Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a front group for the coal industry, is "sending 30 Santas to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to deliver stockings filled with coal-shaped chocolate," reports The Hill. "The goal of the campaign is to shift coal's image as a key contributor to global warming to a relatively cheap and increasingly clean provider of electricity." David Roberts predicts that "This is only the beginning of what promises to be an enormous PR campaign by an industry that sees the writing on the wall. In public, it will be smiles and Santas. Behind the scenes, it will be slime campaigns against candidates who dare propose a shift to renewable energy."

The Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America (SUVOA) industry front group paid the PR firm Stratacomm $440,000 in the first half of 2007 to lobby the U.S. government. Stratacomm boasts a range of auto industry clients. Later this year, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are set to discuss proposals to mandate that the auto industry meet a fuel efficiency target of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 across their range of vehicles, including passenger cars and sport utility vehicles. Associated Press reports that recently filed lobbying disclosure forms reveal that SUVOA "lobbied against Senate legislation promoting higher fuel economy standards." In 2004, the PR commentator Paul Holmes wrote that "what is clear is that SUVOA is a front for SUV manufacturers. Its board of directors consists largely of industry reps and public affairs execs with ties to the industry."

The coal industry front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) is seeking public relations help "in targeting the public, politicians, interest groups, and the media" on the national level, and also in Pennsylvania and Nevada. ABEC promotes coal as an "essential, affordable and increasingly clean" source of electricity. The National Journal recently reported that ABEC's budget for PR, advertising and "grassroots" organizing will nearly quadruple, from $8 million to $30 million a year. "Two words sum up why" the coal industry and its allies "opened their checkbooks," wrote the Journal -- "global warming." ABEC notes that "Nevada is perhaps one of the most volatile states in the west regions for ABEC's industry," so its PR work in the state will include issues management, as well as presidential candidate outreach and identifying "cities and communities critical to helping shape policy at the grassroots level." The Pennsylvania campaign will be less intense, involving "regulatory / legislative communications," "grassroots assistance," and various types of media outreach.

Five years ago in their book "Trust Us We're Experts," CMD's Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber exposed the propaganda machine selling Americans the idea that global warming is good for us. Newsweek's Sharon Begley examines the current situation: "If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. ... Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. ... Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless."

An old advertisement for Exxon (then Esso)

In an apparent policy shift, earlier this year Exxon Mobil called climate change "a serious issue," saying that "action is warranted." The oil company also said it would stop funding groups that downplay the risks from global warming or lobby against measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But Exxon still funds about 40 "skeptic groups," including the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and National Black Chamber of Commerce, according to a new report from the environmental group Greenpeace. Exxon did "cut its donations to these groups by more than 40 percent from 2005." Rep. Brad Miller urged Exxon to release data on its 2006 donations, saying the money "appears to be an effort to distort public discussion about global warming." Exxon gave $3.9 million to "global warming deniers" in 2004, $3.6 million in 2005, and over $2 million in 2006. Exxon challenged Greenpeace's characterization of the groups as "deniers," and said the groups "do not represent Exxon or speak on its behalf."

At the "Utah Energy Summit," Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer called for more federal money to develop "clean coal" as an alternative to petroleum and a solution to global warming. As David Roberts notes, the summit organizer is Jim Sims of Policy Communications, "a long-time lobbyist for extractive industries" and the head of front groups such as Partnership for the West and the Save Our Species Alliance, "an astroturf organization created for the purpose of convincing the public to accept the gutting of the Endangered Species Act. ... Remember: despite the new moniker, clean coal is coal, a fossil fuel backed by a fossil fuel industry. It's the same Big Coal with deep ties in state and federal government and a long history of corruption. It's an industry that's spent practically a century entrenching itself and fighting off competitors. It founded the 20-year campaign of obfuscation and denial on global warming. Now it's selling 'alternative energy.'"

As a reporter for Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T), a small industry trade publication, Paul Thacker discovered an entire industry built around spinning science for the purpose of confusing the public while benefiting big business. He wrote exposés documenting the tobacco and oil industry ties of Steven Milloy's junkscience.com, which purports to debunk bad science about issues such as global warming. He uncovered the $2.9 million media campaign behind "Project Protect," a front group for the timber industry that represented itself as an organization of concerned citizens in Oregon. But when he began writing about the Weinberg Group, an international scientific and regulatory consulting firm specializing in "product defense" for the chemical industry, he ran afoul of the American Chemical Society, which publishes ES&T. A few months later, after unearthing evidence that the White House tried to prevent scientists from speaking out about the link between climate change and the increasing strength of hurricanes, he was fired from his job.

In an interview with the Toronto Star, veteran energy policy analyst Amory Lovins said that he had spoken with former Greenpeace co-founder turned nuclear power promoter Patrick Moore and concluded that "he's not well informed about energy alternatives." Earlier this year, the Nuclear Energy Institute established a front group, the Clean and Safe Energy Coaltion, with Moore as its co-chair. The group promotes nuclear power as a "solution" to global warming. Lovins referred to his recent Nuclear Energy International article, which showed that "if you spent 10 cents (U.S.) to make and deliver a new nuclear kilowatt-hour ... you can displace 1 kilowatt-hour of coal power. That's what Patrick is talking about. ... If you spend the same 10 cents (U.S.) instead on micropower or efficient use, you get two to 10 times as much coal displacement for the same money, because those options are cheaper -- you get more per dollar. They're also faster, so you get more carbon displacement, coal displacement, per year."

It "was one of the most vicious attacks I have ever seen on the integrity of a scientist," says one scientist on how the energy industry used to treat federal global climate expert Ben Santer. Santer's "heresy" was a 1995 report, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment and the following words: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." At that time, more than 70 groups from the American Petroleum Institute to Union Carbide, painted their target (and rhetoric) on Santer. The Global Climate Coalition set an early standard for front groups and astroturf, and accused Santer of "scientific cleansing" when the world was reeling from Bosnia's "ethnic cleansing." Now the GCC is defunct and Santer's work has been afffirmed by sophisticated new testing, models and technology. Santer reflects: "I was a messenger bearing news that some very powerful people did not want to hear. So they went after the messenger. ... I just happened to get in the way and had to be discredited." Today, says Santer, "All of us--policymakers, public, media, and scientists--have important roles in [climate change] debate. Let's hope it takes place sooner rather than later."

"A public relations firm with ties to the automobile industry has launched ads suggesting that a proposed California rule to cut carbon dioxide exhaust could cause more people to die in traffic accidents," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Starring 'Squeezy the Clown,' the radio and newspaper advertisements by the Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America use humor to make a questionable claim: The regulation to combat global warming will compel auto companies to make smaller vehicles, forcing California families into diminutive cars and trucks that could endanger their lives. ... But SUV Owners of America is not a grass-roots organization. It is run by Strat@comm, a Washington, D.C., public relations firm whose clients have included General Motors, DaimlerChrysler and Ford, as well as the auto industry's two major trade groups."