Wingers should believe what Exxon tells them. Exxon is pure of heart and has no financial motives whatsoever.
A study by the US Union of Concerned Scientists reports that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report says, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community.
See exxonsecrets.org for fact-sheets on funding recipients.
Between 1995 and 2005, Exxon Mobil spent $16 million to "bankroll more than 40 groups to quell the claims of global warming." [14]
During 2002, ExxonMobil donated $5.6 million to public policy organizations which share its agenda, either on climate change denial or general extreme free market advocacy. These included: [2]
Acton Institute, ($30,000)
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research ($200,000)
Atlas Economic Research Foundation ($50,000)
Cato Institute ($30,000)
Center for Strategic and International Studies ($145,000)
Committee for Economic Development ($75,000)
Competitive Enterprise Institute ($405,000)
Foundation for American Communications ($175,000)
Frontiers of Freedom ($233,000)
George C. Marshall Foundation (90,000) (did they mean George C. Marshall Institute? in the PDF, it is "Foundation")
Reason Foundation ($50,000)
2006 and beyond
In October 2006, two US Senators, Olympia Snowe, (R-Maine), and Jay Rockefeller, (D-W.Va.) wrote to ExxonMobil's chairman and CEO Rex W. Tillerson, asking that it "end any further financial assistance" to groups "whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth." The Senators singled out the Competitive Enterprise Institute and TechCentralStation as such groups. They wrote that "we are convinced that ExxonMobil's long-standing support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics' access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy". [3]
Skeptic funding cut back under Rex Tillerson
"Exxon will not contribute to some nine groups in 2008 that it funded in 2007...The groups Exxon has stopped funding include the Capital Research Center, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research... Exxon's public tone on climate change has softened since Tillerson took the reins of the company at the beginning of 2006, replacing the often-combative Lee Raymond. Tillerson has said that nations should work toward a global policy to fight climate change and in 2006 [and again in 2007] the company stopped funding a handful of groups that were climate change skeptics. [15]
Or not...
But Exxon continued to fund a further 28 groups which campaigned against climate science. And the Center for Science in the public Interest stated in June 2008, "Each group continued to receive Exxon funding in 2007 after the company’s first announcement that it would discontinue the payments. Exxon did not immediately return calls seeking comment on how serious it was in following through on its plans." [16].
In 2011, the Global Warming Policy Foundation's website ran the headline "900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism Of 'Man-Made' Global Warming (AGW) Alarm," listing more than 900 papers which, according to the GWPF, refute "concern relating to a negative environmental or socio-economic effect of AGW, usually exaggerated as catastrophic." However, a preliminary data analysis by the Carbon Brief revealed that nine of the ten most prolific authors cited have links to organisations funded by ExxonMobil, and the tenth has co-authored several papers with Exxon-funded contributors. The top ten contributors alone were responsible for 186 of the papers (over 20%) cited by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.[17]
Dr Sherwood Idso was the most cited academic on the list, having authored or co-authored 67 of the 938 papers, seven percent of the total. Idso is president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a thinktank which has been funded by ExxonMobil. Idso has also been linked to the Information Council on the Environment ( ICE ), an energy industry PR campaign accused of "astroturfing". The second most cited is Dr Patrick Michaels - with 28 papers to his name. Michaels is a well known climate sceptic who has revealed that he receives around 40% of his funding from the oil industry. Third most cited is Agricultural scientist Dr Bruce Kimball - the list shows that all of his cited papers were co-authored with Dr Sherwood B Idso.[17]
Also included was Willie Soon, a senior scientist at the Exxon funded George C Marshall institute, and John Christy, also a Marshall Institute "expert." Ross McKitrick is a senior fellow at the Exxon funded Fraser institute and on the academic advisory board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Dr Indur Goklany is affiliated with the Exxon Funded thinktank the International Policy Network (US). Sallie Baliunas is listed by the Union of Concerned Scientists as being affiliated with nine different organisations who have all received funding from ExxonMobil, including the George C Marshall Institute. Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist and prominent sceptic, is a member of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, which has also received Exxon funding. The final name in the top 10 contributors - David Douglass - has written several papers with Singer, Christie and Michaels - six of the fifteen papers he authored on the list were written with Michaels, Singer or Christie.[17]
2009+: Lobbying expenditures continue
In 2009, Exxon Mobil spent $27.5 million in lobbying against global warming, which is their second highest year on the books after 2008 election year. [18] Odwyer's Magazine describes Exxon's efforts as misleading: "ExxonMobil, absurdly praised in August by Forbes as “green company of the year,” was discovered the same month by the New York Times to have given major funding to industry groups like the now-defunct Global Climate Coalition, an organization that had silenced its own scientific reports and falsified information for more than a decade." [19]
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