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.
If CAGW is supported by demonstrable scientific proof, a head start of a decade or two, support budgets of 100s of billions from just the US government alone, 97% of all scientists, three decades of 90% of the media heralding the cause, support of every university (without exception- a challenge to find one), scientific organization (without exception) and government scientific agencies (maybe with the only exceptions a couple in Russia), then we johnny-come-latelys, even with some dark cash must be the smartest evil geniuses the world has ever known to bully these guys off their game. Man, I’m feeling very underpaid and under-appreciated. How can a handful of skeptics outsmart and out maneuver all this? Are these people really saying that smart, resourceful, talented, persuasive people are on the contrarian side of the issue and that the climate consensus are so unconvincing and talentless, that they can’t take advantage of having such an enormous upper hand? I think the general public is also underpaid and under-appreciated. They ain’t buying either. Prof Brulle, having named yourself an environmental sociologist, I can understand your angst.
This should be the realm of atmospheric physics aided and abetted by solar physics, geology and marine biology.
However it is now an industry and a religion all rolled into one.
That someone called an “Environmental Sociologist” should even exist pretty much sums up the entire scam.
The whole nonsense would fall apart in days if the media did it’s job.
I firmly believe the public are ignorant of what government global warming activities are costing them. Saying the Federal Government spends 22 billion dollars this year on global warming is for most just numbers. Such expenditure should be made personal. Every American is being charged $66 to change the climate not one jot. The average family is being charged $264 which may be better spent on food or a vacation. If you attribute the charges to just taxpayers you may find the bill for a taxpaying household is closer to $1000; a considerable sum to be paid based on crooked data. Doing the same sums for my own Australian government would result in similar wasteage of taxpayer funds. The hip pocket nerve is an effective weapon if and only if individuals are aware of their pain. The media might get interested if the news is less about the science and more about the cost.
Wiki has described Brulle’s job as under…..”Environmental sociology is typically defined as the sociological study of societal-environmental interactions, although this definition immediately presents the perhaps insolvable problem of separating human cultures from the rest of the environment. Although the focus of the field is the relationship between society and environment in general, environmental sociologists typically place special emphasis on studying the social factors that cause environmental problems, the societal impacts of those problems, and efforts to solve the problems. In addition, considerable attention is paid to the social processes by which certain environmental conditions become socially defined as problems.”
Rather than looking for “Dark Money”….we would all be better off if we understood why we pay people to do the aforementioned….a job description that beggars belief!
It’s in the energy sectors interest to keep the fear levels high. It keeps the prices up. It would be odd if they were on the side of the rationalists.
When it comes to leftist (warmer) accusations, I am a firm believer that these accusations are in fact confessions. It would seem that in addition to the Billions of $$$ we know about, there may be many times that being slipped in to their war on civilization.
Charles Koch must have my address wrong because I’m not finding any checks in the mail.
cba, calls it, this projecting of ones sins onto your perceived enemies, is classic climatology.
Brulle should turn himself in, as he has confessed to ripping the taxpayer off.
This is standard “progressive” fare: accuse your opponents of doing exactly what it is that you, yourself are doing. The thinking is that it deflects attention and somehow inoculates the accuser from the same accusation.
Talk about perpetuating the negative stereotype of things that are “dark”. Dare I proclaim the use of “dark money” as racist?!!! All money is created equal.
Where’s my check?
The $900M is not a “headline”, it is plainly stated in the abstract of Brulle’s article in the Climatic Change web site: “An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over 900 million, with an annual average of 64 million in identifiable foundation support.”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7#page-1
Mr Brulle’s article,” Not Just the Koch Brothers: New Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort” appears on Opednews, and I pointed out his omission of comparative financing for AGW hype, $558 million for ” deniers”, vs. over $50 Billion funding the IPCC and climate change hype. I was immediately blocked from the site, my profile up for review by the editors. So much for objectivity over at Opednews.