Peabody Coal Bankruptcy Reveals Climate Denial Network Funding

(Photo: Jeffery Scism)(Photo: Jeffery Scism)

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Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, has provided funds to a network of individuals, scientists, non-profits and political organizations espousing climate change denial and opposition to efforts to tackle climate change, according to newly available documents reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD/PRWatch).

The recipients of funding from Peabody Energy were made public in the company’s recent bankruptcy filings.

Although the documents filed so far do not show the scale or precise dates of funding — they only list current creditors — they demonstrate for the first time that Peabody Energy has financial ties to a very large proportion of the network of groups promoting disinformation around climate change.

Who Received Peabody Cash?

* Willie Soon. According to the list, prominent and controversial climate change denial scientist Willie Wei-Hock Soon has received cash from Peabody.

Soon, who is not actually a Climate Scientist but an Aerospace Engineer, works for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and espouses the widely discredited position that it is sun spots and not CO2 that is a major driver of change in the climate.

He is known to have received significant funds from the fossil fuel industry for his work in the past, including from ExxonMobil and Southern Company.

But this is the first known support from Peabody Energy for Soon, whose role with the Smithsonian Institute has proven to be quite controversial.

Who else is financially tied to Peabody?

* The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which recently released a film — “Climate Hustle” — spreading disinformation about climate change. Its position is that increased CO2 is “beneficial” to plant growth and therefore a good thing for the…

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