The Denier’s multi-million dollar funding machine

According to Exxonsecrets.org, run by Greenpeace, Exxon is engaged in a ‘multimillion dollar campaign’ to create public confusion about global warming. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/binaries/exxon-secrets-analysis-of-fun. All told, between 1998 and 2006, Exxon is alleged to have spent nearly 23 million dollars funding various groups that publish studies and pay scientists to publish studies that claim something other than the ‘consensus’ of man-made CO2 emissions causing global warming.

My first thought when I actually read this was THAT’S IT ??

Greenpeace/Exxonsecrets pored over XOM’s annual tax returns for the numbers, and then summed them up in the article linked above. They were kind enough to summarise all the data from Exxon for the reader, warning the public of a veritable Denial Machine hell-bent on suppressing the Truth about Global Warming.

The TOTAL DOLLAR AMOUNT from Exxon to these alleged ‘denial groups’ between the years of 1998-2006 is $22,854,423. Keep in mind, however that this total is spread over 80 groups over a period of eight years. Curiously, the same article claims “several organizations and journalists have confirmed that ExxonMobil is the only known oil company to fund a network of organizations that deny the science and urgency of global warming”. So no other oil company engages in that sort of funding then? Environmentalists are a lot of things, but they aren’t lazy. If ConocoPhillips or Imperial Oil or Royal Dutch Shell or some other petroleum company was funding these ‘deniers’ en masse, it would be equally widely-publicized.

I haven’t yet dug into what the coal industry is alleged to have spent, but coal companies have never been responsible for pathetic (though certainly publicity-generating) pictures of sad-looking, dying oily birds and therefore don’t make for a particularly great target.

So the sum total from the ‘oil industry’ to ‘denialists’ is that same $23 million spread among 80 organizations. This is an average of $287,000 each, spread over eight years, or just the equivalent of just under $36,000 per year for each organization. This is the average per organization per year that has gone into funding this veritable Machine that is alone responsible for any confusion the public might have regarding Man’s role in causing the earth to warm at an ‘unprecedented rate’ that will cause future catastrophe.

Not that I would ever turn down such an amount, but that’s probably roughly the amount of salary that I earned in that same eight years as I made my way up through a variety of entry-level to middling positions. So basically, the sum total of this ‘multimillion dollar campaign’ would in reality only be enough to fund a single and not terribly well-paid junior research assistant for eighty different groups.

Now, it is true that this oh-so generous $23 million over eight years isn’t distributed evenly to each of the groups. The Property and Environment Research Center got a piddling $55,000 in that time period. The American Enterprise Institute fared better under their largess, but no single organisation seems to have been able to get Exxon to cough up more than the Competitive Enterprise Institute managed – barely over $2 million in that time frame – and under pressure from Environmental groups, they’ve since been cut off.

I’m actually familiar enough with CEI to know that they have a life outside of global warming – they fund studies on other things Exxon might be interested in such as capital gains taxes or securities regulations and so on, but let’s just pretend that every last cent did indeed go to funding these “denialists”.

Don’t take it on my word alone when I say that a couple of million here, or 23 million in eight years isn’t a lot of money even from a company that pulled in $40 Billion in 2007. If anything, Exxon’s a cheapskate. Really, if they were funding these organisations because what Environmentalists claim about global warming is such a threat to their future earnings don’t you think they’d be spending a little more than such a tiny fraction of their profits? They probably spend more on post-it notes and staplers. But numbers in isolation are still meaningless – unless there’s something else to compare them to.

Let’s take a look at a well-known advocacy group, taken at random, (also one for whom numbers are easy to come by – they’re less so for Greenpeace, who publish their numbers in Euros for a start). Let’s take PeTA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Their annual budget is $30 million.

But on to environmentalist lobby groups.

Environmental Defense’s Annual report for 2007 brings up this gem: “Total program and supporting services expenditures for fiscal 2007 reached $73.8 million” So in a single year, one single environmentalist lobby group had expenditures that were well over three times the sum total of what ExxonMobil spent on 80 lobby groups spread over 8 years. Natural Resources Defence Council fares about the same – around $75 million in 2007.

