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 :-).
==============================================================
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.
So Col Mosby,
How much money has come from dirty coal? Isn’t that the real enemy?
When will the basic illogical nature of “big oil” claims be addressed? “Big oil” is hugely invested in green and benefits from scarcity (natural or contrived by Greenshirt restriction). Economics #101 before post-normal politics displaced it.
I may have missed it but don’t forget the expenditure planned by the Department of Defense to go to all renewable fuels
Considering the provenance of “dark matter” and “dark energy,” “dark money” is a felicitous term: something that exists only in the imagination of a grant receiver.
>The AGU (American Geophysical Union) would like to take the time to thank all of our generous sponsors who support the 2013 Fall Meeting and the events at the meeting. And guess which company is at the top of the list?<
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/general-information/thank-you-to-our-sponsors/
How a Talking Point Is Born: $1 Billion Against Action on Climate Change
http://www.volokh.com/2013/12/23/talking-point-born-1-billion-action-climate-change/
Funny, still waiting for my check…
Update from Canada Post Deepak Choprah: It’s in the mail… 😉
Too often, as is obvious here, those who proclaim the loudest for transparency are the least transparent and you can use this formulation for words like, fairness, freedom, justice, fill-in-your-own-word. Considering how much money goes to the Green propaganda machine – from governments, private companies, and the now extreme environmental groups, 1 billion laughable dollars, even if remotely true, is a drop in the bucket in the PR war. These people are now desperate and every few months need to re-feed their Green base with new (easily countered) head garbage to keep them fired up for ACGW, which is now obviously all in their minds; the garbage serves as fuel to keep their dreams/nightmares alive.
If Lewandowsky and Cook were not such frauds, they would find this “study” to be a great example of truly deranged conspiracy kookiness. Instead, they are probably coaching Prof. Brulle on how to product place this sort of dreck so that the President will tweet about it.
Such crap, the global warming industry gets magnitudes of order more money than skeptics, even if one believes the figures in this “study.”
Climate scientists and their sycophants in academia and the media are some of the greediest and hypocritical people on the planet…
Coach Springer at 6:44 am
The IRS would not do that.
Can you be so sure that some friend within the IRS would not do it? Lois Lerner took the 5th on much larger issues.
If someone tells huge, grandiose lies in one area of science, you can bet they will do so in others.
Or, it’s huge, grandiose lies all the way down?
Or, “go home, sociology, you’re drunk!”
Lois Lerner was the IRS director for the Exempt Organizations Division at the time of the research! This will deserve House scrutiny
JohnWho says: December 24, 2013 at 6:44 am
My pile of “dark money” appears to be a little, uh, light.
Thank you for the laugh. Now for the $64K question: What’s the difference between an Environmental Sociologist and a Social Environmentalist? Answer. The former appears awkward at an Al Gore soiree.
He didn’t “enlist the IRS”, he used publicly available records (Form 990, and probably others) to analyze the flows of money. Please change your subhead and article.
Why shouldn’t I be skeptical of people who play hard and loose with the facts? People like Goldenberg can’t believe that anyone would support a cause without getting paid for it. They wouldn’t.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
December 24, 2013 at 10:06 am
“He didn’t “enlist the IRS”, he used publicly available records (Form 990, and probably others) to analyze the flows of money. Please change your subhead and article.”
Why does Brulle not analyze the 1000 times bigger money flow that the State pumps into the warmists coffers? Because he has the task to stamp out any opposition.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
December 24, 2013 at 10:06 am
Since you apparently couldn’t be bothered to RTFA:
“He 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).”
Let me help you with that tricky English language:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphrase
& since you asked so nicely to have the article changed based on your own ignorance of the source of the words you object to, please remain silent when your intellectual & philosophical superiors are speaking (hint: that’s basically everyone else who posts, writes, or comments here).
Rattus Norvegicus says:
December 24, 2013 at 10:06 am
He didn’t “enlist the IRS”, he used publicly available records (Form 990, and probably others) to analyze the flows of money. Please change your subhead and article.
The information should not be available to the public – period.
The reason for the original data collection was to ascertain the level of taxes to be paid,
Once that was accomplished the only reason hold the data is for legal reasons.
There is no valid reason snoop through another person’s tax records unless you are researching the opposition so you can shut them down.
““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,” ”
YES!!
Does it matter one dot how much funding the sceptics have raised to fight the cult of global warming. The important issue is the science itself regardless of the cost of presenting each sides scientific findings to the world. As with most of the GW hysterical ‘scientific’ publicity these days, having lost the scientific debate the policy of the cult is to attack any aspect of scepticism with anything but the science. I challenge Professor Brulle, and Suzanne Goldenberg to put some substance behind their assertions. If they cannot do this then it is rather like accusing someone of theft and then not being prepared to say what has been stolen.
Box of Rocks and Rattus Norvegicus
This story leaves me nauseous. I hope Rattus is correct that Prof. Brulle only used public info available to all, but I wouldn’t think it possible. It seems he had access to the “Lois Lerner IRS
attack those who disagree.” IRS. If the “Tea Party” was not safe from scrutiny how long will it be before the “Skeptic Party” starts being persecuted. This scandal, above all others, reflects the disrespect of the current administration with our constitution.
I`ll only believe the reality of dark money,when they find the Higgs pound.