Green Oceans Asks Brown University to Retract Reports about Anti-Wind Organization
August 25, 2025
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PROVIDENCE — A law firm representing the anti-wind energy group Green Oceans sent a letter to Brown University earlier this month, asking the institution to retract research it published about the organization.
In the Aug. 11 letter from Marzulla Law to Brown University, first reported by The New York Times on Monday, lawyers claim that information published by Brown researchers is “false and injurious.”
The three studies Green Oceans takes issue with were published by the Brown Climate and Development Lab between April 2023 and December 2024, which found that the Rhode Island-based anti-wind organization echoes rhetoric and employs techniques used by the fossil fuel industry.
“CDL’s claim that Green Oceans is a part of a ‘fossil-fuel’ funded ‘network of misinformation’ is flatly untrue,” the letter stated.
The letter also noted that statements from one of the researchers, Brown professor J. Timmons Roberts, “have been widely distributed by outlets such as The Associated Press, EcoRI News [sic], and others.”
The letter demands that Brown remove the publications from its websites and reach out to journals and media outlets that published or wrote about the research in order to remove them, too. It also asks the university to share information about the correction with its private and federal funders.
Brown spokesperson Brian Clark said that the institution does not speak on behalf of researchers, but he shared a statement with ecoRI News about the university’s commitment to academic freedom.
“In keeping with the bedrock principles of academic freedom – which is essential for challenging and testing ideas to promote new paths of learning and discovery – scholars shape their own research and course of instruction at Brown,” Clark wrote. “One principle that is core to research at Brown is the ability for scholars to discuss contested topics and themes, and to have those topics openly debated.”
“Green Oceans is a local, nonpartisan, grassroots group funded solely by individuals who are opposed to the industrialization of our coastal waters with offshore wind developments. We have no association with the fossil fuel industry nor any conservative political groups and have never accepted funding or ‘information subsidies’ from either,” the organization wrote in a statement to ecoRI News. “These oft-repeated lies are designed to discredit the messenger, while preventing the public from absorbing the substance of our valid and well-researched concerns.”
Roberts, the Brown professor, told ecoRI News in a phone interview Monday that the situation is “stressful … but I also feel kinda determined to not have our research, which we do with a lot of care, be taken off the web, to be silenced.”
“I’m quite worried about the direction our country is going in many ways,” he said, adding that the letter from Green Oceans’ attorney seems to follow a trend “of bullying being used to extract concessions.”
Although the efforts have not cooled Roberts’ desire to continue his research, he said that he isn’t putting any pressure on his students to do anything they don’t want to do.
“I’m so proud of my students whether they go running toward the fire or choose to take another strategy,” he said.
“I am heartened, and the students who find their way to the work we do on climate research really are eager,” Roberts added, “and they understand how fraught these times are, and they don’t expect easy solutions.”
The law firm’s letter asks for a response from Brown within 30 days. “If this matter is not resolved,” the letter stated, “Green Oceans will consider all available legal remedies.”
ecoRI News wrote about one of the Brown papers, a 22-page report released in April 2023 titled “Discourses of Climate Delay in the Campaign Against Offshore Wind: A Case Study from Rhode Island.” Climate Jobs Rhode Island collaborated on the report, which found that Green Oceans bases its arguments on techniques of disinformation that are taken from the playbook of national climate change denial organizations and obstructionists funded by the fossil fuel industry.
The report emphasizes the need “to understand the … networks of mis/disinformation that are seeking to obstruct … renewable energy, as a strategy to maintain fossil fuels as a dominant energy (and profit) resource.”
ecoRI News also wrote about a second report, released in December 2024, titled “Beyond Dark Money: Information subsidies and complex networks of opposition to offshore wind on the U.S. East Coast.” That report found that the Brown “case study opposition group” — Green Oceans — operates locally, but “its rhetorical claims … do not stray far from the deeply interconnected network of think tanks and legal and public relations specialists that have advanced the interest of the fossil fuel industry for decades.”
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Interesting that Green Oceans doesn’t want to see any research undertaken on coordinated climate denialism efforts. If Green Oceans is putting out information publicly, the public can consume and analyze that information. The public of course includes researchers. Maybe Green Oceans is a grassroots organization that is just great at fundraising — with a $550,000 annual budget in 2023 and 2024. If that’s the case, and their videos, commissioned reports, etc. are for the public good, then the public, including researchers, has every right to assess the material and note any patterns they see. What a silly court case for a grassroots organization to bring against scholars.
If Green Oceana doesn’t like a light being shone on their rhetoric, maybe they should change their tactics. Trying to bully academics into censorship is hardly how the marketplace of ideas should function. All kudos to Dr. Roberts and his students who are doing important work to identify and combat the misinformation we are seeing spread in the alternative energy, climate science, and so many other spaces. Methodical and thorough research is helping us identify and combat the climate crisis. Brown should not cave to these ridiculous demands. Thanks to ecoRI for the consistent reporting on this and other issues!
