Connor Gibson's blog

In recent years, the government of Pennsylvania has faced enormous pressure to serve the oil and gas industry. Some legislators have been all too happy to help out, including some introducing bills that attempt to restrict peaceful protest of oil and gas pipelines. 

Scott Pruitt had a bad habit as Oklahoma's attorney general: he liked to have oil lobbyists ghostwrite his official government letters calling for limits to enforcing federal pollution laws.

This month, nineteen United States Senators called attention to the Web of Denial, a network of front groups that oppose any productive action to combat climate change.

The Kochs have spent over $88 million in *traceable* funding to groups attacking climate change science, policy and regulation. Of that total, $21 million went to groups that recently bought a full page New York Times advertisement defending ExxonMobil from government investigations into its systematic misrepresentation of climate science.

A wolf pack of in-state utilities and out-of-state petrochemical billionaires has attacked Ohio's clean energy law, threatening to kill clean jobs and wreak further damage on the environment.  

The third and final meeting of the year for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) just wrapped up in Scottsdale, Arizona, last week.

On the day of ALEC's board meeting, Greenpeace attempted to ask ALEC's board of directors and executives about climate change science. ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson was not keen on speaking to us.

ALEC has a long history of denying climate change. It continues to take payments from fossil fuel companies like Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and Peabody Energy. It was part of the American Petroleum Institute's leaked plan to manipulate the public's trust in climate scientists, spelled out in an eerie memo from 1998.

If you've ever turned on the TV and seen a charismatic, boyish, conservative looking man yelling at scientists in an animated fashion, there's a good chance it was Marc Morano.

Marc's new movie, Climate Hustle, is slated for release during global climate change negotiations next month. As in past years, Marc Morano will be among a contingent of a dying breed of science deniers attending the COP with the simple intention of interference.

Smile and Lie

Having met Marc before, I know what it's like to look into the eyes of someone who is paid to misrepresent truth with confidence, and attack my natural hesitation to call out his dishonestly.

Last June, at The Heartland Institute's tenth climate denial conference--a desert of true climate science expertise--I recorded my conversation with Marc. At minute 2:45 in the recording of our talk, he pulls a classic move. Listen to him pull a a double-layered lie, baiting me to confirm that 2014 was the hottest year on record, then attacking me for saying yes.