The Ice Age Is Coming, The Sun's Zooming In

Somehow today I ended up at the website of a group called EnviroTruth (Slogan: Promoting truth in enviromental activism).  More importantly, I ended up at their page on "Myths and Envirotruth Regarding Climate Change".  Now, ignoring the fact that someone should be taken out back and shot for making up and using the word envirotruth, the list is actually kind of amusing.  More specifically one particular item is kind of amusing: Myth #11: 'Those Who Question Whether Human Activity Contributes in Any Significant Fashion to Climate Change are Secretly Funded by Coal, Oil, Gas and Other "Smokestack" Industries.'

The response is a wordy bit of spin that doesn't do much except pay the salary of whoever typed it up.  (It certainly doesn't provide any hard evidence to back up its claims.)  But that's not why it's interesting.  Why it's interesting is that they're saying that it's a myth that those who doubt the concept of global warming are funded by companies involved in oil, coal, gas, &c.

Now, if you look down at the bottom of the page, you'll spot this line: "Sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research".  So far, so good.  Unfortunately, the National Center doesn't state who funds them anywhere on their site.  (I don't suggest visiting it, unless you enjoy having every other link you click opening in a new window.)  That's fine though, as there're plenty of other places where you can find this sort of stuff.

Anyways, among the funders listed on the appropriate page:  ExxonMobil.  More importantly, the funding from ExxonMobil wasn't just given carte-blanche.  It was given for a very specific purpose that's even listed in ExxonMobil's 2003 giving report  (page 44 of the PDF).  The conditions?  That $30,000 of it was for the "global climate change/EnviroTruth website".  Whoops.  No wonder the about page at the EnviroTruth website doesn't contain the usual spiel about being an independent group, instead prefering to toss around loaded words like 'terrorism'.

It would appear that someone has a large amount of egg on their face.