to our own experience.  Really, it’s an unmitigated disaster, particularly in the economic burdens imposed on the lower-income portion of the population.  To take just a few examples from Bryce’s report:

Since the EU adopted its Emissions Trading Scheme in 2005, electricity prices in Europe have increased at about double the rate of increase in the U.S.—63% in Europe vs. 32% in the U.S.

But the increases have been far more dramatic in the countries that have intervened the most in their energy markets:  “During 2008-12, Germany’s residential electricity rates increased by 78 percent, Spain’s rose by 111 percent, and the U.K.’s soared by 133 percent.”

“In 2016 alone, German households will be forced to spend $29 billion on renewable electricity with a market value of $4 billion - more than $700 per household.”

“Germany’s energy minister has warned that the continuation of current policies risks the ‘deindustrialization’ of the country’s economy.”

Spain until recently was famous for the most aggressive promotion of wind and solar of all European countries.  How has that worked out?  “The country’s electric utilities have accumulated a $32 billion deficit that must now be repaid, by adding surcharges of about 55 percent to customers’ bills. High energy costs are only adding to Spain’s economic woes. During 2004-14, Spain’s GDP grew by just 0.6 percent per year, on average, and the country’s unemployment rate now stands at about 21 percent.”

Meanwhile, at the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions, John Droz today links to an archived 2014 post by a guy named John Weber titled “Prove This Wrong—Wind Makes Zero Sense.” If you think that wind energy is infinitely clean and free, this post is filled with lots of data and many pictures that show the extent to which the production of wind energy relies on a massive underlying fossil-fuel infrastructure.  The post kicks off from a 2009 proposal from Stanford Engineering Professor Mark Jacobson to provide 50% of the world’s electricity by 2030 by the simple strategy of building lots of wind turbines.  According to Jacobson (who thinks it is a good idea), it would take 3.8 million of the turbines at 5 MWe each to reach the 50% level.  Current humongous wind turbines are only about 2.5 MWe each, so it would take more like 7.6 million of the smaller ones.  Bernie thinks that all power (not just half) should be provided this way, so make that 15.2 million!  Then put aside for the moment that wind turbines only work the far-less-than-half the time when the wind blows at the right speed.  Also put aside the big transmission losses from moving the electricity from where the wind blows to where the electricity is used.  Anyway, Weber’s post just focuses on the large and really unavoidable use of fossil fuel energy in building all these wind turbines.

When you see these things from a distance in the countryside, it’s hard to realize how truly gigantic they are.  Weber gives the following statistics for just one 2.5 MWe wind turbine:  tower height - 100 meters (328 feet); total height to top of blade - 485 feet; total weight - 2000 tons (!), mostly of steel and concrete.  (Source: Kansas Energy Information Network here.) Here’s a picture of the base of a 2.5 MWe turbine under construction, with some men in the picture to give a sense of the scale.  That’s about 45 tons of steel re-bar:

That base is soon to be filled with a pour of about 1200 tons of concrete.  Then you attach the 328 foot tower.  The tower comes in two sections.  Here’s a picture of the smaller (approx. 120 foot) section arriving on a 208 foot long truck:

To state the obvious, the whole idea of wind turbines is a non-starter without the enormous underlying fossil-fuel-powered infrastructure to make and deliver the steel, concrete and other materials.  Here is a 2014 post from the Energy Collective acknowledging the same point.

Then there’s air travel—has anyone figured out a way to do that with wind power?  Ocean shipping?  Theoretically, with enough batteries, you could do all-electric cars with wind power.  You can buy a Tesla for around $75,000 today.  But don’t worry, the government has plenty of free money lying around to subsidize that down until the price is competitive with the evil fossil-fuel powered vehicles.

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Denmark says wind energy too expensive

Michael Bashtasch, Daily Caller

Denmark’s government abandoned plans to build five offshore wind power farms Friday amid fears the electricity produced there would become too expensive for Danish consumers.

“Since 2012 when we reached the political agreement, the cost of our renewable policy has increased dramatically,” said Climate Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt, a Liberal Party politician representing the country’s minority government, according to Reuters.

The government would have had to pay $10.63 billion to buy electricity from the five wind farms - a price deemed too expensive for consumers who already face the highest electricity prices in Europe.

“We can’t accept this, as the private sector and households are paying far too much. Denmark’s renewable policy has turned out to be too expensive,” Lilleholt said.

Denmark gets about 40 percent of its electricity from wind power and has a goal of getting half of its electricity from wind by 2020. But that goal has come up against a stronger prevailing headwind: high energy prices.

Danes have paid billions in taxes and fees to support wind turbines, which has caused electricity prices to skyrocket even as the price of actual electricity has decreased. Now, green taxes make up 66 percent of Danish electricity bills. Only 15 percent of electricity bills went to energy generation.

Electricity prices have gotten so high, the government has decided to slash green taxes on consumer energy bills.

“The PSO tariff is expensive and ineffective. We have long believed that the rising costs are unsustainable and now it is abundantly clear that we have to find an alternative. Therefore the government is ready for a showdown over the PSO levy,” Tax Minister Karsten Lauritzen said Tuesday.

