Rediscovering the Will to Change: A New Energy Economy

Summary.  The growth of the U.S. from an agricultural society to an industrial power was driven in important ways by ambition, a positive attitude, and an ability to see opportunities and develop them.  Examples of changes that contributed to this growth include new means of transportation and communication.

As our economy grew and matured, however, unforeseen harmful effects of some activities became apparent.  Acid rain from electric generation was identified as the cause of dying forests.  Synthetic refrigerants were flagged as the cause of the depletion of ozone in the stratosphere.  Increased carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for energy was marked as the cause of global warming and its harms. The industries in question ignored the science behind these findings, and fought the need to change their business activities.

Global warming remains an unresolved problem.  Because of the vast size of the fossil fuel industry and the major changes already brought about by global warming it needs to abandon its resistance to change.  Its business model of providing energy for a growing and developing world remains, but needs to switch to carbon-free sources and to develop new technologies.  This new model will still yield profits for the industry, and continue to provide jobs for the economy.

 

American growth.  Throughout much of our history America has been a country marked by people bent on succeeding.  An entrepreneurial spirit drove the development and widespread adoption of new devices and new technologies that dramatically advanced our economic growth and improved living conditions for our population.

Railroads.  For millenia news and articles of commerce could travel no faster than men, or their animals, could carry htem.  The advent of the industrial revolution in the early nineteenth century, however, brought coal-powered transportation; railroads crossed the landscape faster and further than had been possible earlier.  This dramatically accelerated commerce and the exchange of technologies among populations separated by large distances, improving the lives of the participants.   Coal was also the fuel used in the growing iron and steel industry that permitted forging the rails, building the bridges, and providing the skeletons for new skyscrapers rising in cities.  The force behind all this growth was the vision of the industrialists and architects who created these enterprises and buildings.

Automobiles.  Human ambitions also led to the development of the gasoline engine and its use to power individual transportation, the automobile.  This depended on newly discovered sources of liquid fuels, the petroleum deposits in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and elsewhere.  Liquid fuels provided vastly improved convenience and independence to the consuming public, as well as to the military.  The foresight and ambition driving this change is another example of the positive attitudes of the entrepreneurs behind this growth. 

This spirit gave rise to America's exceptional industrial expansion, helped it survive the Great Depression of the 1930's, and was the spirit invoked by President Roosevelt and our military leaders to fight the war that ultimately defeated the Axis powers. 

Electronics.  A final example is drawn from the electronics industry.  Over the course of the 20th century electronics moved completely from analog to digital circuitry based on solid state transistors.  This transformation likewise was driven by forward-looking scientists and entrepreneurs.  Its growth was highly dependent on creativity and resilience, since the pace of technological advance, and therefore the competition in the industry, was very intensive.

Optimism.  These examples are cited to emphasize the "can-do" enthusiasm that has marked the growth of America over its history.   Much of our expansion was further promoted by favorable state and congressional action.  The Homestead Act drew Americans with a vision to move west and spread roots in a new setting.  Railroad expansion likewise was fostered by supportive laws.  Recovery from the Great Depression and fighting the Second World War depended crucially on the cooperation between the president and Congress.

Resisting change: Acid rain.  In more recent decades, however, interest groups have opposed the need, based on scientific findings, for changes in their operations.  In the 1970s forests in the American northeast and southern Canada began dying mysteriously.  Lakes and rivers had massive fish die-offs.  Scientists eventually traced the cause to the presence of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, strong acids when they combine with moisture, in the exhaust gas from coal-burning power plants.  The plumes from these plants became windborne and carried the acids many hundreds of miles from their sources.  The acidic moisture fell to the ground whenever it rained.  The acidity became so severe that forests could no longer tolerate it and died in vast swaths.  The same phenomenon occurred in Europe.

The solution to this malady lay in desulfurizing the exhaust gases of the offending power plants or fuel switching to low sulfur fuels.  The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) imposed limits on how much sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides could be emitted by the power plants.  The power companies objected vigorously to what they protested would be the great expense required to implement this remedy. 

As of 2014 EPA projected that acid emissions would fall between 54 and more than 70% from 2005 levels, with estimated health savings of $120 to $280 billion per year . The measures have been effective, as the acid rain problem has diminished significantly in recent years.

