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.
‘environmental sociologist’ so a comedy duo then !
But we can at least all sleep easy in our beds when we learn that the same sources of ‘dirty money ‘ becomes, by a miracle that makes water truing into wine look like a poor magic track , cleaned beyond godliness when its seen to support ‘the cause ‘ as seen in the funds Shell, BP etc pay out to the IPCC, CRU etc
The real problem is that they simply cannot understand how they have failed, with what they though was ‘everything ‘ on their side the idea that small group of people with little funding , who they have often labelled as ‘fools’ , can beat them is one they cannot deal with. And so the ‘need’ for conspricy dark or otherwise comes about.
Frankly their failure to understand what went wrong and their highly negative and counter-productive approach to correct their failings , is something we should be more than happy about .
The more they resort to childish name calling , out right lying and the use of smoke and mirrors, the less political traction they have .
The paper is available here:
http://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx
As I’m skimming for first time I suspect it’ll be due a “5 Lewandowsky” rating.
Worthless and ridiculous. Because, sociologist.
Exactly. I’ve been an active denier since 2007, where’s my money?
Sorry, you can’t claim anything. Show your Hockeystick-Carving-Diploma first.
Elaborate Orwellian bulls***.
And exactly what has that money supposedly been spent on? A few dozen skeptical blogs?
And…. an ‘environmemenal sociologist’….?
Funding must be pretty dang good over there if they can afford to throw cash at specialized sociologists!
Must have cost a fortune to pay the seas to have their rate of rise decelerating.
Even if it was true, so what? Wealthy people are allowed to have opinions too, and make donations to who they want, subject to the law. It’s called philanthropy. On the warmist side, the Grantham Institute for Climate Change in the UK was partly founded on the money from a wealthy individual. And his name is Jeremy Grantham.
I’m with Bullocky. Prof. Robert Brulle and Prof. Lewnydumski are a perfect match. Psycho-socio-climatology meets dumpster diving.
A good example of how easy it is for this field to just exaggerate and distort everything.
The reason there are skeptics in the first place is because of this propensity to default to non-truthfulness as a first response. It is who they are.
And we are just supposed to accept the propositions of the science. From people who are perfectly fine with non-truthfulness.
This is exactly how the poltical narrative of the Left works. Some does a study which has, arguably, a shred of truth. As Morano notes, weasle words are inserted. The published study is picked up be a few opinion-activist journalists along with inserting straw men and what if’s. When the first media “reports” hit the public, the MSM follows along and echos the study and “as reported” treating it as fact. Then it’s repeated. And repeated. And repeated. The takeaway is not what’s “reported” but what’s repeated, ala Goebbels. “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
Actually, the “big oil” straw man used by Brulle is part of the “repeating”. Try countering with “Everyone believes this is just another lie from the warmests”.
Obtw, one really should believe the claim about the IRS.
I got a “free” T-Shirt from Energy Citizens, for an afternoon of my time. Does that count?
So Prof. Brulle can surely help me get my dark money for being sceptical. After all I’m certain that neither he nor his university take any money from energy companies. Right?
Drexel Univiversity with almost 2 billion in assets much of it received from dark money paid no income taxes last year by using a tax loop hole.
I’d be embarrassed to write something like that. But, I’m not an environmental sociologist and am in the pay of industry. Great silly early morning reading.
Was Prof. Brulle able to identify the Accounts Payable address for this dark money? I have backlog of invoices to submit.
I don’t like this at all, primarily because there are fools who believe this nonsense.
The prospect of being seen as a sort of Doctor Frankenstein, and greeting a mob with burning torches at the front door of my modest castle, doesn’t exactly appeal to me. But…O well, I’ll do my best to invite them in and charm them with hospitality and reason. And if the fools who swallow Robert Brulle’s paranoia prefer empty-eyed hate to my amazing charm, I will have gone down standing for Truth.
We all have to go sometime, and I’d hate to look back during my final moments and realize I made up data and perpetuated untruths just to lick government boots for filthy lucre. I don’t do this, and wouldn’t even know where to begin. I wonder how it is that Professor Brulle knows so much about the subject. Has he done it?
Likely his school does receive funding from people who have a vested interest in promoting Alarmism. Maybe he assumes that, because he can’t survive without such funding, it must be the way of the world. (A sort of “projection,” if you want the psychological term for this sort of insanity.)
Confectionary manufacturers last week stated they had no involvement whatsoever in the production of chocolate teapots.
This claim has been hotly disputed by Professor Brulles**t, using only an abacus stated he has incontrovertible proof that millions of chocolate tea pots, which are causing catastrophic global warming, are being produced in facilities deep within disused mine shafts throughout the known world.
Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year to all.
http://www.drexel.edu/culturecomm/contact/facultyDirectory/brulle/
I do not see any expertise in climate science in training or research
It looks like he made up a academic program so he would have a job as he looks like the only professor involved.
>>The takeaway is not what’s “reported” but what’s repeated, ala Goebbels. “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” <<
@cedarhills: compared with the IPCC techniques of distortion and omitting, Goebbels was bungling.
hopefully the search for the darkmoney will lead to the discovery of all the missing dark matter
Hysterical, paranoid, tripe – but I think the word Bulls**t best describes this rubbish. How can somone so educated be so stupid. Perhaps him and Greg Laden will be meeting up this christmas to put the world to right.
“The White House reported to House Republicans that there are 18 federal agencies engaged in global warming activities…”
There are 18 federal agencies working to warm the globe?. That’s a fairly brave admission
To all those complaining that they are not getting any of this ‘Dark Money’ for being a skeptic, it is your own fault, if you are willing to do it for free because of some delusional belief then why would the oil companies pay you ?!
But ignoring the issue of how much is going to advocate climate science rejection, how much to union bashing and how much to promote deregulation of the financial system, the really interesting question is how healthy is it for a democracy to have large funds lobbying politicians where the donors are secret?
Is secret money ethical, why should not all funding be transparent as it is on the other ‘side’?
I was delighted to see the standard photo at the top of the Garundia article. The classic:
“Water-vapour-coming-from-a-stack-with-the-Sun-behind-it-making-it-look-black”
(like the black money??).
“Delighted” because it immediately says, “This is article is political rubbish”. Like so many others.