Exclusive: Climate Science Denial Group Heartland Institute is "Reaching Out" to Fossil Fuel Industry for Funding

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One of the worldโ€™s most notorious climate science denial groups is โ€œreaching out to the fossil fuel communityโ€ to raise cash in the wake of President Donald Trumpโ€™sย election.

Coal industry veteran and new Heartland Institute senior fellow Fred Palmer believes the election of Donald Trump will transform the energy industry in the United States by leaving the science of climate changeย behind.

And in a wide-ranging interview with DeSmog, Palmer claimed there was nothing wrong with fossil fuel companies secretly funding groups that push climate scienceย denial.

โ€œI am reaching out to the fossil fuel community right now and raising money for Heartland,โ€ he said.ย  โ€œOf course thatโ€™sย acceptable.โ€

Palmer spent more than 30 years as a lobbyist and public affairs professional for the coal industry, first with Western Fuels Association and then later for Peabodyย Energy.

Palmer has long rejected the science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change. Instead, he says adding CO2 to the atmosphere will bring benefits. His position runs counter to credible scientists around the world and decades of peer-reviewed scientific literature, including the positions of every major scientific academy on theย planet.

In 1990, Palmer was asked to help organize a coal-funded PR campaign to โ€œreposition global warming as theory (notย fact).โ€ย 

Later Palmer established the Greening Earth Society to try to convince the public that the science linking dangerous climate change to fossil fuels was weak, but thatย adding CO2 to the atmosphere would help plantย growth.

Palmer told DeSmog he believed coal and other fossil fuels were part of โ€œa divine planโ€ because, he said, they were easy to access and improved peopleโ€™sย lives.

He said there was nothing wrong with fossil fuel companies funding climate science denial groups, even if that funding was not disclosed. People who opposed those secretive arrangements, he said, โ€œdonโ€™t understandย advocacy.โ€

In 2016 it emerged that Peabody had been funding a network of climate science denial groups.

The Heartland Institute announced in early January that Palmer would become a senior fellow on energy and climateย change.

Heartland Institute runs regular conferences for climate science deniers and contrarians. Before one conference, the group launched a billboard campaign comparing people who โ€œbelievedโ€ in global warming to terrorist Ted โ€œUnabomberโ€ Kaczynski. A parade of corporate funders pulled their support to the institute after the ill-judged billboardย campaign.

President Trumpโ€™s key financial backer, billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, has donated almost $5 million to Heartland from his family foundation.

Palmer told DeSmog he thought the presidency of Trump, who has said climate change is a hoax, would be โ€œtransformationalโ€ for the fossil fuelย industry.

โ€œFor the first time in 25 years, CO2 greenhouse gas emissions are not the driving consideration in energy development in the United States,โ€ saidย Palmer.

โ€œThatโ€™s a transformational development and it took a Donald Trump to become president of the United States to put that on the table. I say God blessย him.โ€

Main image: Screenshot of Fred Palmer appearing in a 2000ย PBSย documentary

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