The Western Fuels Association is a consortium of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

suppliers and coal-fired utilities based in

Westminster, Colorado The City of Westminster is a home rule municipality located in Adams and Jefferson counties, Colorado, United States. The city population was 116,317 at the 2020 United States census with 71,240 residing in Adams County and 45,077 residing i ...

. Western Fuels Association supplies coal and transportation services to consumer-owned electric utilities in the

Great Plains The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include th ...

Rocky Mountain The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

and

Southwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...

regions.

Mining operations

In 2011 Western Fuels Association supplied approximately 19.4 million tons of coal to its members through its three mining operations; the Dry Fork Mine located in

Gillette, Wyoming Gillette (, ''Help:Pronunciation respelling key, jih-LET'') is a city in and the county seat of Campbell County, Wyoming, United States. The town was founded in 1891 as a major railway town on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The po ...

, The Colowyo Mine in Northwest Colorado, and the New Horizons Mine located in

Nucla, Colorado Nucla is a Colorado municipalities#Statutory town, statutory town in Montrose County, Colorado, Montrose County, Colorado, United States. The population was 585 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, down from 711 in 2010 United State ...

Advocacy

Western Fuels Western Fuels Association uses collective advocacy to represent industry interests including membership in Western Coal Traffic League, National Coal Transportation Association, CURE and the National Mining Association. In May 1994

Richard Lindzen Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940) is an American atmospheric physicist known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides, and ozone photochemistry. He is the author of more than 200 scientific papers ...

Patrick Michaels Patrick J. Michaels (February 15, 1950 – July 15, 2022) was an American agricultural climatologist. Michaels was a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute until 2019. Until 2007, he was research professor of environmenta ...

, and

Robert Balling Robert C. Balling, Jr. is an American climatologist. He is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, and the former director of its Office of Climatology. His research interests include climatology, global climate change, and geographi ...

served as expert witnesses on behalf of Western Fuels Association in St. Paul, Minnesota to determine the environmental cost of coal burning by state power plants. Balling was mentioned as a fossil fuel industry – funded scientist in Ross Gelbspan's 1997 book ''The Heat is On''. This led the Minnesota ''

Star Tribune ''The Minnesota Star Tribune'', formerly the ''Minneapolis Star Tribune'', is an American daily newspaper based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As of 2023, it is Minnesota's largest newspaper and the List of newspapers in the United States, seventh- ...

'' to run an editorial speaking of a "disinformation campaign" by some climatologists. Balling and his colleague

took a complaint against the Star Tribune to the Minnesota News Council. By a 9–4 decision the council "voted to sustain the complaint that the Star Tribune editorial unfairly characterized the scientific reputations of Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling." At the 1998 hearing, Balling "acknowledged that he had received $408,000 in research funding from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade (of which his University takes 50% for overhead)."Minnesota News Council, 16 April 1998
Determination 118: Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling v. Star Tribune
archived a

/ref> Between December 1998 and September 2001 Balling was listed as a "Scientific Adviser" to the

Greening Earth Society The Greening Earth Society, now defunct, was a public relations organization which denied the effects of climate change and the impacts of increased levels of carbon dioxide. The Society published the World Climate Report, a newsletter edited by ...

, a group that was funded and controlled by the Western Fuels Association (WFA), an association of coal-burning utility companies. WFA founded the group in 1997, according to an archived version of its website, "as a vehicle for advocacy on climate change, the environmental impact of CO2, and fossil fuel use."

Climate Change Denial

The Western Fuels Association has played a key role in advancing and spreading

climate change denial Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetor ...

. Together with corporations like

ExxonMobil Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational List of oil exploration and production companies, oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the Successors of Standard Oil, largest direct s ...

it has engaged in funding contrarian scientists, conservative think tanks and various front groups that were promoting climate change denial. It has been a member or founder of several advocacy groups and coalitions, among them the

Information Council on the Environment The Information Council for the Environment (ICE) was an American climate change denial organization created by the National Coal Association, the Western Fuels Association, and Edison Electrical Institute. History In the 1980s, the scientific ...

and the

. While the ICE was created to develop a national communication and PR campaign designed to undermine climate science and shift climate and energy policies the Greeing Earth Society had the aim to promote the notion that fossil fuels enable economic wealth and that more CO2 in the atmosphere would be beneficial for planet Earth. While the 2005

annual report An annual report is a comprehensive report on a company's activities throughout the preceding year. Annual reports are intended to give shareholders and other interested people information about the company's activities and financial performance. ...

of the Western Fuels Association refers only to 'environmental and regulatory uncertainty', but they have been more outspoken in past annual reports. They have established groups such as the

which promote various forms of climate change denial and have funded individual deniers, such as

, Craig D. Idso and

Sherwood Idso Sherwood B. Idso (born June 12, 1942) was the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of ...

. Groups established by industry bodies like the Western Fuels Association have been criticized as Astroturf organizations, since they appear superficially to be grassroots initiatives.

Greening Earth Society and Patrick Michaels' World Climate Report

The

, now defunct, was a

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...

organization which promoted the idea that there is considerable scientific doubt about the

effects of climate change Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies. Changes to the climate system include an Instrumental temperature record, overall warming trend, Effects of climate change on the ...

and increased levels of

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

. The Society published the

World Climate Report World Climate Report, a newsletter edited by Patrick Michaels, was produced by the Greening Earth Society, a non-profit organization created by the Western Fuels Association. Early editions were paper based; it was then transferred to a web-only ...

, a newsletter edited by

of the

Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch ...

. It was a non-profit organization created by the Western Fuels Association, with which it shared an office and many staff members. It has been called a "front group created by the coal industry" and an "industry front". Fred Palmer, a Society staffer, is a registered lobbyist for Peabody Energy, a coal company. Although the Greening Earth Society generally denies the true impact of climate change, it acknowledged some degree of global warming as real: "Fact #1. The rate of global warming during the past several decades has been about 0.18°C per decade".Greening Earth Society
/ref> Note that the actual increase in the

global surface temperature Global surface temperature (GST) is the average temperature of Earth's surface. More precisely, it is the weighted average of the temperatures over the ocean and land. The former is also called sea surface temperature and the latter is called ...

during the 100 years ending in 2005 was 0.74 ± 0.18 °C.

References

{{reflist

External links

Western Fuels Association website
Climate change denial Coal companies of the United States Coal mining in the United States Cooperatives based in Colorado Organizations of environmentalism skeptics and critics Year of establishment missing