The Calgary Foundation is at it again.

This prominent Alberta charity is once more shoveling money through their "Science Education Fund" to organizations and projects that seem specifically unfriendly to real science, but helpful to the Friends of Science.

The Foundation's latest relevant gift was in the amount of $142,685 paid to the Frontier Center for Public Policy.

The last time we heard of this fund was in 2006, when the Calgary Foundation was using it to channel petro dollars through the University of Calgary to the Friends of Science, with the assistance of Dr. Barry Cooper – long-time friend and mentor of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Friends of Science were at the time running a public campaigning against climate action while denying that their funding was coming from the oil and gas industry.

DeSmogBlog spoke this week to one of several groups impersonated by Big Coal to block the Waxman Markey Bill, and they are not happy.

Lisa Maatz, director of public policy and government relations for the American Association of University Women (AAUW) had just finished testifying before a Congressional hearing in the fraudulent letter scam:

“It was very clear to me that this was specifically targeting certain members using the names of reputable groups because those groups could be influential with those members, and it wasn’t just a fluke, it wasn’t just an accident.”

No doubt. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a coal industry umbrella group, is on track to spend an incredible $44 million on lobbying efforts in 2009. This includes almost $3 million dedicated to “outreach to individuals and groups representing the interests of minorities, seniors, business, and veterans.”

<!--EndFragment--> Bonner and Associates sent out numerous forged letters misrepresenting just such grassroots groups. In the case of the now-closed AAUW Charlottesville office, Bonner used the personal address of the former chapter president and the name of the late and well-loved AAUW historian Anne Waldner.

Maatz wonders: “How did they come up with that name? Clearly some work was done to find something that would feel on the surface as legitimate.”

Climate Cover Up continues to amass some amazing coverage and praise from around the world. 

Here are some of my favorite reviews so far:

Jeff Biggers reviewed Climate Cover Up at the Huffington Post:
“James Hoggan and his DeSmogBlog.com posse might be our nation's most important sleuths--and they ain't even from the United States. … Climate Cover-Up is an indispensable guidebook to anyone concerned about our planet's climate future; in fact, it should be required reading for all American citizens, journalists, public policy makers -- and President Barack Obama. … Let's hope Climate Cover-Up makes it to the White House before the next round of Big Coal lobbyists.”

Liz Veazey at It’s Getting Hot in Here says:
“As someone fighting for bold climate action it is really helpful to better understand folks fighting against you and how they are organized.  I would definitely recommend the book, especially if you, like me and many others, felt like the climate denial campaign was mostly over.”

The Georgia Straight in Vancouver writes that Climate Cover Up offers “compelling insights for anyone interested in learning why there is so much confusion about this issue in the media.”

Straight Goods, Canada’s leading independent online newsmagazine, says:
“If you care about your well-being, the fate of your children and the environment, please read James Hoggan's new book, Climate Cover-Up.”

RealClimate.org, a website that focuses on the science of climate change, had this to say about the book:
“There is an important story behind the climate change denial effort that goes well beyond the scientific issues at hand. It’s not our mission at RealClimate to tell that story, but there are others who are doing it, and doing it well. Hoggan and Littlemore are clearly among them. Read this book, and equally important, make sure that others who need to do as well.”

But my favorite quote of all (so far) comes from David Roberts at Grist, who describes DeSmogBlog as “a Canadian outfit that has its teeth in the skeptic movement’s arse like it was made of sirloin.”

Roberts says Climate Cover Up “offers chapter and verse on the industry groups, scientists for hire, and lazy-ass media that have colluded to leave the public in its current state of ignorance on the most important scientific question of our time. This isn’t just bloggy ranting either: the guys know how to dig, and they’ve uncovered original documents. Tasty, tasty documents.”


Have you seen another great review of Climate Cover Up? Drop me a line at desmogblog@gmail.com,

It’s always nice to get feedback on your work. That’s why we were heartened to see a comment from the Alberta Government on our post yesterday about the appointment of a tar sands executive as a "clean energy" envoy to the US:

David Sands of the Government of Alberta, here.

