The coal barons who control the National Rural Cooperative Electric Association have fallen out with the climate quibblers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) over the think tank’s most recent round of ads that challenge the fight against global warming.

Rural electric co-ops are populated overwhelmingly by companies running coal-fired electrical plants and in the past, they were more likely to be part of the problem when it came to climate change disinformation. But now they’re trying to rein in CEI – still something of a laughingstock for its earlier “We Call if Life ” ad campaign.

Likely as not, this dispute arose because of copyright challenges that the NRCEA itself faces for using footage of Nobel laureate Al Gore without permission. But in a civilized world, you would have thought that the coal kings and CEI would have settled the issue quietly, as between friends.

Increasingly, it appears, CEI doesn’t have any friends.