In The Pay Of Big Oil And Other Funding Arrangements

So what of the claims that sceptics are in the pay of “Big Oil.” The most repeated accusation is that organizations sceptical of man-made climate fears have received $19 Million from an oil corporation over the past two decades. Whilst it is true that organisations like the “George C. Marshall Institute” and “Heartland Institute” who have received part of their funding from Exxon in the past, the amount pales when compared to the funding that the believers are now drawing from both government and private sources.

James Spann, a meteorologist certified by the American Meteorological Society, suggests :

Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story, Spann wrote on January 18, 2007 For many, global warming is a big cash grab, Spann added.

"Tens of thousands of interested persons benefit directly from the global warming scare—at the expense of the ordinary consumer. Environmental organizations globally, such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defence Fund, have raked in billions of dollars. Multi-billion-dollar government subsidies for useless mitigation schemes are large and growing. Emission trading programs will soon reach the $100 billion a year level, with large fees paid to brokers and those who operate the scams," Professor Fred Singer explained on June 30, 2007.

"In other words, many people have discovered they can benefit from climate scares and have formed an entrenched interest. Of course, there are also many sincere believers in an impending global warming catastrophe, spurred on in their fears by the growing number of one-sided books, movies, and media coverage," Singer added.

Even if you factor in former Vice President Al Gore's unsubstantiated August 7, 2007 assertion that $10 million dollars a year from the fossil fuel industry flows into sceptical organizations, any funding comparison between sceptics and warming proponents utterly fails. Al Gore launched a $100 million a year multimedia global warming fear campaign. Gore alone will now be spending $90 million more per year than he alleges the entire fossil fuel industry spends, according to an August 26, 2007 article in Advertising Age.

Also according to this article from the U.S Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:

The [climate] alarmists also enjoy a huge financial advantage over the sceptics with numerous foundations funding climate research, University research money and the United Nations endless promotion of the cause.

The well-heeled environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets compared to groups that express global warming scepticism. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defence Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often media derided (Sceptical) Competitive Enterprise Institute’s small $3.6 million annual budget. In addition, if a climate sceptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defence Fund) The alarmists have all of these advantages, yet they still feel the need to resort to desperation tactics to silence the sceptics.

The last two highlighted sentences say a lot. Any funding directed towards sceptical organisations is labelled tainted money by the believers and as a result the funding from “Big Environment” towards the believers far outweighs the amount of money being spent by “Big Oil” on the sceptics. Yet the Greenpeace propaganda is more widely known. Dr. David Evans also wrote a detailed account of being a global warming scientist prior to his defection to the sceptical side in his article: "I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train" (28/5/2007) where he states:

I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; there were international conferences full of such people. We had political support, the ear of government, big budgets. We felt fairly important and useful (I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet!

…Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. Climate change has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly blames carbon emissions, to the point of silencing critics.

As Melbourne’s Herald Sun Columnist Andrew Bolt suggests:

The government money, of course, follows the alarmism - and the political advantage.