Prof. Brulle (Drexel Uni, Phil) claims IRS helped track secret donations
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Prof. Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist of Drexel University, Phil., has published a study allegedly accusing “deniers” of being sock puppets in the pay of “dark money” from big oil.
According to the story, Prof. Brulle enlisted IRS help tracking a correlation between big oil bogeymen such as the Koch Brothers withdrawing funding from climate studies, and significant increases in funding from other organizations such as the Donor’s Trust and Donor’s Capital Fund.
Quite apart from the outrageous invasion of privacy, if the IRS did actually lend special assistance to the study, the mundane explanation, that lead authors of studies simply turned to other sources when some donors withdrew their support, was not good enough for Prof. Brulle.
Instead, Brulle allegedly asserts the existence of a “dark money” conspiracy – a deliberate attempt to conceal the true sources of funding, by using a network of shadowy donor groups.
“The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming,” said Brulle. “Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight — often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians — but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations.
All I can say Anthony, is where is my dark money cheque? I’ve been sending you these scripts for ages, so far not a dime :-).
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Some other viewpoints on this claim.
Dr. Lubos Motl: We received 1 billion dollars
‘Congratulations to all of us. A possible problem – one pointed out to me by the Galileo Movement via Twitter – is that I may find out that we just “may have received” the billion instead of the phrase “did receive” it.’ — ‘The funding of climate skepticism work is at most something of order $10 million a year and much if not most of the most influential work is being done on a budget that is smaller than that by additional orders of magnitude…This figure should be compared to $80 billion that have been paid to promote the climate hysteria pseudoscience, mostly in the recent decade or two…If Suzanne Goldenberg believes that the purpose of this funding is to change people’s minds, well, then I must say that the climate skeptics are more efficient by almost 4 orders of magnitude.’
Marc Morano:
This new study and the media reports surrounding it are pure bunk! The study counts all money raised by all conservative groups as somehow being for global warming issues! But the study itself admits this is not true.
Tom Nelson:
After UK Guardian’s Suzanne Goldenberg makes a large, fraudulent claim about climate change spending, it gets very quietly ‘fixed’ with the addition of weasel words ‘may’ and ‘up to’
Conservative groups have spent $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change
Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change
…This headline on this article was amended on 21 December 2013 to reflect that not all the $1bn referred to will have funded climate change work.
Twitter / kaleekreider: @DanJWeiss @pourmecoffee Bob …
@DanJWeiss @pourmecoffee Bob Bruelle says headline misleading. $1billion is total avail not total spent on climate. I will forward email.
Update: Robert Brulle pushes back on Suzanne’s fraud here.
‘sock puppets in the pay of “dark money” from big oil.’
Great news. Where’s mine? Who’s nicked my pay cheque?
In case the UK branch of Sceptics International Fry The Planet Eat Babies Roast the Grandkids Corp has another PAYG gettogether after Christmas in the pub, I’ll need a few quid to buy my Fish and Chips and bus fare (£7 and £1.90 respectively – a total of about $13US)
Confession: I once had a free cup of coffee – and TWO chocolate chip cookies courtesy of the high rolling GWPF. And I saw Josh the Cartoonist buying McSteve a beer.
For UK, accusations of Big Money for sceptical voices are entirely ludicrous.
Prof. Robert Brulle MAY have received dark money to write this research. The sums COULD amount to several millions of (possibly) USD.
Anthony, you are a PROBABLE Millionaire!
Why is it that I’m thinking that the same rigorous standards are being used to feed these conspiracy theories as the climate alarmists “science”?
“Brulle’s team … listed 118 climate change denial organizations in the U.S and attempted to trace their source of fundings with the help of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). They found that 91 organizations have received a TOTAL of $558 million from 2003 to 2010. However, they clarified that these amount were not all spent on climate change studies. However, 75 percent of their funds were “dark money.”
$69.75 million a year average.
And how much does the global warming side receive?
This story says $4 billion – or $10.6 million per DAY – in 2011.
http://www.thegwpf.org/how-much-money-are-us-taxpayers-wasting-on-climate-change-try-106-million-a-day/
Orig link to data – Go to Chapter 15:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/rdreport2011/
“Four billion dollars to study climate change — and that’s just for this year!
