Utilities Pay Scientist Ally on Warming
    The Associated Press

    Friday 28 July 2006

    Washington - Coal-burning utilities are contributing money to one of the few remaining climate scientists openly critical of the broad consensus that fossil fuel emissions are intensifying global warming.

    The critic, Patrick J. Michaels, is a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and Virginia's state climatologist.

    Dr. Michaels told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research. So a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for him last week and has raised at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

    The utility, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, based in Sedalia, Colo., has given Dr. Michaels $100,000 of its own, said Stanley R. Lewandowski Jr., its general manager. Mr. Lewandowski said that one company planned to give $50,000 and that a third planned to contribute to Dr. Michaels next year.

    "We cannot allow the discussion to be monopolized by the alarmists," Mr. Lewandowski wrote in a July 17 letter to 50 other utilities. He also called on other electric cooperatives to undertake a counterattack on "alarmist" scientists and specifically Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth," which lays much of the blame for global warming on heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

    Mr. Lewandowski and Dr. Michaels, who holds a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin, have openly acknowledged the donations and say they see no problem. But some environmental advocates say the effort clearly poses a conflict of interest.

    "This is a classic case of industry buying science to back up its anti-environmental agenda," said Frank O'Donnell, president of the Washington advocacy group Clean Air Watch.

    Others, however, view it as the type of lobbying that goes along with many divisive issues. One environmental scientist, Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford University and current editor in chief of the journal Science, said skeptics like Dr. Michaels were lobbyists more than researchers.

    "I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical," Dr. Kennedy said.

    Dr. Michaels is best known for his newspaper opinion columns and books, including "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media." He also writes research articles published in scientific journals.

    He has been quoted by major newspapers more than 150 times in the last two years, according to a LexisNexis database search. He and Mr. Lewandowski say that their side of global warming is not being heard and that the donations resulted from a speech Dr. Michaels gave to the Western Business Roundtable last fall.

    Dr. Michaels said the money would help pay his staff.

    "Last I heard, anybody can ask a scientific question," he said.