This is the sort of stuff that just makes you want to scream.
From Oil Sands Fact Check, comes this interview with Bill McKibben: http://oilsandsfactcheck.org/2014/09/25/video-the-truth-about-the-anti-keystone-xl-rockefeller-brothers-fund/
Excerpt:
Timed to coincide with the anti-fossil fuel march in New York City over the weekend, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation (RBF) led a press conference of groups announcing a pledge to divest from fossil fuels. Given that board members of RBF are heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune, the media was led to believe that divestment from fossil fuels was a drastic change in practice for the foundation. Yet anyone who knows the least bit about RBF is well aware that foundation has given millions to groups that oppose fossil fuels for years.
In fact, RBF is credited for providing the financial support to launch 350.org. How do we know that? Because Bill McKibben himself reluctantly gave away those details in a little-watched YouTube video (full version of interview here) from three years ago with a news outlet called Climate Challenge.
From the transcript:
Climate Challenge: So you don’t get money from Pew or Rockefeller or any of those big foundations?
McKibben: No we did. Rockefellers Brothers fund gave us some money right when we were starting out that’s been useful too.
Climate Challenge: But they no longer fund you?
McKibben: Uhh I don’t know. I don’t have that sort of… funders sitting in front of me.
Climate Challenge: Really? That’s usually something that people know.
McKibben: Rockefellers is one of our… is a great ally in this fight.
So now the question becomes just how much money has RBF pumped into 350.org over the years? Vivian Krause, writing in the Financial Post looked into that early last year and found the number to be in the millions. In a piece out just today, Ron Arnold digs into the actual investments. No wonder McKibben was reluctant to divulge the information.
====================================================================================================
And here, in plain public view, with an easy to find simple search, is the answer to Bill McKibben’s “Uhh I don’t know.” moment.
h/t to Vivian Krause via Twitter
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Yes.
Winner!
Bill McKibben sounded unsure. His website IS SURE.
Same thing in 2013
Who set up the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment? Jeremy Grantham who set up Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC. What does this investment outfit invest in? Many things as well as oil, coal, and natural gas exploration and distribution companies.
All U.S. nonprofits are required to file and make public an IRS Form 990 after the close of each fiscal year. The 2012 FY ended September 30, 2013. The 2013 FY ends today.
So the latest available is for 2012. Expect the 2013 990 to appear around next June.
The reason the reports are public is that the taxpayers, by virtue of its tax-exempt status, essentially “own” the nonprofit and are expected to watch over it. Unfortunately they rarely do.
http://350.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/350.org-FY13-990-Public-Disclosure-Copy.pdf
Not that I disagree with you, but since the linked interview was from 2011, shouldn’t the data on contributions to 350.org be prior to 2011?
Kurt in Switzerland
Hi Kurt,
I didn’t know the interview was from 2011. I looked at the youtube and it was posted up on Mar 4, 2014. Anyway, McKibben said in the video the Rockefeller Foundation gave them money right when they started which was in 2007. And we know the foundation also gave them money in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Therefore we have a gap of 4 years. My guess here is they continued to give. I’ll try and dig after my morning chores.
Sustainable Markets Foundation
$100,000 for 1 year
For its 350.org project.
Program: Sustainable Development
Award Date: 06/17/2010
Sustainable Markets Foundation
$75,000 for 1 year
For its project 350.org.
Program: Sustainable Development
Award Date: 11/07/2009
Kurt,
Here are the search results for my last post. 2009 and 2010 funding received by 350.org
http://tinyurl.com/nzzj2gq
Jimbo –
Thanks; also for comments further down. It would be appropriate for Anthony Watts to update the posting with a list of contributions PRECEDING the interview.
Ideal would be for McKibben to make a guest posting at WUWT, explaining the organisation, its funding and its plans (and inviting questions from interested parties).
Kurt in Switzerland
I was hoping there was going to be a poll to go along with this headline 🙂
I’m going with “all of the above”.
I think it’s (a) because of (b).
Well we already know for sure that he is stupid, we have overwhelming evidence of that, so the only question is is he a liar also, I say yes.