Check the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2011 budget request, and go tochapter 15: Climate Change in the FY 2011 Budget. The numbers are staggering. In 2011, your government will spend $10.6 million a day to study, combat, and educate about climate change.
The big winner in the climate change money train is the National Science Foundation — they are requesting $1.616 billion. They want $766 million for the Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program, a 15.9% increase from their last budget. They also need another $370 million for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), an increase of 16%. They say they also need another $480 million for Atmospheric Sciences, an increase of 8.1%, and Earth Sciences, up 8.7%.
Oh, and $955 million for the Geosciences Directorate, an increase of 7.4%.
The second largest request for money in 2011 comes from the Department of Energy. They say they need $627 million for things like funding for renewable energy. The request represents a whopping 37% increase from last year! They want a 12% increase for energy efficiency programs. They want to eliminate $2.7 billion of subsidies for industries that emit large amounts of carbon dioxide.
Let’s get NASA in on the parade! For 2011, NASA wants $438 million to study climate change, an increase of 14%. NASA’s total Earth Sciences budget request is actually $1.8 billion. Some $809 million of that is for satellites, some of which are specifically put in orbit to study climate change. It is difficult to separate out which ones are for climate monitoring and which ones are not, so I won’t include this number in the overall climate change money train. But make no mistake: a significant percentage of the $809 million is exclusively for climate change satellites.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for $437 million for climate research. This is an increase of 21.4% from the previous budget. This includes funds for regional and national assessments of climate change, including ocean acidification. Once again, another meaty bag of money to tap into for researchers, who have nice cars and big houses and need to keep up the payments.
The Department of the Interior (DOI) is also interested in robbing the climate change vault — they say they need $244 million in 2011. Of this total, $171 million is for the Climate Change Adaptation initiative. This program identifies areas and species that are most vulnerable to climate change, and implements coping strategies. Another $73 million is needed for the New Energy Frontier initiative. The goal of this program is to increase solar, wind, and geothermal energy capacity.
Solar and wind power don’t survive without this government funding.
Is that $14 trillion making sense yet?
Of course, there’s more. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants $169 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an increase of 1%. Do you believe that next year greenhouse gases will be reduced by the EPA spending $169 million? I would bet the ranch that greenhouse gases will continue to increase next year, and the year after that, and the year after that despite EPA spending your money.
Is there any government agency that does not get some climate change funding? The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) wants $338 million for climate change programs. They want $159 million for climate change research, up a whopping 42%. They also want another $179 million for renewable energy, an increase of 41%! The USDA’s climate change efforts are supposed to help farm and land owners adapt to the impacts of climate change. Yes, really.”
Were the two chocolate chip cookies free as well?
Were you accepting a bribe?
I got a grant from Exxon for mine…..
Brulle got the figure all wrong.
It should be a few tens of trillions, not a billion, anti AGW money a year.
Much more than half the world population doesn’t believe in AGW (counting in India and China)
So in the spirit of the article, all their income should all be counted as anti-AGW money.
May I suggest Professor Stephan Lewandowsky as an experienced peer reviewer for this study?
Another source – the White House itself – 2013 Climate Change funding $22 BILLION – yes with a “B” for 2013 and $21.5 Billion next year:
“The White House reported to House Republicans that there are 18 federal agencies engaged in global warming activities in 2013, funding a wide range of programs, including scientific research, international climate assistance, incentivizing renewable energy technology and subsidies to renewable energy producers. Global warming spending is estimated to cost $22.2 billion this year, and $21.4 billion next year.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fcce-report-to-congress.pdf
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/28/global-warming-gets-nearly-twice-as-much-taxpayer-money-as-border-security/#ixzz2oNaJU7X6
Yep – $69 million average over 8 years compared to $20+BILLION according to the White House Report to Congress …. that sure is a blockbuster finding Mr. Brulle.
http://www.volokh.com/2013/12/23/talking-point-born-1-billion-action-climate-change/
Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, represents a couple dozen non-profit organizations whose 501c(3) applications have been in limbo at IRS for over 3 years. He ought to send a subpoena to Robert Brulle and Drexler Univ, for information on who at IRS provided them with information, information at first blush seems to have been provide illegally.
Twitter: @JaySekulow, @ACLJ
Hard not to laugh when The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are listed as funding the denial machine. And the Chamber of Commerce of The US’ entire revenue is part of the conspiracy?
