No. 6: Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (A.K.A. ClimateDepot.com)

Meet the 12 loudest members of the chorus claiming that global warming is a joke and that CO2 emissions are actually good for you.

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From 2006 until early this year, Marc Morano was the communications director for Senator James Inhofe‘s Environment and Public Works Committee, where he worked to back up the Oklahoma Republican’s claim that climate change is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Morano periodically compiled the best ravings of crank bloggers, rebel meteorologists, and industry-funded denier groups and blasted them out to sympathetic reporters and lawmakers.

After Inhofe lost the committee to a Democrat, Morano reemerged in April as the editor of ClimateDepot.com. The site functions much as his email list did, slapping sensationalistic headlines on links to questionable science and frothing “experts.” In the past two weeks, it has devoted itself almost entirely to criticizing the Copenhagen talks and trumpeting Climategate. It recently posted a link to a spoof video called “Hide the Decline,” a creation of the parody website Minnesotans for Global Warming.

According to the Web traffic site Compete.com, ClimateDepot had as many as 168,000 unique visitors in a month, making it the most popular denial site. ClimateDepot is bankrolled by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a nonprofit with a $1.5 million budget, which in turn has received money from Exxon, Chevron, and foundations tied to conservative billionaire and Clinton nemesis Richard Mellon Scaife. Morano says he “can’t assess the credibility of everything” he publishes, “but I usually go by a trusted source.” One of those sources is Anthony Watts, a former TV meteorologist from California, who runs WattsUpWithThat.com. Morano has trumpeted Watts’ claims that data showing rising temperatures across the United States are simply the result of federal weather monitoring stations that are too close to heat sources like air conditioners. When government scientists humored Watts by excluding stations he considered “flawed” from their data, they found virtually no change in the overall temperature readings.

“I think you’d have to talk to Anthony Watts to get a detailed rebuttal on that, but I still think that’s a major issue,” Morano says. (Watts has responded here and was debunked here.) “Anthony Watts has played a critical role in the climate debate in the innovative research he’s done on these surface stations, and it’s been badly needed and much appreciated.”

Click here for the next member of the dirty dozen.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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