A few days ago, I wrote
Part 1: Carter & Harris: Gore "an embarrassment to U.S. science" in this series of diaries which slowly but surely exposes the hidden connections of
Friends of Science to Big Oil and the electric companies. They got publicity in the Canadian Free Press thanks to columnist Tom Harris, who was exposed in Part 1 as a lobbyist for Canadian electrical companies (see comments, thanks Kossacks!).
I've now gathered enough information for a Part 2. (I had posted an earlier version of this that I deleted; for those that saw it, like va dare, see the new info I found on Tim Patterson and APCO Worldwide.) Part 3 will focus on the actual argument made by Bob Carter and his ilk trying to deny that global warming is a serious threat and how Kossacks can refute them succinctly. Be forewarned, it will be a diary with a moderate amount of science in it. But first, let us explore the Big Oil connections. This diary will focus on the connections of the scientists themselves in the Friends of Science group to Big Oil, specifically .
Follow me below the fold for all the sordid details.
The first task here is to expose one of Big Oil's front groups,
Tech Central Station and its founder,
James Glassman. Once establishing that connection, I then turn to the scientists themselves who have inexorably tied themselves to Big Oil and its tentacles in a variety of conservative think tanks.
First, many thanks to ExxonSecrets.org and SourceWatch.org for most of the information I gathered. They are invaluable resources, and I encourage all of you to use those sites.
Tech Central Station has a funding arm called the Tech Central Science Foundation.
Tech Central Station was launched in 1999 as "a cross between a journal of Internet opinion and a cyber think tank open to the public" (TCS news release). According to Washington Monthly, TCS is published by the DCI Group, "a prominent Washington public affairs firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called 'Astroturf' organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot." TCS shares office space, staff and ownership with DCI Group.
Ah, yes, the DCI Group, a top Republican lobbying firm. The Third-World country cited above is Burma, which the DCI Group was given $340,000 to help improve their image in the world. One of the DCI lobbyists in Burma was Charles Francis, a longtime friend of the Bush family.
Francis "even set up two meetings with White House National Security Council Southeast Asia director Karen B. Brooks," Kamen continued, "--an unusual feat given that Burma is under U.S. sanctions and its top officials are barred from coming here--to tout Burma's cooperation on anti-drug, HIV/AIDs and anti-terrorism efforts and in finding the remains of U.S. soldiers from World War II." After lobbying congressional officials, the Defense Department, and well connected think tanks, the "campaign was on the verge of success--the State Department was about to certify the regime--but the administration backed off amid pressure from the Hill, human rights groups and the media."
One of the DCI Group's key managers is Thomas J. Synhorst, who was a field coordinator for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (what, you thought Big Oil and Big Tobacco weren't in bed together?) and was linked to the infamous push polls in South Carolina that derailed John McCain in 2000. He's worked as an advisor to Bush/Cheney 2000, and helped Elizabeth Dole with her 2002 Senate campaign. Basically, he's a bigtime Republican strategist.
So, you have a well-known Republican lobbying firm publishing Tech Central Station, headed by James Glassman. Glassamn's also a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the top conservative think tanks out there, which has received $1,625,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
TCS also publishes articles from people such as Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Dick Armey, Rumsfeld's former assistant, and has an article praising Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) for saying global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".
Yep, when you think Newt Gingrich, obviously the first thing that pops into mind is stuff like "Science Foundation writer". But that's just a minor detail. The main thing, of course, is the smoking gun....
gave the Foundation $95,000 in 2003 for "Climate Change Support."
In fact, that $95,000 made up over half of TCS' total 2003 income. Those trying to argue against global warming being a legitimate threat should really not hitch their wagon to Tech Central Station.
Now, given this information about Tech Central Station, let's show the connections the "Friends of Science" that wrote the letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asking for an open debate on Kyoto have to Big Oil, via these think tanks, which are little more than mouthpieces for Big Oil and their ilk.
