People and Corporations who have made their fortunes from selling fossil fuels to the masses -- have a vested-interest in keeping-on selling those fuels. For as long as corporately possible.
So much so, that they will invest a portion of those profits, to keep those profits flowing -- no matter the national confusion they may create in the process.
Confusion, Ambiguity, Indecision -- those are social results that they are paying for.
It's simply money well-spent in their millionaire wealth-preserving accounting ledgers.
National Center for Public Policy Research
sourcewatch.org
Global warming has been described by the NCPPR as an "unproven premise" and as a science that "is not settled." NCPPR analyst Amy Rideenour even went so far as to claim that global warming is a religion:
[...]
Funding Sources
Between 1998 and 2008, NCPPR received $445,000 in funding from ExxonMobil.[12]
NCPPR has also received funding from the following sources:[13]
The Armstrong Foundation
Brady Education Foundation
Carthage Foundation
Castle Rock Foundation
Earhart Foundation
Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation
Leadership Institute
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Randolph Foundation
Roe Foundation
Sarah Scaife Foundation
Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation
William H.Donner Foundation
Heartland Institute
sourcewatch.org
The Institute campaigns in support of:
[...]
"Common-sense environmentalism", such as opposition to the the Kyoto Protocol aimed at countering global warming
[...]
and against:
What it refers to as "junk science" (science that that could indicate a need for regulation);
[...]
An anonymous donor called "Heartland Insider" released documents in February 2012 of the Heartland Institute's budget, fundraising plan, and Climate Strategy for 2012.
The 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy states that the Institute got $200,000 in 2011 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation, and nearly a million from an anonymous donor. Goals of the organization included:
• working with David E. Wojick on "providing [K-12 school] curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain -- two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science";
• "sponsor[ing] the NIPCC [Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change] to undermine the official United Nation's IPCC [International Panel on Climate Change] reports" including paying "a team of writers $388,000 in 2011 to work on a series of editions of Climate Change Reconsidered" [NIPCC]; and
• funding climate change deniers Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 a month), James Taylor who has written a lot about Climategate through his Forbes blog, and Anthony Watts ($90,000 for 2012) to challenge "warmist science essays that counter our own," including funding "external networks (such as WUWT [Watts Up With That?] and other groups capable of rapidly mobilizing responses to new scientific findings, news stories, or unfavorable blog posts)."[18]
[...]
Funding -- Foundation funders
Media Transparency lists Heartland as having received grants from a range of foundations between 1986 and 2009. Of these foundations, by far the largest donor has been the foundation of Chicago industrialist Barre Seid[41], maker of Tripp Lite surge protectors.
Barbara and Barre Seid Foundation $1,037,977
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation $648,000
Exxon Mobil $531,500
Walton Family Foundation $400,000
Sarah Scaife Foundation $325,000
Charlotte & Walter Kohler Charitable Trust $190,500
Jaquelin Hume Foundation $166,000
Rodney Fund $135,000
JM Foundation $82,000
Castle Rock Foundation $70,000
Roe Foundation $41,500
John M. Olin Foundation $40,000
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation $40,000
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation $37,578
Armstrong Foundation $30,000
Hickory Foundation $13,000
Carthage Foundation $10,000
Climate Sceptics Exposed
by Andy Rowell, priceofoil.org -- 02/15/2012
[...]
The documents confirm what many people have suspected for a while: That Heartland not only receives money to fund its own climate sceptic work, but it also funds other leading sceptics, such as Craig Idso who gets $11,600 per month and Fred Singer who receives $5,000 per month, plus expenses.
Heartland is also spending a whopping $388,000 for a team of sceptics to undermine the findings of the UN climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC].
One of the documents leaked is Heartland’s Fundraising plan for this year, which exposes some of the world’s best known companies, such as Altria (parent company of Philip Morris) Bayer, Eli Lilly, General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, Microsoft, Pfizer and Time Warner, as funding the climate denial movement.
Would you work for $5,000 a month, to use you professional credentials
to spread ambiguity and denial?
Apparently there are enough "pseudo scientists" who will. Who consider it a good investment in their own personal minor fortunes.
Of course, some people and Corporations who have made their fortunes from selling fossil fuels to the masses -- have a super-charged vested-interest,
-- in maintaining their personal billionaire status quo. Heck, they specialize in buying the Free Market.
Even to the point of purchasing the marketplace of ideas:
Koch Industries
sourcewatch.org
Fighting greenhouse gas regulations
Regional Climate Change Accords
With the collapse of federal cap-and-trade legislation, a total of 32 states became active participants or observing members in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast, the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, or the Western Climate Initiative. Some commentators have suggested that Koch family foundations and ExxonMobil have opposed these initiatives, and that the American Legislative Exchange Council has advanced model legislation to that end.[64]
[...]