 

Depletion in the ozone content of the upper atmosphere.  Ozone, a molecule consisting of three oxygen atoms, forms by the action of sunlight on the more common oxygen molecule, consisting of two oxygen atoms.  Depletion of ozone over Antarctica was first detected in the 1980's, and grew worse each year during that region's summer.  Ozone is important because it screens out the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays, whereas the oxygen molecule does not.  Penetration of UV increases the occurrence of skin cancer and promotes cataracts in the eye lens.

Atmospheric scientists Mario Molina, F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen showed that man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in aerosol spray cans, air conditioners and refrigerators, can cause the loss of ozone when combined with the action of sunlight.  (They were awarded the Nobel Prize for this work in 1995.)  The scientists strongly recommended phasing out use of CFCs for refrigeration. 

Companies in the U. S. that made CFC's, such as DuPont and Pennwalt; chemical manufacturers in Europe; and makers of aerosol spray cans mounted intense public relations campaigns questioning the science connecting CFCs with ozone loss.  They warned of massive economic loss if they were required to halt production.  Major constraints on CFC use came with the Montreal Protocol, an agreement under the United Nations (U. N.) in 1987, which U. S. President Ronald Reagan agreed to.  It called for phasing out the use of CFCs.  By 2016, Susan Solomon (who had helped identify the problem at the time of Montreal Protocol) and coworkers reported the ozone extent over Antarctica is starting to increase, decades after the Protocol was agreed to.  They were able to link the increase to lower levels of ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphere.

Global warming. Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution, economic progress and enhanced living standards have relied on the ready availability of energy sources, primarily fossil fuels.  Worldwide consumption of energy continues to increase, driven especially by policies promoting economic growth in the developing world.  As of 2010, providing energy to the world’s population accounted for about 8% of global economic activity, of which about US$4.4 trillion was for the fossil fuel share.  Yet scientists as long ago as the nineteenth century recognized that carbon dioxide (CO₂), the combustion product obtained when fossil fuels are burned, is a greenhouse gas leading to global warming. 

In recent decades scientists from around the world have warned that the growing accumulation of CO₂in the atmosphere from human fuel use would have serious harmful effects on the earth’s living systems.  They have pointed out in a succession of reports, beginning in 1990, that the sooner we agree to limit fossil fuel use, the easier and more effective the abatement measures would be. 

In the United States, the economic power of the fossil fuel industry and the political power of naysayers have been directed against the predictions of harm from the scientific community.  Dr. James Hansen, a renowned climate scientist, had been warning of the effects of global warming for many years.  His concerns were suppressed by the administration of President George W. Bush, made possible since Hansen, employed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was a government employee (James Hansen, “Storms of my Grandchildren”, Bloomsbury, 2009).  Fossil fuel interests have mounted an ongoing campaign to plant seeds of doubt among the public concerning man-made global warming (Naomi Oreskes and Erik. M. Conway, “Merchants of Doubt”, Bloomsbury Press, 2010).  U. S. Senator James Inhofe has published the book “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Controversy Threatens Your Future” (WND Books, 2012).  Scientists at Exxon Mobilin the 1970’s and 1980’s published research addressing the global warming issue.  At the time they recognized “Exxon's … ethical credo on honesty and integrity."  Yet by the late 1990’s, when the U. N.-sponsored Kyoto Protocol to limit further warming was being negotiated, the company reversed its policy and sought to raise doubts about the scientific basis of man-made global warming.

Discussion
 
The growth of the United States, and its westward expansion, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a reflection of the optimistic, “can-do” spirit that pervaded the country in those periods.  Much of this growth depended on exploitation of new scientific, engineering and technological advances by enterprises in both the private and public realms.   

In more recent times as technology has expanded, however, unforeseen harmful effects of byproducts from the use of these technologies have become apparent.  The cases described above are examples of how commercial and political interests coalesced to refuse to accept scientific realities and to reject the remedies required.  Acid rain arose from the trace levels of sulfur present in coal and oil, while the heat of combustion converted the nitrogen of the air into acidic nitrogen oxides.  Depletion of stratospheric ozone is due to the diffusion to the stratosphere of trace amounts of man-made refrigerants.  The industries in question, electric power generation and chemical manufacturers, opposed implementing the changes needed to address the problems even in the face of compelling scientific evidence.  In the end the technological fixes for these two effects were not excessive, and remedies were put in place.

