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Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest investor-owned coal company, declared bankruptcy Wednesday. Among the many consequences, the company’s court-ordered disclosures are likely to yield hard evidence of Peabody’s direct links to climate science denial.

After all, that’s what we learned from the bankruptcy filings of two other major U.S. coal companies, Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources. The companies’ lists of creditors accompanying their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings both cited known climate science deniers. So far, the bankruptcy cases have not revealed the details of these financial relationships. But there is no doubt the coal companies contracted with these groups and individuals to either make a donation or pay for services.

This new evidence is important at a time when coal and oil and gas companies are under increased scrutiny about their ongoing climate science disinformation campaigns. ExxonMobil currently faces state and possibly federal investigations into whether the discrepancies between what the company knew about climate science and what it told its shareholders and the public amounted to fraud.

Of course, there’s no shortage of historical […]