They also like to imply that the entire controversy is driven by the illimitable lucre doled out by the dreaded George Soros, who is motivated by -- well, I'm not sure what the motive would be. Evil for evil's sake, I suppose.
Actually, the illimitable lucre is all going to the right-wing nay-sayers. Go here to see who is tossing big bucks into the campaign to fight those fighting against global warming. No surprise: ExxonMobil is the big sugar daddy.
One of the leading advocates of the "no global warming" position is a 90-something physicist named Frederick Seitz, at one time the president of the National Academy of Scientists. Seitz was the big name attached to the so-called "Oregon petition" against the Kyoto protocols. He has functioned in the same way before -- on behalf of Big Tobacco:
Call him the $45 million man. That's how much money Dr. Frederick Seitz, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, helped R. J. Reynolds Industries, Inc., give away to fund medical research in the 1970s and 1980s. The research avoided the central health issue facing Reynolds—"They didn't want us looking at the health effects of cigarette smoking," says Seitz, who is now 94—but it nevertheless served the tobacco industry's purposes...And:
Seitz earned approximately $585,000 for his consulting work for R. J. Reynolds, according to company documents unearthed by researchers for the Greenpeace Web site ExxonSecrets.org and confirmed by Seitz. Meanwhile, during the years he consulted for Reynolds, Seitz continued to draw a salary as president emeritus at Rockefeller University, an institution founded in 1901 and subsidized with profits from Standard Oil, the predecessor corporation of ExxonMobil.So, what did ExxonMobil get for its money? Let's take a refresher gander at the Oregon petition. In May 1998, the Seattle Times revealed that many of the names on that position may not have belonged to leading scientists:
Several environmental groups questioned dozens of the names: "Perry S. Mason" (the fictitious lawyer?), "Michael J. Fox" (the actor?), "Robert C. Byrd" (the senator?), "John C. Grisham" (the lawyer-author?). And then there's the Spice Girl, a k a. Geraldine Halliwell: The petition listed "Dr. Geri Halliwell" and "Dr. Halliwell."Embarrassing revelations. Of course, the skeptics need merely wait a few years, since the public memory is notoriously short. Meanwhile, they can keep using ExxonMobilBucks to pay off the mortgage. Nice racket, eh? In comparison to this crew, the ladies of Pamela Martin & Associates did honest labor.
2 comments:
I was just sorting through some old notes and noticed to my surprise that Frederick Seitz was at one point on the National Advisory Board of Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media -- along with such worthies as Edward Teller, Midge Decter, Clare Boothe Luce, Eugene Lyons, and Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, plus others too numerous to mention.
List courtesy of RightWeb -- which also points out that in its heyday (the 70's and 80's), AIM was closely connected with the World Anti-Communist League, various supporters of the Pinochet regime, and Reverend Moon.
And here I'd thought that Seitz was just a shill for the corporations. Looks like his ties to the military-industrial complex go even deeper.
(Hey, it's almost enough to make you believe that the CIA really has been responsible undermining the independence of the news media on behalf of American business interests.)
Seitz isn't the only "smoking is healthy" alumnus now getting paid to say global warming is a communist treehumping plot (or that it's just a fuzzy piece of cotton candy, nothingto see here...) Fred Singer also a 2nd-hand-smoke-is-harmless shill-- who now works at the AEI with other fine fellows like mike ledeen, has most recently been offering scientists $10,000 for any paper debunking climate change. nice.... but of course they aren't the only shills and the funny thing is the names haven't changed much in almost 20 years... its alway fred singer, patrick michaels...same old same old... (not to mention the EVIL C.E.I. those guys have gotten close to $5M from exxon alone) and of course cei's little nazi youth, bureaucrash who are now in the climate denying game but for hip savy culturejammers
u may also wanna check out DeSmog Blog who actually follow the omney trail and skeptics and deniers like no other!
oh and one good bit of news.. now that the cat has been out of the bag like no other, Exxon has cut the funds for all these "scientists" maybe people weren't as stupid as previously thought...
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