In other words 350.org is funded by big oil.
Hilarious!
John D. Rockefeller made money by providing a commodity that helped to transform civilization, and along with coal and natural gas made possible the enormous progress in health, longevity, and material wealth for the average citizen of the West over the last 150 years or so. His heirs would turn progress on its head, trading cheap, plentiful energy and world development for some misguided notion of ‘sustainability’ and a vision of the future that would turn us all back to plowing with bullocks and using the dung for fuel. ‘Decency’? I call it shameful.
/Mr Lynn
Give us a break. Everyone screams that skeptics are paid shills of big oil, but all the big money funding the anti CO2 movement is for a noble cause, right.
This neighbourhood values truth and good science. What looks like decency appears misguided.
But 350.org is no longer funded by “Big Oil” if RBF divests themselves of their small remaining amounts of oil interests.
For the Rockefellers to fund such a group shows just how nefarious they were, and to gain political advantage by making this token divestiture shows they haven’t repented.
Shame on the Rockerfellers. Shame, shame, shame.
So do you think if they sell all of their oil interests and put the money into “green” interests that this will change the fact that the fortune came from big oil?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Jay Rockefeller isn’t running for reelection because he couldn’t beat Shelley Moore Capito. There was nothing noble about it.
There are many oil funded green bodies. Ya see it’s OK for them to take oil money, but it’s not OK for CAGW sceptics. Even some like Dana Nuccitelli – Guardian environmental contributor works for Tetra Tech oil and gas services company while telling us we must move away from fossil fuel use. It’s worse than we thought!
Here is another.
Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC has investments in oil, coal, and natural gas exploration and distribution companies. It was set up by the environmentalist and hedge funder Jeremy Grantham.
The recipients of funding from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment (founded by Jeremy Grantham) includes the London School of Economics: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
It’s worse than we thought.
methinks petey grace is another nick stokes.
@PG
“Where is the financial benefit to those donors?”
Have you not heard of ‘greenwashing’ Peter? These companies give money to green NGOs to make themselves look worthy and cuddly in the eyes of the average gullible greenie/watermelon
How clean is our ‘dirty’ oil? You’d be surprised. by Peter Burn, former senior advisor in the Greenhouse Gas Reductions Directorate in Environment Canada, and advisor to Environment Minister Jim Prentice. (July 2014)
‘The Rockefeller’s interest is driven by decency and that drive appears to be incomprehensible to this neighbourhood’
What is McKibben’s interest driven by when he won’t answer a straight question?
Ok sorry,I am not a climate scientist and have never had a peer reviewed paper published so I withdraw the question.
I imagine the Rockefellers are haunted by some sort of guilt about their gains being ill-gotten. People who have worked hard for a living can’t imagine the warped brains of people who haven’t worked so hard, or who gained their wealth by some means that are unjust.
There is a great scene in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” where Claudius is attempting to pray for forgiveness, (after killing his brother for his brother’s crown and wife,) and says,
“My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder-
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?”
Perhaps the most annoying attribute of the rich and spoiled is their tendency to ask others to sacrifice, as they keep their wealth. (For example, the rich lady stuffing bonbons into her face while blubbering into Kleenex as she watches a PBS show about the poor and hungry in Africa. She gets a sort of pleasure from crying for the poor, but never gets around to feeding the poor….or, for that matter, dieting.)
The Rockefellers inherited their money. So if they see it as “ill gained” that makes them “ill gained”. They gained it by virtue of birth.
Peter,
there is no point throwing “weepy bill” under the bus, you and yours are permanently chained to that squealing warmulonian, so down you go. If you wanted to get some “cred” from denouncing McKribben, you should have been very loud and clear over a decade ago. It’s too late now…
You think you are achieving “push back” at WUWT? Sure, there many are lukewarmers who believe adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will reduce surface and atmospheric radiative cooling ability. But some here are real sceptics. We know the 255K assumption is in grave error. We know AGW due to CO2 is a physical impossibility. I have the empirical experiments to back my claims. “Push back” as hard as you like sunshine, it can never work. 😉
“But, but, hard sceptics are not “pal-reviewed!” I hear you screech. Here’s the thing Peter, I have been pressured to submit to several journals, and my answer is always “NO”. *
Why not? Well, it can now be shown that the empirical dis-proof of Gorebull Warbling was demonstrated in the public domain before the journals. Pal-review is scientific bureaucracy, not scientific method. Its easy hijack should be an embarrassment to all thinking scientists. I intend to rub that message in good and hard. Real hard.
