Most of those involved signed the letter, and as it shows, CoalOILition is an apt name.

p.21
“Another Strong Group connection is J (JASON), some subset of whom spends a month together each year working on problems for the US government: Historically, most JASONs have been physicists, and thus likely APS members. The 4 JASON signers (Happer, Lewis, Katz, LeLevier) would together know most other JASONs, including Nierenberg, but most JASONs are not signers. Many Strong Groups exist for other reasons, not advocacy, but people know each well.”

Se p.22, note Happer codes Jdk JASON and
Nierenberg codes JEdk: JASON

See Wikipedia on JASONs:
“Chairmen[edit]
In chronological order:
Marvin Leonard Goldberger (1960-1966)[8]
Harold Lewis (1966-1973)
Kenneth Watson
Edward A. Frieman
Richard Garwin[9]
William Nierenberg
William Happer (1987-1990) …”

In view of the fact that Dr. Happer was made the director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science under G.H.W.Bush, he could well serve as the poster child for my list of reasons why smart people go off the beam.
*Allowing oneself to be misled by “nice” people in your tribe. (G.H.W. Bush (oil man) was nice to Happer, Happer owes him. )
*Failure to reality check.
*Belief in one’s infallibility.Overly high self regard or self esteem. Mistakenly believing that one’s expertise in one area is transferable to everything else in the universe.
*Tiredness, Intellectual laziness, Senility?
*Wrong assumptions, Wrong data/ information.
*Rigidity, Lack of imagination.
*Devil’s advocacy for the hell of it.
*Friendship, Peer Pressure, Tribe Loyalty,Tribe values.
*Arrogance, Psychopathy?
*Inability to face the enormity of one’s error due to the horror of it, the embarrassment of it, the need to save face.

Is Dr. Happer suffering from inclusion in just about every one of the categories listed? I think he is.

So how do wrong ideas capture people who are otherwise reported to be intelligent?

Kevin Anderson says what a lot of my colleagues and I have suggested for years – even the best of us look at the PDFs with unjustified optimism. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been accused of pessimism, and responded by saying that I am simply an objectivist.

So how do wrong ideas capture people who are otherwise reported to be intelligent?

Kevin Anderson says what a lot of my colleagues and I have suggested for years – even the best of us look at the PDFs with unjustified optimism. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been accused of pessimism, and responded by saying that I am simply an objectivist.

“This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda,” Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, said in an interview. “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.””

http://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer

and Happer has done these silly pettions before, with some of the same people, lots of Heartland speakers and Experts.
http://www.desmogblog.com/another-silly-climate-petition-exposed