Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank

ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview.

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Organization

Funding

Hot Air

Fun Fact

Acton Institute for the Study of Religious Liberty

$155,000

Calls CO2 caps “a misguided attempt to solve a problem that may not even exist.

Advised by an AEI fellow.

Advancement of Sound Science Center

$40,000

Run by FoxNews.com’s Steve Milloy.

 

American Council for Capital Formation

$250,000

“Science questions must be addressed before the United States and its allies embark on a path as nonproductive as that of the Kyoto Protocol.”

Group netted nearly a million dollars from ExxonMobil from 2000-2003 but the real science bashing was in 2001 when they got a quarter million.

Organization

Funding

Hot Air

Fun Fact

American Council on Science and Health

$90,000

Policymakers can safely take several decades to plan a response” to global warming.

Michaels and Singer are advisors.

American Enterprise Institute

$960,000

Published 2004 climate article titled “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

Dick Cheney is a former senior fellow.

American Legislative Exchange Council

$712,200

Published Michaels’ paper that claims “global warming could actually save lives.

Launched attack on “Sons of Kyoto” state legislation in 2004.

Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy

$427,500

Answering questions about global warming takes more than a few thermometers, an agenda and a press release.

Baliunas is an adviser; honored Senator Inhofe for “supporting rational, science-based thinking and policy-making.

Arizona State University Office of Climatology

$49,500

They got this amount in 2001 when the office was headed by

Robert C. Balling, a well known climate change “skeptic.”

 

Atlas Economic Research Foundation

$440,000

“As the science behind global warming becomes increasingly sketchy, many environmentalists clutch even harder to their views.”

Atlas fellow, Deroy Murdock , “You call this global “warming”?” The Washington Times, May 31, 1996.

 

Cato Institute

$75,000

One of the modern right’s most respected think tanks

Michaels is a senior fellow.

Capital Research Center

$115,000

Right-wing nonprofit watchdog group

“Scientists disagree about climate change, but you wouldn’t know that from the [Kyoto] treaty.

It is based on a theory that man-made carbon dioxide, or CO2, gas emissions caused by industrial activities

have created the so-called ‘global warming’ effect.”

CRC President, Terrence Scanlon, “Outside View: Hot air blows away,” United Press International, February 8, 2002.

Centre for the New Europe

$40,000

“Not only is the scientific basis of global warming increasingly uncertain, but Kyoto will also ultimately prove to be an economic disaster for Europe—and the developing world,”

CNR President, Tim Evans, “Kyoto will chill the global economy,” The Daily Telegraph (letter), October 2, 2004.

Singer offers up his contrarian commentary on their website.

Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise

$40,000

Called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment “as phony as a three-dollar bill.

Driessen is a senior policy adviser.

Center for the Study of CO2 and Global Change

$55,000

Calls CO2 emissions “a force for good, enhancing the organic matter that sustains all of humanity.

 

Citizens for a Sound Economy

$305,250

“The science behind global warming is inconclusive, and to teach otherwise is fearmongering.”

Peggy Venable, director of Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy in, “Groups criticize proposed texts ;

Conservatives duel liberals over books,” San Antonio Express-N ews, September 7, 2001.

In 2001 its Texas branch fought to get rid of global-warming talk in school textbooks

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

$252,000

Website features “Some surprisingly clean facts about SUVs.

Driessen is a senior fellow;

Baliunas and Michaels are advisers.

Competitive Enterprise Institute

$1,380,000

Likens the danger of global warming to that of “an alien invasion.”

Milloy is a fellow.

Congress of Racial Equality

$40,000

Says there is no “convincing, real evidence that humans are disrupting the earth’s climate.”

This year’s Martin Luther King Day civil rights honoree was Karl Rove.

Consumer Alert

$35,000

Funds the Cooler Heads Coalition’s denialist website, globalwarming.org

Michaels is an adviser.

Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies

$30,000

The mounting evidence over the most recent years demonstrates that the forecasts for global warming were greatly exaggerated. This new evidence suggests that global warming may not even be occurring.” (PDF)

 

Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment

$100,000

Montana-based thinktank

“Given the uncertainty around warming, and the fact that some models predict that temperature increases of up to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit would have beneficial effects, increasing our adaptability to change may be more important than cutting emissions.”

FREE’s Research Associate John C. Downen, “Resiliency is the Key to Climate Change,” Bozeman Daily Chronicle, November 13, 2002.

Fraser Institute

$60,000

Vancouver-based thinktank questions the “still-speculative risk of global warming.”

Chief Scientist Kenneth Green, “Old school environmentalists need to become more business-minded,” The Vancouver Province, June 2, 2003.

Soon and Baliunas co-authored Fraser’s “Global Warming: A Guide to the Science.

Free Enterprise Action Institute

$50,000

Another of Milloy’s projects, registered to his home address

 

Frontiers of Freedom

$612,000

To listen to eco-radicals tell the story, it is a proven scientific fact that the climate is warming and that mankind is responsible…Nothing could be farther [sic] from the truth.

Driessen is a senior fellow.

George C. Marshall Institute

$310,000

Challenging global warming (and promoting missile defense) since 1989

Baliunas is a senior scientist; Michaels is a visiting scientist.

Heartland Institute

$312,500

Compares Michael Crichton to Rachel Carson and Upton Sinclair.

Publishes op-eds by Soon and Baliunas.

