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THE WITNESS
Aliya is a corporate accountability research specialist with Greenpeace. Aliya holds a Masters degree in Environmental Management from Yale University and a Bachelors degree in Sociology from Cornell University. 
Donors Trust climate denial funding skyrockets
A new Greenpeace analysis released today shows that Donors Trust, a shadowy funding vehicle, has laundered $146 million in climate denial funding from 2002 to 2011. Yesterday’s article in the Guardian referenced part of the Greenpeace analysis. Continue reading
Last week, Greenpeace posted a comparison of Romney’s new “War on Coal” TV ads with coal industry advertising. Our analysis shows that Romney’s ads mirror four decades of coal industry advertising.
It turns out that the coal industry is not only providing Romney with talking points for his TV ads, but also with human props. The Romney “War on Coal” TV ad features the candidate speaking in front of a crowd of coal miners. Murray Energy Company forced these miners to miss a day of work without pay, and told them that attendance was mandatory at the Romney event. On Tuesday, Progress Ohio filed an FEC complaint over the use of coal miners in the Romney TV ad. “Clearly the [Romney] campaign should have thought better of exploiting the forced support of these workers,” said Brian Rothenberg, Executive Director of ProgressOhio.
The TV ad is running in coal states, including Ohio and West Virginia. In the ad, Romney declares “we have 250 years of coal! Why wouldn’t we use it?” Greenpeace analysis revealed that this estimate is frequently used in coal advertising, even though the National Academy of Sciences shows it to be vastly overestimated.
Long-time climate skeptic Richard Muller, UC Berkeley physics professor, has completed his “total turnaround” and now believes that carbon pollution from human activity causes global warming.
Since the vast majority of climate scientists reached this conclusion decades ago, Muller’s temperature study is noteworthy mainly because the oil-billionaire Charles Koch, climate-denier extraordinaire, provided the lion’s share of funding for Muller’s work. Continue reading