California, 2010
Koch subsidiary donates $1 million to stop Calif. GHG law
In September 2010, a company controlled by the Koch brothers donated $1 million to the campaign to pass Proposition 23, the Suspend AB 32 California ballot initiative that would halt the state's global warming law. The contribution came from Flint Hills Resources, a Kansas petrochemical company that is a subsidiary of Koch Industries.
[...]
Koch-funded organizations
According to the 2010 report by Greenpeace, Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine, Koch has out-spent ExxonMobil in funding climate change denial. From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million, while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding to organizations of climate change skeptics. Efforts include:
• More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” campaign opposing clean energy and climate legislation.
• More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, which writes about climate and environmental policy issues.
• Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate story.
• $800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years, a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.
• $365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which advocates against taking action on climate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.
• $360,000 to Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP) which supported and funded An Inconvenient Truth...or Convenient Fiction, a film attacking the science of global warming and intended as a rebuttal to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth (PRIPP also threatened to sue the U.S. Government for listing the polar bear as an endangered species.)
• $325,000 to the Tax Foundation, which issued a misleading study on the costs of proposed climate legislation.
The reports says such contributions are only part of the picture, because the full scope of direct contributions to organizations is not disclosed by individual Koch family members, executives, or from the company itself.
Organizations' messaging on "ClimateGate"
ClimateGate Echo Chamber -- At least twenty Koch-funded organizations have repeatedly rebroadcast, referenced and appeared as media spokespeople in the story, dubbed “ClimateGate,” regarding stolen emails from the University of East Anglia in November 2009. These organizations claim the emails prove a “conspiracy” of scientists and "proves" climate change is a hoax.
ALEC Model Bill Behind Push To Require Climate Denial Instruction In Schools
by Steve Horn, prwatch.org -- January 26, 2012
On January 16, the Los Angeles Times revealed that anti-science bills have been popping up over the past several years in statehouses across the U.S., mandating the teaching of climate change denial or "skepticism" as a credible "theoretical alternative" to human caused climate change came.
[...]
Exxon Mobil
sourcewatch.org
[...]
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]
[...]
Exxon Mobil has contributed nearly $1.5 million dollars to ALEC since 1998
Climate Change, aka Extreme Weather; aka the inheritance we are passively passing on to Future Generations ...
Everyone talks about it, but no one takes it seriously. Too much ambiguity. It's too confusing. No one can claim -- any one event is the "direct result" of Climate Change
... we are constantly reminded to include this status quo disclaimer.
The forever-limiting disclaimer, aka Inaction. aka, Procrastination.
What is an exasperated future-oriented, technology-literate generation to do ...
[...]
Specific Recommendations for the Legislative Branch
No branch of government has a more important role to play than Congress in creating federal climate policy that is strongly based on climate science. Congress should use its authority to ensure that legislators and the public are being responsibly served and informed.
• Congress should approve the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, or similar legislation, to enhance disclosure of indirect political contributions.
• The Lobbying Disclosure Act should be strengthened and enforced. Although companies are currently required to report their lobbying expenditures, the content of these reports is often vague and incomplete. A more robust policy, including mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement, is needed to inform the public on corporate lobbying activities.
• Congress should investigate discrepancies between climate positions presented by companies in congressional oversight hearings and those they have presented elsewhere. Congress should hold companies accountable for their inconsistent statements.
Specific Recommendations for the Executive Branch
The federal government plays an important public-protection role in regulating and overseeing the corporate sector. The executive branch in particular must use its authority to ensure that companies are behaving responsibly in, and not unfairly influencing, the public discussion.
• The president should issue an executive order, first proposed in April 2011, that would require companies with government contracts to disclose their political contributions. Because these companies stand to benefit directly from public spending, taxpayers have a right to know who and what they are supporting.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission should require publicly traded companies to disclose their political spending to their shareholders. Responding to shareholder requests for such information, Commissioner Luis Aguilar has called for the SEC’s adoption of this requirement.
• Using the responses to its climate-related guidance to companies on filing the annual Form 10-K, the SEC should actively monitor companies’ disclosure of material risks from the physical impacts of climate change and report this information to Congress. Further, the SEC should require companies to report annually whether climate change poses risks to their business and to list any such risks specifically.
• Federal agencies should fully implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of, their scientific integrity policies developed in response to the White House’s guidelines issued December 17, 2010.
-- Union of Concerned Scientists
A Climate of Corporate Control
How Corporations Have Influenced the U.S. Dialogue on Climate Science and Policy
May 2012
That is the advice from the reality-based, technology-oriented organization of Actual Scientists. Advice designed to change the equilibrium of the status quo.
Advice designed to confront the cottage industry of Climate Denial -- right in their modus operandi.
Right in their pocket books -- so that the general populous could one day know, how we've become the frogs in their simmering pot
-- How we've been persistently and effectively sold -- the ultimate Price of Denial ...
aka A Bill-of-Goods. A fabrication. A complete denial of science.
aka THEIR corporate bread-and-butter.