Blame Sunspots: Climate Science Denial Continues at Shale Gas Pipeline Industry Conference

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Last month, 11,258 scientists from virtually every country in the world published a study on climate change, writing that they collectively declared โ€œclearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climateย emergency.โ€

That comes six years after a widely cited 2013 study reported 97 percent agreement among publishing climate scientists that human activity causes climate change โ€” a consensus that has grown stronger in the years since. John Cook, lead author of that study, described this summer a 99 percent scientific consensus that humans cause globalย warming.

Despite this widespread scientific agreement, shale pipeline executives attending this yearโ€™s Marcellus Utica Midstream conference last week in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, heard a very different message on theย climate.

โ€œThere’s a premise that has now become standard that I don’t accept: the idea that we know,โ€ Mark Mathis, president of the Clear Energy Alliance, told the gathered pipeline executives. โ€œFor a scientist, for a climatologist to say, ‘we know that we’re the cause,’ okay, ‘and the consequences are extreme’ โ€” well, we’ve got these giant natural factors, you know, sun spot activity, oceans, cloud formations, these are all extraordinarily complex things,ย okay?โ€

โ€œThere’s a lot that we don’t understand,โ€ Mathis continued. โ€œWe’re just now trying to get our finger onย it.โ€

Itโ€™s a mantra thatโ€™s been heard for decades from fossil fuel advocates โ€” but itโ€™s worn increasingly thin as the world comes to grips with the political and scientific reality of the ongoing climate crisis. The United Nations warned in March that the world has โ€œonly 11 years left to prevent irreversible damage from climateย change.โ€

John Powell, Senior Vice President of Crestwood Equity Partners, presented during the Marcellus Utica Midstream conference on how the energy industry is 'losing the PR battle'
John Powell, Senior Vice President of Crestwood Equity Partners, presented during the Marcellus Utica Midstream conference, similarly telling the pipeline industry that โ€œwe need to change the narrative.โ€ Credit: Sharon Kelly,ย DeSmog

At the December 3โ€“5 pipeline conference, Mathis called for more study, and falsely claimed that the science does not back up the notion that fossil fuelโ€“burning has caused climateย change.

โ€œLet’s continue to work through the science side of it and understand that this extreme case scenario [of fossil fuelโ€“caused climate change] โ€” it’s a constant mantra, people are beginning to accept it, but the science simply does not back that up,โ€ he told the crowd during a panel titled โ€œBreaking Through the Regulatoryย Wall.โ€

For the record, the science does in fact back up the notion that people โ€” mainly by burning fossil fuels โ€” are causing the climate to rapidly warm. Climate scientists have carefully examined the role of the sun and sunspots in climate change, as Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgiaโ€™s Atmospheric Sciences Program and former president of the American Meteorological Society, explains in detail in Forbes.

The short version: Scientists have measured the amount of the sunโ€™s energy arriving at the top of our atmosphere since 1978 and have found no risingย trend.

In fact, a study released the same day that Mathis spoke at the Marcellus Utica Midstream conference found that climate models have proved to be remarkably on point. Even some of the earlier climate models going back to the 1970s, which have been refined and updated in significant ways since, accurately predicted the warming that weโ€™ve seen in the past 40 to 50ย years.


In March 2018ย Mark Mathis comparedย climate models to fortune tellers in aย Clear Energy Alliance video, listing off a range of unrelated computer models (for elections, hurricanes, and stock markets) as evidence that climate change modelsย areย unreliable.

The Clear Energy Alliance was created in 2017, DeSmog reports in its profile of the organization, and does not disclose its funders, though Mathisโ€™s earlier projects have confirmed that the groupย took fossil fuel funding. According to a Clear Energy Alliance biography, Mathis has โ€œtestified before Congress on the dangers of anti-energy extremist groupsโ€ and appeared as โ€œkeynote speaker for many dozens of organizationsโ€ including the National Football League and the Independent Petroleum Association of America. His organization also has created and circulated cartoonish YouTube videos and political ads mocking climate science and itsย findings.