Refusal to accept the scientific validity of man-made global warming is the most profound example of the “won’t change” mentality that replaced the “can-do” attitude of American growth.  Because of the fundamental importance of the global energy industry in the world’s economy, the actions of this sector have major effects on our planet’s environmental wellbeing.  Exxon Mobil’s internal research, for example, set out the compelling need for energy companies to modify their activities and limit production of fossil fuels.  Yet by the time that the Kyoto Protocol was issued in 1997, Exxon Mobil changed its policy to one of creating doubt.  In general the world’s fossil fuel companies opposed changing their operations.  Political forces also resisted change.  Whereas Europe and most of the developed countries ratified the Protocol, the U. S. never did.  Canada and Australia, which initially agreed on policies to limit CO₂ emissions, later changed course and withdrew from the Protocol. 

 

Conclusion

In the U. S. the “can-do” mindset that inspired its early expansion and economic growth has, in the cases examined here, been replaced by a “won’t change” operating principle.  This is especially important for our planet’s wellbeing, in the global warming case.  Producing carbon-based fuels comprises an important part of the world’s gross economic product, resulting in emission of massive amounts of CO₂, a greenhouse gas. 

The world’s energy demand will continue to grow as economies develop and populations increase.  The U. N.-sponsored Paris Agreement of December 2015 recognizes the absolute necessity for worldwide change in energy production.

The present situation calls for the world’s fossil fuel companies to develop new business models. Fulfilling the growing worldwide demand for energy means that there is profit to be made in this industry.  That demand must be provided, however, by technologies that do not emit CO₂.  We have to change to an energy economy that emits near-zero carbon in order to minimize further warming.  New technologies will have to be developed.  The energy industry has to abandon its fossil fuel-driven business model, and create the vast infrastructure for provision of energy from renewable sources. It has to give up its present “won’t change” mindset and adopt again a “can-do” attitude.

 
© 2016 Henry Auer

Connecticut’s First Wind Farm and the Growth of Wind Energy

Summary: The author recently participated in a tour of Connecticut’s first wind farm.  Operation of the wind farm represents the success of its campaign to gain permitting and financing, and to complete construction.

Wind generation capacity has grown dramatically, but erratically, in the U. S. in response to the cyclical operation or expiration of a series of production tax credits.  The current credit, in place for five years until the end of 2019, will provide a more stable investment and business environment for wind development.

The Department of Energy foresees major expansion of wind energy by 2030, and even more by 2050.  Wind could provide a significant fraction of U. S. demand for electricity by then.

 

On a beautiful sunny day at the end of June 2016 I joined a group of interested citizens on an organized tour of the state of Connecticut’s first wind farm.  Our guide was Gregory Zupkus, the CEO of BNE Energy, the business venture that built the farm.

At present, BNE Energy’s farm consists of two wind turbines.  Planning for a third turbine is underway.  The towers to the hub that houses the generation equipment are about 330 feet (100 m) high, and the blades are about 135 feet (41 m) long.  Each turbine, made by General Electric, can produce 2.85 MW of electricity.  The scale of this equipment is truly inspiring, as can be seen below.

 

BNE Energy wind turbine.  Some of our colleagues are visible to the right of the base.  The lower inset shows the base of the turbine, held by closely spaced rods.  The rods descend a few feet then splay out horizontally like the roots of a tree; the entire assembly is embedded in concrete.

Photos: Henry Auer 

 

 

The BNE Energy wind farm project took many years to come to fruition, including a three-year battle with local opponents of the project.  They were concerned, among other factors, about noise pollution from the rotating rotors.  This aspect of the process was concluded by a favorable decision from the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2014, allowing the project to continue. 

 

There was also opposition from activists concerned about collisions between the rotors and birds in flight.  During our visit Mr.Zupkus pointed out a person crisscrossing the meadow beneath one of the turbines.  He said this was an environmentalist looking for dead birds.  He pointed out that from the time the wind farm began producing electricity in October 2015 until our visit only two dead birds had been found by such searches.

 

The energy from this wind farm enters the local electricity grid via a feeder line that is only 1 ½ miles (2.4 km) long, a very short distance indeed.  This helped keep the cost of the project low.  The amount of electricity is enough to provide the power for the residents of nearby towns.

