Coal-fired cooperative coughs up cash to climate crank
Say you don’t like the results of climate science. What to do? Us, we suffer from night terrors. But the Colorado-based Intermountain Rural Electric Association — a group heavily invested in coal-burning utilities — is going with the fossil-fuel industry’s favorite alternate strategy: buy more favorable science! They’ve donated $100,000 to notorious climate crank Pat Michaels, and are urging other industry types to come up with more. Michaels, a University of Virginia professor, fellow at the Cato Institute, and isolated scientific outlier, has long had a large megaphone, quoted endlessly by a mainstream media determined to “balance” the other 99 percent of scientists. But with other skeptical voices falling silent, perhaps from an overdue sense of shame, it’s more important than ever that the remaining shills be well paid. Coal-fired utilities dread the thought of mandatory caps or taxes on carbon dioxide emissions, which would increase their operating costs and make renewable energy sources more financially attractive. Can’t have that.