Pull the other one – it’s got icicles on it.
still waiting for my check
“Prof. Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist of Drexel University, ……”
Presumably a suckler at the public teat. Oh the irony.
And they still complain about “Conspiracy Theories” on the “Deniers” side of things!
The problem with this model of the Warmist Universe in which Dark Funding is thrown at anti-warmists by big oil is that they do not tell me where to apply for this funding for my new blog:
“Skeptical Contrarian Denier”. This information would both give credibility to their arguments and help me luxuriate in the fossil fuel lifestyle to which I want to become accustomed.
I kind of like that now humans know the future with 95% certainty. This sort of thing used to be the domain of palm readers and crystal ball oracles. Now, it’s mainstream science.
According to this link: http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/ar2012_low_res.pdf the WWF Network had an income of EUR 593 million in 2012 – about $810 million. The “dark money” of “$558 million from 2003 to 2010” does not seem quite so impressive now.
Also, if they want to find out about “dark money” shouldn’t they be talking to Tides? Do these people really not know how the AGW side is funded or are they choosing not to look?
And just who exactly has been receiving this dark money? I tried to follow the trail, mostly through melodramatic and misleading Guardian articles. Assuming the story is true, which I seriously doubt, then my estimate of how much annually alarmists outspend sceptics has dropped from 1,500 to 1, to 1,000 to 1.
In my wanderings I came across this delightful statement from His Alarmism James Hansen.
Environmental groups….fear of losing funding…..following a false energy policy? Perish the thought. how could that be true? Sarc off/
“Hansen called the policy of scaling back nuclear power ‘a big mistake’ and claimed that ‘environmental groups for fear of losing funding would prevent a successful fight against climate change by following a false energy policy.'”
All you deniers, stop confusing the issue with facts.
These people are an expensive joke! What if “deniers” have been paid a couple of £/$billion? So what? The climate evangelists have been paid many times that to try to prove something that has not been happening for 18 years.
An explanation of the mindset of these people is given in Christopher Booker’s excellent “Sunday Telegraph” column. I have copied and pasted it below:
“The most interesting response to my item last week on how the BBC’s coverage of so many issues is shaped and distorted by a one-sided “narrative” was from a reader directing me to a passage on “group-think” in The Blunders of Governments, by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe. They quote the brilliant analysis of the symptoms of this phenomenon by the Yale psychologist Irving J Janis in his book The Victims of Group Think. Janis shows how group-think creates in those caught up in it a false sense of “consensus”, which is unable to accept any alternative viewpoint or evidence that contradicts it.
His portrayal of how the victims of group-think get so carried away by the moral rightness of their cause that they cannot tolerate any dissent from it helps us to understand not just the collective psychology of the BBC but many other examples in our time: not least that “consensus” on global warming.
His account of “the illusion of unanimity”, and how group-thinkers regard anyone daring to question their belief-system as an “enemy” to be discredited, superbly characterises the mentality of that small group of “climate scientists” at the heart of driving the warming scare.
This was never more clearly brought home than by those Climategate emails, showing how they were ready to fiddle their data to promote what they themselves called “the cause”, and to suppress the views of any scientists they saw as a threat to their illusory “consensus”.
We all casually use the term “group-think”, but I had not known how comprehensively Janis explains so much that is puzzling about this world we live in. I am grateful to David Samuel-Camps for alerting me to it.”
What is the legal definition of a “climate change denial organisation”? What are the minimum reqirements to match Bruelle’s definition? I suppose Bruelle has no definition at all for that and IMHO he is travelling on some sort of “define-as-you-please”-ticket.
the perfect counterpoint. Canadian conservative/libertarian media personality, Ezra Levant – with whom i do not always agree – investigates the hypocrisy of David Suzuki, with lots of scathing stuff on taxpayer-funded CBC along the way. a must watch:
Approx 54 mins: FULL EPISODE: Ezra Levant confronts David Suzuki
The White House reported to House Republicans that there are 18 federal agencies engaged in global warming activities.
Now there is a statement I could sorta believe in. Except it is probably more than 18. But only if you buy into waste = global warming.
Readers may be interested in the EU’s policy of funding green groups to lobby..the EU!
The gravy train is never-ending
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10532853/European-Union-funding-90m-green-lobbying-con.html