 

The project’s cost is US$23 million.  It benefited from a U. S. law providing a production tax credit (i.e., a credit during operation dependent on the amount of electric energy provided).  The financing was seeded by a loan from the Connecticut Green Bank, a state agency intended to stimulate public-private financing in fields that the state seeks to promote.  With that stimulus, and a long term power purchase agreement from the local electric utility company, financing was obtained from three regional commercial banks.  The loans differ in their details, but Mr. Zupkus indicated they would be redeemed at various times, the earliest being five years.  Once paid off, BNE Energy will be earning profits.

 

Developing wind energy creates new jobs.  During construction the contractors employed several dozen high-skilled workers.  Furthermore, the project promotes secondary labor demand in the fabrication of the various parts of the wind turbine installations such as steel working, manufacturing the turbine blades, and electronic controls for operation.  During operation there are far fewer job needs, as the day-to-day functioning of the turbines is largely controlled electronically.  Expansion of wind energy will obviously create many more job opportunities in the future.

 

Discussion

 

Wind Energy in the U. S.  The installed wind generation capability in the U. S. has grown dramatically, albeit by fits and starts, in the past 15 years.  This is seen in the following graphic, which shows the annual additions of new wind capacity, and the total cumulative generation capacity from 1999 to 2015:

Annual and cumulative wind-powered generation capacity.  DEEP BLUE, cumulative capacity.  AQUA and MULTI-COLOREDbars, generation capacity added each year.  The arrows show dates of expiration of federal production tax credits (see text).

Source: Adapted from the American Wind Energy Association, http://www.awea.org/Resources/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=5059.

 

 

Production Tax Credit.  It is seen that the annual capacity additions (light-colored bars) surge to time-dependent maxima, than fall precipitously the following year.  These are indicated by the arrows in the graphic above, and arise as follows.  A federal production tax was enacted in 1992 but allowed to expire in December 1999; after six months it was reinstated until December 2001; after 3 months it was reenacted until December 2003; after 10 months it was again reinstated until 2009, at which time wind businesses could choose between three taxing alternatives until 2012 when the production tax credit again expired; it was renewed to expire in Dec. 2014; it was again renewed for 1 year to Dec. 2015.  “Congress giveth and Congress taketh away.” 

 

These serial enactments and expirations of production tax credits left the wind industry whipsawed, unable to plan effectively for new investment.  As a result, after the expiration of each short-term credit the graphic above shows that annual installation of new generation capacity fell dramatically. Congress finally recognized the detrimental effects of its fits-and-starts legislative actions.  Accordingly, the production tax credit was further extended at the end of 2015, made retroactive to the beginning of that year, and extended for a five year period, to the end of 2019.  The wind industry now has a stable investment environment in place sufficient for advance planning for new wind energy projects.  It is anticipated that this stable investment environment will lead to a significant expansion of installed wind energy capacity (as well as solar) by the expiration of the current tax credit.

 

The present tax credit regime, which benefits both wind energy and solar generation, is expected to result in 37 gigawatts of new wind and solar capacity—a 56-percent increase during  its 5 year duration, promoting $73 billion in new investment, and enabling as many as 8 million more households to benefit from renewable energy at competitive prices.

 

The cost of producing wind-driven electricity has been falling dramatically in recent years. The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is an analysis of the lifetime costs involved in constructing and operating an electricity-generating facility over the projected lifetime of the facility, typically several decades.  The LCOE for wind energy has fallen about 60%   between 2009 and 2015, and is reaching a value that is competitive with fossil fuel generating facilities.  By the end of the current tax credit at the end of 2019 the continued improvement of the LCOE as time passes will certainly make wind generation fully competitive with fossil fuel generation.

 

Wind energy is projected to grow dramatically in the U. S.  The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects that wind energy generation will expand dramatically in future decades.  As an example, the graphic below compares actual wind energy production by state in 2013 with an expected extent of generation in 2030.

 

Comparison of actual wind energy generation state by state in the U. S. in 2013 (inset, upper left) with a projection of wind generation capacity in 2030 (right).  GREENcircles/sectors represent land-based generation.  BLUE circles/sectors represent offshore generation.  The size of the circles is scaled to the wind power capacity in gigawatts (right panel, calibrated by the white circles at the lower right of the panel).

Source: U. S. Department of Energy, http://energy.gov/articles/new-interactive-map-shows-big-potential-america-s-wind-energy-future 

 

 

Actual generation capacity in the U. S. in 2013 was 60.7 gigawatts (GW; billions of watts), with generation occurring in 34 of the contiguous 48 states.  This provided about 4.6% of U. S. electricity demand.  By 2030, DOE projects an increase of 269% to 224.1 GW in 47 states, with a significant fraction coming from offshore generation.  By 2050 the projection climbs to 404.3 GW in all 48 states (not shown), with important contributions from offshore generation in both inland lakes and ocean sites.  This could provide as much as one-third of the electricity used in the U. S. at that time.