This statement by Brian Clark is key to the matter: ““In keeping with the bedrock principles of academic freedom – which is essential for challenging and testing ideas to promote new paths of learning and discovery – scholars shape their own research and course of instruction at Brown,” “One principle that is core to research at Brown is the ability for scholars to discuss contested topics and themes, and to have those topics openly debated.”
Suppressing arguments by legal intimidation is not a part of the democratic principles that represent the better of America. Trying to get your way by legal intimidation or by threatening executive power is un-American. The Green Oceans organization has made arguments against offshore wind but the organization has accentuated the downside that do not fully stand the scrutiny of physical science or reason. To attack scholars at Brown who have question the assertions and to threatened overall funding for Brown University shows the low level to which anti-offshore wind or anti renewable groups will stoop to get their way vs. respecting science and reason.
To quote an oceanographer friend who is well informed of the threats to our oceans, “Would it not be more beneficial to all if we worked together to discuss how we can stop global heating and its associated harms and costs? The warming and its associated perils will continue to worsen until we reduce the flow of greenhouse gases. No one wants that. Can we all work together to create a better world instead of a more angry world”?
This is what the fossil fuel industry will do if you start to uncover its networks of covert influence. We all owe a debt to Timmons Roberts and his team at Brown for uncovering the truth about the connections between mysteriously well funded anti-wind groups in Rhode Island and the national network of climate denial organizations. If GO were the grassroots, local organization that they purport to be, why would they be so sensitive about this research? What would they have to hide?
This statement by Brian Clark is key to the matter: “In keeping with the bedrock principles of academic freedom – which is essential for challenging and testing ideas to promote new paths of learning and discovery – scholars shape their own research and course of instruction at Brown,” “One principle that is core to research at Brown is the ability for scholars to discuss contested topics and themes, and to have those topics openly debated.”
Suppressing arguments by legal intimidation is not a part of the democratic principles that represent the better of America. Trying to get your way by legal intimidation or by threatening executive power is un-American. The Green Oceans organization has made arguments against offshore wind but the organization has accentuated the downsides that do not fully stand the scrutiny of physical science or reason. To attack scholars at Brown who have question the assertions and to threatened overall funding for Brown University shows the level to which anti-offshore wind or anti renewable groups will stoop to get their way vs. respecting science and reason.
To quote an oceanographer friend, “Would it not be more beneficial to all if we worked together to discuss how we can stop global heating and its associated harms and costs? The warming and its associated perils will continue to worsen until we reduce the flow of greenhouse gases. No one wants that. Can we all work together to create a better world instead of a more angry world”?
This weak action literally proves the Brown researchers’ point: Green Oceans is in bed with the fossil fuel industry. Marzulla Law has been shilling for oil and gas for decades. These scientific illiterates are jeopardizing my children’s future as well as their own.
Green Oceans is just another bunch of fools taking a page from the bully Trump playbook. They have no data gto back up their asertoipons and let us see a list ofg every one of thier donors. I seriously doubt none of their donors have associations with the fossil fuel industry. i assume that would be the first thing discovery would find if they file a law suit.
That is why we have laws.
Academic freedom does not include the right to make factually false and defamatory statements. The statements involved were clearly not opinions, but deliberate misinformation to further the writers’ agendas. When I was in college, this conduct would never have been tolerated, by either professors or students alike.
Green Oceans has tried to settle the matter with Roberts. In a meeting among Green Oceans leadership, Brown’s Deputy Provost and Roberts, he admitted that he neither spoke to nor interviewed Green Ocean’s founder prior to publishing his article. Nor was the article peer reviewed. Green Oceans would have settled for a proviso stating those facts attached to the article. When will the world wake up to the fact that fossil fuel interests are allied with offshore wind? Offshore wind capacity must be twinned with an equal or even greater amount of fossil fuel capacity to kick in when the wind doesn’t blow. Peaker plants utilize fossil fuel at twice the rate of normal steady state providers.
Brown was awash with grift from the wind, solar and batteries industrial complex. That group is directly tied to big oil companies among the invested and connected. As well State Street Black Rock and Vanguard are among those in the mix. The net Zero CO2 catechism is debunked. The RI governors 1.4 million annually climate mismanagement staff is a joke. In my opinion Brown had been a megaphone for a seriously flawed approach while advocating a very dangerous agenda. They appear to have abandoned traditional economics, science and engineering disciplines in exchange for getting on the bandwagon advocating a counterfeit remedy for energy/power means and methods for modernization. I have questioned the “climate science presenters” at various climate infomercial road shows. Their responses exhibited a lacking in knowledge for the fundamentals. More over if packaged as independent research such does not begin with a pre determined outcome.
The Federal Government has pivoted to reality and RI New England needs to recognize their mistakes and get onboard. The local unions and academia have had their climate industrial complex PR share of the grift seriously curtailed.