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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Skepticgate: Revealing Climate Denialists for What They Are
  • Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:18:30 -0700


"Michaels admitted on CNN that an estimated 40% of his funding came from
petroleum industry sources"

Kelly Rigg Executive Director, GCCA
January 26, 2011 12:56 PM
Skepticgate: Revealing Climate Denialists for What They Are
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-rigg/skepticgate-revealing-cli_b_814013.html
Greenpeace USA's lead researcher Kert Davies just broke the story about a
congressional investigation requested by Rep. Waxman that may finally put the
climate denial machine under the microscope.
This by all reckoning is a real "climategate" - a genuinely scandalous
story in which a scientist who testified before Congress hid the fact that he
was funded largely by corporate interests. But will it get the same airplay
that the now debunked "climategate" story enjoyed?
Maybe timing is everything. The hackers who broke into the computers of
the University of East Anglia did so just weeks before the Copenhagen Climate
Summit in December 2009. So when the denial machine went into overdrive the
press fell for it hook, line and sinker. Despite several independent reviews
exonerating the fundamental science, a number of newspaper retractions and
various public apologies to people whose names were dragged through the mud,
many people were left wondering whether climate change was really as much of
a threat as it had been made out to be.
Compare that to the dog days of last summer. When much of the northern
hemisphere was on vacation and concerns about climate tended more towards the
cost of running an air conditioner, this far more explosive story barely
escaped the blogosphere. Prominent climate skeptic Pat Michaels admitted on
CNN that an estimated 40% of his funding came from petroleum industry sources:
In and of itself, this was hardly news. Desmogblog has revealed that since
1998 ExxonMobil has contributed $25 million to 35 anti-science nonprofits
while oil giant Koch Industries has doled out more than $48 million to
efforts that attack climate science.
Dr. Michaels, according to Rep. Waxman may have knowingly misled Congress
into believing that only around 3% of his income came from the energy sector
when he appeared before a congressional subcommittee hearing on the climate
crisis the previous year. Waxman is now calling to have Michaels brought
before the committee to clarify the sources of his funding.
In his letter to the new Republican Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Waxman
points out that "Among the scientists who testified before this Committee on
the issue of climate change in the last Congress, Dr. Michaels was the only
one to dismiss the need to act on climate change."




  • [Livingontheland] Skepticgate: Revealing Climate Denialists for What They Are, Tradingpost, 01/26/2011

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