ExxonSecrets is hanging here in the Big Apple with DeSmogBlog, as the Heartland Institute, flush with cash from anonymous planet hating foundations and corporations, is putting on the second annual global warming Denial-Palooza.
The Guardian led with a description of the keynote address by Czech president, Václav Klaus, whose country holds the important rotating presidency of the EU. Klaus’ alarmist message to the cheering denier throng was that European nations plans for climate solutions hide a nefarious plot to ruin human society… “They probably do not want to reveal their true plans and ambitions to stop economic development and return mankind several centuries back”
How’s that for optimism and hope in troubled times? Yo Vaccie, chillax and enjoy the Energy Revolution.
The New York Times panned the conference in Monday’s paper, documenting several cases of peer to peer disagreement on how to best deny global warming – MIT’s Richard Lindzen slamming the sun-spot people and Fred Singer correcting fellow skeptics understanding of physics. ExxonSecrets loves it when the skeptics eat their young.
But the best salvo of the Times article was a recitation of last year’s Exxon Corporate Citizenship report blockbuster sentence by ExxonMobil spokes Alan T. Jeffers, who wrote the Times in an e-mail, saying that the company had ended support “to several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion about how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.”
Ending Exxon’s diversion campaign being the primary goal of ExxonSecrets, seeing these immortal words from last May in the NY Times warmed our hearts….
Heartland, the free-marketeers, went on…attacking corporations who now express some consciousness of the threat of global warming: “Joseph L. Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute, said Exxon and other companies were just shifting their stance to improve their image. The Heartland meeting, he said, was the last bastion of intellectual honesty on the climate issue.” Last bastion of antireglatory extremists more like.
“Major corporations are painting themselves green around global warming,” Mr. Bast said, adding that the companies have shifted their lobbying and public relations efforts toward trying to shape climate legislation in their favor.”
Well they have a point there, we have noticed a spike in climate greenwashing. Maybe Heartland wants to join our StopGreenwash campaign?
Despite Exxon unceremoniously kicking them to the curb in 2007, Heartland seems to have raised a lot of money bashing Al Gore over the last few years. In a promo brochure handed out at the conference, the Heartland Institute’s funding looks like the much maligned Michael Mann hockey stick graph. Their funding more than doubled from 2005-2007 rising from $2.5 million to $5.2 million after hovering at less than $2 million from 1999-2003.
