Funding for global warming alarmists dwarfs the much-publicized funding for climate crisis skeptics, science writer Joanne Nova explains in a global warming funding chart and accompanying text on her Web site, JoanneNova.com.au.
Vested Interests Support Alarmists
“The money and vested interests on the pro-scare side is vastly larger, more influential, and more powerful than that on the skeptical side,” Nova writes.
“Fossil fuel and conservative think-tanks are competing against most of the world financial houses, the nuclear and renewable energy industry, large well financed green activists (WWF revenue was $700m last year), not to mention whole government departments, major political parties, universities dependent on government funding, the BBC (there is no debate), the EU, and the entire UN,” she explained.
Skeptics Winning on the Evidence
“Despite this highly asymmetrical arrangement, the skeptics are winning simply because they’re more convincing—they have the evidence,” explains Nova. “The other team avoid debate, try to shut down discussion (only their experts count), they imply the audience is too stupid to judge for themselves, and then call everyone who disagrees rude names. The dumb punters are figuring them out. Vale free speech.”
Life-and-Death Funding
“On the skeptical side, Exxon chipped in all of $23 million over ten years, but it’s chump-change,” Nova writes. “The fossil fuel industry doesn’t like carbon legislation, but it’s not life or death, unlike the situation for wind and solar, which would be virtually wiped out without the subsidies provided by the scare.… Exxon paid more than 20 times as much for a single renewables research project than it did to skeptics.”
“The US government has poured in $79 billion and then some. But the pro-scare funding is pervasive: for example—the Australian government spent $14 million on a single ad campaign, and another $90 million every year on a Department of Climate Change.… Last year in carbon markets $142 billion turned over, and $243 billion was invested in renewables. If the carbon market idea went global it was projected to reach $2 trillion a year,” Nova observes.
Nova’s chart is republished below and can be found with additional commentary at http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/map-the-climate-change-scare-machine-the-perpetual-self-feeding-cycle-of-alarm/.
James M. Taylor ([email protected]) is managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
