I’m not sure whether or not lobbying for policies you know are disastrous is illegal but it damn sure should be (emphasis mine):

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

This is some of the most sinister and corrupt business imaginable. Please read this article.

Update: Glenn Hurowitz weighs in:

The amazing thing about this story is not that industry deceived journalists about the threat of climate change, but that journalists are still buying industry deceptions to this day – just different ones.

Having finally lost the battle about the reality of climate change, these same industries and their backers in Congress have come up with a different deception: that bold action on climate change would somehow negatively affect the economy.

Update 2: DeSmogBlog has more.