After His Climate Denial Machine Is Exposed, Marc Morano Will Leave Senate Post
After His Climate Denial Machine Is Exposed, Marc Morano Will Leave Senate Post
Marc Morano
A top aide for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be leaving his Senate post after a Wonk Room investigation revealed how he coordinates the right-wing climate denial machine. Marc Morano, Inhofe’s environmental communications director, joined the Senate in 2006 to promote Sen. Inhofe’s denial of manmade global warming via the Drudge Report and other right-wing outlets. E&E News reports that Morano will return to the conservative media network as a blogger for Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT):
Marc Morano, the spokesman for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will leave the committee later this month to become executive director and chief correspondent for a fledgling Web site that will serve as a “clearinghouse and one-stop shopping” for climate and environmental news.
Morano joined the Senate, with a $134,000 a year salary, from the rightwing website Cybercast News Service (CNS), where he launched the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in 2004 and attacked the war record of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) in 2006. Morano was Rush Limbaugh’s “Man in Washington” in the 1990s. Limbaugh, of course, still promotes global warming denial.
Both CNS — a subsidiary of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center — and CFACT are part of the Scaife network of conservative front groups, supported by the Richard Mellon Scaife family fortune and corporations like Exxon Mobil. CFACT and the Media Research Center are co-sponsors of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, a global warming denier extravaganza that begins Sunday, March 8.
12 Responses to “After His Climate Denial Machine Is Exposed, Marc Morano Will Leave Senate Post”
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good riddance!
March 6th, 2009 at 3:53 pmWow. Last time I checked in here you were deliberately distorting how Marano laughs at people dying in car accidents. Now you’re implying that Marano is leaving his post because his email list was exposed. And you think Morano has a credibility problem?
March 6th, 2009 at 10:03 pmBrock: The only person “distorting” anything here is you.
Also, what Anders said: Good riddance. At least Morano’s no longer using taxpayer-funded resources to spread his garbage.
– bi
March 7th, 2009 at 1:33 amBrock:
Morano no more has a credibility problem than a typical house pet has a driver’s license problem.
hope that helps.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:08 amThis is a criminal act.
If an auto mechanic told me to not use my seat belt, publicly and loudly advised me not to fix the brakes, and said my bald tires were fine… that person would be in jail.
What’s the difference here?
March 8th, 2009 at 3:23 amIt is a good thing Mr. Morano is out, but I have to doubt that the production of your “list” had much to do with it. Morano and his gang seem pretty hardened to these kinds of revelations.
Good work on your part, though, for all sorts of reasons.
March 8th, 2009 at 9:22 amSo does this mean that EXXON still is a major contributor to global warming distortion?
March 8th, 2009 at 9:55 amI don’t think that Exxon Mobil needs to get involved anymore. All that is needed is some media starved mavens like Roger Pielke Jr. to manufacture a controversy by selectively quoting someone and then passing it off to the right wing media.
March 8th, 2009 at 3:33 pmRoger Pielke Jr.has a post up trying to “splain himself and his policies.
Here goes….
RPJr: they cannot engage me on the substance, and instead resort to the strategy of “attack the man,” probably indicates that they feel that they cannot win an argument on the substance of the matter.
Pot/Kettle/Black. Are you being serious?
RPJr: I was once invited to write a paper for publication in the Cato Institute’s journal Regulation.
How much money did the Exxon Mobil funded Cato pay you for your thoughts on climate change?
RPJr: I have testified before Congress at the request of both Democrats and Republicans. Whenever I am invited to testify I recognize full well that the invitation is offered because there is some expectation that my views are somehow politically useful to the party doing the inviting. This is of course how politics in the U.S. Congress actually works, and it goes for every witness ever invited, including scientists and other academics. Thus, I take care in my prepared remarks to clearly spell out my views and their policy implications, based on my expertise and experience. I have never been told what to say, nor has my testimony ever been critiqued or edited beforehand by staff. When I testify you can be sure that my views are my views.
Basically an admission that you were compliant with Republicans using you to undermine a hearing on the Bush Administration’s politicization of science in the corporate interest. Good for you!
And so we can all be clear. It is common Hill practice that all written testimony is first approved by the committee. Whether that resulted in you making any changes or not to make the Republicans happy is unknown. We’ll take your word on it.
RPJr: People who argue that I have claimed to be an “honest broker” are not telling the truth….
This is true! But you insinuate it nonetheless with your pattern of haranguing other scientists such as Naomi Oreskes, Evan Mills, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt,Jim Hansen…etc…etc…
RPJr: My policy is that anyone who is written about here on this blog has an open invitation to respond, and we will publish their response unedited as a main line entry.
First bait them, then offer a chance for defense on your home territory. Brilliant.
RPJr:Do recognize that discussing people’s actions or words is not an “attack” even if that discussion is critical at times.
Unless the focus of the discussion is the actions or words or Roger Pielke Jr. In that case, it’s personal and ad hominem.
RPJr: if you ever notice something that you think is inappropriate, just let me know and we’ll deal with it.
Please print out this comment. Put it in your wallet. Pull it our every ten minutes. Read closely. Repeat for the next thirty days.
And please stop it with the Royal We nonsense.
March 8th, 2009 at 5:17 pmI’d like to find some relief in this news. Morano might be giving up his platform at the Senate’s website; however he will surely carry on as before in his new venue. Meanwhile, won’t Sen. Inhofe just find someone new to do his trumpeting of every name they can dredge up to quotemine in the cause of clouding the issues around climate change?
March 11th, 2009 at 8:58 amThe “Inhofe 650″ list is heavily padded with names who’ve never done any climate science. My site lists which authors actually have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and been cited by others. The “skeptics” don’t make much of a showing.
list of climate scientists
Some things never seem to change
March 26th, 2009 at 9:46 pmnot much in the way of a scientifically reasoned rebuttal in any of the above. I’d like to see something a tad more robust than denigrating the messenger rather than his message. A lot of smoke and mirrors to me. Perhaps someone might take a look at AR4 pages 131-132 and realise the IPCC concedes they don’t even factor in the biggest greenhouse gas (60%) water vapour in the models, yet somehow they adamantly conclude the science is ’settled’? Boggles the mind! Ah, well, ‘reap as ye sow’ : (
March 27th, 2009 at 12:06 pm