Mr. Anderson you certainly bring a lot of energy to your writing. While we can't agree with most of your assertions, we certainly applaud you and desmogblog for promoting the discussion.

If any of your readers want a quick (12 mins, I think) look at what we are doing to address environmental impacts of oil sands development, we've got a new video. Real people, real pictures, no script. ("Conversation") up at this site: http://oilsands.alberta.ca/

Thanks David. I did take the time to view the video yet failed to come away with any new information or insights that undermined my strongly held belief that the tar sands are an ecological nightmare, or that the Alberta government is doing much more than trying to massage their public image.

In fact, it is odd that the Alberta taxpayer is funding a team of on-line writers to troll the blogosphere for potentially damaging posts, at the same time as the government of Premier Stelmach just slashed $12 million from provincial environment programs.

These sophisticated PR efforts instead seem part the much-maligned $25 million “rebranding” campaign bankrolled by the Alberta taxpayer. Mr. Sands himself is on record as saying a “fair amount” of this money is being spent in Washington because “the oilsands are a large part of Alberta's story."

It was welcome news last month when Congress committed $9 million to refurbish the long-overdue Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). Good start. So how about some information to go with it?

Desmog blog readers will recall the long and fruitless quest to wring documents out of NASA about the bizarre story of the DSCOVR spacecraft. This $100 million instrument was fully completed eight years ago yet has been sitting in a box in Maryland ever since.

DSCOVR was designed to directly measure climate change for the first time ever by observing our warming planet from the unique vantage of the Lagrange Point - one million miles towards the Sun.

The climate denial industry has been regularly harping on the unreliability of low Earth orbit satellite data for years. Strange then, how the very experiment that could resolve such issues was mothballed – over the strenuous objections of dozens of leading researchers.

I struggled for over a year to extract any kind of internal documents from NASA using the Freedom of Information Act and got nowhere. After 11 months of stonewalling, the space agency elected to withhold an unknown number of documents due to some very bizarre rationales. I appealed later in 2007 and was also turned down.

Then Barack Obama was elected President of the United States....

Desmog Blog readers know how much cyber-ink we have spilled trying to save the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). Our work may finally be over.

The Omnibus Appropriations Bill 1105, just passed yesterday by the US Congress contains the following fateful statement on page 141:

WOW!

Details remain sketchy but it seems that the loony idea to strip the spacecraft of all Earth observing instruments has gone by the wayside.

More importantly, the passage of this bill means that DSCOVR may finally be on its way into space where it will return vital data about our warming world.

To recap, this fully completed $100 million climate observing spacecraft has so far sat in a box in Maryland for the last eight years. Dr Robert Park summed up the feeling of many in the scientific community when he described DSCOVR as “the most important thing we could be doing in space right now”.

Why? DSCOVR would gaze back towards Earth from the unique vantage of one million miles towards the sun – an entirely new way of doing space-based research. 

While much remarkable science continues to be done from low Earth orbit, it is like trying to map an elephant using a microscope. Being so close to our planet means most satellites only see the Earth in thin strips, and vital numbers relating to climate change still do not add up.

After spending billions of dollars, researchers remain unable to close Earth’s outgoing radiation budget closer than 6 watts per square meter – that "noise" in the data is almost six times larger than the effect of climate change we are trying to see.

DSCOVR would instead see Earth from almost 1,000 times farther away with a continuous view of the entire sunlit side of our planet. This would provide DSCOVR much more accurate data on our planet’s changing albedo - a vital measurement to resolve the energy budget of our planet. DSCOVR would also better calibrate billions of dollars of space hardware now in low Earth orbit.

More importantly, DSCOVR would for the first time allow us to directly measure global warming - something that is routinely questioned by so-called "skeptics". One would think resovling such weighty issues would be a scientific priority but this mission has been mired in politics from day one.