  Wed, 2012-05-30 10:16Chris Mooney Chris Mooney's picture
Did they fund think tanks that misrepresent the science (or,
that represent it accurately)? How do their websites represent
the science? Do they support science based policy action, or
not—or just sometimes?  What do they say on their earnings calls
with financial analysts? Do they give campaign donations to
climate science defenders, climate science opponents, or
both—and in what ratio? What trade associations do they belong
to, and are those organizations pro-science or anti-science?
The result is a massive data dump—it must have been incredibly
time consuming to compile–but some intriguing patterns emerge
from this novel exercise.  First, there are the companies with a
clear history of undermining the science, like Peabody Energy,
whose website claims that “The greatest crisis society confronts
is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer
models but a human crisis today that is fully within our power
to solve…with coal.”  Pea