Peabody Blows Smoke on Climate Science

If carbon dioxide gas had an odor, it would smell like money to America's largest privately held coal company.

St. Louis-based Peabody Energy operates mines that produce 600,000 tons of coal per day. Burning it releases millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every week, which fuels global climate change.

Peabody sued this month to block federal regulations that would limit emissions of greenhouse gases. It claims an "endangerment finding" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is flawed and relies on discredited science.

Peabody's claims are wrong. But if they are sustained, the EPA would have to start over in laying the groundwork for regulations on greenhouse gases.

Any delay in addressing global climate change would be good for Peabody. It wouldn't be good for the rest of the people who live on the planet.

Unfortunately, arguments like Peabody's are gaining traction. Texas and Virginia filed suit last week using the same basic claims.

Like Peabody, their arguments are based on the content of stolen e-mails between leading climate scientists, which were posted online last fall.

Denialists have been trying for years to discredit the science of climate change. Those failed efforts have been replaced by a campaign of intimidation and personal attacks.

Using words and phrases cherry-picked from the pilfered e-mails, denialists have tried to portray the scientists as manipulating data and skewing their work.

In fact, the science is robust, based on temperature observations, increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, documented changes in weather patterns and natural phenomenon.

Peabody's federal appeal reads as if it were lifted from denialist blogs and websites — because it is.

Many of the claims the company makes are misleading or untrue.

The suit alleges that scientists "engaged in a wide variety of improper and indeed unethical tactics to manipulate" scientific information.

As evidence, it quotes a 2004 e-mail in which a researcher talks about a pair of studies that dispute key aspects of climate change.

The researcher says he will "keep them out somehow" from an important report being prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But both papers were discussed in that key IPCC report.

Elsewhere, the suit quotes a researcher who talks about using a "trick" to compile information for a paper. Denialists have seized on the term as evidence that the data was manipulated.

In fact, a University of Pennsylvania inquiry board cleared the researcher of that charge earlier this month.

"The so-called trick was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion," the board wrote. It noted that the technique "has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."

Denialists lately have been quoting NASA scientist Andrew Lacis, who critiqued an IPCC report in 2005. They've used his words to cast doubts on the science of climate change.

But Mr. Lacis clarified his views in a New York Times blog earlier this month: "Failure to control atmospheric (carbon dioxide) is a bad way to run a business and a surefire ticket to climatic disaster."

Bad business and climate disaster are bad for the rest of us, perhaps, but they are good business for Peabody. The federal court ultimately will decide which it will be.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH.

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