Hard sceptics are not just after the end of the AGW hoax, we are gunning for the (non) scientific bureaucracy that allowed it to flourish. Real sceptics are going to destroy any hope of the professional left playing dress-ups in the white coat of scientific respectability from now until the heat death of the universe.
So what ave you achieved with your “push back” Peter? Nothing but exposing the vacuity of the warmulonians and the professional left. Remember, up the tracks, not across Peter.
*Ok, someone slipped up. Some of my old 2011 experiments were published without my knowledge, or prior approval, in a peer reviewed paper. It wasn’t me, so my plan remains solid.
Say petey, did you shut off your fossil-fueled heating this past winter?
The hypocrisy of limousine liberals is beyond the pale.
There sits Eileen Rockefeller playing organic “farmer” in Vermont doing a fair imitation of a trust-fund hippie. Many in the family’s 4th generation are completely removed from reality.
The Rockefellers and their ilk are not interested in saving the planet for anyone but themselves. Their efforts are now, and always have been, geared toward the complete domination of governments and human beings. They see representative government as messy and much less manageable than totalitarian control. People like you, Peety, are their “useful idiots.”
Jay knew that he would lose…that’s why he quit. People in WV are a little ticked off with his voting record as of late and without “Porkbarrel” Byrd to partner with Jay was not going to win another round…nothing to do with coal, oil or the environment.
Peter, just a load of unsubstantiated BS. The family “knows”?! BS Another set of “born again” anti-development billionaires buying indulgences at the altar of CAGW, having made their billions and now leaving the majority of the earth’s population to wallow in energy poverty because they “know”!
Powering industry, heating and cooling homes, turning on the lights, and transporting mankind via the internal-combustion engine “will damage the speciies”? Where do such antediluvian thoughts come from?
Who consistently vote against coal. In every vote, Manchin has voted with Obama, even when he whines about having to. So the question becomes, how stupid are the people of West Virginia?
We will find out in November.
both
Search Results were limited to 5. Could there be more?
There are only 5 results if you widen the search.
Wonder why he was too scared to admit to the truth.
Because the Rockefeller fortune was oil – in fact, a monopoly on oil and the old Standard Oil Company was one of the first monopolies to be busted up under the law. So now McKibben is a “shill” for the Rockefeller interests. A paid shill.
Probably he was worried that smaller donors would feel less motivated to contribute if they knew that 350.org had big-money backing.
Receiving funding from the Rockefellers is not necessarily something to be proud of. They have funded some rather unfortunate causes in their time.
I think that Eugenics is something the progressives would like to forget much like the warmists would like to forget the other warming periods during the Holocene. Both items are bad for the image don’t ya know.
In fact, in many ways the present warm-mongering by the progressives is a continuations of their efforts to “purify” mankind. (their vision of mankind at least) The fact that they corrupted science in furtherance of their aims should surprise no one as science has always been for sale.
Eugenics is sure not the only one.
The big one is the long support of the left for state socialism in the 20th century. State socialism killed 100 million and enslaved billions.
Then of course there is the internment of the Japanese by FDR, and the long support of Jim Crow policies by the “party of the little people”.
The common element is the use of big government to force coercive solutions.
Eugenics continues in the guise of the Club of Rome. The elite are allowed to breed, but, if CoR had their way, the rest of us wouldn’t breed. Why else would they advocate population control without leading by example?
Earth Charter Initiative
North American Commissioners:
Maurice F. Strong, Canada
John Hoyt, U.S.
Elizabeth May, Canada
Steven C. Rockefeller, U.S.