‘I donโ€™t even buy itย myself’

A second panelist at the conferenceโ€™s regulatory session said he thought policy makers and the public no longer bought the idea that climate science is unreliable. And, he added, a second fossil fuel industry talking point, the notion of natural gas as a โ€œbridgeโ€ to renewables, also no longerย works.

โ€œI really โ€” I don’t think that sort of denial, it’s complicated, I don’t think that’s going to work,โ€ Mathisโ€™s fellow panelist, Steven C. Russo, chair of the environmental practice at law firm Greenberg Traurig, said. โ€œIt’s certainly not going to work in Democratic states. I don’t even buy itย myself.โ€

โ€œThat may be an approach and maybe it’ll work in some places,โ€ he continued, โ€œbut I think it’s working less and less and I think it’s working less and less with the youngerย generation.โ€

Russo, according to his law firm biography, previously served as general counsel of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Prior to joining Greenberg Traurig, Russo represented a range of clients, according to Martindale, including a solar farm developer, a โ€œmajor companyโ€ under federal investigation for knowing violations of hazardous waste laws, and large utilities. While at Greenberg Traurig, Russo registered as a lobbyist for National Fuel Gas Co. and other energy industry clients, according to the grassroots watchdog Public Accountabilityย Initiative.

โ€œThe climate issue is not going to go away,โ€ Russo told the gathered pipeline executives. โ€œIt’s not going to go away politically. It’s not going to go away as a problem. I mean, because it is aย problem.โ€

โ€œAnd for years, natural gas was able to be in on that conversation because they were saying, ‘hey, we are actually bringing the numbers down in this country. We are displacing much dirtier fuels and we are a bridge to the future. Yes, we all want to get there eventually but it’sย complicated.โ€™โ€

โ€œAnd the conversation was kind of good,โ€ he said. โ€œBut it hasย turned.โ€

Instead, Russo suggested that the pipeline industry should present gas as more reliable and cheaper than renewable energy, and to suggest a slow response that mirrors the long rise of the fossil fuel industry over the last century and a half or so. โ€œBut I think saying to people, listen, we got into this problem over a long, long period of time and we didn’t know anything about this, and we have other issues such as reliability and price,โ€ heย said.

As DeSmog โ€” as well as the Wall Street Journal, S&P Global, Bloomberg, and many others โ€” have reported, the shale drilling industry has spent years raising naturalย gas production while racking up huge financial losses, putting the long-term prospects that gas prices will remain at historic lows potentially atย risk.

Trade show booths and luncheon tables at the 2019 Marcellus Utica Midstream conference, which occupied a smaller portion of the David L. Lawrence convention center in Pittsburgh than conferences in prior years.
Trade show booths and luncheon tables at the 2019 Marcellus Utica Midstream conference, which occupied a smaller portion of the David L. Lawrence convention center in Pittsburgh than conferences in prior years. Credit: Sharon Kelly,ย DeSmog

The industryโ€™s financial troubles were apparent at this yearโ€™s Marcellus Utica Midstream conference, where attendance was sparse compared to years past, and the conference trade show occupied only a fraction of the convention center space used in yearsย prior.

Even at todayโ€™s prices, the natural gas industry faces an increasingly uphill battle using price as a talking point.ย A pair of September studies by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)ย concluded that within just 16 years, it will be cheaper to scrap natural gas power plants โ€” even those built today or in the future โ€” and replace them with renewable energy powerย generation.

โ€œThe analysis presents compelling evidence that 2019 represents a tipping point,โ€ RMI wrote, โ€œwith the economics now favoring clean energy over nearly all new U.S.ย gas-firedย generation.โ€

Main image: Marcellus Utica Midstream presentations in Pittsburgh on Decemberย 4, 2019. Credit: Sharon Kelly,ย DeSmog
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Sharon Kelly is an attorney and investigative reporter based in Pennsylvania. She was previously a senior correspondent at The Capitol Forum and, prior to that, she reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and a variety of other print and online publications.

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