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‘Amateur Paleontologist’ Gingrich Accuses Climate Scientists of ‘Hubris’

With conservative commentators like Fox’s Stuart Varney using this winter’s unusually cold temperatures to deny global warming, CNN’s Crossfire held a climate change debate Monday that pitted advocate against skeptic. But things really got interesting when self-described “amateur paleontologist” Newt Gingrich asked the panel: “What’s the right temperature for the planet?”

“Assume for a minute that we have the capacity to actually decide the planet’s temperature,” Gingrich mused. “What kind of hubris does it take to say, I know exactly what this planet’s temperature ought to be and I’m going to manage it to that effect?”

“The age of the dinosaurs was dramatically warmer than this is right now and it didn’t cook the planet,” Gingrich responded. “In fact, life was fine.” He also said that Minnesotans escaping to the Caribbean this winter demonstrates that “slightly warmer wouldn’t be a crisis.”

Of course, if you believe in that other scientific phenomenon — evolution — you will know that when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the “life” Gingrich described did not include humans. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/amateur-paleontologist-gingrich-accuses-cli
mate-scientists-of-hubris/]

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Limbaugh: Media, Liberal Activists Ginning Up ‘Polar Vortex’ to Sell Global Warming ‘Hoax’

Rush Limbaugh isn’t buying into the “polar vortex” term being used in the media to describe the extreme cold all over the country right now, saying it’s just a hyperbole and a way for liberals to “attach this to the global warming agenda.” He mocked the environmentalist warnings that the ice is melting at the North Pole, because of what’s happening right now, and took note of the climate scientists whose ship got stuck near the South Pole.

He mocked the media coverage of the “vortex,” saying that the entire game is to make this sound “new and unprecedented” so blame entirely goes to humans, “particularly Republicans.” http://www.mediaite.com/online/limbaugh-media-liberal-activists-ginnin
g-up-polar-vortex-to-sell-global-warming-hoax/]

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To whom (or what) are you responding? All I heard was a feeble wet fart.

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Not Just the Koch Brothers: New Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort

A new study conducted by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort.

Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are "dark money," or concealed funding.

The data also indicates that Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, two of the largest supporters of climate science denial, have recently pulled back from publicly funding countermovement organizations. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to countermovement organizations through third party pass-through foundations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital, whose funders cannot be traced, has risen dramatically.

Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study during a year-long fellowship at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The study was published today in Climatic Change, one of the top 10 climate science journals in the world.

The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. government to regulate emissions. This countermovement involves a large number of organizations, including conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, trade associations and conservative foundations, with strong links to sympathetic media outlets and conservative politicians.

To uncover how the countermovement was built and maintained, Brulle developed a listing of 118 important climate denial organizations in the U.S. He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service. "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. If you want to understand what's driving this movement, you have to look at what's going on behind the scenes."

The final sample for analysis consisted of 140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations from 2003 to 2010. The data shows that these 91 organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities, Brulle notes.

Key findings include:

• Conservative foundations have bank-rolled denial. The largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial are a number of well-known conservative foundations, such as the Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. These foundations promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.

• Koch and ExxonMobil have recently pulled back from publicly visible funding. From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding climate-change denial organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions.

• Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to denial organizations by the Donors Trust has risen dramatically. Donors Trust is a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation now provides about 25% of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.

• Most funding for denial efforts is untraceable. Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75% of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.



"The real issue here is one of democracy. Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible," said Brulle. "Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square. Powerful funders are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise public doubts about the roots and remedies of this massive global threat. At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts."

Brulle has authored numerous articles and book chapters on environmental science, and is a frequent media commentator on climate change. He co-edited Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (2005) with David Pellow, and is the author of Agency, Democracy, and Nature: U.S. Environmental Movements from a Critical Theory Perspective (2000). This study is part one of a three-part project by Brulle to examine the climate movement in the U.S. at the national level. The next step in the project is to examine the environmental movement or the climate change movement. Brulle will then compare the whole funding flow to the entire range of organizations on both sides of the debate.

Brulle previously served as a commissioned officer in the United States Coast Guard for two decades. He received a doctorate in sociology from George Washington University, a master of science degree in natural resources from the University of Michigan, a master of arts degree in sociology from the New School for Social Research and a bachelor of science degree in marine engineering from the United States Coast Guard Academy. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Not-Just-the-Koch-Brothers-by-Press-R
elease-Black-Money-Secret-Donors_Climate-Change_Climate-Change-Deniers_Denial-140105-86.html]

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