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In a must-read piece co-published today by Salon.com and The Tyee, Geoff Dembicki exposes the dark underbelly of the public relations and lobbying industry, revealing the interconnectedness between Alberta tar sands movers and shakers in Alberta and their oily compatriots in Washington. 

The investigative article focuses on the fossil fuel industry front group Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), which is run out of the offices of the PR firm HBW Resources, headed by David Holt, Andrew Browning, and Michael Whatley.

Geoff Dembicki's article "Big Oil and Canada thwarted U.S. carbon standards," exposes CEA's effort to thwart government efforts to favor relatively cleaner conventional fuels over the dirtiest forms of extreme unconventional energy like the Alberta tar sands. 

Dembicki reveals how CEA influenced the debate at both the national and state-by-state levels on low carbon fuel standards (LCFS), working to defeat or delay any efforts to differentiate between the emissions footprints of extreme and unconventional fuels like tar sands oil and cleaner-but-still-dirty conventional oil.

Oil industry power players, including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Shell and Norway’s Statoil are among the CEA's key financially backers, and many of these companies also happen to have deep ties to the Alberta tar sands.

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New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman has a must-read piece today noting the “cynical careerism” of climate deniers who won’t even acknowledge the truth when one of “their own” discovers that climate science is sound.  Singling out Anthony Watts as an example of this head-in-the-sand approach, Krugman notes that Watts and other climate skeptics changed their tune about the Koch-funded Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project when its lead researcher testified in front of Congress last week that climate change is real and man-made.  It wasn’t what the skeptics - or the anti-science GOP - wanted to hear.

UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller - whose reputation as a climate skeptic and funding by a Koch foundation the Republicans likely assumed made him one of “theirs” - instead shocked the hearing by reporting that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend “very similar to that reported by the prior groups.”

Krugman notes that Anthony Watts had recently “praised the Berkeley project and piously declared himself ‘prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.’”

But then of course when Professor Muller announced the preliminary results of his study upholding the scientific basis of climate disruption, Watts ridiculed the hearing Muller attended as “post normal science political theater.”

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The primary funder of Tucker Carlson’s new website ‘The Daily Caller’ is climate change denier and GOP bankroller Foster Friess, and Carlson has reportedly lined up sponsorship from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and Southern Company, all major opponents of meaningful action to curb climate change.

Friess donated $3 million to Carlson’s site, which is run out of an office a “stone’s throw from the White House” by a 21-person staff.  ‘The Daily Caller’ is the brainchild (if you can call it that) of Carlson and his college roommate Neil Patel, a former Dick Cheney aide.  The site’s opinion editor is former RNC press secretary Moira Bagley, immediately calling into question Carlson’s insistence that ‘The Daily Caller’ won’t cater to the right-wing crowd.

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Alaska Governor Sarah Palin penned an op-ed in Tuesday’s Washington Post slamming Obama’s “cap-and-tax” plan and promoting America’s home-grown, (not) cheap, (not) clean, (not) abundant fossil fuel supply. 

Palin clearly wants to be relevant in her forthcoming post-resignation days, and what better way than by declaring herself the lead spokesperson attacking efforts to stop climate change?

In true GOP fashion, Palin seeks to put the fear of God and all things scary into readers minds, foretelling an apocalyptic future for any who subscribe to the idea that we need to curb carbon emissions to save the climate and protect our economy from carbon dependence. 

Palin declares Obama’s cap-and-trade (er, sorry, she says “cap-and-tax” four times) energy plan an “enormous threat to our economy” that “would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.”

Permanent damage?  You mean the tipping point beyond which scientists conclude that we won’t be able to recover the climate and will surely face more devastating floods, droughts, and heat waves?

No, no. That’s not the “permanent damage” Sarah Palin predicts.

Instead, Palin is talking about the damage that efforts to curb carbon emissions might have on the profits of the world’s largest polluters, including the oil industry which has treated her and her family so well over the years, providing gobs of campaign funding and a job for dear husband Todd (when he’s not out snowmobiling, of course).

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Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) was on a roll Tuesday with three appearances on MSNBC in which he lied twice about the cost of reducing carbon emissions and asserted that global warming is a liberal myth.

Pence told MSNBC host Chris Matthews that “I think the science is very mixed on the subject of global warming.”

Documenting his grasp of scientific reality, Pence went on to state that creationism is “fundamental truth.”  Matthews responded, “Did you take biology in school? … If your party wants to be credible on science, you gotta accept science. Do you?”

Pence ducked the direct question, but told Matthews that “In the mainstream media, there is a denial of the growing skepticism in the scientific community on global warming.” 

Matthews put Pence in his place, telling him that “I don’t think your party is passionately committed to science, or to fighting global warming, or to dealing with the scientific facts we live with.”