Tim Patterson: He is also an author for Tech Central Station. He appeared in the Friends of Science video called "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled". He was an invited climate specialist at a Canadian news conference which was put together by none other than columnist Tom Harris, who is also an Associate for APCO Worldwide. That event was funded by companies such as Imperial Oil, Talisman Energy, and a group of Canadian lime producers. We've hit the trifecta: oil, energy, and lime corporations.
And wait... what about this APCO Worldwide? One of APCO's front groups was The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which helped Philip Morris discredit research that smoking was a cause of cancer and heart problems. After helping Big Tobacco, TASSC moved on to help global warming skeptics. So Patterson is associating with the same people and organizations that were behind Big Tobacco claiming there was no link between smoking and cancer.
Madhav Khandekar, Nils-Axel Morner, & Paul Reiter: They were all invited guest speakers to a congressional & media breifing set up by the Cooler Heads Coalition. And who runs the Cooler Heads Coalition? Guys like Myron Ebell and Marlo Lewis, Jr. They're also both key figures in the leadership of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which is the firm that's running those TV ads against Al Gore's documentary. CEI has received over $2 million from ExxonMobil since 1998, including $270,000 in both 2004 and 2005, and a whopping $465,000 in 2003. And this website only provides the money trail to ExxonMobil. No telling how much other oil companies gave to CEI. Khandekar was also a speaker at the APCO news conference in Canada. Reiter's also a Tech Central Station writer.
Bob Carter: He is also a writer for Tech Central Station, and was the subject of my ire in Part 1 for calling Al Gore "an embarrassment to U.S. science". He gets his comeuppance in Part 3.
Fred Michel: He was also a speaker for the APCO news conference.
Tim Ball: He is also an author for Tech Central Station, and was one of the invited speakers at the APCO news conference.
Ross McKitrick: He works for the George C. Marshall Institute as an expert on climate change. The Marshall Institute has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, including $170,000 in 2004 and $115,000 in 2005. But wait, he also is a senior fellow for the Fraser Institute in Canada, which has gotten $120,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
Douglas Leahey: He is the current President of Friends of Science, and he's an "independent consultant" to the oil and gas industry. Um, yeah, we all know what that means. (wink, wink)
David Wojick: He's a contributing editor for the Heartland Institute and the Greening Earth Society, both of which are puppet organizations set up by Western Fuels. The Heartland Institute has received a monstrous $561,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998, including $119,000 in 2005. And one of the Board of Directors of the Heartland Institute is Walter F. Buchholtz, an ExxonMobil executive!
George Taylor: He's also another writer for Tech Central Station, as well as the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, known as co2science.org on the web. That center is run by the Idso family, well known for their connections to Western Fuels also. Their group has gotten $90,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
Roy Spencer: Yet another writer for Tech Central Station and the Marshall Institute. He's also a contributing writer for the Heartland Institute (mentioned above).
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen: She's an advisory board member of the Scientific Alliance, a British group of industry-friendly experts, which has teamed up with the Marshall Institute to publish global warming critiques. Interestingly, the executive of this Alliance, Mark Adams, worked as PM Tony Blair's personal secretary back in the mid-1990s.
Hans H.J. Labohm: Yet another Tech Central Station writer.
Vincent Gray: Yet another Tech Central Station writer, and he also serves, along with our good friend Bob Carter, on the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, a group started just last month to refute global warming claims.
Gerrit van der Lingen & August H. Auer: Both are also on the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.
Gary Sharp: Yet another Tech Central Station writer.
Jack Barrett: Also an advisory board member of the Scientific Alliance.
Patrick Michaels: Ah, we're hitting the big time here. He's a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a visiting scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute (see above). He's even the publisher of "World Climate Report", which is a newsletter put out by none other than Western Fuels. Western Fuels has personally given him $63,000 in research money, and he's testified as an expert witness on behalf of Western Fuels back in 1995. And Harper's magazine reported that he has gotten over $115,000 personally from coal and oil companies just from 1991-1995 alone. Michaels was also a speaker at the APCO news conference. In one of the funnier faux pas Michaels committed, he, along with the aforementioned Ross McKitrick, published a paper about the temperature record, only they mixed up degrees with radians. Sheesh. The big correlation they found turned out to be rather insignificant once someone corrected the math for them. And he was the 4th speaker at the Cooler Heads Coalition briefing mentioned above.
