More hot air from the Locke Foundation's global warming denial machine

A story in this month's issue of the Carolina Journal published by the John Locke Foundation -- a pro-business, anti-regulatory think-tank based in Raleigh -- offers a twist on the sort of investigative reporting that has documented the financial links between fossil-fuel interests and organizations promoting global-warming skepticism ( including my own reporting on the Locke Foundation's dirty-energy ties).

Titled "CO2 Alarmist Organizations Affecting Policy in N.C.," the story details how the Pennsylvania-based Center for Climate Strategies is involved in supporting the work of the state's Climate Action Plan Advisory Group. What's the problem with that, you ask? Well, reporter Paul Chesser accuses CCS of having a "predetermined bias" -- in favor of believing that global warming is real.

Consensus on global warming, Chesser informs us, "is nonexistent." Never mind the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, at least 11 other national science academies, American Geophysical Union, and American Meteorological Society all agree that it's real and being exacerbated by human activity. We don't have consensus until Chesser and his corporate paymasters -- who include Progress Energy and Duke Energy -- say we do.

But for some reason, the people of North Carolina don't seem to be getting the Lockies' message: A pie chart on the front page of the same issue reports the results of a poll conducted last month by JLF sister group the Civitas Institute that found 63 percent of those polled believe global warming is a real threat to North Carolina.

Perhaps their brains are just addled from this week's record-breaking heat.

(P.S. Our condolences to the Locke folks on the recent death of their resident local global warming skeptic, Dr. Charles Hosler. We will miss his always interesting perspective.)