Another Dow 30 company, General Electric has been busy lobbying for subsidies for ‘alternative energy’ to the tune of $20 million in the past three years. Whoops, that’s annually, meaning around $60 million. Sorry, my mistake.  That doesn’t include their own ‘Green Week’ programming either.

In March of this year, Al Gore announced a $300 million advertising blitz on climate change. That’s more than 10X more than Exxon spent, according to Greenpeace, over eight years.

According to this site, Greenpeace, in the same time span that Exxon doled out it’s 23 million, pulled in around 2 Billion dollars. We’re not even getting into all the government grants and so on. But even with these examples it’s pretty clear where the money really is.  The World Wildlife Fund does quite well too and clears roughly the same amount.

Also, this is only a handful of examples (including, admittedly, some of the better-funded ones), but keep in mind that I haven’t factored in any government largess yet either.

Sorry, but who’s the one who’s ‘well-funded’ again?

Nice people and truths.

Several years ago I was sitting in a lounge with a small group of female friends, just out for a few drinks.  Roughly an hour or so into the evening, a familiar scene played itself out.  There were a couple of guys at a neighbouring table; one seemed fairly normal and was preoccupied watching a game on one of the TV screens mounted in the place, the other guy was one of those guys that pretty much any girl who got out more than once a month could pretty much instantly tell was one of those creepy guys.

Naturally, the creepy guy started talking to us. I can’t remember specifically what he said to us, but he had a habit of interrupting our conversation and trying to get the attention of at least one of us. It wasn’t that he’d been eavesdropping and wanted to add his own two cents; he was clearly too self-absorbed to be paying attention to what others were doing or saying. Nor did he have much to say apart from giving us the sense that he felt entitled to our attention.  Although we were all polite, he was not someone who interested any of us starting with being easily a decade older.

I was in the midst of some particularly animated conversation with one person when this same guy apparently figured it was my turn to pay attention to him.  Out of the blue, he tapped me on the shoulder and said: “I’m a nice guy you know.”

I turned around, as he was sitting behind me, and said to him, “I didn’t say you weren’t”.

“Well, you don’t have to ignore me you know.”

“I wasn’t,” I shrugged and gesturing in front of me and away from him I said, “I’m facing this way and talking to my friend who’s sitting in that direction.”

“But I’m a nice guy, and-”

“Get lost, creep” my friend Sam butted in (thanks Sam!).  She had more guts or whatever it takes to say such things. I was raised to be far too polite and find it hard, even to the most obnoxious person, to tell them straight out to buzz off.  Normally I hope that they get the hint, but some people need to be told. Really, on what planet is it appropriate to try to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger you’ve never before exchanged words with by interrupting them while they’re speaking to someone else while asserting what a nice person they are?

Anyway, the point of this little story is this: I have yet to meet anyone who tells me they’re a nice person, who actually IS a nice person.  If someone is genuinely a nice person, they never have the need to tell anyone. Such a quality can be determined through a person’s behaviour: nice people behave nicely, and rude people behave rudely. However, rude people often think of themselves as nice people, but seem to be surprised when the world doesn’t respond to them accordingly.  So instead of reflecting on this and perhaps changing their approach then instead just insist, but I’m nice. Or perhaps there are people out there who simply take what a person says about themselves at face value when they’d be better off presuming the opposite.

It’s the same with pretty much any character trait – honesty, intelligence, patience and so on. There’s never a need to tell anyone whether or not you possess these traits since if you do, they are readily apparent to anyone who’s even remotely observant.

Therefore, it is often the case that precisely those people who lack those characteristics in themselves who have to verbally assert that they do indeed have them.  The ditz who insists she’s really smart if only you get to know her, the used car salesman who claims to be ‘an honest guy’, or that creepy guy in the bar who interrupts complete strangers to tell them how he’s actually really nice.

Whenever someone has the need to tell me that they possess some positive character trait the first thing that pops into my mind is, why do they feel the need to tell me that?

Similarly , whenever someone claims they’re the ones in possession of The Truth, or they are interested in presently reality, I look for, and quickly find, plenty of lies.