S. Fred Singer: Jackpot! He's the President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). He helped co-sponsor the 1995 Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change, which was a petition signed by scientists from around the world claiming greenhouse gases were not causing climate change. Funny thing, though, a reporter researched the signatures, and guess what? 25 of the signatories were TV weathermen. There was also a dentist that signed on, and a medical laboratory researcher, and a civil engineer. Of the 33 European signatories, it turns out 12 of them, when contacted, said they never signed such a thing. So in the end, out of over 100 names, those that could be independently verified turned out to be only 20 of them. Singer then edited his list and added more names. Even in this new list, 14 are called "Professor", but for some reason the list does not give their field of study nor any institution where they've worked. Very fishy, no?
Singer was the 6th speaker for the APCO news conference. He also works for the National Center for Policy Analysis, which has received $390,900 from ExxonMobil since 1998; he was the Robert Wesson Fellow at the Hoover Institution, which has gotten $295,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998; he's worked for the Cato Institute; he was part of the now-defunct National Policy Forum, which was shut down after its role in the RNC foreign fundraising scandal: "As a result of NPF's default on the loan, the RNC improperly retained $800,000 in foreign money during the 1996 election cycle"; he's a "policy expert" for the Heritage Foundation, which has received $555,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998; and he's still yet a member of several other think tanks and groups that have received funding from ExxonMobil. There's simply too many to list here.
Oh yeah, and Singer was also the chief reviewer on behalf of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution when they attacked EPA regulations on tobacco smoke back in 1994. So he worked for Big Tobacco too. And the Heartland Institute published a compilation of articles called "Earth Day '96" denying the serious nature of ozone depletion and global warming, and passed them out around college campuses. One of the key articles was "Adventures in the Ozone Layer" by Singer.
What a guy.
And the other biggie...
Sallie Baliunas: She's in 'em all, the Greening Earth Society, the Marshall Institute, the Scientific Alliance, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, World Climate Report, the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and, of course, our favorite website, Tech Central Station. Oh, and if that didn't make it clear enough, she published a paper along with Willie Soon that concluded the climate hasn't really changed in the past 2000 years. Except, the paper itself was partially funded by the American Petroleum Institute. Oh look, the Idso brothers make a reappearance here too. Some editors of Climate Research, which published the paper, even resigned in protest over a flawed peer review that allowed the paper to be published as good science.
So, quite a catch here, no? But you know, all these are really just minor details. I wouldn't leave you Kossacks without tying the ribbon on top of it all. The entire organization Friends of Science was founded by one Charles Simpson. Who is he? A retired oil executive. Nice to know that's who started the group up in the first place, eh? Unfortunately, even after extensive searching, I cannot find any additional information on Simpson, like what oil company he worked for, when, and so forth. There is a black hole of information on him. I wonder why. So I ask the Kossack community to help me in finding out more information on Simpson and who he really is.
Here is a nice graphic which shows a lot of the connections I've put forth in this diary.
For a larger version, click here.
In Part 3, for a little teaser, I'll focus on Dr. Bob Carter's infamous column for TCS. Here is the first paragraph, which I will dissect carefully to show exactly how intellectually dishonest it really is.
The first thing to be clear about is that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Rather, the presence of this trace gas in Earths atmosphere is vitally important for the growth of plants. And in extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, plants in turn release the oxygen that is required for the respiration of most animal life forms, you and me included.
(Semi-personal rant: In the Charles Simpson link above, Tim Patterson also mocked carbon dioxide as a pollutant, meaning he's just as intellectually dishonest as Bob Carter is being. Dr. Patterson got his Ph.D. from UCLA. After reading his viewpoints, and with his association with APCO, I have to say that he is an embarrassment to what UCLA stands for, just like Andrew Jones is.)