Climate Sceptic Thinktank Received Funding From Fossil Fuel Interests (theguardian.com) 90
An influential thinktank that has led the backlash against the government's net zero policy has received funding from groups with oil and gas interests, according to tax documents seen by the Guardian and OpenDemocracy. From a report: Though the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has always said it is independent of the fossil fuel industry, the revelations about its funding will raise questions over its campaigning. The thinktank has always refused to disclose its donors, but tax documents filed with US authorities reveal that one of its donors has $30m of shares in 22 companies working in coal, oil and gas. Over four years the GWPF's US arm, the American Friends of the GWPF, received more than $1m from US donors. The vast majority of this, $864,884, was channelled to the UK group, with some being held back for expenses.
Of the $1.8m the GWPF has received in charitable donations since 2017, about 45% has come from the US. It received $210,525 in 2018 and 2020 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation -- set up by the billionaire libertarian heir to an oil and banking dynasty. The US-based foundation has $30m-worth of shares in 22 energy companies including $9m in Exxon and $5.7m in Chevron, according to its financial filings. Between 2016 and 2020, the American Friends of the GWPF received $620,259 from the Donors Trust, which is funded by the Koch brothers, who inherited their father's oil empire and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the climate denial movement. "It is disturbing that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is acting as a channel through which American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy," said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Of the $1.8m the GWPF has received in charitable donations since 2017, about 45% has come from the US. It received $210,525 in 2018 and 2020 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation -- set up by the billionaire libertarian heir to an oil and banking dynasty. The US-based foundation has $30m-worth of shares in 22 energy companies including $9m in Exxon and $5.7m in Chevron, according to its financial filings. Between 2016 and 2020, the American Friends of the GWPF received $620,259 from the Donors Trust, which is funded by the Koch brothers, who inherited their father's oil empire and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the climate denial movement. "It is disturbing that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is acting as a channel through which American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy," said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Re:So what (Score:4, Insightful)
Couldn’t even read the first paragraph.
Claims to be independent of the fossil fuel industry. Takes money from people invested in fossil fuel. Hmmmm
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Re: So what (Score:2)
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Re:So what (Score:5, Insightful)
Believers kind of seems like the wrong term, but then so does deniers, as many of them no longer even deny that climate change is happening and even that it is manmade. It may be more accurate to say that there are only climate action supporters and obstructionists.
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Theoretically possible, but practically not worth worrying about with the kind of technologies we'll be using in our lifetimes. I wouldn't take any such people seriously until we have something like a solar shade megastructure in space.
Re: So what (Score:2)
Re:So what (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no climate change skeptics. There are only believers and deniers.
There once were climate change skeptics, but their voices were so thoroughly drowned out by the amplified shouts of deniers who pretend to be skeptics that you can't even hear them.
I'm not sure what you mean by "believers". I assume you mean "people who understand the science and have looked at the evidence and find it well justified and believable, and have looked at the evidence presented by deniers, and found it lacking foundations and not believable."
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I'm not sure what you mean by "believers". I assume you mean "people who understand the science and have looked at the evidence and find it well justified and believable, and have looked at the evidence presented by deniers, and found it lacking foundations and not believable.".
imagine getting everyone who agrees with climate change to a take a technical test on climate change science.
you fully expect most people to do well?
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Nope. This is not a question of belief. This is a question of Science and hence one of understanding the available evidence. Anybody doing it by belief or denial has not understood the problem.
That said, we pretty much have 2C already locked in via secondary effects and it does not look like it is going to end there. Things are going to get bad and then they are going to get worse.
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And what "plans" do you think are possible? And do not give me that "prepper" nonsense. Dying a bit later in a dark hole is not my idea of an improvement.
Re: So what (Score:2)
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There is no scenario where GW becomes an extinction level event.
Hahahahahaha, nope. You seem to be functionally illiterate. There are both direct and indirect scenarios and they are not that distant.
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I do not know where you take that fantasy from (personal experience?) but I am not subject to it.
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That said, is anyone surprised?
