For a while now, global warming skeptics have been heartened by the writings of professor Patrick J. Michaels at the University of Virginia. In addition to being a professor of environmental studies, a fellow at the Cato institute, and the Virginia State Climatologist, he's also a vehement denialist who says that global climate change isn't happening, and that humans don't really do much to the globe. He is, of course, mildly crackpot and completely wrong. Just a few days ago, it was reported that he's also on the take.

...a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for him last week and has raised at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

The utility, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, based in Sedalia, Colo., has given Dr. Michaels $100,000 of its own, said Stanley R. Lewandowski Jr., its general manager. Mr. Lewandowski said that one company planned to give $50,000 and that a third planned to contribute to Dr. Michaels next year.

“We cannot allow the discussion to be monopolized by the alarmists,” Mr. Lewandowski wrote in a July 17 letter to 50 other utilities. He also called on other electric cooperatives to undertake a counterattack on “alarmist” scientists and specifically Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” which lays much of the blame for global warming on heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

Mr. Lewandowski and Dr. Michaels, who holds a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin, have openly acknowledged the donations and say they see no problem.

No problem? Like conflict-of-interest? Perhaps one could argue there's a chicken-egg issue here (did they give him money because he espoused their views already?). But it's hard to argue that there's a definite COI when the guy who's supposed to coordinate the climate info for the entire state is taking bribe money from electrical utilities, one of the major players in global climate change.