December 08, 2009 11:33 am ET
Over the past decade, oil giant Exxon Mobil has paid millions to organizations and "think tanks" in an attempt to deceive the public about the science behind global climate change. It's no surprise that those very same organizations are now doing everything in their power to please their benefactor by drawing attention to the so-called "Climategate" scandal involving hacked emails from the University of East Anglia in England.
Exxon Mobil Has Given The American Enterprise Institute Nearly $2 Million Since 2001. Since 2001, Exxon Mobil has donated $1,910,000 to the American Enterprise Institute. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
Slowly and mostly unnoticed by the major news media, the air has been going out of the global warming balloon. Global temperatures stopped rising a few years ago, much to the dismay of the climate campaigners... Climate change is a genuine phenomenon, and there is a nontrivial risk of major consequences in the future. Yet the hysteria of the global warming campaigners and their monomaniacal advocacy of absurdly expensive curbs on fossil fuel use have led to a political dead end that will become more apparent with the imminent collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process. I have long expected that 20 or so years from now we will look back on the turn-of-the-millennium climate hysteria in the same way we look back now on the population bomb hysteria of the late 1960s and early 1970s--as a phenomenon whose magnitude and effects were vastly overestimated, and whose proposed solutions were wrongheaded and often genuinely evil (such as the forced sterilizations of thousands of Indian men in the 1970s, much of it funded by the Ford Foundation). Today the climate campaigners want to forcibly sterilize the world's energy supply, and until recently they looked to be within an ace of doing so. But even before Climategate, the campaign was beginning to resemble a Broadway musical that had run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it's closing time for the climate horror show. [Weekly Standard, 12/14/09]
Exxon Mobil Has Given The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow Over $465,000 Since 2001. Since 2001, Exxon Mobil has donated $467,000 to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
Exxon Mobil Has Given The Competitive Enterprise Institute Over $1.6 Million Since 2001. Between 2001 and 2005, Exxon Mobil donated $1,690,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
In the wake of the burgeoning Climategate fraud scandal, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on December 2 filed an emergency petition demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency stop its plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, pending a complete investigation.
The purpose of the filing is to "put EPA on notice that new information has very recently been released, whose content is so grave that it may well destroy EPA's scientific basis for an Endangerment Finding." The petition urges EPA to reopen its proceeding and engage in a full examination of this information, accompanied by public comment.
"The petition points out that if the explosive information associated with the Climategate e-mails was serious enough to cause the departure of the director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), then it also justifies EPA's reopening its proceeding," said Sam Kazman, CEI General Counsel, who filed the emergency petition. [Competitive Enterprise Institute, 12/2/09]
Exxon Mobil Gave FreedomWorks Over $275,000 In 2001. In 2001, Exxon Mobil donated $275,250 to FreedomWorks, then known as Citizens for a Sound Economy. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
Exxon Mobil Has Given The Heartland Institute Over $530,000 Since 2001. Since 2001, Exxon Mobil has donated $531,500 to the Heartland Institute. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
Exxon Mobil Has Given The Heritage Foundation $385,000 Since 2001. Since 2001, Exxon Mobil has donated $385,000 to the Heritage Foundation. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
1,000 emails and more than 3,000 other documents from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom publicly revealed by a hacker, or allegedly an inside whistleblower, are rekindling the flame to the global warming debate just weeks before the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference where the United States will propose an emissions reduction target. [Heritage Foundation, 11/23/09]
For those who thought the exposed emails from Britain's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit would come and go without much play, think again. Surely the skeptics and even the agnostics wouldn't miss an opportunity to jump on such devastating revelations, but the fact is ClimateGate is having immediate and possibly long-lasting effects all over the world. [Heritage Foundation, 12/1/09]
[T]he always-witty Mark Steyn calls it, Warmergate. Skepticism is only bound to grow and here comes that funny little word transparency again. Reason senior analyst Shikha Dalmia writes, "A complete airing of the science of global warming, which is looking less and less avoidable by the day, might eventually vindicate the claims of climate warriors. Or it might not. The only thing Obama can control in this matter is which side he will support: The truth, or-what he accused his predecessor of-ideology." [Heritage Foundation, 12/3/09]
Maybe the scandal won't be everything the skeptics hope for but Heritage Senior Policy Analyst David Kreutzer reminds us that "Few policy questions, and none with as big a price tag, are based so fundamentally on there being a scientific consensus." The least we can do is a little prying and poking. [Heritage Foundation, 12/2/09]
Exxon Mobil Has Given The National Center For Policy Analysis $520,000 Since 2001. Since 2001, Exxon Mobil has donated $520,000 to the National Center for Policy Analysis. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
The Climate-gate scandal, which revealed that scientists attempted to suppress inconvenient data, used tricks to change reported outcomes, suppress dissent, and undermine the peer review process, should serve as a major red flag to the Obama administration and other government delegations, according to NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett.
"Even though the science used to justify the need for a costly climate treaty is unraveling, the Obama administration is shrugging off the emails, parroting the claim that the science is settled and it's time to act, which couldn't be further from the truth," Dr. Burnett said. "Instead of the administration choosing to slow down and make sure the science is solid, it feels the need to push harder for an agreement to set new greenhouse gas emissions targets." [NCPA, 12/7/09]
Exxon Mobil Has Given The National Center For Public Policy Research $390,000 Since 2001. Since 2001, Exxon Mobil has donated $390,000 to the National Center for Public Policy Research. [Publicly Available IRS 990 Forms via Conservative Transparency, accessed 12/7/09]
In a scandal now known as "Climategate," released documents and emails from a climate research branch of a British university reveal what appear to be efforts to manipulate data to support the preexisting views of leading climate researchers.
Raw data on which IPCC conclusions were based also has been destroyed.
IPCC reports on global warming are frequently relied upon by corporations and governments to develop their policy on climate change.
"For the sake of his company, shareholders and customers, Rogers must stop lobbying for a law whose scientific foundation could be made of sand. Given the questions surrounding the integrity of scientists that contributed to the IPCC report, Rogers must conduct an internal review to independently evaluate the impact of manipulated and destroyed data on Duke Energy's climate change policy," said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the Free Enterprise Project. [National Center for Public Policy Research, 12/3/09]
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