 

Benefits of wind energy.  DOE writes that by 2050

·        The price of wind energy is projected to be directly competitive with conventional energy technologies within the next decade.

·        Wind energy could be a viable source of renewable electricity in all 50 states.

·        Wind energy could support more than 600,000 jobs in manufacturing, installation, maintenance and supporting services.

·        Wind energy could save $508 billion from reduced pollutants and $280 billion in natural gas costs.

·        Wind energy could save 260 billion gallons of water that would have been used by the electric power sector.   

 

Conclusion

 

The manmade increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere as we burn fossil fuels because no natural processes exist that remove it on the (geologically short) time scale needed to reduce global warming.  Therefore it is necessary to end further accumulation as fast as possible by actively migrating to a near zero-carbon energy economy, i.e., one that does not rely on fossil fuels to produce energy.

 

Wind-driven generation of electricity is growing dramatically in the U. S.  It is one way of moving toward zero emissions.  In recent years development of new wind facilities has responded directly to the presence or absence of the federal production tax credit.  Wind is expected to expand even further in coming decades to a point at which it can provide a large fraction of anticipated demand.  A stable federal policy supporting a production tax credit for wind (and other renewable) sources is a significant factor in the growth of wind generation until the industry becomes self-sufficient.

 

© 2016 Henry Auer

More Debate on Exxon Fraud

I read the following opinion piece in Physics Today. This is a topic we have discussed several times here, so I thought it would be appropriate to share. The original piece can be found here.

Curbing fraud or restraining speech?

Reporters and commentators engage the impassioned legal struggle over Exxon and climate.

·  Steven T. Corneliussen

05 July 2016

Climatologists at the blog RealClimate long ago indictedthe journalistic failure of “false balance”—the presenting of unscientific climate scoffing as credible. They quipped, by way of analogy, that’s it’s false to try to balance NASA’s views with those of the Flat Earth Society. But what about when climate-wars contentiousness shifts to a legal battlefield, as in the widening fight over ExxonMobil’s climate-related statements, policies, and actions?

A Mother Jones articleopens by summarizing the shifted fight: “Does Exxon Mobil have a constitutional right to sow doubt about climate science? That’s the subject of a high-stakes legal battle playing out between dozens of state attorneys general, members of Congress, corporate executives, and activists.”

In a 25 June press release, the Democratic Party outlines platform planks. One blurb speaks of “calling on the Department of Justice to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change.” In other words, the Democrats have formalized what InsideClimate News headlinedlast October: “Hillary Clinton joins call for Justice Dept. to investigate Exxon.”

In an emailed “action alert” and on a web page, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) charges that Exxon is “lashing out” against those who would hold it accountable. The company must “stop blocking progress on global warming,” the UCS declares.

But on the right, the Daily Callerheadline “Dem Party platform calls for prosecuting global warming skeptics” illustrates the defining of any investigation of alleged fraud as instead First Amendment–trashing intimidation—as strong-arming that’s actually designed to punish and deter climate scoffers’ speech. The article’s text highlights a Democratic platform “provision calling for the Department of Justice to investigate companies who disagree with Democrats on global warming science.” But in fact, say fraud-investigation supporters, any such investigation merely asks narrowly whether Exxon obtained but hid knowledge and, crucially, hid it in ways that constitute fraud under the law.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and many others are buying no such claim that restraining speech constitutes the curbing of fraud. “Abuse of power” exclaimed the headline on CEI’s recent full-page New York Times ad. It prominently displayed an image of the Statue of Liberty with its mouth gagged. Although “all Americans have the right to support causes they believe in,” the ad charged, a coalition of state attorneys general has “announced an investigation of more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, and private individuals who question their positions on climate change.” The ad declared that “regardless of one’s views on climate change, every American should reject the use of government power to harass or silence those who hold differing opinions” in what CEI classifies as “political debates,” not scientific ones.

Media Matters distillsthe counterargument seen on the left against such invoking of the First Amendment: the “attorneys general are seeking to determine whether Exxon and other companies knew the reality of climate change but publicly sowed doubt about climate science in order to protect their profits. Reports from InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Exxon’s own scientists had confirmed by the early 1980s that fossil fuel pollution was causing climate change, yet Exxon funded organizations that helped manufacture doubt about the causes of climate change for decades afterward.”

