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Greenpeace: Big Oil funds Climategate echo chamber
Kansas-based giant found to have ‘spent millions’ on research that casts doubt on climate change
Greenpeace claims to have proof of what environmentalists have suspected for years: that Big Oil is funding the activities of climate change deniers who have been instrumental in demonising the now-exonerated scientist at the centre of 'Climategate'.
A report published by the charity yesterday alleges that Koch Industries gave $48.5m to organisations dedicated to producing research and campaigns that cast doubt on climate change. In comparison, oil giant ExxonMobil spent $24m in the same period on its own climate change sceptic activities.
Koch is a private, Kansas-based conglomerate dealing in petroleum, minerals, chemicals and finance among other industries. With annual revenue of $98bn, its owner, billionaire tycoon David Koch, says it's "the biggest company you've never heard of".
Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute have received respectively $5m, $1.6m and $1m from Koch since 2005, according to Greenpeace. These conservative organisations were among many Koch-funded advocacy groups and think tanks which contributed to what Greenpeace calls the Climategate "echo chamber".
Climategate blew up in November following the hacking and dissemination of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. Climate change sceptics alleged the emails showed that CRU scientists misled the world by claiming climate change was happening despite the data proving otherwise. British MPs today cleared the CRU head, Dr Phil Jones, of distorting his data.
But climate sceptics have been making hay with the emails regardless. Steve Lonegan, a director of Americans for Prosperity, said Climategate could be the "biggest hoax our world has ever seen". The Heritage Foundation called Climategate a conspiracy that attempted to "freeze out dissenting scientists from publishing their work in reputable journals". Meanwhile, Patrick J Michaels of the Cato Institute is a vocal climate sceptic who says the CRU scientists perpetrated a "capital crime".
Much of the Koch money has gone to fund scientific studies that are apparently aimed at giving a veneer of respectability to climate change scepticism, which after all goes against the grain of mainstream scientific opinion.
A 2007 study funded by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and ExxonMobil concluded that polar bears were not declining because of global warming. "Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are warming spring air temperatures the 'ultimate' survival control factor?" was published in Ecological Complexity as a 'Viewpoint' piece and not subjected to peer review. Nevertheless, the paper was cited by then-Alaskan governor Sarah Palin to support her case against government action to protect the polar bear.
Two polar bear experts, Dr Ian Stirling and Dr Andrew Derocher, responded to the paper, saying: "[The article's authors]... suggest that factors other than climate warming are responsible for a decline in the polar bear population of Western Hudson Bay... In our examination of their alternative explanations, and the data available to evaluate each, we found little support for any."
Koch has defended its environmental record. In a statement, the company said: "The Greenpeace report... distorts the environmental record of our companies.
"We believe the political response to climate issues should be based on sound science. Both a free society and the scientific method require an open and honest airing of all sides, not demonising and silencing those with whom you disagree."
One victim of demonisation - Dr Phil Jones of the CRU - would probably agree. ·
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Kevin McGrane is absolutely right in his figures. The alarmist funding runs into billion while funding for those trying to get the facts (not speculation) into the media runs into just millions. We prove all this in an upcoming book 'Energy and Climate Wars: How naive politicians, green ideologues and media elites are undermining the truth about energy and climate' (Continuum, September 2010).
And Tim Edwards last point about Phil Jones is just plain laughable. You only have to read what he and his disreputable assoicates like Michael Mann said to each other by reading the Climategate emails to realise that neither has a shred of scientific credibility left. Or is attempting to subvert the publn of studies and articles that disagree with you now acceptable to Edwards? It would seem so.
I'm sure there are some First Post readers who don't work for lobby groups or have an extremist agenda pushing as their hobby, but you wouldn't think so from the knee jerk comments that always seem to predominate.
Kevin McGrane & Man in a Shed:
You may remember a few decades ago that there was a dispute over the link between smoking and ill health. Would it not have been fair comment to point out that most of the allegedly neutral 'public interest groups' contending that tobacco was harmless, were funded by the tobacco companies? While I don't have the actual figures, it seems to me that the government was spending a far greater sum promoting the view that tobacco was harmful. It strikes me that we have a roughly analogous situation, with the suppliers funding the deniers in both cases. I fail to see why, in the present instance, you consider it unfair to point it out.
The 'green' movement was targeted as a potentially subversive anti-western force and taken over in the seventies by communists and has been greatly financed with their money ever since. With so much of the rest of the communist agenda being currently so succesful, they are becoming bolder in their bullying by the day. Doesn't it occur to people that this is essentially an anti-capitalist movement, aimed mostly at big corporations and western Governements (ie tax payers)? The desire to first intimidate and then fine western countries, forcing them to give billions to third world countries, ridiculously blaming western CO2 emmissions for the appalling mismanagement of third world economies is essentially communist, divisive, and naturally totalitarian. Communists are as alive and as violent as ever and as for their use and abuse of words, like 'denier', just call them out for what they themselves are, lying totalitarian bullies.
The funding you describe is a drop in the ocean compared to the mulitbillion dollar warmism industry. Thank goodness someone provides funds to those who want to stop this anti-human madness.
PS Lets stop using Polar Bears and emotional blackmail shall we - they're thriving.
The trouble with lying advocacy groups like Greenpeace is that they don't give anything like a realistic picture. $24 million from ExxonMobil are over the last 20 years, and that money dried up years ago. The funding from Koch is over a long period as well. What the UK and Australia have spent of climate alarmist advertisements (funded by coercive taxation) is more than that in one year! What Greenpeace isn't likely to tell you is how much money has been poured into the climate alarmist camp over the same period. So in the interests of balance, I'll give you some figures. You will find that the amount of money spent on climate alarmism is SEVERAL THOUSAND times more than what has been put the way of the sceptics - so in reality, what the sceptics have had is chickenfeed by comparison. Who is getting money from 'Big Oil' now? CRU for one and lots of supposed 'green' vested interests. But here are some figures for what monies are being doled out, or are swilling around supporting the alarmist agenda:
US government climate change policies (last 20 years): over USD 80 billion;
Carbon trading, 2009 year alone: USD 130 billion, expected to grow to trillions per year in the near future;
ExxonMobil, Stanford University Global Climate and Energy project: USD 100 million http://gcep.stanford.edu/about/sponsors.html; ExxonMobil 'biofuels' USD 600 million on just one project http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/07/14/14greenwire-exxon-sinks-600m-int.... Climate sceptics are fighting with a few million dollars per year an industry funded to the tune of billions per year attached to a market expected to be trillions per year. Greenpeace are wilful distorters not to give the picture as it is. But then, what do you expect from such pathetic liars? The whole climate change agenda is a scam built on lies and gross misrepresentations.