Re:So what (Score:5, Insightful)
Always fun to try and distract from the fact that big money has been working to get people to think there is any controversy over anthropogenic climate change. Scientists working for fossil fuel companies warned management of fossil fuel-induced climate change in the 1980s. The science on it has only gotten far more certain since then. Of course that won't stop people here from disingenuously claiming that there is still uncertainty, because untold millions or billions of dollars have been spent to make sure some people have doubts. Same with the tobacco industry and lung cancer. There is big money too be had in manufacturing doubt and confusion. Just ask the folks the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
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All nonprofits should disclose donors [Re:So what] (Score:4, Insightful)
So what if "one of its donors has $30m of shares in 22 companies working in coal, oil and gas"
That's the least of it. The point is that the individuals funding this group are the Koch Brothers, oil billionaires who are paying millions to fund climate denial, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation, another front for an oil fortune.
Suggestion: All nonprofit groups need to disclose all their donors. Don't want to let anybody know who is funding you? Then don't file as a nonprofit.
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Don't want to let anybody know who is funding you? Then don't file as a nonprofit.
I would have thought this was already the case. Can you really file as a nonprofit without disclosing where your money comes from? That's crazy.
There's nothing wrong with taking money (Score:5, Insightful)
from people with an ax to grind. It's not wrong to take money to do a particular job for them. It's not even wrong to serve as a mouthpiece for them.
Not disclosing that is a bit smarmy, and downright lying about it is wrong, and lying about that when you are lobbying or working with public officials to create policy should be illegal.
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Unlikely.
The people who grand funding are PhDs etc. and not some desk chair bureaucrats.
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Yes, they are.
Or do you think it is a PhD fraud going on begging for funding?
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Well you're going to get more research grants for cancer than for toe fungus. Is that somehow proof that medical research is corrupt?
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Are you judging from papers you have read?
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I'm an engineer, not a scientist, but I've spent much of my career working with scientists; I've participated in many research proposals and have helped scientists respond to peer review comments, so I think I understand the character of the process better than most laymen.
As for the issue itself, I'm married to a geophysicist -- although not a climate scientist -- and have been reading her subscription of Eos since the early 1980s, roughly around the time the current consensus on anthropogenic climate chan
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What you said then is cognitively empty. How do you know a research topic is popular? It receives funding. It's circular.
We're back to toe fungus and cancer.
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Which has nothing to do with climate change and research. I remember the SSC decision. The problem was that the projected cost had increased from 4.4 billion to 12 billion (24 billion in 2022 dollars). That's a huge cost overrun for a civilian program and with the project only a little more than complete you if you had similar cost overruns and delays you could be talking about a lot more money.
You're right there was an element of national prestige involved in deciding to start the program, but that's alw
Re: There's nothing wrong with taking money (Score:1)
Go to OpenSecrets, search for your favorite politician and do the same. DoJ should be investigating all of them since most of our current leadership has been on the take for 30-50 years without even disclosing it.
If itâ(TM)s not wrong for our elected leaders to do, who cares about unelected interest groups with no real influence?
Ok Back up a second... (Score:2)
This article is about the US, right?
Since when did we pass a national "net zero policy" through congress and signed into law?
I now I miss a lot of things, but this seems like something I would have heard on the news?
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I gotta start proofreading better before I hit the post button.
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I gotta start proofreading better before I hit the post button.
And you gotta start reading to the end of the article before you hit the post button.
"It is disturbing that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is acting as a channel through which American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy," said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment."
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Ahh..thank you.
But then again, this is slashdot...."read the article"?!?!
Are you insane...?!?!
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https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri... [whitehouse.gov]
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This article is about the US, right?
Nope. From the fine summary:
"It is disturbing that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is acting as a channel through which American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy," said Bob Ward...
GWPF is a British organization, lobbying the British government.
And from the very beginning, it's been quite clear that the global warming policy they favor is more of it.
"I'm shocked! Shocked that fossil fuel funds are being transferred through this establishment!"
In related news (Score:2)
Congress couldn’t agree on what shape the earth is.
https://www.sustainability.gov... [sustainability.gov]
Executive order 14057
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There's a place in politics for people who can't be doctors or scientists or engineers.
