A Victory for Climate Science

Exxonmobil Finally Cuts Financing to Deniers

From The Guardian:

according to Greenpeace’s research director, Kert Davies, ExxonMobil has sharply reduced its funding for groups that dispute that global warming is under way.


Greenpeace used a Freedom of Information Act Request to obtain extensive records and e-mails from the Smithsonian regarding Dr. Soon’s research funding. It discovered, for example, a $55,000 grant from ExxonMobil in 2007-8 for research on “Arctic climate change.”

For more than a decade now, climate scientists and their allies have linked Exxon money to groups that promote skepticism of the science underlying global warming. The links brought Exxon some negative press. Then in 2008, the company promised shareholders it would stop financing groups that had become a “distraction.”

Many climate groups wondered if it would follow through. But recent evidence indicates that it has to a significant extent. Alan Jeffers, an ExxonMobil spokesperson, says the company and its foundation are no longer disbursing grants to Dr. Soon, for example.

Greenpeace said that Exxon’s most recent annual worldwide giving report, released this week, confirmed that it was not financing Dr. Soon. Numerous other groups that are critics of climate science and longtime Exxon beneficiaries — the Frontiers of Freedom and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, for example — have also been dropped, according to that report.

In total, Greenpeace found Exxon has reduced its donations to such groups from a peak of $3.4 million in 2005 to less than $800,000 for 2010.

Now if we can just do something about the Koch brothers...

Actually, this fits with my own observations - there is just less going on in the Denier camp this year - the extreme weather around the world has driven many to silence. Denialism is not going to disappear soon, but it looks like Mother Nature has driven them for cover for a while.


The most Ironic bit is that Sen. James Inhofe, the biggest Denier in the US Senate, has had to cancel his participating in the Heartland Climate Denial Conference because he's "Under the Weather"... It turns out he went swimming in algae infested water - algae brought on by Warming...

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