Danish politicians still want the country to be completely independent of fossil fuels by 2050 as part of their effort to combat global warming, but ratcheting down green energy taxes means they’ll have to find other ways to finance wind projects.

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Northeast Pipeline Blocked by Progressive Politicians

Another Pipeline Blocked: Pipelines are considered the safest way to transport liquid fuels and gases. For no clear reasons other than political, the Obama Administration blocked the building of the extension of the Keystone Pipeline from Canada into the US. The pipeline would have expanded crude deliveries from Canada to Texas, partially replacing imports of heavy crude from unstable Venezuela and elsewhere outside of North America.

For no clear reasons, other than political, the administration of Governor Cuomo of New York blocked a pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York and New England, which would bring inexpensive natural gas to these areas that have some of the highest electricity prices in the country. Natural gas is the low-cost alternative to coal-fired power plants for electricity and is also needed for heating. The pipeline may save up-state New York homeowners $1000 per year.

There was no solid justification given for this denial of permits except the pipeline failed to meet the state’s water quality standards, which were unspecified. Cuomo has used the same argument to ban hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the state.

Governor Cuomo considers himself to be a progressive-liberal, as does President Obama. Though not directly these actions, political columnist George Will writes about the attitudes of progressive-liberals when writing about the calls for RICO investigations:

“Four core tenets of progressivism are: First, history has a destination. Second, progressives uniquely discern it. (Barack Obama frequently declares things to be on or opposed to “the right side of history.") Third, politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state. Fourth, enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech (witness IRS suppression of conservative advocacy groups) in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.”

There is little reasoning with those who have such high beliefs in themselves.

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Protesters Gather at 2 Oil Refineries In Washington State

Protesters Gather at 2 Oil Refineries In Washington State, by Phuong Le and in the May 13 The Olympian link begins as copied below.

Hundreds of people in kayaks and on foot are gathering at the site of two oil refineries in Washington state to call for action on climate change and a fair transition away from fossil fuels.

Hundreds of people are gathering at the site of two oil refineries in Washington state near Anacortes to call for action on climate change and a transition away from fossil fuels, but it is important to note that climate change here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands is reflected in the official climate data reported by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center Climate at a Glance indicating that:

* Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at a rate of 0.3 degrees F per decade during the 25 winters from 1990 to 2014.

* Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at a rate of 0.9 degrees F per decade during the 20 winters from 1995 to 2014.

* Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at a rate of 2.0 degrees F per decade during the 10 winters from 2005 to 2014.

Meteorological winter temperatures here in Washington state’s Puget Sound Lowlands have trended downward at increasing downward rates during the 25 winters from 1990 to 2014, as indicated by the official climate data reported by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center above, even as our atmospheric CO2 concentrations have continued to increase.

Ken Schlichte Tumwater, Washington

George Mason University Must Release Documents Calling for Prosecution of Political Opponents

Some of the RICO 20

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) prevailed in a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA) lawsuit against George Mason University (GMU). The VFOIA request sought public records showing how the “RICO-20” group of academics, using public funding, organized their call for a federal racketeering investigation of “corporations and other entities” who disagreed with them on climate policy.

The judge ruled for CEI on all counts in an April 22 ruling in Christopher Horner and CEI v. George Mason University that the court released today. The ruling concluded that by leaving it to faculty who simply told the school’s FOIA officer they had no responsive records, GMU failed to conduct an adequate search; the judge also ruled that documents including emails from GMU Professor Ed Maibach must be released to CEI.

“This victory puts on notice those academics who have increasingly inserted themselves into politics, that they cannot use taxpayer-funded positions to go after those who disagree with them and expect to hide it,” said Chris Horner, CEI fellow and co-plaintiff. “These records are highly relevant to the state attorneys general campaign that these academics hoped for, and will be of great assistance to the public in trying to understand how their tax dollars are being used for political fights.”

In 2015, George Mason University (GMU) faculty claimed “no records” existed in response to CEI VFOIA request for records regarding Professor Ed Maibach’s role as a ringleader of the RICO-20 campaign.  Other universities provided proof that the “no records” claim was not true, which prompted CEI to sue GMU over the FOIA dispute.

The RICO-20, including six GMU faculty, wrote a September 1 letter from 20 climate scientists to President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House science adviser John Holdren requesting a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) investigation of “the fossil fuel industry and their supporters.” The scientists allege that the aforementioned interests “knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, in order to forestall America’s response to climate change.” CEI’s FOIA efforts extend to each public university represented in the letter. GMU is not the only school to falsely claim “no records” existed.

In May 2015, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called for a RICO investigation of “fossil fuel companies and their allies."The academics “strongly endorse” Sen. Whitehouse’s proposal.  Documents provided by two universities suggest the RICO-20 recruited this support, not for any legislation, but for his call to prosecute political opponents, in consultation with Sen. Whitehouse.

In April, 2016, CEI was subpoenaed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands for a decade’s worth of climate policy related work. CEI is vigorously fighting the subpoena, which is an attack on its First Amendment rights.
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See in the post how the roaches are scurrying now that the lights are on. Some of the emails have been released and like climategate they are very interesting. Junk Science may have a more complete set of letters released.