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Saturday, November 22nd, 2014

On Fox, Pundit From Oil-Funded Group Says Climate Scientists Are The Profiteers

Author:     LIBBY WATSON
Source:     Media Matters for America
Publication Date:     November 18, 2014 9:44 PM EST
 Link: On Fox, Pundit From Oil-Funded Group Says Climate Scientists Are The Profiteers
Stephan:   This is the media face of the carbon energy industries, and their blatant disinformation program. As a life long researcher and academic I find the idea that there is a cabal of scientists trying to promote a false story in order to get rich from funding climate change research and remediation belly laugh absurd. Have you met a lot of multi-millionaire climate researchers? Neither have I. According to the government the annual median income of a PhD senior atmospheric scientist with 22 years of education and 10 years of post-doc experience is $89,260. Not chump change to be sure but, for a typical family of four, hardly an income that buys luxury. Carbon energy interests pour tens of millions of dollars  annually into creating confusion and misunderstanding and, as a result, Americans who watch outlets like Fox News have voted for politicians, who themselves are vassals of carbon energy interests, and are dedicated to doing nothing about climate change.

fox_news_logoFox News provided American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Jonah Goldberg a platform to attack climate scientists as profiteers who are “financially incentivized” to advocate climate change action, without disclosing AEI’s own financial incentive to undercut action on climate change. AEI has taken over $3 million from ExxonMobil, and once offered money to scientists to write articles criticizing a UN climate change report.

On the November 18 edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, Goldberg argued that climate scientists have a conflict of interest reporting on climate change because they are “deeply invested in the whole industry of global warming” for their university programs. Goldberg also called climate scientists and advocates “people who are financially incentivized to go one way.”

Though host Neil Cavuto did disclose that Goldberg is a fellow at AEI, he did not mention AEI’s ties to the oil industry or its history of offering money to climate scientists to write articles undermining a climate change report. In 2013, The Union of Concerned Scientists reported that AEI received $3.04 million from ExxonMobil between 2001 and 2011. According to ExxonMobil’s website, in 2012 the company also donated $260,000 to AEI.

In 2007, The Guardian reported that AEI offered scientists and economists $10,000 to write articles that “emphasize the shortcomings” of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, […]

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