The Power of Big Oil (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/front... [pbs.org]
After watching this documentary, the "Global Warming Policy Foundation" is likely a paid participant in the fight against the truth. Inaction is winning for the carbon intensive industries.
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No, there is not a "whole lot of money on both sides." That is complete BS, and just more propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. No one is falsifying data or blacklisting scientists either. You haven't seen any "shenanigans," my dude, you have been successfully propagandized by Big Oil.
But I could be wrong. I'm sure you understand that nobody who isn't already a climate change denier will never believe a word you say without proof. I mean, it's a simple truth: "that which can be asserted without proof c
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Seriously, I would love to read about the moment you realize that all of the rhetoric you believe is true about climate change, was crafted by some of the smartest and highest paid PR firms the world has ever known. The cigarette industry people were effing amateurs.
+1 Duh! (Score:1)
So... there's a "climate-sceptic thinktank" out there that ISN'T funded by entrenched chemical, mining, logging and/or fossil-fuel interests? These things don't come from organic grassroots activism, they come from lobbying and astroturfing and they've existed for decades. Shell Petroleum used to provide environmental education packs to schools and probably still does. These companies are SHAMELESS when it comes to misleading the public, bribing elected officials and other nefarious deeds including outright
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Just like murder! I mean, those murder alarmists are probably paid for by big murder. There's no other reason to be alarmed by murder.
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If you want to talk deaths, the literal millions that die every year from the air pollution are barely talked about, while people screaming you to eat bugs with weird cult mantras get boosted to the top of the trending news.
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What the actual fuck are you talking about?
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I'm talking about how there's a tendency in the media of amplifying weird, fanatical people on the climate change side in the spotlights rather than people with real solutions.
And then you amplify the climate deniers and anti-nuclear power people as well, and the end result is what the oil industry want.
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Oh. Okay, fair enough. Bit of an odd phrasing but I get it now.
the other way around (Score:2)
Forbes reports [forbes.com] that the fossil fuel industry funds environmentalism and explains why: Environmentalists shut down nuclear plants which creates demand for fossil fuels.
Over the last three years, the five largest publicly-traded oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP, and Total invested a whopping one billion dollars into advertising and lobbying for renewables and other climate-related ventures...
All of which raises the question: why, if renewable energy advocates like Greenpeace, AOC and Thunberg are such defenders of the climate, are they advocating the replacement of zero-pollution nuclear plants, which will require burning more fossil fuels?
Re:the other way around (Score:5, Interesting)
Wiki on the guy who wrote that article, just FYI, not pushing an agenda but you should probably read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Wiki on the guy who wrote that article, just FYI, not pushing an agenda but you should probably read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Wow, he does sound like a bit of a jerk. I'm not surprised to see him writing for Forbes.
The government gets money from big oil & gas (Score:2)
If the government gets money from oil & gas and funds your study, don't you then get money from big oil & gas?
Sceptic Tank (Score:2)
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Came here to say the same... I totally read that as "septic tank" the first pass. Then after the second and third pass I thought "sounds legit."
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~$2MM in 5 years (Score:2)
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People have sold their souls for far less.
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People have sold their souls for far less.
I see you're familiar with the US Congress.
In other news... (Score:2)
Look, I can write this click-bait with either side of the debate!
Next, you'll tell me that people donate money to the causes
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No, the problem is described right there in the summary: " the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has always said it is independent of the fossil fuel industry, the revelations about its funding will raise questions over its campaigning. The thinktank has always refused to disclose its donors... "
It's not that they are funded by fossil fuel money, it's the fact that they denied receiving such money, but wouldn't disclose where their funding did come from.
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The Think Tank doesn't matter (Score:2)
Doesn't matter as much as one might think (Score:2)
Scientists funded by government are motivated to argue for more government, because government is good for them. Everyone has biases, look for reproducible peer reviewed studies and ignore the rest regardless of source.
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Also, ignore peer-reviewed articles because most of them are wrong and the reviewers tend to be biased, often based on who wrote the paper.
Is it time for public lynchings? (Score:1)
Haha. (Score:2)
Someone has discovered how politics works.
And? (Score:1)