InsideClimate News (ICN) calls itself a “Pulitzer Prize-winning, non-profit, non-partisan news organization dedicated to covering climate change, energy and the environment.” Its investigative series last year described, as ICN puts it, “how Exxon conducted cutting-edge climate research decades ago and then, without revealing all that it had learned, worked at the forefront of climate denial, manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that its own scientists had confirmed.” Oneof ICN’s articles carried the headline “Exxon sowed doubt about climate science for decades by stressing uncertainty: Collaborating with the Bush-Cheney White House, Exxon turned ordinary scientific uncertainties into weapons of mass confusion.”

The Los Angeles Times’s October 2015 exposé began:

Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities.

The board’s response: Exxon had studied the science of global warming and concluded it was too murky to warrant action. The company’s “examination of the issue supports the conclusions that the facts today and the projection of future effects are very unclear.”

Yet in the far northern regions of Canada’s Arctic frontier, researchers and engineers at Exxon and Imperial Oil were quietly incorporating climate change projections into the company’s planning and closely studying how to adapt the company’s Arctic operations to a warming planet.

The fraud allegations echo past experience with Big Tobacco, a precedent emphasized by Harvard historian of science Naomi Oreskes and others. John Schwartz at the New York Times citesas “a turning point in the fight against tobacco” the “unearthing of industry documents that showed the industry had long been aware of the health risks of its products, and the enormous lengths to which the companies went to sow doubt about the science.”

Compare newspaper excerpts separated by two decades:

• From the 2015 Los Angeles Times exposé: “The gulf between Exxon’s internal and external approach to climate change from the 1980s through the early 2000s was evident in a review of hundreds of internal documents, decades of peer-reviewed published material and dozens of interviews conducted by Columbia University’s Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and the Los Angeles Times.”
• From the 1994 New York Times front-page article “Tobacco company was silent on hazards”: “Internal documents from a major tobacco company show that executives struggled with whether to disclose to the Surgeon General what they knew in 1963 about the hazards of cigarettes, at a time when the Surgeon General was preparing a report saying for the first time that cigarettes are a major health hazard. The executives of the company, the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, chose to remain silent, to keep their research results secret, to stop work on a safer cigarette and to pursue a legal and public relations strategy of admitting nothing.”

Still, on the right it’s regularly arguedthat Exxon has actually accepted climate science constructively. Schwartz at the Times recently quotedExxon spokesman Alan T. Jeffers: “The great irony here is that we’ve acknowledged the risks of climate change for more than a decade, have supported a carbon tax as the better policy option and spent more than $7 billion on research and technologies to reduce emissions.” The Wall Street Journalreportedonline on 30 June that Exxon “is ramping up its lobbying of other energy companies to support a carbon tax,” making it “the first major American energy company to move closer to the positions of European energy firms ... which have publicly advocated for a price on carbon.”

In 2008, the Guardian reportedthat “a sizeable chunk of Exxon's investor base” was “uncomfortable” with the company’s “hardline attitude towards climate change and alternative energy.” A day later, the Christian Science Monitor pointed out an intriguing paragraph from Exxon’s annual Corporate Citizenship Report: “In 2008 we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.” The Monitor piece added that Exxon had also previously “backed away from such groups.” Though without documentation or a link, it even reported that “according to the Guardian, in 2006 the company stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute.”

Besides defense of Exxon, the struggle also involves elaborate attacks on investigation proponents’ motivations. The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel proclaimedon 17 June that the “crusade” is neither about the law nor even about Exxon; it’s really “liberal prosecutors” seeking “to shut down a universe of their most-hated ideological opponents.” She asserted that the “real target is a broad array of conservative activist groups that are highly effective at mobilizing the grass-roots and countering liberal talking points—and that therefore must (as the left sees things) be muzzled.” She continued: “This is clear from the crazy list of organizations [that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey] asked for information about in her subpoena. She demanded that Exxon turn over decades of correspondence with any of them.”

Strassel compared the campaign to other alleged attempts “to shut down conservatives,” listing “the IRS targeting, the Wisconsin John Doe probe, the campaign against ALEC, [and] the harassment of conservative donors.” Also in June, she published the book The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech.