Severn Cullis Suzuki, Canada
http://www.earthinaction.org/content > Who And What > Commissioners
Rockerfeller was 350.org’s 2nd largest single donor in 2012, probably hard for a president to remember the second largest, if only they had given $300,001!
http://threefifty2pt0.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/fy2012_350.org_form_990_public_disclosure_copy.pdf
If you are asking for an opinion then yes to all three and I would toss in misinformed and irresponsible as well. If you want solid facts the answer is nobody knows. We do know that carbon deniers kill people with the kiss of progressive global concern. Carbon deniers in this case being those who deny passage of so-called death trains carrying coal to market and who deny cheap fossil fuel powered electrical energy to starving populations in large parts of the world. It is not limited to the third-world. How many more elderly Brits must die from the bitter cold each winter because of misbegotten green energy policies advocated by these carbon deniers? How long before society does the right thing by putting them behind bars?
The Rockefellers are a brainless familiy that has spent a lot trying to atone for their antecedent’s bad deeds. Nelson was as stupid as they come.
Antecedants perhaps were not so brainless. It’s always easy to criticize some historic character out of context for the age he lived in. It’s fashionable in this age of homogenization to put Sir Isaac Newton down because he was so religious and because he dabbled in alchemy (chemistry wasn’t yet available for dabbling in the 17th Century). I’m sure your forbears and mine believed in witches, magic, slavery, demons….Progressives are like termites demolishing a palace. PC has banned Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, from schools etc. for being insensitive to our minorities. Actually Mark Twain was more empathetic toward the plight of slaves than most Americans in the mid 19th century. Oh yes, he used the “N” word, which is actually an American mispronunciation of the Portuguese word “negro” which means simply black, the color. The Portuguese were the main slave traders bringing Africans to the Americas. Yes, I realize that in time and context it took on a pejorative meaning and I understand that. But to rewrite history and ban the world’s literature and art to clean it up is really a way to polish the image of European descendants.
You reminded me of this cartoon. And I was also reminded of a DVD set my uncle bought of award winning Tom and Jerry/Looney Tunes cartoons. When you put the DVD in, there was a disclaimer about how insensitive and wrong some attitudes of the cartoons were.
But what annoys me about the leftist mindest is their hypocrisy and double-standard. It is wrong to use the “N word”; it is not wrong to call someone a cracker. It is wrong to use oil; it is not wrong to profit from someone who made their fortune from oil. It is wrong for poor countries to use cheap coal; it is not wrong for me to own several large houses but still live on an always moving yacht. And I could go on. The “rules for me and rules for thee” hypocrisy is what disgusts me most of all.
Behind the slave trading were the Arabs and Africans themselves. It would seem that slave trading in Arab states is still quite fashionable … just ask the Indian contract construction workers who go to Dubai to make a crust. I was only the other day talking to a foreign national who went to work in Dubai on contract … only to find that the ‘deal’ once you arrived there was nowhere near what the ‘offer’ provided in the employment contract. If you resign and leave, you are billed the cost to get you there and you are physically held there until it is paid. Alternatively, the best way to get out is to sit back, feet up, until you get dismissed at which time they are required to repatriate you to your country of origin.
I never cared for Nelson, but I don’t think John D. Rockefeller Sr, lived a fine life, he was not evil.
Amazing hypocrisy!
You can’t make this stuff up.
One wonders how that makes his following feel……..or if they even have the ability to process the thought in context.
Steyer, Soros, Rockefeller, etc. I just threw up in my mouth a little. It seems that we should change from the term “hockey team” to “projectionists”.
What we are observing is more along the lines of a puppet show.
“McKibben: Rockefellers is one of our… is a great ally in this fight.”
Maybe weepy Bill is using Bill Clinton’s definition of “is”.
This just makes you want to cry.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/06/the-weepy-bill-mckibben-effect-study-links-emotionalism-and-global-warming/
Stupid or evil. Whats the difference if it leads to the same outcome.
