[UPDATE 1] A commentor suggests up-rating the Youtube at the end of this post since the denialist minions have come out in force with their thumbs down.
[UPDATE 2] Also worth providing a bit of conjecture here insomuch that it appears Dr. Happer has found a way to create plausible deniability with regards to payment for his “research”. By funneling the money he would be paid through “The CO2 Coalition,” he can accept a honorarium or payment for “consulting services.” In other words, it appears as if The CO2 Coalition is a cut-out designed to create opacity between “research” sponsors and the researcher. An amateur con, but honestly, so is most political grift. Come to think of it, it’s probably what you should expect from a honest-to-goodness career scientist-turned-con-artist.
Greenpeace’s EnergyDesk broke a huge story yesterday that exposed a giant knot of maleficence. The investigators masterfully unwound a scrum of tangled threads to reveal a network of bad actors that included:
a crucially important dark money launderer complicit in recruiting foreign money to influence domestic affairs, an academic fraudster selling denial while making assurances that the identity of the “research” purchaser would remain secret, and a highly influential “journalist” defrauding his employer and readers by willfully using his position to propagate “research” he knew to be fraudulent.The investigation involved a series of emails that had the GP investigators posing as a Beirut-based business agent for an unnamed middle-eastern energy company with an interest in undermining the climate talks currently underway in Paris. The “business agent” approached Dr. William Happer, a renowned physicist who, in an email exchange with the GP investigators, said he would publish as the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University.
Happer didn’t want to invoice the client directly, however. Instead, Happer suggested that the client pay an organization — “The CO2 Coalition” — for his work. He cited an hourly rate of $250, and ball-parked $8000 for a short paper.
The “business agent” expressed continued interest, but they were reticent about one nagging concern: It was of paramount importance that their anonymity be preserved. Could Dr. Happer absolutely ensure total opacity?
Happer’s response took two tracks.
First, Happer promised that his paper would contain an assertion: “The author received no financial compensation for this essay.”
Second, Happer expressed a degree of confidence that the CO2 Coalition would be able to safeguard the identity of the “donor,” but he offered to double check.
The next email in the chain reflects an exchange with The CO2 Coalition’s Ed O’Keefe — a former Exxon lobbyist. O’Keefe assured Happer that the donor would not see their name published in any public record, but that the Coalition might be required to provide the donor’s name to the IRS in a confidential filing. O’Keefe thoughtfully went on to suggest that if the funding source wanted a greater degree of separation, they could funnel the money through Donors Trust.
If you follow climate denial, Donors Trust should ring a bell. Long run by Whitney Ball, who, in a great cosmic irony, was a honest-to-goodness elder fraud predator charged with safeguarding the “intent of the donors,” Donors Trust is the Koch brother’s preferred money laundering machine. The Kochs (and anyone else that wants to put dark money to use, including, apparently, foreign interests) send money to the Trust with directions on how it should be spent. “Donors Trust” then appears as the donor on the receiving entity’s IRS filings.
Donors Trust seemed to solve the “agent’s” anonymity problem so long as they were able to figure out a way to get the money into the trust from a United States bank.
But a paper is just a paper, until it is read and validated. The “business agent” had no interest in purchasing something to put on their shelf — they needed to generate a storm of publicity too. And for that, they wanted peer review and media coverage.
Happer knew exactly what to do.
First, the “peer review” would be handled by Matt Ridley, a journalist at The Times of London, a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, former editor for the Economist, and a member of the British House of Lords. Ridley, also a member of The CO2 Coalition, would have no problem writing a column that labeled the essay as having been “widely peer reviewed”. After all, “peer review” could have different meanings to different people…
Of course, Ridley would also be counted upon to use his platform at The Times to thrust the paper into the media, but Happer claimed to also have reliable pals at Brietbart News that would get the story into the news cycle.
(My guess: Larry O’Connor is the goto climate guy for Brietbart… And have you noticed how Brietbart’s stories frequently make it onto the Drudge Report… Which, in turn, drives a huge swath of talk radio… Which, like clockwork, helps the story crawl out of the primordial ooze onto Fox News… And then, some percentage of stories (like the so-called “Climategate”, Benghazi!, Shirley Sherrod) escape the fevered swamp that is Fox to be picked up by the rest of the media.)
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