The conservative columnist, Fox News pundit, and veteran climate scoffer George Will, famed recently for renouncing the Republican Party because of its presidential candidate, has also attacked investigation proponents’ motivations. In an April Washington Post columnheadlined “Scientific silencers on the left are trying to shut down climate skepticism,” he listed what he sees as “core tenets of progressivism,” including these:

• “Politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state.”
• “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.”

Occasionally, fraud-investigation opponents even allude to the old Soviet Union’s Lysenkoism—the extreme, and destructive, politicization of science. On 29 June, the Wall Street Journal printed a lettercalling the “Exxon probe ... a message to anyone daring to dispute the climate-change consensus.” The letter charged that government “has too much riding on climate change with all of its implications for tax revenue and administrative-state power to permit dissent, and climate-change scientists have too much riding on government research funding. As government inquisitors move to shut off climate-change debate and punish heretics, it seems that Lysenko’s ghost is now haunting the US.”

It’s no surprise that fraud-investigation proponents level motivation charges too—about financial ones. Recently 13 Republican members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology wrote official lettersthat requested documents from state attorneys general investigating Exxon. Media Matters chargesthat the 13 “have received over $3.4 million from the fossil fuel industry, including over $126,000 from Exxon.” The Huffington Post reportedthat Charles and David Koch—the “Koch brothers”—“have spent over $88 million in *traceable* funding to groups attacking climate change science, policy and regulation,” with $21 million of that total going to groups that helped pay for that Competitive Enterprise Institute ad featuring a gagged Statue of Liberty.

Some in the media have now turned to lawyers, whatever is to be said about the mixing of the scientific and legal questions. At the Times, Schwartz recently quotedRobert C. Post, the dean of Yale Law School and a constitutional scholar, who “rejected the notion that Exxon Mobil is being gagged by the state efforts”:

“Debate is not being suppressed in any way by this,” he said, adding that citing First Amendment rights has become “a weapon in the arsenal of those who would seek to unravel the regulatory state.”

“They’re bringing it up because it sounds good.”

A week later, Post asserted in a Washington Postop-ed that the “point is a simple one. If large corporations were free to mislead deliberately the consuming public, we would live in a jungle rather than in an orderly and stable market.”

Three days after that, Hans A. von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation—a Republican lawyer with an MIT undergraduate degree—argued in a letterresponding to Post that “human-induced global warming is unproven.” He sought to show that fraud-investigation supporters can adduce only weak evidence:

In the countersuit filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute against the outrageous subpoena issued by the U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general for CEI’s climate-change research, the attorney general was forced to show his cards. In a brieffiled in D.C. Superior Court, the only two supposedly fraudulent statements by ExxonMobil he could cite were:

• “International  accords and underlying regional and national regulations for greenhouse gas reduction are evolving with uncertain timing and outcome, making it difficult to predict their business impact.”
• “Current scientific understanding provides limited guidance on the likelihood, magnitude, and timeframe of physical risks such as sea level rise, extreme weather events, temperature extremes, and precipitation.”

These statements merely express uncertainty over climate change and climate policy. Anyone who believes these statements constitute fraud lacks common sense and an understanding of the applicable legal standards.

The “abuse” of the First Amendment here is by state attorneys general acting like a scientific Inquisition to silence what they believe is the wrong view in this vigorous, unsettled scientific debate.

With summer’s arrival, the struggle’s leading public forum appears to be the Wall Street Journal, where indirectly related opinion-page ads have been challenging the opinion editors’ climate statements. The 16 June WSJ editorial“The climate police blink” mocked fraud-investigation supporters who had just suffered apparent setbacks. US Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Earl Walker responded with a letterthat the WSJ headlined “Attorneys general are right to pursue Exxon Mobil: Exxon Mobil and the CEI are attempting to argue that the First Amendment protects them from producing the information that can shed light on whether they broke the law.” Another WSJ editorialargued that if Exxon had committed fraud, so had former vice president Al Gore, whose “unproven claims” concerning climate “arguably mislead investors about the value of clean-energy companies.”

That editorial ended by demonstrating that more contentiousness is surely coming from both sides: “We don’t think anyone should be prosecuted for engaging in political debate, but progressives have shown (see independent counsels) that they’ll cease their abuses only when the same methods are used against them.”

(Thumbnail credit: brownpau, CC BY 2.0)
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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature andScience, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and was a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.