For the last 39 years, yes since the last time before present the persons and group beloning to the AWG-group put forward their thesis re. CO2, I have been saying: Follow the money.
adding the question: “Where have all the money gone?
And now
when some followed the money so we know where they came from,
we still don’t know where the money gone.
There are so much money “placed” by investors who want the AWG-believers to be believed to be true,
that neither Theories of Science is on the agenda before a paper of those believers are presented,
nor do we know how much of the pre-view paper’s writers, editors and other have had of said money,
nor do we know how much of the money gone into other pockets not associated with science at all, neither with so called science or real sound science….
Well, I guess a lot of the money will have gone to airlines and 5* hotels.
Reblogged this on Canadian Climate Guy and commented:
Busted!
So old scary eyes Mckibben gets $800.000 given to him over 5 years and he comes up with uhh I don’t no, I have not got the info in front of me.Despicable liar on this subject and his so called global warming crap.What I cannot believe is how the rockerfellers are taken in by this fool.
Taken in? The Rockefellers fund whatever cements political power in governments instead of individuals. From Metropolitanism to Green Energy Deliberative Democracy via Dialogue to the Club of Rome. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/experimenting-on-people-and-places-via-the-rockefeller-process-of-communication-for-social-change/ makes it quite clear too that the Rockefeller philanthropies have pushed other foundations to follow whatever their lead is and not contradict the message.
McKibben would be aware of just how coordinated this all is. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the original foundation. You can download the lovely book created that openly brags about their pushes involving social engineering.
@del boy
What I cannot believe is how the rockerfellers are taken in by this fool.
——————–
You could be right… but I think it will be childish to consider a wealthy and a powerful entity of such a magnitude as foolish.
I call it an entity… as regardless of the name, it stands and operates in regard to it’s power and wealth status…….
It will do anything to protect its interest.
One of main priorities is to get the best information the “silver” can “grab”, especially while its own interest at stake.
What do you think the best information on climate change could be!
Could it be nearly the same you know these days [decelerated warming,hiatus, very little warming, close to a no existent AGW.. etc.] …….!
But getting at it about a decade earlier in advance….makes that information very important and priceless while the interest related to it is in question!
If you know that chances of this global warming or the AGW are next to none and destined to crash, and if it helped you to protect your interest by making it fly higher and higher before crashing!…[Icarus “effect”]…….
wouldn’t you think this as the most effective way to be done with it once and for all, without any chance of the threat coming back to you in any other form or shape .
Paying for organisations and to people like Mc Kibben can and does help in that regard. There always spineless characters ready to play the fool and the idiot for few more dollars and a little publicity.
Global warming and the AGW are not the real threat in such cases of big oil or whatever.
The CO2 emissions seem to be the real threat.
Making and helping the AGW to crash as loudly as possible will deafen any other threatening problems about CO2 emissions..
I don’t know any Rockfellers individually to be good or bad, clever or fools… as far as I can tell any one of them, or anyone in their possition could be as good and bright as it can get…….but still I think none owns such wealth and power… but incontrary that kind of wealth and power owns them.
cheers
Someone should inform the independent auditors of the Rockefeller Foundation that one of their recipients is not keeping accurate donor records and should be dropped from the grants list.
350, 400, 450, whatever.
& Naomi Oreskes in her capacity as the GMMPSPHMCCC*** should be informed immediately that we found out that it looks like McKibben is a double agent in the CAGW team being paid by both big oil and by green NGOs.
*** GMMPSPHMCCC means the ‘Grim Mistress of the Ministry of Public Safety for the Protection of the Heroic Mythology of the Climate Change Cause’
John
And how many times has McKibben parroted that line about how “all deniers are funded by big oil”?
Anthony, where’s YOUR $800,000?
Hypocrites.
Not the word I would have used, but I understand this is a family-centered blog.
Nice climate movement. A bunch of sleazy characters and connivers in cahoots.
Divesting from fossil fuels is a image move, it doesn’t have any real effect. For example, Exxon Mobil traded over 14 million shares today with a value of 1.4 billion And Rockefeller isn’t listed a major holder.
We expected what? Honesty? Integrity?