Heritage Foundation

$340,000

For the next several decades, fossil fuel use is key to improving the human condition.

 

Hoover Institution

$140,000

Published “Happiness is a Warm Planet.

Singer is a former fellow.

Hudson Institute

$15,000

Got funding in 2000, the same year they published Singer’s article, “Cool Planet, Hot Politics: The next president needs to know that the global warming hypothesis, though politically powerful, is scientifically weak.

 

Independent Institute

$30,000

Published 2003 report entitled: “New Perspectives in Climate Science: What the EPA Isn’t Telling Us.

Singer is a former fellow.

Institute for Energy Research

$67,000

A 2003 “Letter to President George W. Bush” (PDF) advised that “the uncertain link between industrial emissions and global warming after a century of [greenhouse gas] buildup and decades of study points toward lower-range, benign warming scenarios.”

 

International Policy Network

$50,000

“The temperature variations read in the past century could be part of a larger process that is alien to humanity.”

IPI author Kendra Okonski ed., Adapt or Die: The science, politics and economics of climate change, London: Profile Books, 2003. p. 205

 

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

$15,500

Funding amount from 2001when a board of scholars member opined: “The Kyoto Protocol seems to be built on the following two assumptions: First, global warming is a function of human activity (with the biggest villains being automobiles, factories, and power plants), and second, we are currently experiencing unprecedented levels of global warming. However, a review of the earth’s most recent ‘geological history’ brings into question both assumptions and puts the entire subject in a different light.

 

Media Research Center

$50,000

Blasted the “networks’ overwhelmingly one-sided picture of the global warming debate.”

Robert Novak dubs MRC an “indispensable counterpunch to liberal reporting.” (PDF)

Mercatus Center

$40,000

George Mason University shop that included an eight-page speech by Michael Crichton in its official comments to the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2003.

 

National Black Chamber of Commerce

$75,000

Kyoto could “reverse the…economic progress that blacks and Hispanics have achieved in recent years.” (PDF)

 

National Center for Policy Analysis

$205,000

There is still no conclusive evidence that human activity is causing global temperatures to rise.

Singer is an adjunct scholar.

National Center for Public Policy Research

$160,000

In their “Questions and Answers on Global Warming.” it states, “There is no serious evidence that man-made global warming is taking place,” and “There are many indications that carbon dioxide does not play a significant role in global warming.”

Its Envirotruth.org website debunks “myths” of climate change, including,

“Humanity is the primary cause of global climate change”; and

The consensus of world scientists, as revealed by the UN’s IPCC agree–humanity is causing significant climate change.

Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy

$145,000

“No one seriously claims to know whether the past warming was caused by human activities; whether further warming will occur and, if it does, whether it will result from human activities, and whether such warming in some general sense would be a bad thing.”

Senior fellow Benjamin Zycher, “State’s Auto Emissions Bill Is Just So Much Gas,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2002.

 

Pacific Legal Foundation

$15,000

“Whether global warming is happening is a matter of debate”

PLF attorney, Anne M. Hayes, “Legislature declares war on SUVs,” San Diego Union Tribune, July 12, 2002

 

Property and Environment Research Center

$60,000

Gave Bush a B- on global warming, applauding his acknowledgment of “the importance of scientific uncertainty.” (PDF)

 

Reason Public Policy Institute

$230,000

Their website reads, “The sun, not a gas, is primarily to ‘blame’ for global warming.”

 

Science and Environmental Policy

$10,000

We should have more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

Singer’s pet project

Tech Central Science Foundation

$95,000

A virtual HQ for global warming deniers

Baliunas is a commentator; Soon is the science director; and Milloy is a contributing writer.

Run by former FoxNews.com editor and hosted by an AEI fellow.

Total 2000-2003

$8,678,450

   

 

The Cold Earth Society

Some key “skeptics” show up again and again in the echo chamber funded by ExxonMobil.

 

SALLIE BALIUNAS, a Harvard-Smithsonian Institute astrophysicist, has, along with colleague WILLIE SOON, been giving deniers scientific cover since the mid-1990s. They began by claiming solar effects could account for the rise of the global thermostat. After that theory was debunked, Baliunas and Soon wrote a paperpartially funded by the American Petroleum Institute—for Climate Research that claimed that the 20th century hasn’t been all that warm. Their conclusions have been praised as the epitome of “sound science” by deniers, including Sen. James Inhofe. The journal’s editor, meanwhile, said the paper should never have been published. Baliunas and Soon are each connected to at least four ExxonMobil-funded groups.

PAUL DRIESSEN: See “Black Gold?” Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least five.

PATRICK MICHAELS: University of Virginia climatologist and Cato Institute fellow. One of the most widely cited skeptics, Michaels has received substantial funding from energy companies. Author of The Satanic Gases and Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media. Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least seven.

STEVEN MILLOY: A columnist for FoxNews.com and publisher of JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. Milloy also runs the Advancement of Sound Science Center and the Free Enterprise Action Institute. Those two groups—apparently run out of Milloy’s home—received $90,000 from ExxonMobil. Key quote: The date of Kyoto’s implementation will “live in scientific and economic infamy.” Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least five.

S. FRED SINGER: A godfather of global warming denial, author of The Scientific Case Against the Global Climate Treaty and Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate. Key quote: “There is no convincing evidence that the global climate is actually warming.” Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least seven.

Go to: As The World Burns: A Mother Jones Special Report on Global Warming

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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